The original 'Tower of Babel'.
Our 'Tower of Babel'.
magnum +
i bought a new book, nice.
oh and also,
the new metallica album, not bad.
being unemployed during the holiday season, its downright sad.
whipped
annie & cross processes
seems to me that everything looks better cross processed. the mundane looks ... less mundane and more grungy, edgy and flattering. it's like a quick-fix for any pictures that are neither here nor there.
the good stuff
chanced upon some interesting images.
Elliot Erwitt
Rodney Smith
Unknown
Sally Mann; Candy Cigarette
Unknown
Sally Mann; Candy Cigarette
back (in business)
it certainly feels good to be back in business. it seems like there are so much that can be done, so much that needs doing and so little time for all of it. it's quite a long shot, but i need to give it a go.
on the trip, i've learnt that i do not enjoy taking photographs. i find that the photographs often turn out to be less meaningful than memories, and in the process of actively trying to snap a visual memory, i tend to lose more of the real ones. and to take landscapes, you need the right time of the day, the right light, the right scene (normally without tourists)... it is just too much of a hassle. and if somehow you got yourself, say a lovely picture of taj mahal, so what? its just a beautiful picture... might as well buy a postcard in the first place.
here's an funny excerpt from susan sontag. i must say it's quite a lovely coincidence; i've been wanting to get this book and i found it on my last day in india - on a shelf of a second hand bookstore. here's what she wrote.
"A way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a way of refusing it - by limiting experience to a search for the photogenic, by converting experience into an image, a souvenir. Travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs. The very activity of taking pictures is soothing, and assuages general feelings of disorientation that are likely to be exacerbated by travel. Most tourists feel compelled to put the camera between themselves and whatever is remarkable that they encounter. Unsure of other responses, they take a picture. This gives shape to experience: stop, take a photography, and move on. The method especially appeals to people handicapped by a ruthless work ethnic - Germans, Japanese and Americans. Using a camera appeases the anxiety which the work-driven feel about not working when they are on vacation and supposed to be having fun."
bloody funny and i can't stop laughing when i read this. maybe it's just the way we travel that makes no sense to engage in meaningful photography; we rarely have time to develop a proper understanding that is necessary for all good pictures. next time, i think i'll cover less ground. i'll choose somewhere that has something that interests me a great deal, go and take pictures.
on the trip, i've learnt that i do not enjoy taking photographs. i find that the photographs often turn out to be less meaningful than memories, and in the process of actively trying to snap a visual memory, i tend to lose more of the real ones. and to take landscapes, you need the right time of the day, the right light, the right scene (normally without tourists)... it is just too much of a hassle. and if somehow you got yourself, say a lovely picture of taj mahal, so what? its just a beautiful picture... might as well buy a postcard in the first place.
here's an funny excerpt from susan sontag. i must say it's quite a lovely coincidence; i've been wanting to get this book and i found it on my last day in india - on a shelf of a second hand bookstore. here's what she wrote.
"A way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a way of refusing it - by limiting experience to a search for the photogenic, by converting experience into an image, a souvenir. Travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs. The very activity of taking pictures is soothing, and assuages general feelings of disorientation that are likely to be exacerbated by travel. Most tourists feel compelled to put the camera between themselves and whatever is remarkable that they encounter. Unsure of other responses, they take a picture. This gives shape to experience: stop, take a photography, and move on. The method especially appeals to people handicapped by a ruthless work ethnic - Germans, Japanese and Americans. Using a camera appeases the anxiety which the work-driven feel about not working when they are on vacation and supposed to be having fun."
bloody funny and i can't stop laughing when i read this. maybe it's just the way we travel that makes no sense to engage in meaningful photography; we rarely have time to develop a proper understanding that is necessary for all good pictures. next time, i think i'll cover less ground. i'll choose somewhere that has something that interests me a great deal, go and take pictures.
team hoyt
sometimes in life, you just happen to get into a rare occurrence; the type that holds your attention for as long as it takes to unfold itself, it leaves you speechless and humbled at the end of it all.
i just watched a video of team hoyt, and it was beautiful beyond words. it was the sort of beauty that i cannot possibly comprehend. and it has left me humbled and embarrassed. for a moment, i thought about Rick and how he feels during the races. and i can't help but to wonder - what if all this is a stunt by Dick Hoyt? a scam, a gimmick, a money driven tug at our hearts. after all, we've been seeing a lot of these in recent times.
i won't know the truth behind it all, but i choose to believe in such examples of indescribable human beauty.
i just watched a video of team hoyt, and it was beautiful beyond words. it was the sort of beauty that i cannot possibly comprehend. and it has left me humbled and embarrassed. for a moment, i thought about Rick and how he feels during the races. and i can't help but to wonder - what if all this is a stunt by Dick Hoyt? a scam, a gimmick, a money driven tug at our hearts. after all, we've been seeing a lot of these in recent times.
i won't know the truth behind it all, but i choose to believe in such examples of indescribable human beauty.
the ninth floor
Jessica Dimmock;The Ninth Floor
In 2004, anywhere from 20 to 30 young addicts lived on the ninth floor of an elegant narrow building overlooking Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The squatters had turned the sprawling apartment into a dark, desperate and chaotic place. People hustled, scored, shot and smoked wherever they could. Friends conned each other for their next hit. They slept on piles of clothes on the floor. The power was shut off; the bathroom unusable; the kitchen filled with garbage. Anything of value was sold off...
(excerpt from Mediastorm.com)
I am not too familiar with the current trends of documentary photography (I think I got lost somewhere in the magnum era) Perhaps that's why the 'Ninth Floor' comes to me as jarring and unorthodox. The moody photographs are often dull and grainy, out of focus or blurred by motion; they defied all the capabilities of what technology brings to photography nowadays.
Some might dislike the 'Ninth Floor' series, call it technically incompetent, manipulative and all sorts of other names. But I like it. In fact, I like the entire series quite a bit. I find the approach work extremely well for such an intense story, and the use of such a raw edginess is fully justified.
I wonder if one would consider Dimmock's method to be manipulative and overly romanticised, like pictoralism? Where does one draw the line between a representation of truth and manipulation?
In 2004, anywhere from 20 to 30 young addicts lived on the ninth floor of an elegant narrow building overlooking Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The squatters had turned the sprawling apartment into a dark, desperate and chaotic place. People hustled, scored, shot and smoked wherever they could. Friends conned each other for their next hit. They slept on piles of clothes on the floor. The power was shut off; the bathroom unusable; the kitchen filled with garbage. Anything of value was sold off...
(excerpt from Mediastorm.com)
I am not too familiar with the current trends of documentary photography (I think I got lost somewhere in the magnum era) Perhaps that's why the 'Ninth Floor' comes to me as jarring and unorthodox. The moody photographs are often dull and grainy, out of focus or blurred by motion; they defied all the capabilities of what technology brings to photography nowadays.
Some might dislike the 'Ninth Floor' series, call it technically incompetent, manipulative and all sorts of other names. But I like it. In fact, I like the entire series quite a bit. I find the approach work extremely well for such an intense story, and the use of such a raw edginess is fully justified.
I wonder if one would consider Dimmock's method to be manipulative and overly romanticised, like pictoralism? Where does one draw the line between a representation of truth and manipulation?
wasted potential
i was talking to a friend, and our strange conversation ended up somewhere along the lines of wasted potential. she asked if i felt i was wasting a bit of mine, in giving up an entire realm of photography for another.
and i thought. "nothing could count more as a waste in life's potential, than the failure to try to live a life that you chose for yourself."
and i thought. "nothing could count more as a waste in life's potential, than the failure to try to live a life that you chose for yourself."
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