in all aspects evenly

Louise Bourgeois and some 140 000 others died yesterday.

2010

                                     

                                                             

Tate Modern new blockbuster photography exhibition starts tomorrow. Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera,  is certain to have the right amount of shock, color, vintage, exotic, politic, artistic and crowd. I will be going, of course, to see the Brassaï, Weegee and some. The press coverage, illustrated by a black &white image from Jonathan Olley http://www.diemarnoblephotography.com/artists/jonathan-olley.html  reminded me of that  shoot of a street view behind Batersea Power Station I took in 1996. So off I was, scanning again. I will try to go down the spot one of these days. Looking at the image I remember that silence. It was on a sunday, all the surrounding streets were completely empty which made me feel that I was possibly trespassing, or for the least, I was wandering in some kind of unchartered territory; when I spotted the cameras, I did not feel reassure one bit, but started thinking that hordes of blood thirsty policemen and their dogs would probably arrive any minute and surround me with their automated weapons aimed at my Rolleiflex. I scampered off. 

The color picture was taken during my postgraduate course at Central St Martins and won the approval of my peers to be used as our end of year exhibition promotion material. It is a take on David Hamilton Swingeing London from 1968, one of my all time favorite pop images.

The unseen is fascinating because we will never know. The notion of what has been and what will be, before and after what we see, is one of the most interesting notion of photography It is a bit like children incessant interrogations about "before I was born" and "were will I go when I'm dead" or "do giants really exist". There are the images in our mind and the images we are shown and we have to, somehow, correlate the two.

London has approximately 10 000 CCTV.

                                                       

                                                                                

Verademashpolitalis

If I don't say anything, I feel as I haven't said enough.

Shrine

Rejoice

On stoicism

    

A while ago, I stumbled upon an old issue of Purpose magazine and I was really moved by a documentary on present-day slaves in France by Raphaël Dallaporta and Ondine Millot. The text  tell the story of 11 women who have been cheated in to slave labour for affluent families. The color photographs only show the building where their ordeal took place. The objectivity of the images contrast with the poignant tales of abject human behavior endure by naïve souls who were lured by the prospect of a better future for themselves or their family back home. I have long been fascinated by stories, fictional or real of people living in near isolation, voluntary or inflicted. The silence, the edge of madness, the lack of affection and communication, the forced withdrawal into oneself  is compelling enough to enter ones sanity through the exit door. As the daily ray of sunshine comes bouncing in the kitchen, I grab the DLux and narrow my universe to this one room. In an instant, my past, present and future flash in front of me. Nothing matters and everything matters. I am alive but above all I am free and I can play with that freedom. I choose where I want to be and no matter how many times I will find myself incapable of going further than my own neurasthenia, nobody has control over my movement but myself. I wish that somebody, somewhere right now is gaining or regaining his/her freedom.

Purpose n°9- Esclavage domestique by Raphaël Dallaporta and Ondine Millot

Is it right to steal from your children?

transmission characteristics

        Alice Virginie Reynaud née Rougon
24/07/1916 - 27/04/2010

mastering your hidden self

Whitstable

I drove to Whitstable on Saturday and believe me it was beautiful!

a photograph is not a painting

Disaster stroke last week; I lost the battery of the Leica dlux3. This essentially meant no snap shooting for a few days and the realization of how important this has become for me in the last few years, first using an Olympus mju2 and now the Leica dlux3. The evidence is that I  always photograph best when I am not thinking and only looking. Thinking does not engage feeling and snap shooting  is a good way to feel the world around; in that sense, photography is for me an artistic medium, like Haikus rather than philosophical statements. Not for me the big epic, the fresco depicting Hell, Heaven, the damned and the beautiful, I am only looking at the footprint, the chard, the electric wire. By having a thorough knowledge of art history, I often see elements of the real world which recall an art movement, sometimes a painting. This is somehow reassuring for me; what I see is part of the whole, others have seen it before me, be a long time ago or just a few weeks. When I see "that way", I might inconsiderately decide to shoot. It is probably my way of saying to dead artists:I know your work and I embrace you. Photography can hold hand with painting, the way it does with everything that might ever come out of a human brain, the way René Magritte hold hand with pipes and hats. But a photography will never be a painting. The time spent, the smell, the white canvas, wood, plaster which will be covered by hand, the patience also the impatience, mostly the time spent to produce one painting can never be compared to even the longest exposure, the most fastidious Photoshop fiddling, or chemistry enhancing of a photography. So what is Jane Ure-Smith trying to say in this week end FT Life and Art, when she titles her review of Andreas Gursky new show at Sprüth-Magers in Berlin "Painterly Photographic"?, calling him a "painter" of modern life? Possibly, she does not know her De Kooning from her Richard Misrach. Did she meant to refer to his sense of composition? It seems Mr Gursky affirms not being interested in an objective view of the world but a painterly view, which is not the same idea at all than him producing "painterly" photographic work. He mentions the formal qualities of painting, that is the form, not the essence. Form follows function and it is evident here that Mr Gursky is not about to abandon the walls of the museums to start a blog showcasing the snapshots of his "carefree days, driving through some nice landscapes."
I shot the back of this advertising board in front of the old Commonwealth Institute and I was in  a Lucio Fontana meet Picasso mood.


http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/73a56e86-4e63-11df-b48d-00144feab49a.html

http://spruethmagers.com/exhibitions/258

Lorna Sage

As I wait for the bag of frozen peas to work their magic on my knee, I have started to read Lorna Sage Moments of Truth, Twelve Twentieth-Century Women Writers. The anonymous portrait on the jacket makes me want to read every single word she has ever written. She married at 16 because she was pregnant but still graduated and became a literary critic and a Professor of English Literature. She died in 2001 aged 57. I feel that along with Grace Paley, whose Collected Stories I read last year, I will find in LS a true inspiration for what to thrive for as a creative woman and mother: quiet determination, a self-belief so powerful that reserve and shyness have no means of survival. Great accomplishment does not necessitate weekly manicures and in order to shine a woman has no requisite for the services of Mario Testino or Brigitte Lacombe.

http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/Authors/5070/lorna-sage

                                                    
                                                              shining in the kitchen 2007
      

cars

Spring is all over the place, sunshine, daffodils, Alys Fawler and her edible garden on the BBC, Cath Kidtson on a roll for world domination, Essex Ladies in their 70's starting their sunburning cure on newly renovated, primroses planted Marble Arch Plaza. The cat is shedding so many hair, it won't be long until I can do my photo shoot for PETA; it's nice, there is beautiful sunlight again, the thing is, I can not stop thinking about cars. I am doing a lot of strange test from inside my car, some street shots where the cars have the focus whereas I have been cursing any kind of post 1960 vehicles littering my field of vision for years; I'm on the sprawl for the London best car park, window-licking at Peter Bradfield Vintage Cars in South Kensington, and the more I'm becoming engrossed in  my car visual delirium tremens, I remember that I have a fair number of snapshots featuring cars and more so of while-in-a-car snapshots, like the one above, at the red light on the rond point de Realpanier coming back from Arles. I won't go into detail on the reasons I named that blog hips like boys but yes, cars were an important part of me growing up and I'm not ashamed to say I still squeal when I see a Ferrari 250GT. I 'll only show the pretty stuff today but I'm hoping to come up with something interesting from my "3 days in a car boot" shoot.

camera luminosa

I went to my first physiotherapy appointment this morning and could not resist stealing a view from my pale grey curtained partition. The ceiling light, be it neon-light, participating to the fantasy that I stood in my own, long dreamed of, version of Irving Penn's studio. I long for a white linen cabin that could be installed in an instant and on sunny days, invite people to have their portrait taken. The whole installation functioning as a giant 3D light-box, with the white linen filtering as well as subtly reflecting the natural light. The point is not only the light but the isolation, the calm that emanate from a floating curtain, the idea of being in the world but remote from its constant solicitation. I have to go over the pain threshold.

Das Ding

Here are the things. There are a couple more, which were to small to be shot with the D-Lux. I shot these on friday and later that day, I read http://blog.sonicsites.de quote of the day and thought it appropriate to my wandering: "The object turns into art by the possibility of its interpretation. Does it not allow or need interpretation, it can not be the subject of art" Arthur C. Danto 

I'm better after

As I was laying on the sofa, listening to FourTet and eating m&m's, I had a bright spark and remember I had put on a shelf a whole lot of things that I wanted to do bigger things with; because I was so high on all the E numbers in the m&m's sugar coating, my mind could not focus on anything more than taking a few snapshots of my findings, of which here is the first one. The rest to follow soon.

Packaging

                         

It's raining. I still can't walk very much. I stare at people in the bus and on the street and I feel frustrated that I will never take their picture. The green packaging will never mind that I stare, that I take for ever to get the right exposure and adjust the white balance. The green packaging has nothing to hide. It has nothing to say but: I am. It does not question my intentions. I like that. I wonder if one becomes a photographer because ones intentions are questionable. Is it a mean to signal: ask me a question? Johnny Thunder of New York Dolls fame sang: "Ask me no question and I tell you no lies." It's springtime.

blush

der blau Reiter

                                                                     Der blau Reiter

The reflection of one of my blue crutch on the kitchen door. I have been on one leg for 2 weeks now, unable to go for photographic walk or seeing exhibitions. For once, I have felt no guilt spending hours looking at photographs on the ever amazing vintage photo works website http://www.vintageworks.net/.

I read Patti Smith Just Kids in 3 days and was captivated by her unpretentious account of her becoming one of the most inspiring women of the last 50 years. http://www.pattismith.net.

The only thing that's keeping me from tears is Jason Evans with his daily nice and the memory of Chris Ofili "Iscariot blues" seen at Tate Britain a few weeks ago.

                                                                     Before the fall

International Women's Day

My best friend's mother past away last week. My mother has asked me for a new post to reflect on while she is coping with another snow fall. My neighbour (the one who feed my cat while I'm away spraining my knee on ski slopes) and I had coffee this morning and once again lamented on the sacrifice we feel we are making for our husbands. Fatima, a single mother whose daughter also attend Le Lycee is doing the bus journey to school with Rita and assure me: "we help each other out". The sunday papers are resurrecting feminism, after announcing a sharp rise in child's poverty ( bad lazy ignorant feeble selfish mother!).

Three weeks ago, I watched for the third times Pedro Almodovar Volver and strongly felt it was one of the best film ever made. This picture of 3 little wonky, man made, tables embellished by flower plastic table cloth is my allegory of 100 years of feminism. You can make what you want of the squashed chewing-gum on the floor.