Back to front

when it is switched on

aaaaahhhhhh, the sun was coming through today, everything seemed to want and tell me something. Some light...and that was all that I needed...if somebody could put the sound up a little now, that would be great.

I finally made it to the Serpentine yesterday to see Philippe Parreno. Ah, It was beautifull! you can read Thom Brige from BonzoBonzo review of the exhibition here because all he is saying, althought very personal, is right on the button. In addition I would just say that, as I sat through Invisible Boy, I had a sense of being at home, you know, a bit like a spiritual state, where everything made sense and I understood what was being said to me, and this was a language that elated me. Yeah, I know, it's that whole thing of Art being the new religion...yes, I guess there was a sense of that, that I was part of a spiritual community and Philppe Parreno is my god. Ah! ah! ah! Although, I will add that the June8,1968 video is most excellent. Filmed from the funeral train that carried Bobby Kennedy's body back home, it shows the anguished face of american folks on the side of the track, come to show their last respect. There was something deep to explore here and that is what Parreno has done by making his re-creation of the event, directly inspired by Magnum photographer Paul Fusco reportage. Some  photographs where shown in a newspaper sunday supplement a few years ago, probably the Paul Fusco ones, and they made such a strong impression on me, I kept the magazine for ages; now of course, I can't put my hands on it.

I have just read, in the Evening Standard of all places about a recently opened gallery space in London, the Edel Assanti project space and gallery. I will visit next week, hoping to find a new church worthy of my devotion.

Back and forth

Have you done it yet? You should have done it. You had plenty of time to do it. You had all day Tuesday and Saturday... what did you do? why didn't you do it? you knew you had to do it, it's not that difficult is it? What you're gonna do now? I mean, you can't go back...you can't tell them you haven't done it. You should have done it... it's too late now. I just don't understand.

Sugar?

I heard the doorbell. I put some shoes on and went down to open. No one was there.

All my friends at once

                                                      

I have started the year back in time. First there was the gift of For a Language to Come, Nakahira Takuma 's first collection of works; originally published in Japan in 1970, it has just been republished by Osiris/Tokyo. This took me right back to discovering photography, with a certain nostalgia for the invention of a new photographic, yes, language, full of the blacks and grainy whites Robert Frank and William Klein had become the masters

Then, there was my visit to Le Pavillion Populaire in Montpellier. Currently co-directed by Gilles Mora, a figurehead in the establishment of Photography becoming a major actor in France cultural development led by the then socialist government ( Gilles Mora was editor-in-chief of the beautiful quarterly "Les Cahiers de la Photographie" and artistic director of Les rencontres d'Arles between 1999 and 2001), Le Pavillion Populaire is currently showing a retrospective of Ralph Eugene Meatyard (1925-1972). Like a lot of photography nerds, I have long been under the tragicomic spell of R.E. Meatyard; through him I learned that photography could be a kind of film-still and be ambiguous and explicit at the same time. Seeing this show was a pure moment of joy, I was virtually alone in this part of the gallery, and I was definitely the only one laughing at the tiny captions, which were not, unforgivably, translated for the french public. If you are in Montpellier, keep an eye on this space as I believe Gilles Mora is capable of miracle.

To keep on with the past but on an entirely different level, after 2 and a half years of respite, enjoying the luxury of being an outsider and a recluse, I am utterly broke and that means only one thing for me: back on the shop-floor, doing curtseys to the rat race. Some people never learn.

p.s: I'm still scanning! the picture above was shot in Berlin in 1991 with a Nikon FE (?) on Ilford FP4 or Kodak T-Max (?)

Ralph Eugene Meatyard, from The familly album of Lucybelle Crater 1969-1972. © The estate of R.E. Meatyard courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery

Birthday bonanza

These pictures are all holiday snapshots I've taken with the Leica DLux2. I wish my work had some kind of commercial value, but then it would not exist as it is. The images I do would be of a much higher quality would I be a professional photographer but chances are I would not do the same kind of images, the kind that has little to say but just ink at life, the photographs I do are just about memory, discovering through memory. I use to try to communicate with others by doing their portraits but more and more I content to communicate with myself. What I discover in the depth of my mind interest me more than it does others.

It's been a year since I started HIPSLIKEBOYS; as a gift, I will tell you why I called it that : I have hips like a boy, straight, no round curves there for me, the bone is near, trousers hang onto it. It is not a nationality thing, I have that french tomboy look about me. I'm also a bit obsessed with jazz, the 50's, the beat generation, the hipsters, the cool cats, the down and under...anything hip does it for me. That's all.

Ah Ah Ah

Be cool, boy... go cool, boy... stay cool, boy... just be cool, boy

Le roi est là

 

Peace

Argh! It's that time again. At no other time in the year is the battle so fierce. Yes, I want to show my friends I love them, but do I really want to write merry christmas on a card printed in China (it already says Merry Christmas inside anyway) or worse some ugly squirrel or robin plonked on some ethically sourced most unappealingly designed card ( thank you for reminded me that we live in a bad bad ugly mean world where there's no fun to be have anymore), do I really really want to buy them the new Alec Soth or the new Stephen Gill book (no, I want it for MYSELF). Mostly, I'm condemned to a whole month of guilt ridden thoughts for not being as generous, as thoughtful as I should. My whole winging, self-pitying behavior gets a knock on the shoulder too when the concrete proof that I am surrounded by people who loves me, is right there, pilling up in front of me (well, so much for the chocolate!).

I have to go... another friend to meet up for a last drink before the new year ( oh! please let it be the Alec Soth book!).

My mind is a minefield

                                                  

On the positive side, I can always shuffle in my Iphoto and Mies Itunes playlist and instantly feel better.

Music is man made but it takes me places no human being ever will. The playlist I'm listening to now is called Slipped Disco and it swoon just the right amount of warmth, light and energy to get me through the day. The one playing now is Dear African Sky, a remix by one of my favorite producer Henrik Schwartz.

Ideas contain visions of the absolute

I'm sorry I don't have time to writte. But I have been reading; Salman Rushdie and my Photoworks magazine. I've read it five times. I have done some great still life and I went to see or should I say to unravel in James Turrell exhibition at the Gagosian gallery (hi Larry!); very fulfilling.

Jeanne-Claude

Back in black

Some days, when I go down the tube on the escalator, I start humming "Highway to hell" by AC/DC, in a low enough voice that will not raise suspicion. The parents and teacher meeting went well yesterday. Right until the start I was snapping away and this is some of it. 

coming back in a good mindframe

...the possibility of returning to what has already happened is phenomenal...it is specifically human... it is art, isn't it? That is what listening to house music induces on me.

...the bloody crippling doubt came on at me again, and I went digging in one of my negatives pick and mix boxes looking for this photo I took with my Olympus MJ. This is from around the time where I started to finally admit  that good photography was essentially good when the main subject was light, the rest comes after. I have always liked this photo. A couple of years after taking it, I saw one  very similar by Juergen Teller; see it here. Ironically, in typical Teller, his doesn't have much light but that is what make it good; its gloom. I like feeling that the people I have long admired seem to be in the same head space as me. very reassuring. This hasn't been happening for a long time. The snowy light in London at the moment is like the one in this photo: a mix of blue and yellow on a milky dust, very difficult to replicate. It is beautiful.

I'll kill you, creepy doubt.

Cerulean

All flat now!

The straw hat

This morning I read a fairly interesting essay by Mark Greif on the Hipsters in The New York Time Sunday book review, dated 12/11/2010. I live in London and there are a lot of hipsters. In fact, since reading Greif's not so flat platitudes, it appears I use to be one; Mr Greif, referring to Pierre Bourdieu, establish that one type of hipster is "the middle class child who moves to large urban area to work in the creative field". So nicely and bluntly said. I think the hipster is the city guy who categorize the provincial youth in social type because they all wear the uniform of globalization whatever the trend of the year. close. Who cares about stereotype  anyway. We all know crystal-meth is not good for you.

I have done a bit of thinking today, about improvement and series. and the dream and  understanding what people want to see in acknowledging what I want to see. Then I decided it wasn't time on a tuesdayto fight with myself and left the house . The bitter cold helped me forget immediately about all the gibbering my hip-self come up with. Tonight I had me self a bit of fun. I haven't got a clue but I'm enjoying.

p.s: the plastic white chair was bought for a photo-shoot a few weeks ago. I have spent such a long time hating those god damn thing', I had to resolve the matter. Now, I'm stuck with the thing, I can feel the pressure building... it's wicked.

White on white translucent black capes

Post tittle from Bella Lugosi's dead by Bauhaus.

but where is everyone?

I like iPhoto, it is scarily easy, I just scroll up or down and pick and mix and it's tidy and mostly the good enough to be published pictures stand out from the mediocre more rapidly than in my head. There is no time wasted shifting through boxes of prints and then more boxes of negatives. I could never guaranty that my negatives would stay with their contact-shits. And I never need to find the magnifier again, a double click and I have a 14x11 in image in front of me. Still yesterday I felt hatred for all things digital, I just wanted to hold some prints, move them around, align a little story, look at some color pigments and not some brightly lit pixels. I can not remember the last time I got something printed. Now there is too much. My anger at the digital mainly came after looking at the result of a portrait session I did recently and being certain that the result would have been so much better if I had used one of the film camera. My world has become flat. I long for the depth, the richness of traditional prints, I want a black with detail, a highlight with detail, may be I don't want to scroll endlessly in Steve Jobs' deserted land. I know, no one is forcing me. I'm gonna start eating pasta every day again so that I can treat myself to a beautiful print.

watermelon