night crawler

The idea is to post a whole lot. One at a time. I'll explain on the last one.

Miration

I recently visited the website of Nigel Shafran, a photographer I have long been in awe of and whose work speaks so intimately of what it is to be human in our days that I gave my copy of his 2004 Steidl publication Edited Photographs 1992-2004 to a dear friend to speak in my place.

I didn't know he made in 2012-2013 a series named Packages. This only confirmed the bond I felt  as I spent much time (and used a considerable amount of space) to collect and photograph packagings around that time. I regularly get mocked by my daughter for displaying such props on walls or shelves (although I'm trying to control my habit as I do not wish to end as a hoarder, suffocating into a mess of consumerism rejects. Still I couldn't help it yesterday when I entered the kitchen and was struck by the luminescent ultramarine barquette used for the delicious figs (I LOVE figs) I bought in the morning. The color, outremer in french, the name barquette (a small embarcation typical of Marseille) are right on to keep the holidays going a bit further. the plastic bag is one of those new biodegradable beauty of the palest shade of RGB 234 243 232 HEX/HTML EAF3E8 CMYK 7 0 5 0 or Pantone ® P 133-1 U. I took a few shots but all but this one were completely out of focus (that just gives me an excuse to keep the thing around for a few days and have another go at it!). I was listenning to Andrew Weatherall show while doing my business and it felt good to have the rush (of.) again. So to my masters, guru, kindred, I send a whiff of (real) fig and some ultramarine cosmic light flow.

 

The golden apple

Dwell

Wish you all the best

 

 

Be the light

This is what happens shortly after

wind was blowing
I was lying alone
with want to extinguish my death
as I looked straight ahead
you were all I could see

This is what happens just before you fall in love

Troubled mind

Prinzlauerberg

 

My bohemian summer

 

Not this one

Nice

I'm not about to drop dead. Are you?

Flesh

  

''Summertime will come happiness will be mine...''

Come on baby

I'm back. After more than a year, I felt the need to open my big mouth again. Mainly, I have found the courage to re-post all the photos that blogger had kindly replaced with a grey oneway sign. It's taking a bit of my precious time but I will get there eventually. If you're happy to see hipslikeboys up and running again, clap your hand and share.

Rochenoir

Is anybody there?

Metapsychology

I have had those unprocessed films for years; I kept them hidden in a box to avoid feeling guilty. 2 of them belonged to a school friend who entrusted them to me for processing. That was 25 years ago. I don't know why I never processed those miserable 2 films because at the time and many years after that, I was always processing films, I always had the chemicals; perhaps the fact that my friend went to Japan for a year and that we sort of lost touch afterwards explain my negligence. Perhaps, I had processed her films and those were something else entirely, some of mine, perhaps the best pictures I had ever taken were on those films. On the whole, I hadn't a clue about what was on those films and I gave up on them, I threw them in the river in a shamanic ceremony with chanting of "you will not dwell upon the past, you will have no regrets and the unknown you will not fear".
All in all, in was a very emotional moment, I had not open a 24X36 film for 15 years perhaps and I had forgotten how tough the little devils are. I took time to show my daughter what the past looked like.
These I did because I was looking for some old films to put into my little MJU Olympus camera. I have about 30 B&W films I have kept all this time just in case. Most of them are years out of date, but I'll have a go anyway, thinking that poor quality film will always be better than nothing. I want to fill a photo album. I'm fed up at looking at images on my computer.

Wrong side

The Waste Land

Since having a go at making sense of T.S. Eliot The Waste Land, I have become mildly obsessed with mythology. Like myself, Eliot was a snob - while  he had reason to be, I'm still trying to unravel my confused self…
What I saw in this, I'm not sure, chaos, alchemy, iron, gold dust, the compass of love, the cosmic mountain…
The fact is that my toilet lock/door handle is definitely busted after a first repair a year ago. This metal dust is all that is left of one essential mechanism part. Now I have a good excuse to go lock hunting in all the salvage yard in town (one and counting) instead of filing boring MA application forms on-line.