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.

Graffiti

I have shot today a digital version of my Cross project. Here is one of 133, that includes a few circles and triangles. I had been thinking about it for about a year and the whole thing was done in under 1 hour. At present, I have no information on why some of the stones on streets curbs are marked with chiseled cross. Keeping in mind all symbolic aspects, underlining the possibility of  offense, I compiled those pictures of cross in order to add a bit of pure graphics to my production of freaks. Mostly, I'm going back   to where I belong,  a  world of minute joys and pleasures. With a nod at Brassai.

string quartet

My grandfather's disused stable is one of my treasure-troves, emotionally and literally. There, nothing is blurred or hazy; three generations have worked and lived between those walls. This is about "let us now pray famous men".

more crash

This wasn't an accident, but all the same, I incidentally walked that street and not another. I guess the fascination for hazy scenery comes directly from oil paintings and the early 20th C carbon and bichromaticgum(bichromated gum) photographic print process. I used to print some B&W through a commercial plastic sheet or a cut off plastic bag around 1994 to get the effect. In 2004 I discovered the work of Uta Barth; she shoots nice graphic, color, hazy close up of interiors. She has a great body of work but after a while I found it boring. There are a lot of images I stopped producing because I was  scarred of boring myself. That 's how you get labelled "inconsistent", I consider my photographic journey to be adventurist, reflecting my agitated mind. Saying that, I have been quite consistent in photographing windows, dust and corners.

CRASH

the golden child

I just love this Picture Mies took with his iphone before removing the protective film. You just can't beat an accident.

The magic

                                        

                                            Soeur Yvonne- Marseille- 1990

                                    
                                            Street musician- Marseille- 1990

A few months ago, I bought a scanner, a Canoscan 8800F. I then repatriated all of my early negatives

back from France, some of them having no contact sheets, I began scanning and retracing recurrent themes in my practice, as well as the intrinsic evolution brought by different equipment,  skills and editing in regard of the ever changing contexts. Some photographs were very vivid in my memory, I considered them key examples of what I wanted to show; not because of their iconography, or composition but because they carried some emotions which, aged 19 I did not know how to express. It was for me the realisation that magic was at work in the photographic process like in no other pictorial means. Mostly,photography seems to be echoing the raw energy of the music I listened to, the same instantaneity,the same power to constantly regenerate itself without having to establish a pompous statement. Those blurred images had the heaviness of a bass line, ripped of details, the impact was  direct. Blur photography became mainstream around 1985, it permeated from art and fashion into advertising and through daring young picture editors, to documentary; thus giving out of focus and blurred photographs the credibility to become the showcase for the postmodernist era. Music had been leading the way for moody teenagers, with band like Suicide, Joy Division , My Bloody Valentine, and  what would then be tagged as lo-fi and slow-prog(ressive); Galaxy 500 and Codeine were the epitome of slow motion and late night tale and inspired me to create many blurs and"true black" in my photographs.

Recently, I have heard some reminiscence in german and canadian electronic music, and new "it" band

the XX are definitely on the dark side of the moon; and with the people at The Impossible Project ready for the relaunch of instant Polaroid film, I'm quite certain that we will soon see a return to blurred, grainy pictures which should give photography students some freedom to experiment with the medium instead of calibrating their monitors.

I have had a tremendous afternoon in my living room. There's no need to retouch.I took a picture of all my cameras;well, I forgot one, a Zeiss Ikon.

                             

Wardour Street. Sand,cement,paper,zing and time.110x70.

cactus

I have had my eyes on these cactus for about 10 years.They proudly stand on the windowsills of a basement flat in the neighborhood. As I was snapping away, I was hopping for a hand to draw one of the nets and for a face to appear; who was dedicated to these plants? man or woman? how old? what kind of clothes was a person who'd display a Shaggy flowerpot wearing ? I imagined pale blue eyes, wrinkly hands

                                                    

My first bought book this year will remind myself to remember how much Japanese graphic design has influenced me and how graphic photography was in the 70s. This book is proof of it. Although printed in Singapore(well...), the quality of the paper (cover included) is not impressive and the subject would have deserved better quality reproductions, but the japanese production and design gives it the feel of one of the most desirable book coming my way. there's a very informative post in ModernArtObsession dated 15 october about photography books and japanese photography.

Graphic photography...Graphic photography...Graphic photography...??...!...?

-Japanese photobooks of the 1960s and 1970s by Ryuichi Kaneko and Ivan Vartanian for Goliga Books

published by Aperture

http://modernartobsession.blogs.com/modern_art_obsession/2009/10/collecting-photobook-story-in-this-weekends-london-financial-times.html

black holes

I was just about to post a note on Elinor Carucci's show at James Hyman Gallery when I read -Hey! look at me on (notes on) politics, theory & photography and was turned cold turkey by Jim Johnson's critic of her narcissist approach. Nothing is never simple and the view of a highly intelligent social anthropologist can be a black hole. While this review won't put me off going to see Elinor's show,  I am sure to follow (notes on) politics, theory and photography if only to stop myself from posting too many pictures of my daughter or grand-father.

I am also looking forward to the William Eggleston exhibition at Victoria Miro gallery starting on 15/01/10. Thanks to Juergen Teller (I will come back on him later) and my friend David, I have developed a bit of an obsession on Eggleston lately, so it will be good to see some recent work as I was not very impressed by the catalogue of his Paris exhibition at the Fondation Cartier last year. It stopped me from having any regret that I didn't make it in time to Paris for the show. ( but I sure did not miss the George Condo's show at the Musee Maillol!)

Alpes de Haute Provence

politicstheoryphotography.blogspot.com

www.jameshymangallery.com