yellow

et voila, I'm back from 6 weeks in the south of France. There are tons of digital images to sort out, a wedding to shoot on monday, the 10th issue of Cream, Creammier to read through, the bike to dust, the rant to have at Saatchi Young British artists exhibition  and the éloge of the Arles Marin Karmitz Collection display of Michael Ackerman to write. Poor me.

the power of now

exhale

I do

                                    

FlashBack

I saw last night on a bbc iplayer a 93 year old man crying about the father he lost over 80 years ago. Then I watched the Alan Yentob: Imagine: Louise Bourgeois from 2008. It was late so I slept on it. This morning I partly listened to radio interviews of women who made the punk scene of London in the early 70s. I finished the washing-up and started thinking. the women liberation, the so-called Feminist Movement had nothing to do with women. The human race was ready to express its anxiety as to its coming about. Sex was just a way of demonstrating that all links could be sectioned off at any time while new one could be created. I think men wanted to shout at the established order too. That's why they invented the electric guitar and the synthesizer, no? anyhow, I am not going to talk about what I don't know. It's just that I got my comforter out of its box and dusted  this small piece of rusted metal found on the side of a railway 20 years ago. At time it can look like human feces. So when at look at this picture for example, I wonder what made artists use pooh to express themselves. Last year I saw an excellent show of Luke Fowler at the Serpentine and I could watch his fascinating documentary shown on multiples screens with some photographs of rebel psychiatrist R.D. Laing' s refuge Kingsley Hall in London. One of the most disturbed resident spent 3 months smearing the walls of her room with her shit. She felt better for it and started recovering slightly. Not particularly that bit but I adored that film. I'm going to befriend this rusty metal part again. As an homage to Louise Bourgeois.

         "I had a flashback of something that never existed"

Then I will work at something in homage to Martin Kipperberger. And may be then I will have find a way to do something for my beautiful Grand-mother. Not scatological! May be something with chicken feathers, old cast irons and quince. Roll on Pan F.

solaire

more human

Friday morning, despite a bright sunshine, I stayed home and finished reading Kazuo Hishiguro Never Let Me Go. Sometimes a work of fiction can impact on ones life with full force. that force can bring growth, can release an action hence its expansion. We create  to be more human. Art is not meant to be a representation of what makes us more human but a transcendency of the real toward the spiritual. This Mark Rothko kne. I am just starting to understand. Yippee!

Togetherness

As I'm fighting my little fight with bitterness and regrets, I really needed to recall times when taking photographs was just about experimenting and having fun and never never think about what the purpose was and where it fitted in the grand bal masqué of self-criticisms. We do not look like it on that picture, but we were having fun that day, we were king and queen of the highway, having a rest in the corner of our eyes. We were really together, it was always about being together. Now the photo is there to remember that. This is what Patti Smith talks about in Just Kids, her and Robert Mapplethorpe being together. Nothing can beat that.

don't give up

I saw this sad sad sight last week when walking along the Regent's canal. I guess the 7 inch had been damage by water in one of the barge before being left to melt in the sun. I wished they had been covered by a white cloth rather than seeing their decaying soul exposed to the glare of foreign tourists. I was never a 7 inch kind of girl, but hey, a groove is a groove.

all the things these hands have done

10 000 hours

For Edward

      

of no interest

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