Man In The White Suit

Untitled, by Superape

One of the things about the square format I find difficult is the sense of compositional challenge - without a long side to draw the eye, what do you do?

Superape has evidently overcome this challenge, as evidenced by this wonderful picture of a bike shop’s workbench.  The strong diagonals in this, the wonderful red tones, as well as the authentic and textural clutter of the work surface made this one an instant favourite for me.

Check out the rest of his Rolleicord pictures for more quality.

http://www.chichesteropenart.co.uk/index.html

One problem with this one however -”The exhibition will be of paintings, drawings and prints. All 2-dimensional work will be acceptable, with the exception of photographic prints and reproductions.”

They obviously don’t recognise photographic prints as being originals - a bit of education needed perhaps?

If ever you want a case for making Photoshop illegal read this:

Crazy Doll Lady vs. Something Awful

The original site, triggering this wonderful e-mail correspondence, is here.

Be warned though - these images are not for persons of a nervous disposition.

A post at Ron Diorio’s blog describes his working methods. Ron of course works digitally, but even so this is well worth a read.

So the use of photography is different. It is not the decisive moment frozen. It is a more measured purposeful encounter - the creation of the physical object. This is what I consider to be the “art”. The screen image or the photographic print is the object, the document of my process where the image becomes an image of itself. An event takes place but the viewer doesn’t experience that. They experience the idea of that. And ideally the viewer will have an experience where they will respond to the pictures - think about their own memories, perceptions and premonitions.

What I love is this process that you can go outside right now and capture something and then transform and present them as an idea, my imagination of the experience rather than the experience itself. There is a lot of imagination in reality. You just have to look for it.

THIS is England - Originally uploaded by outallnight

I love this picture.

I love the tones, I love the wonky flag, I love the background that you know is a beach but you can’t quite see. I love the fact that it’s a polaroid.
I find it amazing that this, a little square image of something most of us have seen or made ourselves countless times, contained on a piece of paper, created by the action of light upon certain chemicals can stop you in your tracks and take your breath away.

A couple of unrelated things for you;

1) The World’s Oldest Darkroom?

Apparently, when Joseph Fortuné Petiot-Groffier (known as one of the pioneers of photography) died in 1855 - his darkroom in Chalon-sur-Saône in Burgundy was simply abandoned and the door closed. His heirs and successors never did anything with that part of the house and just left it locked up. Upon the death of the last of his family two years ago it was eventually found that the whole darkroom was still fully intact - complete with bottles of chemicals, apparatus and everything a photographer in 1855 needed.

( Article from the muse-ings blog.)
2) The Power of Context

An interesting article at Gallery Hopper on something that troubles me, namely whether to allow the viewer to use the context they bring with them to form an opinion on a photograph, or to give them a push in the direction you want them to take.

I’d urge you to view the photograph before reading any of the text, and ask yourself these questions;

“Take a look at this portrait by Timothy Archibald and imagine what sort of man this is. What is the photographer saying about him? What is he trying to say about himself? What does he do for a living? Why is he holding that gun?”

The article is here.

My answers were way off, if you’re interested.

Leaf

Originally uploaded by John the Monkey

I’ve often thought of film photography as being a wonderful series of happy accidents. There are cameras, lenses and film stock that we know better than others, that are more predictable to us, and thus give results that we can be more certain of.  However, the outcome of our shutter release, uncovering of the pinhole or application of the other means we use to convey light to the emulsion remains hidden from us until the film develops.

Just as this unpredictability can be diminished by using gear we know well, in controlled conditions, it can be increased by using “toy” cameras, expired film stock, or by any number of alternative processes.

One interesting project I’ve seen lately is Stephen Gill’s “Buried”. From the artist’s own description, photographs were taken

“in Hackney Wick and later buried there.

The amount of time the images were left underground varied depending on the amount of rainfall. The depths that the pictures were buried at also varied, as did their positioning. Sometimes they were facing each other, sometimes back to back or sometimes buried singly.”

The results are intriguingly textural - I wonder if there’ll be a photoshop action along shortly to replicate the “look”?

The illustrative photograph is one frame from a roll of Superia 400 colour print film that was torn inside the camera, accidentally exposed to light, and then processed in B&W chemistry. It’ was taken and processed by me, and is nothing to to with Mr. Gill’s work.

…there were glass plates, on which S.M. Produkin-Gorskii set out to record the life of the Russian Empire.
The Online Photographer has an article today that gives an introduction to the man and his work. It’s fascinating because of Produkin-Gorskii’s achievements in the field of early colour photography, and the nature of his project, which documented Czarist Russia before its fall.

A direct link to the article in question is here.

Howard Hopwood, marketing director of Ilford Photo comments on the future of film in this press release.

(The picture isn’t a comment on the article, it’s there because it was shot on HP5+ and developed in Ilford chemistry).

Catwalk, originally uploaded by Mr Luke Harby.

We needed a new picture, so I picked this one…