Posts tagged: photography
Czech photographer Markéta Luskačová fell in love with the East End of London in the 1970s and made some fantastic images, concentrating especially on the Brick Lane area and its animal markets where they even sold the odd lion cub. I think she is a really wonderful photographer.
More of her story and a bunch more of her great photographs here.
How to behave around fog
When you’re just out of bed, standing shivering and half-naked with your coffee at your window, and you see the morning is bundled up in a sea mist so thick you’ll barely be able to see your fingers in front of your face once outside, there are some rules you have to follow: you must squeal with delight; you must spill you coffee; you must forget your breakfast; you must pack all the camera gear you’ve ever owned except your tripod, which is the one thing you really need; you must get off the bus three stops early to walk through the park and its abandoned football pitch; your summer trainers must get soaked in dew; you must drop your favourite lens in the mud; you must wonder why there is no sound; you must whisper to the fog as you shoot it, soft, soft, my love, do not run, for it is a wild beast that will flee if you are not gentle; once you have it tamed, you must be firmer, cajole it, growl at it, for it will be used to your sweet words, will get complacent, lazy, it will forget; you must see the mist as you have never seen it before; you must let it lick your ankles, nuzzle your earlobe, breathe against the nape of your neck; you must tell it yes yes yes; in short, you must fall in love with it; and you must be late, very late, for work because you fell in love and nothing else mattered.
There you go. Them’s the rules, OK?
(Source: Flickr / sniffy_jenkins)
My superpower, it seems, is being able to make any place, anywhere, at any time, resemble the wide open ranges of a 1960s cowboy movie. An English tea room. The top floor of the Empire State Building. Your gran’s downstairs loo. Anywhere.
I started developing an idea about roads to nowhere for last week’s course homework. It just sort of happened while I was making photographs on the bleak, beautiful shingle beaches of the wonderfully strange Dungeness headland in Kent (I have so much more to write about this bizarre place later, it’s where darling, wonderful Derek Jarman lived out his final years in his beachside shack, Prospect Cottage, in the shadow of the power station and lighthouses on the nature reserve, what an amazing amazing place ugh I love it I love it OK I’ll stop now).
So I found myself beginning a sort of story in photographs, a story I’m carrying on over the next few days. Something about disappearing paths, directionlessness or unknown direction, tracks through wilderness, being lost, rootlessness, having somewhere to go but nowhere to end up at. That sort of thing, the idea’s still not fully cooked. Here are a few of my favourites so far. I had such a great time making these, felt happy and hoboish. Despite an arctic wind the weather was perfect, bright sunshine with plenty of fair-weather clouds. You know they’re infinitely better on Flickr don’t you? You do, don’t pretend you don’t. Gwan see mi pictures dem, I’ll wait right here.
I’m hoping to go back to Dungeness very soon. Maybe this time I’ll find a lonely twist of tumbleweed rolling along the shingle, a western saddle slung across the salt-scoured ribs of an abandoned fishing boat, a dusty-heeled cowboy chewing on a stalk of sea kale, staring at the ocean as he waits for me. Maybe.
Yee-haw, little dawggies. Yee-frikkin-haw.
“In 1950, a young man from Central Point, Virginia, went seven miles down the road to hear some music. Seven brothers named the Jeters were on that night, playing bluegrass in a farmhouse. The young man had come for the music, but couldn’t help noticing a young woman in the audience. The man, Richard Loving, was white; the woman, Mildred Jeter, was black and Cherokee. Seventeen years later, as a result of their meeting, the Supreme Court struck down Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act, along with anti-miscegenation laws in fifteen other states, ending the legal prohibitions against interracial marriage.” (The New Yorker)
I love this so much. It is important stuff, beautiful stuff, and a subject that is very close to my heart, being the product of “miscegenation” myself (we chaps are the wonderfullest and most beautifullest, tru facts you guys, sorry, I’m not sorry, deal with it). Grey Villet photographed the couple and their children in 1965 and there’s an exhibition of some of the photographs at the International Centre of Photography in NYC. I would kill to see it. This is just wonderful, in so many ways.
Love. It’s all there is.
Rainbow’s end. Rainbows end.
I did some black and white portraits of my mum for my week 3 photography assignment. It was meant to be fly-on-the-wall type stuff, not posed, 30 shots in an hour edited to 15 prints. She was writing letters (it’s nice, try it) at the kitchen table and I spent a lot of time crawling on the floor and crouching under tables and sitting on kitchen countertops for different angles, but I do that anyway so no one thought anything of it (people stopped saying “Justine, what are you doing up/down/underneath there?” years ago). It was pretty great and got me looking at a person I know intimately in ways that I hadn’t before, which was the whole point. It’s amazing how little we really see each other, isn’t it? Something can be in front of you every day, or you can think you really know someone, but there’s always a new way of looking, of knowing. And I’ve discovered that it’s so important to slow down when making photographs. It makes such a difference. Slow down and just look. Watch and wait and the shot will appear. There’s no need to grab it or capture it or force it. No need to persuade it or convince it into being. Be gentle. Be patient. Be open. Trust and it will come in time. Like love.
So we had a laugh and my sister contributed random props like wire elephants and strings of South African beads and panties embroidered by her boyfriend.
Yeah, I was surprised about that one too.
Mum’s half-way through her chemo, so while it was fun I also felt raw and sad seeing her looking so vulnerable. She is strong and youthful, but she looks tired and has lost a lot of hair. Still, her blood count is fine, she’s able to work and has as much energy as she ever did so it’s all good.
She’s picking up her “hairdo” from the hospital later this week. What larks, eh?
(In case you’re interested, here are my favourites from week 1’s fuckton of self portraits, and week 2, take a photo after every 50 steps. Did I mention how much I am loving this? I am loving this.)
(Source: Flickr / sniffy_jenkins)
O hai.
I loved my week 2 photography assignment so much I bought the company. I mean, I did the whole thing twice, once at the beach of the abandoned Shoreham Fort (these here are my favourites from the fort, which I took to class tonight) and once in the woods. As usually, they’re a shitload better uncompressified and on Flickr. I think I’m becoming obsessed, which is just as well because I mostly feel sad at the moment and taking photographs is something that makes me feel less sad. The way I figure it, the more photos I take the happier I’ll become. I heard that’s the way it works for humans so I thought I might try it out and see if it works for me too. You never know.
Isn’t it strange the things that can save you?
To happiness, then. And a kiss on both cheeks for you.
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A sad day.
Where would we be without our Kodak moments.
“Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography. “
George Eastman
Bye bye, Kodak. :(
Hello babies.
So for my photography class assignment this week I had to produce a fuckton of self-portraits, literal and non-literal, no post-processing (ack!), with my amazing new/old Canon EOS 20D. I am loving doing this so much, learning so much. I feel so happy, so calm, so right, when I’m making photographs, it is just the best thing. Though it is weird spending so much time thinking about yourself and how to comunicate you through images, composing those images, taking them, looking at them, deciding what is right. My hour with my camera in the woods (top right) playing and messing about and setting up the self-timer and running away was the happiest I’ve been in ages. True story. I can’t wait to do landscape. More clouds! Whee! So I’ll put a few up here every week, my favourites, but if you want to look at them properly, and see the others, have a look on Flickr because the compression on Tumblr is shocking. Shocking, I tell you.
Some of these I really love, some of them I don’t, but I’m learning and loving it which is the whole point. I’m presenting the final 18 in class tomorrow (I’ll be calling them GPOYW because I love confounding people) so why don’t you come watch me stammer and blush and laugh and I’ll let you buy me a pint afterwards. If you can’t make it tomorrow there is always Flickr, if it do ya and thankee sai.
My photography homework this week is to take twenty self portraits (literal or otherwise) with my proper camera (twenty! printed!), so before I start bombarding you with my face and various other bits and parts of me, here, have a portrait of a cloud taken with an iPhone to steady your nerves.
(It’s beautifuler on Flickr)
My photography tutor Natasha takes some bloody great photos.
