Wednesday 24 April 2013

Photobombing

The other day, while surfing the net, I came across a word that was not only new to me (that happens often) but made me curious (that happens not so often): photobom. This is what The Independent had to say about it:

"Will Self may have missed out on his first Booker prize to Hilary Mantel, but he can take consolation in creating the best photobomb in the history of the Bookers. Which may not be too much consolation for losing the £50,000 bounty but it's, well, something.

Photobombing is defined by the ever-dependable Urban Dictionary as 'any time the background of a picture hijacks the original focus'.

In the photocall for the shortlisted authors, Self found himself holding his title, 'Umbrella', up like an actual umbrella behind Mantel's head, ensuring that when she comes to look at the picture on her mantelpiece in years to come. The memory won't be of Booker glory, but of her head nestling in the verbose genius's armpit."

Booker prize 1: The award for best photobomb goes to ...
The Independent, 18 October 2012

Wednesday 17 April 2013

Frans Lanting: Okavango

Zum ersten Mal erschienen ist dieser prächtige Bildband 1993; die nun vorliegende Version wurde neu gestaltet und um einige Dutzend neue Bilder ergänzt, einschliesslich der zugehörigen, informativen und die Bilder kongenial ergänzenden Texte.

Die Kalahari, auch Durstland genannt, weil es hier den grössten Teil des Jahres kein stehendes Gewässer gibt und einige Flüsse zwar hinein aber nicht wieder hinaus fliessen, ist die grösste zusammenhängende Sandfläche der Welt. Sie reicht von Südafrika über mehr als 2'400 Kilometer nach Norden bis zum Kongo und bildet den grössten Teil Botswanas.

In dieser Wüste gibt es ein Wunder: das Okavangodelta, ein mehr als 22'000 Quadratkilometer grosses Feuchtigkeitsgebiet, das eine einmalige Vielfalt an Pflanzen und Tieren beheimatet. Es ist einer der wenigen Orte, an denen Wüsten- und Sumpfbewohner aufeinander treffen. Da finden sich sowohl Flusspferde, Krokodile wie auch Zebras, Büffel, Giraffen, Löwen, Hyänen und der grösste Elefantenbestand des afrikanischen Kontinents.
Ein Lappenchamäleon 
schleicht am Rand einer trockenen Lehmpfanne entlang

Die meisten Bilder zeigen Tiere. "Tierfotografie in Afrika", schreibt Lanting, "ist zum Teil Naturwissenschaft, zum Teil gute Buschkenntnisse, zum Teil Geschichtenerzählen – und genau so habe ich sie gern." Übrigens: Bereits Livingstone hatte 1858 auf seiner Expedition zum Sambesi eine Kamera dabei.

Dem Buch vorangestellt ist unter anderem dieses auf inspirierende Zitat von Henry Beston aus "The Outermost House": "Tiere soll man nicht an den Massstäben der Menschen messen, leben sie doch in einer Welt, die älter und vollständiger ist als unsere. In ihr bewegen sie sich fertig und vollständig ausgestattet mit Erweiterungen der Sinne, die wir verloren oder nie erworben haben, und sie lauschen auf Stimmen, die wir nie hören werden. Sie sind weder unsere Brüder noch unsere Untergebene, sondern andere Völker, gefesselt wie wir im Netz von Leben und Zeit, Mitgefangene der Pracht und Mühsal der Erde."
 
Der Fluss Okavango, die Lebensader des Okavangodeltas
und wo der Fluss endet, mitten in einer Wüste im südlichen Afrika

"Okavango" ist aber nicht nur ein Buch über Tiere, sondern ebenso ein Buch über das Wasser: Die Quelle des Okavango liegt im angolanischen Hochland. Im Norden Botswanas teilt er sich dann in mehrere Hauptkanäle, um sich dann als riesiger Fächer aus kleineren Wasserläufen auszuweiten und schlussendlich als Fluss sein Ende findet und zwar in der Kalahari, die auch eines der grössten Feuchtgebiete der Erde ist.
Ein Ochsenfrosch, der fast ein Jahr unter dem harten 
Ton einer Pfanne übersommert hat, kriecht vom Regen geweckt
an die Oberfläche und nimmt sein Revier in Besitz

Sich mit diesem Buch beschäftigen bedeutet, aus dem Staunen nicht mehr herauszukommen. Ich jedenfalls staunte über unfassbare Weiten, wunderte mich, wie solche Nahaufnahmen von nicht ungefährlichen Tieren enstehen konnten, fühlte mich gefesselt von kitschigen Sonnenuntergängen, die nur die Natur hervorzuzaubern vermag. Und freute mich, dass es so prachtvolle Bücher wie dieses gibt, die mir erlauben, eine mir unbekannte Welt zu entdecken, die ich ohne Frans Lanting und seine Kamera wohl nie zu sehen gekriegt hätte.

Frans Lanting
Okavango
Afrikas Letztes Paradies
Taschen, Köln 2012

Wednesday 10 April 2013

Yousuf Karsh

© Yousuf Karsh/camera press

"Yousuf Karsh is a photographer from a bygone age", writes stern-Artdirector Johannes Erler, "who looked for virtues such as power, courage, intelligence and genius in his photographs." Just have a look at the pics here on this page and you know that Erler is indeed very right. He also shares the following story: "In a Boston hospital there is a room where doctors meet patients and their families to discuss the findings of their diagnosis. It is a fateful room because the news is often bad. During his lifetime, Karsh donated a number of his most famous portraits to the hospital so they could be hung up in this room. And they are a real help, the doctors say because they encourage patients in their will to live. I know of no other photographs about which something like that has been said." I wouldn't know one either. And, I truly adore a photographer who can accomplish such powerful, and inspirational, pictures.
© Yousuf Karsh/camera press

There is also a longer text in which Jochen Siemens, among quite some other stories, tells the one of how Karsh removed Churchill's cigar and shot one of the most extraordinary Sir Winston photographs ever. Also, Siemens's eloquence contributes substantially to an even more precise and joyful reading: "... in this particular second everything came to a head in Winston Churchill, deprived as he was of his beloved cigar: indignation at the photographer's impudence, weighing up his opposite number with a lurking scowl, the power of his empty hand pressed against his hip, the stance – if you look closely – a hint of amusement (between the left-hand corner of his mouth and his eye) at the strange man behind the camera.") One would wish that more such detailed observations would accompany photographs.
© Yousuf Karsh/camera press

Again and again I wondered: How did Karsh do that? How come he can accomplish what others seemingly can't? There must be a special chemistry between photographer and the person photographed, I thought, but with all of them? Siemens argues that Karsh "was always searching for the essence of his opposite number in order to lift it onto a higher plane – adoration, not investigation", and Scottish photography historian Sara Stevenson explains: "The ability to ally yourself with your opposite number – to empathise to a certain extent with that person and the significance of that person – allows models to be themselves ... Portraiture is essentially empathising art."
© Yousuf Karsh/camera press

stern Fotografie Nr. 71 is one of these rare photo books in which you will see the ones portrayed as you haven't seen them before. And this is not a cliché, this is simply the way it is.
_____

The accompanying booklet (Talent 04) features Alma Haser who 'reconstructs', I'm told, "the sitter's face using the paper-folding technique of origami and then adds this to the original face." I truly do not know what to think of it.

Yousuf Karsh
stern Fotografie Nr. 71

Wednesday 3 April 2013

Steve Pyke: Philosophers

Philosophers consists of a hundred black-and-white portraits of contemporary philosophers photographed by Steve Pyke, a photographer whose work is a regular feature of The New Yorker and Vanity Fair.

From Jason Stanley's interview with the photographer I learn that Pyke had asked each philosopher to provide him with 50 words capturing their particular philosophy. Not all of them complied, the ones who did delivered however quite some food for thought. Here's an example:
"Philosophy is the strangest of subjects: it aims at rigour and yet is unable to establish any results; it attempts to deal with the most profound questions and constantly finds itself preoccupied with the trivialities of language; and it claims to be of great relevance to rational enquiry and the conduct of our life, and yet it is completely ignored. But perhaps what is strangest of all is the passion and intensity with which it is pursued by those who have fallen in its grip."

The above text is by Kit Fine who teaches, I read in Wikipedia, at New York University. Unfortunately, there is no information given in this book about the philosophers portrayed, neither is the reader told what criteria were employed in order to come up with the selection presented. 

The publisher states: "These fascinating portraits feature virtually every major philosopher working in the West". Well, not really, for there is no German (Habermas, for instance) or Latin American portrayed. And, as much as I appreciate the work of Daniel Kahneman, I fail to see why this eminent psychologist is labelled a philosopher. On the other hand, why not?

Most names are unfamiliar to me which of course says more about me and my ignorance than about the philosophers. However, to look at their portraits and to read what they felt like saying is actually inspiring enough, I do not really have to know anything about their place on the social ladder in order to appreciate what they have to say. Here's an example I'm fond of:

"Philosophy's distinguishing value? For me, it resides not so much in the big questions' multifarious answers themselves, not, alas, in wisdom attained through the exacting process of anwering them, but rather in how it invariably reminds us how little we really do know. Philosophy is, or should be, humbling – and is, for this, ennobling." Robin Jeshion.

In the introduction, Arthur C. Danto characterises Steve Pyke as "master photographer of the soul and character of individuals of diverse classes and callings ... For the most part, Pyke shows us only their heads, in characteristic moments of thought, which some of them look as if they are about to express. Everybody looks fiercely smart, though we have testimony regarding the great thinkers of the past that they didn't always look as clever as they actually were."

Do portraits of philosophers radiate something different form portraits of, say, artists or politicians? No idea, really. What however distinguishes this book from other portrait books are the texts that stand next to the photographs. "Can we not think of the aim of life as being simply to see?" asks John Gray, who is pictured focussing on something in the distance; the question accentuates his gaze. What also makes his portrait more intense than the picture alone could is that we know that the accompanying question originated in the mind of the person pictured.

Here's how Pyke sees his work:
"The contents of a photograph are not facts, nor reality, nor truth. They are a means that we have created to extend our way of seeing in our search for truth. On a most fundamental level one may question a likeness "How is that me? ...it does not look like me ... but it is there in front of me ... it is a photograph of me.' Creating a moment of puzzlement is at the very least a beautiful byproduct of photography."

Steve Pyke
Philosophers
Oxford University Press
Oxford, New York, 2011
www.oup.com