Wednesday 26 January 2022

Mulholland

For reasons I’m not really sure of, Mulholland triggers feelings of longing in me. I guess it’s to do with the Raymond Chandler mysteries that I read in my youth and that I associate with this winding stretch of road that follows the ridgeline of the Hollywood Hills.

“I fell in love with Mulholland Drive in 1988 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Not with the actual Mulholland, of course, but with a picture of it. There was David Hockney’s exuberant, twenty-foot-long painting, Mulholland Drive: The Road to the Studio (1980).” With these wonderfully captivating lines photographer Karen Halverson introduces her preface before then elaborating on her move to Los Angeles and her encounter with the real Mulholland Drive.

“For more than a decade before moving to Los Angeles, I made annual trips from New York to photograph the American West … I meandered around a dozen western states, from the mountains of Montana to the deserts of Arizona.” But then she happened upon Mulholland Drive. “No more random wandering, no more long-distance driving in search of je ne sais quoi. Now I had a clear route to follow and follow it I did, in one direction or the other, countless times over the course of two years.” 

For the full review, go here

Wednesday 19 January 2022

The Media & Fake Media

The media, and that includes fake media reflect the world. Up to a point, that is, for most what is taking place on planet earth is of no concern or interest to media makers. It might be therefore fair to say that the media reflect the obsessions of the media makers and, since we live in times in which profit trumps all other motivations, of media owners. These obsessions, it must be stressed, are very much in tune with what the general public does obsess about – gossip, that is.

Everything in today's media world is personalised. The preferred formats are the story and the essay and these work best with heroes and villains, who in the real word, that is far too complex to conform to the wishes of individuals, however do not exist. In this sense all media are fake. In fact, we are only free to choose what invented reality we prefer.

Needless to say, there is a difference between, say, The BBC and Fox News. In my younger years, I felt obliged to listen to what both of them had to say for, I then thought, to be informed requires to use a variety of news sources and that includes the ones whose ideology I do not share.

These days are long gone. Nowadays I only turn to media that, in my view, make a serious effort to live up to basic journalistic standards, whose goal it is to tell the truth. For the truth exists, it is not relative, does not depend on my beliefs. What Philip K. Dick once penned about reality – Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away – can also be said about truth. And while we might never fully grasp it, we certainly can aspire to it.

Covid-19 has taught me that ignorance and the unwillingness to consider (seemingly unpleasent) facts are much more wide spread than I had thought. For many, to rely on their gut feeling seems to be the natural thing to do. If our instincts were as good as the ones of animals this would of course be fine. Yet they are not. As Schopenhauer pointed out: We are animals whose intelligence must compensate for the lack of instincts and the inadequate organic adaptation to the living environment. In other words, we need to activate our brains if we want to survive – and when we deal with the media.

This applies especially to intellectuals. Konrad Kellen wrote in the introduction to Jacques Ellul's Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes that Ellul designated “intellectuals as virtually the most vulnerable of all to modern propaganda, for three reasons: (1) they absorb the largest amount of second-hand, unverifiable information; (2) they feel a compelling need to have an opinion on every important issue of our time, and thus easily succumb to opinions offered to them by propaganda on all such indigestible pieces of information; (3) they consider themselves capable of judging for themselves.”

Although I do not think of myself as an intellectual – intellectuals tend to think in systems, believe it to be relevant where ideas come from – , I am without doubt a person who enjoys thinking. And, I am aware that my thinking has its limits for there are problems that I never get to, that are outside my imagination. Virus research, for instance. Moreover, given the strangeness of the world, I'm not always sure what is a conspiracy theory and what not.

So what is there to do if I cannot rely on my own judgement, when common sense (which is not very common, by the way) isn't much help? I need to listen to what others who have more knowledge than I do have to say. No, I do not believe in a world where experts should have the final word but I find it useful if we were to keep our underdeveloped emotions out of the way when making decisions on whether some news are fake and others not. To give in to our impulses spells disaster, to aspire to the sober mind of a decent adult would be beneficial.

Wednesday 12 January 2022

Benni & Others



Benni & Others was a Zurich-based rock group (I happened to be the singer) that recorded a long play called "Carezzas" in 1978.  I do not recall the photo session that led to the first picture, yet I do vividly remember the concert at Allmend Brunau shown on picture number two. Most of my memories from that time are however linked to picture number three that shows the back cover of "Carezzas". This long play was recorded at Etienne Conod's Sunrise Studio in Kilchberg. It was a wonderfully intense experience that, among quite some other things, made me listen to recordings much more attentively.

Wednesday 5 January 2022

Photography - and what it means to me

 At the age of 16, I wanted to become a photographer. In my twenties, I acquired Preisen will ich die grossen Männer (Let Us Now Praise Famous Men) by Walker Evans and James Agee, a rather expensive book for my student budget. In my mid-forties, I wrote a master thesis on documentary photography in which Evans' and Agee's work figured prominently. Encouraged by my personal tutor and my thesis supervisor, I began to regularly write on (mainly documentary) photography. After twenty years of thinking about photography, I got increasingly tired of it and turned to taking pictures. Because of that I learned that my interest is less in the stories behind a picture but in aesthetics. I do not need explanations any more, it is enough to frame what pleases my eyes.

Santa Cruz do Sul, Brazil, 4 December 2021

Surcasti, Switzerland, 9 November 2021

Debrecen, Hungary, 24 October 2021

I'm not sure why photography attracts me but I guess that part of it is that I've always felt that what I truly liked couldn't really be said but had to be shown.

For more pics, see https://hansdurrer.tumblr.com/