Pensei: tenho que dar essa historia, é a minha historia, quê minha? quê eu? que pretensão.
Vitor Ramil
Monday, 30 March 2009
Saturday, 28 March 2009
We are like music
We are like music. Music, after all, is a type of stream. Music exists only in constant flow and flux and change. Once the movement stops, the music is no more. It exists not as a particular thing, but as pure coming and going with no thing that comes or goes.
Steve Hagen. Buddhism Plain & Simple
Steve Hagen. Buddhism Plain & Simple
Thursday, 26 March 2009
Pictures that I like (5)
Tây Ninh is a town in southwestern Vietnam, approximately 90 km to the northwest of Ho Chi Minh City and most famous for being the home of the Cao Dai religion, an indigenous Vietnamese faith that includes the teachings of the major world religions. The Cao Dai religion's Holy See church/temple, built between 1933 and 1955, is located around 5 km to the east of Tây Ninh's town centre and it was there that I took this photo, sometime in the 1990s. The little girl happened to be with her parents (and some relatives, I think) on the square in front of the church/temple. I had asked the parents for permission to take the photo and they in turn had encouraged their daughter to stand where I had wanted her to stand.
Copyright @ Hans Durrer
Why do I like this photo so much? Because it makes me feel like I am once again on this square in Tây Ninh - I remember it as one of these moments in which I felt fully in the present.
Tuesday, 24 March 2009
Photographic collaboration
One of my problems with photography, especially documentary photography, is that it is intrusive. To alleviate this problem, regardless whether it concerns press photos or portraits, photography needs the collaboration between photographer and subject.
"War Photographer", a documentary by Christian Frei about the work of the photographer James Nachtwey, was nominated for an Oscar (in 2002) and won twelve international film festivals.
Two mini video recorders placed on Nachtwey's camera allowed the viewers to see what the photographer was seeing. In Kosovo: a crying woman. People try to comfort her. She has just learned, one suspects, that someone close to her — maybe her son, maybe her husband? — was killed, or found in a mass grave? We are not told, we do not know, we are left guessing. Neither do we know what the photographer knows. We see what the photographer sees: a woman crying, her face full of pain, women who try to calm and comfort her. Nachtwey is getting closer and closer, he aims the camera at her face and ceaselessly presses the button. How is he able to do that? Doesn't he feel awkward, and embarrassed? Doesn't he have scruples?
On the website of this film, this quote by Nachtwey can be found: "Every minute I was there, I wanted to flee. I did not want to see this. Would I cut and run, or would I deal with the responsibility of being there with a camera?" In the film we can hear him more than once stressing the importance of having respect. He also says he understands himself as being the spokesperson for the ones he portrays.
I'm glad that Nachtwey's photos exist and remind us of things we would probably rather not be reminded of. I want to believe his good intentions. Yet, I also feel that there is something wrong with this kind of photography because the ones portrayed are used; they have no say in how they are depicted and later are put in pages of books, or hung on walls.
Let's look at Nachtwey's rationalizations.
I'm not sure what this is, "the responsibility of being there with a camera." Does that mean that because he is a professional photographer who goes to take pictures in war zones, he has an obligation to take these photos? According to whom? And if so, toward whom does he have this obligation?
Yes, respect is needed, it is imperative, but how does it translate into action? To hold a camera into the face of a grieving person is indefensible; it is the opposite of showing respect; it is the total absence of tact, courtesy and decency. Is he really their spokesperson? How can he be? How does he know that they need or want a spokesperson?
Photography is an intrusive medium. Quite a few photographers describe their business in somewhat aggressive terms as shooting pictures. One way of softening this intrusiveness — if one so wishes — is the collaboration between photographer and the ones portrayed. Such collaboration is not uncommon, just think of photo ops or portraits.
Want to know more? Go to photographic collaboration
"War Photographer", a documentary by Christian Frei about the work of the photographer James Nachtwey, was nominated for an Oscar (in 2002) and won twelve international film festivals.
Two mini video recorders placed on Nachtwey's camera allowed the viewers to see what the photographer was seeing. In Kosovo: a crying woman. People try to comfort her. She has just learned, one suspects, that someone close to her — maybe her son, maybe her husband? — was killed, or found in a mass grave? We are not told, we do not know, we are left guessing. Neither do we know what the photographer knows. We see what the photographer sees: a woman crying, her face full of pain, women who try to calm and comfort her. Nachtwey is getting closer and closer, he aims the camera at her face and ceaselessly presses the button. How is he able to do that? Doesn't he feel awkward, and embarrassed? Doesn't he have scruples?
On the website of this film, this quote by Nachtwey can be found: "Every minute I was there, I wanted to flee. I did not want to see this. Would I cut and run, or would I deal with the responsibility of being there with a camera?" In the film we can hear him more than once stressing the importance of having respect. He also says he understands himself as being the spokesperson for the ones he portrays.
I'm glad that Nachtwey's photos exist and remind us of things we would probably rather not be reminded of. I want to believe his good intentions. Yet, I also feel that there is something wrong with this kind of photography because the ones portrayed are used; they have no say in how they are depicted and later are put in pages of books, or hung on walls.
Let's look at Nachtwey's rationalizations.
I'm not sure what this is, "the responsibility of being there with a camera." Does that mean that because he is a professional photographer who goes to take pictures in war zones, he has an obligation to take these photos? According to whom? And if so, toward whom does he have this obligation?
Yes, respect is needed, it is imperative, but how does it translate into action? To hold a camera into the face of a grieving person is indefensible; it is the opposite of showing respect; it is the total absence of tact, courtesy and decency. Is he really their spokesperson? How can he be? How does he know that they need or want a spokesperson?
Photography is an intrusive medium. Quite a few photographers describe their business in somewhat aggressive terms as shooting pictures. One way of softening this intrusiveness — if one so wishes — is the collaboration between photographer and the ones portrayed. Such collaboration is not uncommon, just think of photo ops or portraits.
Want to know more? Go to photographic collaboration
Sunday, 22 March 2009
Alex MacLean: Over
Wieso dieser eindrückliche Fotoband von Alex MacLean mit Luftaufnahmen aus den USA (meine Besprechung findet sich hier) den englischen Titel Over trägt, ist ziemlich unerfindlich, denn die Texte in diesem Buch sind allesamt auf Deutsch. Nicht etwa, dass ich glauben würde, ein Buch auf Deutsch dürfe keinen englischen Titel tragen. So habe ich zum Beispiel mit dem Deutsch/Englisch-Mix im Untertitel - Der American Way of Life oder Das Ende der Landschaft - gar keine Mühe, denn der Ausdruck American Way of Life ist ja so recht eigentlich mehr als gängig, doch Over? (ich weiss, es ist dies der englische Originaltitel, doch auch der ist nicht besonders gelungen). Nun ja ...
Jedenfalls: es ist ein ganz tolles, ja ein empfehlenswertes Buch, sogar der Klappentext ist informativ. Hier ein Auszug:
"Aus einigen hundert Metern Höhe und mit den Augen des Fotografen Alex MacLean gesehen, erweist sich Amerika, 'das Land der unbegrenzten Möglichkeiten', einmal mehr als Vorreiter - auf dem Weg in die ökologische Katastrophe. Da werden Golfplätze, Reihenhaussiedlungen und ganze Städte mitten in die Wüste gebaut, immer neue Ferien-Hochburgen entstehen unmittelbar an ansteigenden und orkangefährdeten Meeresufern, Kohle- und Kernkraftwerke gewaltigen Ausmasses beziehen ihr Kühlwasser aus natürlichen Gewässern und schicken es auch wieder dorthin zurück ... Seit über 30 Jahren verfolgt MacLean von seiner Cessna aus, wie sich die Landschaft unter ihm verändert, wie sie mit Strassen zubetoniert und wuchernenden Vorstädten verbaut wird, was die häufiger und heftiger werdenden Stürme anrichten und welche fatalen Folgen Bodenspekulation, ein bedenkenloses Freizeit- und Konsumverhalten und der ebenso unbedenkliche Umgang mit Energie und natürlichen Resourcen für die Umwelt haben."
"Aus einigen hundert Metern Höhe und mit den Augen des Fotografen Alex MacLean gesehen, erweist sich Amerika, 'das Land der unbegrenzten Möglichkeiten', einmal mehr als Vorreiter - auf dem Weg in die ökologische Katastrophe. Da werden Golfplätze, Reihenhaussiedlungen und ganze Städte mitten in die Wüste gebaut, immer neue Ferien-Hochburgen entstehen unmittelbar an ansteigenden und orkangefährdeten Meeresufern, Kohle- und Kernkraftwerke gewaltigen Ausmasses beziehen ihr Kühlwasser aus natürlichen Gewässern und schicken es auch wieder dorthin zurück ... Seit über 30 Jahren verfolgt MacLean von seiner Cessna aus, wie sich die Landschaft unter ihm verändert, wie sie mit Strassen zubetoniert und wuchernenden Vorstädten verbaut wird, was die häufiger und heftiger werdenden Stürme anrichten und welche fatalen Folgen Bodenspekulation, ein bedenkenloses Freizeit- und Konsumverhalten und der ebenso unbedenkliche Umgang mit Energie und natürlichen Resourcen für die Umwelt haben."
Alex MacLean
Over
Der American Way of Life oder Das Ende der Landschaft
Schirmer/Mosel, München 2008
Friday, 20 March 2009
Pictures that I like (4)
Copyright @Johanna BråddThis photo by the Finnish photographer Johanna Brådd was taken in 2008, in Germany, and is called “tillsammans” (together).
For Johanna it shows the unnatural way in which we human beings deal with nature: we tend to create a world that is a bit too perfect by, for instance, planting trees that stand in rows and make them thus fit into the human made order.
Wednesday, 18 March 2009
Cultural Conditionings
I walked to the center of my front lawn and lay down, spread-eagled. I looked up at the stars. How did I end up in a place where doing such a thing marked you for crazy, while my neighbors dressed concrete ducks in bonnets at Easter and in striped stocking caps at Christmas but were considered sane?
Alice Sebold: Almost Moon
Alice Sebold: Almost Moon
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
