buddhametrics

i've migrated

2011-04-05T10:12:00.000+03:00

for a change of scene to here i will start deleting stuff from this blog soon

life - support japan auction

2011-03-13T08:50:00.003+02:00

Natural disasters happen all the time, like landslides, floods, earthquakes. We live on a planet that isn't static. Friday, March 11th, we witnessed a natural disaster with a very human toll. The earthquake in Japan was of such magnitude that even the most prepared nation in the world to handle a disaster of this type was overwhelmed. It wasn't the earthquake alone, which was devastating enough but watching a 30 foot high wall of mud and debris wipe entire communities away was beyond any ability I personally had to comprehend.

I had to do something. Aline Smithson, one of our gallery artists wanted to do something too. Ryan Nabulsi and Jennifer Schwartz joined the effort. Soon I was hearing from every part of our creative community that we wanted to reach out to help the people of Japan. Life Support Japan was created to bring assistance to those in Japan who need it.

We have selected two charities to benefit from the sales of these limited edition prints.

Direct Relief International, http://www.directrelief.org/ for help with medical supplies.

Direct Relief works closely with the United Nations (U.N.) Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA), which has activated to assemble the international response. Direct Relief has mobilized and staged materials at our headquarters, which are standing by ready for airlift to Japan.

Habitat for Humanity Japan, http://www.habitat.orgto/ help in the rebuilding of communities in and around Sendai and northern Japan.

Artists from around the globe have donated limited editions, over 300 to date, and we will be consistently updating the images available.

Galleries from around the US are banding together for a series of benefits, for these two and other charities to benefit relief efforts in Japan. We will be posting information as it becomes available.

Thank you for your support and for being part of a global community.

Crista Dix + wall space gallery.
and more here

tzintzer cafe exhibition

2011-03-09T09:29:00.001+02:00

THIAPS portrait book

2011-03-07T09:19:00.000+02:00

participents: Lauren E. Simonutti, Joshua Black Wilkins, Frans Peter Verheyen, Vittorio Colombi, Stephane Polteau, James Wigger, Steffo Weber, Maciek Lesniak, Urs Bernhard, Claudia Moroni, Carmen Palermo, Tanel Verk, Shannon Richardson, Alek Lindus, Tadas Kazakevicius, László Lejkó, Deborah Parkin, Ben Parks, Edoardo Pasero, Madlen Kirchner, Flavia Schaller, Tobias Feltus, Anna Chobotova, Milosz Wozaczynski, Tim Franco, Alexey Alexeev, Giancarlo Rado, Ocaña Fernández, Laurent Orseau, Vít Kocián, Daryan Dornelles, Piotr Biegaj, Kiarash Sadigh, Leo Tage-Hansen, Aleksandra Patova, Vladimir Longauer, Marina Romanova, Takala, Joshua Black Wilkins, Katsunori Yamaguchi, Oliver Weber, Rik Garrett, J.R. Ball, Philippe Mougin, Edward Olive, Christo Stankulov, Cole Emde, Jonas Mattsson, Saroyan Humphrey, Lambis Stratoudakis, Steve Korn, Caglar Tahiroglu, Yuichiro Miyano, Lars Daniel Terkelsen, Ben Rains, Thomas Krauss.

get the book here

for john - cos i love you and your prophecy

2011-03-06T11:51:00.002+02:00

somewhere on line

2011-03-06T09:27:00.001+02:00

montana series on de visu

morning blur

2011-02-25T10:20:00.001+02:00

i have made a new gallery on my web site themed around the 'hotel samion' my friend Katerinas hotel - sadly now for sale. Its one of the first hotels in samos and has the feature of radiators - quite a luxury in the time it was built - its work in progress.

also pleased to be featured on artphotoblog
and the second part of fragile on 591 photoblog

smoke

2011-02-21T09:15:00.004+02:00

fragile series featured on 591blog

new website

2011-01-09T12:22:00.001+02:00

have been working on my website for a while now - which has been a learning curve to say the least - still have some parts under construction but will be working on those and updating as i go.

the harder they fall

2011-01-05T08:18:00.000+02:00

'could you get me some hel gair'
'chresus jist'

happy new year

sermon on the log

2010-12-29T11:14:00.001+02:00

well thats the wonderful thing about reality its pliable

Einstein said one original thought increases the knowledge in the world by the sum total present - so as a thought elasticates movement our perception of realties change - when henry ford said history is bunk -its implication would lead history to become a commodity - for rearranging the future -
dont over look that disney is all about time travel for five bucks a ride - no discomfort as our perception of realties changes - ok it only lasts a few minutes but you get to see your mum again -
john lindus

grey days

2010-12-20T13:00:00.004+02:00

working on a series of images with john under the provisional title grey days. For 25 years i've watched the sea slowly eat up the beach and yard of this magnificent old building at an average of 1 meter a year, now the front sea facing wall is gone.
i was really pleased to be featured on lenscratch, aline smithson's blog - thankyou
(aristaedu400; 1+50; rodinal;)

painted back drop

2010-12-04T11:47:00.001+02:00

very strange effect on this - looks like a studio painted backdrop from an old film or even a photographers studio -

glass

2010-11-27T11:46:00.004+02:00

and something here

descry magazine

2010-10-13T10:18:00.001+03:00

Descry Magazine, Issue No. 2
CATALOGUE OF THE NIGHT
With Guest Editor Donald Graham Hershey

To Be Released: October 22nd
Now available for pre-order here.

Issue No. 2 Features the Work of 28 Artists:

Michael Bailey-Gates, Lauren E. Simonutti, Kati Mennett, Angela Berry, Angel Chiriboga, Sarah Small, Gregory Bartlett, Chris Woodcock, Kristoffer Axen, Corey Michael Smithson,Jordan Reznick, S. Gayle Stevens, Julia Forrest, Morgan Kendall, Sarawut Chutiwongpeti,Bonnie Briant, Jeffery Campbell, Alek Lindus, Rytis Gervickas, Adrienne Lesperance,Ursula Sokolowska, Blair Phillips Friederich, Randi Berez, Viola Booth, Michal Giedrojc, Justin StGermain, Chelsea Rae Klein, Elena Zavala

tonight

2010-08-01T07:59:00.002+03:00

Anastasia Andreadi - Sofiane Ait Chalalet

2010-07-27T10:12:00.003+03:00

EXCESSIVE SHORT STORY - extract from the work - PEISISTRATOS - Scenic excersise - open trial on the work of Giorgos Cheimonas

TΟ ΥΠΕΡΒΟΛΙΚΟ ΔΙΗΓΗΜΑ - απόσπασμα από το έργο - ΠΕΙΣΙΣΤΡΑΤΟΣ - Σκηνική άσκηση - ανοιχτή δοκιμή πάνω στον λόγο του Γιώργου Χειμωνά.

a double portrait of dolly

2010-07-22T08:09:00.000+03:00

another language

2010-07-02T08:28:00.002+03:00

night photography is another language - it is a different spatial plane - a different consideration of time

pitsosfourlis dances with the donkey

2010-06-17T10:09:00.001+03:00

polaroid high definition film - don't know anything about it except i've got a stash and it has wonderful colour on interior shots with a wide aperture. best thing though - there's only 12 shots to a roll - cuts out the interminability of 36 shots

irresistible

2010-06-13T11:17:00.002+03:00

well she is... john's started a blog - plastik and i think the images are great, the best so far in as much as they say so much with so little. Also very much like blogger's new templates, great fun to work with.

nothingness is not heavy

2010-06-02T12:30:00.000+03:00

'nothing could be lighter. it is lightness itself ... . Why, you're scarcely born; ten minutes later you never want to die.' ionesco

speaks for itself

2010-06-01T08:40:00.000+03:00

definitely piracy and murder, and why did the BBC and the Guardian take so long to start covering a story that was being 'aired' on facebook, what is it with the slant - lots of fuck ups there. ofcourse i forgot terrorist organizations disguised as aide workers etc etc - from all over the world - what a dangerous world it is for them - killers behind every bush and boat.

ratio

2010-05-28T09:26:00.003+03:00

john had his Herodotus series featured on mire magazine.

coincidentally my titling of these images seems to have a mathematical aspect - mmm well that would be a case of self flattery as i haven't got a clue - just a sense of wonder at the mystery. on the question of the truth or non-truth of a photograph in this instance - night; many factors conspire to weave optical illusions such as the size and proportion of this building in relation to the figure - 80mm fixed lens distortion. someone mentioned gregory crewdson, someone else mentions lynch as regards the series - in the likeness of - but association [flattering or not] aside, photographing at night offers the same kind of compositional confinement that indoors has, just can't deal with those big open spaces. Am wondering whether to add these 2 or 1 of to the last quatrain.

the fracturing dislocating vision that only the camera supplies - sontag [yet again] has become the reality of the way we have been taught to see. Some clever thoughts - or perhaps what now seems a stating of the obvious - which is one of the consequences of time on most things. i have got to stop making sweeping generalizations about things because the broader picture is pretty bleak - whereas the minutiae are infinitely magnificent. although thinking about it ... the cat killed a lizard - the cat normally kills things for fun and only ever eats dry biscuits - but lizard she seems to have a taste for, though this one seems to be partially unpalatable due to the fact that it is/was full of eggs - so after she consumed it from tail to egg section she left the trophy on the path where it is now a feast for ants. i didn't know lizards had eggs packed in them like that - one wonders where the internal organs go to make room for so much egg.

Also interesting article related to the oil spill posted by Ruth on FB, shame john deleted his 'rant' over there - it would have tied in with his argument, but he likes deleting.

hyperbolic reality

2010-05-27T09:54:00.001+03:00

i see night photography as an hyperbolic reality - by framing isolated areas of light in darkness - it contains the subject whilst simultaneously proposing an infinite in black

scale

2010-05-25T09:59:00.004+03:00

its not often that light, location and time conspire to create a little gem of surrealism, i'm not referring to the contrived surrealism of the movement, but that of life itself which is very much present in photography - Sontag says - surrealism lies at the heart of the photographic enterprise: in the very creation of a duplicate world, of a reality in the second degree, narrower but more dramatic than the one perceived by natural vision - it is photography that has best shown how to juxtapose the sewing machine and the umbrella.

small

2010-05-14T09:43:00.003+03:00

'snapping the thread. . .'
Because the plains are full of asphodels

because despair is agreeable,

you grew an olive tree
out of your head
provisionally lubricating
the ache,

your eyelids
nipples
'rain drops on a dusty road'

kitchen sink drama

2010-05-11T09:14:00.002+03:00

Thessaloniki was great, had a magnificent time with Natasha, walked and talked and she has the most fantastic house. Ευχαριστο Πιτσος φουρλις.

talk to the hand

2010-05-05T10:07:00.002+03:00

"May those who curse days curse that day, those who are ready to rouse Leviathan."
state, church and fear

and a pinhole

a passage

2010-05-03T07:53:00.000+03:00

a passage a paragraph a moment a word some thought the being not being reflected passing constructed inspired the grammar of light an opinion of lens miraculous wee beastie built think black square in place in face ramble rumble grumble .... for melina... what's everything?

shamanistic

2010-04-28T09:21:00.000+03:00

john's got a brilliant story - the chronicles of worm - well worth a look and read. This image is the second in a set of 3, first one is here

fleeting

2010-04-25T12:21:00.000+03:00

we are so transient, contained in our spaces, confined by our barriers. What you catch in a mirror or a shadow. a tiny fragment of a greater puzzle - just one way of looking.

rotating interview at too much chocolate

2010-04-21T12:52:00.001+03:00

the interview with lina scheynius at TMC

shared film and holga

2010-04-20T11:07:00.003+03:00

from a shared film with Isa marcelli first she shot the roll and sent me the film to shoot over. this was the second film in this project, the first is here, where there is also the results of a film she shared with Bichito thanks Isa - it was fun

Too Much Chocolate

2010-04-14T19:06:00.000+03:00

Guy Batey just interviewed me for too much chocolate Next week i'll be interviewing Lina Scheynius

invitation

2010-04-13T13:32:00.000+03:00

“Μετα- Θέσις”,

σε επιμέλεια της Ιστορικού της Τέχνης Μαρίας Κενανίδου

Μέσα στην Ηρακλείτεια ροή των πάντων, η διαφραγματική σύλληψη ενός σημείου του τόπου μες το χρόνο συνεχούς εξέλιξης και μεταβολής του, το μεταθέτει: γεωγραφικά, χρονικά, πολιτικά, θρησκευτικά, φιλοσοφικά, ιστορικά, ανθρωπολογικά, ψυχολογικά, συνειδησιακά, αισθητικά, ηθικά, φαντασιακά, ποιητικά, κοινωνικά, πολιτιστικά, υπαρξιακά ...

Η μετάθεση αυτή ενέχει την εντασιακή σχέση τόπου και χρόνου αμεσότερα από οποιαδήποτε μορφή τέχνης όσον αφορά την γενεσιουργό πράξη, την πρόσληψη του έργου αλλά και την ανάγνωση του ζωτικού εναύσματος και την ερμηνευτική υπόθεση του αποτελέσματος αποτύπωσής του. Ο τόπος στο χρόνο και ο χρόνος στον τόπο.

Ο φωτογράφος επιλέγει ένα σημείο εξέλιξης ενός τόπου και το μεταθέτει προσδίδοντάς του παραβατικά λίγο χρόνο επιπλέον μέσω της αποτύπωσης. Δηλαδή επιβάλλοντάς το να υπάρχει μέσω νοητικής διεργασίας αναγνώρισης ταύτισης, αισθητηριακής ψηλάφησης, νοητικής ανακατασκευής.

Ένας τόπος που ο φωτογράφος μέσα από μία διαδικασία αποκλεισμού και αποσιώπησης του όλου, τον επιλέγει, τον ανακαλύπτει και μας τον αποκαλύπτει χωρίς να ταυτοποιείται αυτονόητα. Τόπος που υποδηλώνει την παρουσία ή την απουσία. Τόπος ως πεδίο ύπαρξης, που ο φωτογράφος επιβάλει, υπονοεί.

Εισχωρώντας στο πραγματικό και συνειδησιακό μας περιβάλλον με πολυσήμαντες αναγνώσεις, με εμφανείς ή αφανείς αποφύσεις, προσδιορίζουν και προσδιορίζονται, προτείνοντας την ανανέωση και ωρίμανση της έννοιας του τόπου μέσα από την φωτογραφική μετάθεση.

Η καλλιτεχνική πρόθεση, μέσω της φωτομηχανικής, φυλακίζει τον Τόπο έρμαιο της απόσπασής του από το χρόνο σαν τομή, μετάθεση της στιγμής αποτύπωσης, καταργώντας τον ως εντοπιότητα, μεταθέτει τα όρια προς την σύγκληση ορατού και αόρατου, εικόνας και Λόγου.

Thessaloniki Photo Biennale

2010-04-10T13:39:00.001+03:00

Γκαλερί "Artis Causa" (Μητροπόλεως 97 - Θεσσαλονίκη)

“Μετα- Θέσις Ι”,

Εγκαίνια: Πέμπτη 6 Μαΐου 2010, 8.00'μμ

Διάρκεια έως 30 Μαΐου 2010

Συμμετέχουν: Alek Lindus (FR), Καρκατσέλης Βασίλης (GR), Diane Katsiafikas (US), Δαγτζίδης Σταύρος (Video) (GR).

Gallery - Artis Causa - Metropoleos 97, Tessaloniki.

Opening - thursday 6 May 2010 - until 30 May 2010

exhibitors: Alek Lindus, Vasillis Karkatselis, Diane Katsiafikas, Stavros Dagtzidis

shadows and daisies

2010-04-09T08:05:00.002+03:00

Oracle

As the sea laps
laps
laps at a wooden wall.

fstop magazine

2010-04-01T16:04:00.001+03:00

had this and another on fstop magazine

soft and blurred but i like it

2010-03-27T10:33:00.000+02:00

i have had some images accepted for the Thessaloniki photobiennale 2010, will update when i have further information

after the fall

2010-03-14T07:05:00.001+02:00

yet the fall is an illusion...thanks to mel for the title. John and i have been working in someone else's vineyard this week, pruning vines and rebuilding fallen terraces. there was something in the region of six thousand vines and there are countless falls in the walls due to neglect over a period of time. It was very exhausting but gratifying work, up in the mountains. there is also a sense of satisfaction in seeing the result as both activities bring a kind of order to the chaos. it also brings home the degree of illusion there is to life on a screen.

fatalism - nihilism - the end of the world

2010-03-02T12:24:00.001+02:00

i'm astounded by the amount of documentaries/movies circulating at the moment about the end of the world. whether due to cosmic reasons, natural disasters or human planetary abuse. i wonder what this propaganda of fear is disguising. last night i watched the consequences of an earthquake [.8] taking place on the New Madrid fault Line in [under] Missouri - pretty grim stuff. The fact that there seems to be some hefty seismic activity taking place at the moment [chile, haiti] only accentuates the fear when watching these 'potential for disaster' programs. Our minuteness becomes diminutive in relation to our growing knowledge of the cosmos and it seems to create a kind of fatalism. i don't suppose anyone will bat an eyelid if one country were to nuke another when the collective is concerned about mega earthquakes, super volcanoes, astroid activity, sun spots, famine, global warming/freezing, super viruses, overpopulation etc etc etc. i was thinking of listing every program i caught on this theme, just as a curiosity about the numbers, but then i'm full of nonsensical resolutions in these precarious times.
not that these thoughts have any relation to this image, far from it, though she could just have frozen in the notion of annihilation... not really; the beauty of the present moment and its infinate potential, if only we could see it.

tension

2010-03-01T07:45:00.002+02:00

the tension of space between people and the environment they inhabit, by that i don't imply a negative tension, just being or spacial tension and the way the camera can see that. i suppose its what interests me the most, this suspension in the moment of time space.
also something featured here, that i didn't know was there, until just now.

vermeeresque

2010-02-27T09:37:00.001+02:00

had an image featured at -

UNLIMITED GRAIN is a place where I place “the best off” THIAPS to be used where it belongs; in a book.I strongly believe that good photography should be printed.
am pleased about that. As regards this image, there was no intention to imitate or emulate Vermeer it was more [for me at least] a post observation on the colour.
Also i came across a site that has taken images from my old [now discontinued] web site and uses them for people to make collages out of. this i'm not happy about at all, nor am i happy about dealing with it. The whole copyright issue on the web is a pain, especially with bills being passed that will make it more so.

vulnerable

2010-02-22T10:29:00.001+02:00

mia - perhaps

2010-02-05T10:21:00.000+02:00

I’m a girl, sure
barking up the wrong dog,

natasha

2010-02-03T11:04:00.000+02:00

just want to thank natasha for the photo shoot, and to thank katerina for the use of her wonderful house

correctness and politik

2010-01-25T09:05:00.001+02:00

interesting thing happened to me over at flickr - i got my stream restricted. that in itself is not particularly interesting as it happens except that one of their criteria for self censorship is

* Restricted - This is content you probably wouldn't show to your mum, and definitely shouldn't be seen by kids

the only image that i have that falls under the category of restricted [further detail - Genitalia/pubic hair, fetish images need to be marked as "restricted".]

is this one which happens to be of my mum and which, unless you are a member of flickr and have your safety filter off you cannot see. i wonder who found it so offensive that they had to report me. of course i have no argument with the consensus as i am using their facility.

dog is a fire hog

2010-01-07T09:57:00.003+02:00

Dead in a Room with Clouds

Sloan did fills.
If the Lazarists hadn't gathered one more time
he would have been paper thin and blue.

Their dissent fashions loose
murmuring,
exempting the basement from silence.

Above cowed heads
Simple Simon
Interfering with neighborhood antennas.

If Sloan hadn't done fills,
I would never have killed myself
in an oily bath.

Saharan mnemonic

2010-01-05T10:27:00.004+02:00

Saharan mnemonic

In caves
quiescent bathers,

dream water
wrenched into tiny
particles of dust.

media

2009-12-30T10:19:00.000+02:00

the media is not producing for the masses; the masses are producing for the media - prices are bound to fall

white

2009-12-19T09:08:00.001+02:00

The Gate of Horn

I had a fever last night;

His left paw induced sleep.

Horses left their pastures to feed on snakes

I flew

just a question of

elevation.

the tomb

2009-10-12T10:08:00.003+03:00

sadly-delicious accents of a grieved penitent

crickets sotto voce

i want papyrus,
wait
on my kneel hard mouth
to puncture dusk

that's the end
i lived dilution.

no knots in light

2009-10-05T09:58:00.001+03:00

in the tunnel

2009-09-26T09:58:00.004+03:00

i had an image published in shots magazine's autumn issue - also had an image in the Getty/flickr exhibition in London this week and some images at the shashin collective

"I don't have anything to say in any picture. My only interest in photography is to see what something looks like as a photograph. I have no preconceptions. " - winogrand

it occurred to me

2009-09-13T09:30:00.003+03:00

that we are not top of the food chain - viruses are. that my observations with a camera of various insignificant minutae is a profound arrogance - but i'll continue to do so. that cleaning up night shots is remarkably similar to picking olives off the ground.

Who will ever do anything better than that propeller?

2009-07-13T08:27:00.008+03:00

upon his return to paris , he was, in essence, no longer a practicing artist. instead, he played chess which he studied for the rest of his life to the exclusion of most other activities.

he then cut three wood slats into shapes of a hull - and put all the dance steps into a croquet box - the moon was obedient to a hundred million a hit - part of a book on classical mechanics- who will ever do anything better than that propeller? these forays of demoralization, which were also forays of witticism and clownery ... he varnished them into place on the blue-black canvas strips and attached them to glass - earth grew a coffee coloured cliff face behind it - when the vegetable man came and towed it down the coast of other dreams

les grecs

2009-07-05T09:45:00.005+03:00

beyond the accident of the double exposure, which has its own majik and chance, i've been thinking of a series of local [greek] faces faded into walls. a kind of reflection of globalization the way it affects cultures and identities. what we lose what we gain. metering for a white wall is pretty tricky... there's more thoughts about this idea, they just need to evolve into words.

light and more light

2009-06-28T10:12:00.004+03:00

did a photo shoot with john and stavroula the other day and its probably the worst set of photos i've ever shot [nothing to do with this image] we set out to do something and never did it, the original idea was hijacked and the result is embarrassing apart from the lesson learnt. focus and control need to be maintained and if there are only two shots to be had then two shots it is.

quote from aperture magazine: 'there is a kind of image that, although quite serene in itself, is charged with energy and dynamism. in such images the drama per se may not be overt, and yet its weight is felt in this calm moment'

Bad Intentions

(Ravaged by my bad intentions to Labradors).

Lip tinted

Apostate.

Knowing you posed those last photographs for him,

deceiving your planes

into Rembrandt's molded curves.

Fingertip memento

mislaid;

tedious as piano notes

embedded in a sweltering afternoon.

time to adjust the temperament

2009-06-24T08:04:00.006+03:00

what creates a sense of place that transcends the actual? - silk curtains read as plastic by a lens. and then some thoughts conjured by john's 3rd installment of the blonde woman - the present is eternally infernally shaping itself, puppet on the strings of what will be what was, a shadow dance or ghost in a double exposure; is it really there? perhaps only in moments like when the earthquake shunts the house about and you sit terrified in the very lengthy here and now - a state of suspension - true.
can one live in the present, in the moment unless one is an amnesiac, but even amnesia must have a memory/sense of the future?

still days on the beach, no ripples in the water also - this allows the present to be just as it is meant to be - the adventure we speak of - a boat passing - come on john, lets go swim... o and i love this line - an Aladdin’s lamp - bright - new - all rub and no genie

i have some images at fstop - group exhibit

after a long hiatus - some doubles

2009-06-17T08:38:00.004+03:00

once upon a time, not so very long ago yet not so recently, everything imitated everything else - Pamuk, my name is red

der geist der stets verneint

2009-04-20T10:20:00.007+03:00

Places, encounters and the nature of immortality through a lens. So you walk into a place like this and it seems to have been frozen, the only movement is the build of dust and time and perhaps the banging of a loose shutter. The elements of a life gathered and disintegrating is a kind of theatre where the actors are invisible or perhaps suggested by the commemoratives hanging on a wall. In this instance 3 weddings, a patriarchal figure, a stag hunt and the Nazarene. This is the visible cast that suggests drama, linear motion and time, a suggestion in 1 frame. The secondary cast is the absent one; the debris on the bed that resembles evidence of a figure disappearing but in reality is something else, the delicately disintegrating embroidery that would have been part of a dowry trunk. This binds the drama.

I've been thinking about this a lot recently.

I used to scavenge these abandoned buildings, collecting small artifacts, stealing little elements of people's lives because I was so struck by the story contained in each environment. It all had a value to me as it related to time; the time I had seen. I'd often rearrange these things in boxes, glass fronted boxes that were shrines to the places, there was a lot of junk, still is a lot of junk that I keep because I can see a value in it.

I came across a suitcase full of photographs in a tannery, there was also a suitcase full of exercise books that chronicled a young girl's education between 2 wars and during the second. I sat there for hours looking at those images that combined with some letters began to emerge like a puzzle. Certain people appearing with regularity, growing, aging having children, emigrating etc. These photos dated from a time before the whole world was entitled to a point and shoot. Most of the photographs are staged studio portraits but there were quite a few incidentals, someone out with a camera shooting real time instead of staged time. When I finally left the place, returning all the photos carefully to the suitcase I had that feeling like when you walk into a cinema in daytime to watch a Tarkovsky film and emerge at night. All those people were suddenly resurrected in my mind, they were continuing the actions that had been frozen in frames and were now embarked on another life. In my head.

I did return, how could I stay away, I wanted to get to know them better. When I got back the place had been vandalized, the photos and exercise books were strewn everywhere and what had been a carefully packed small cardboard box of paper thin liqueur glasses nestled amongst the images was all smashed up. I took what I could salvage and now keep them in an old suitcase at home. Some I've framed.

What this discovery showed me is how close photography comes to immortality because it captures time as well as light and 'souls'. I don't collect things anymore and I don't make other things out of them but I do look for the story that exists in these places.

Creation

By the third day it was so
organized, so nearly
differentiated that it was
beautiful. On the fourth
the light became specific
to sources and could be
turned away from. Unlike
Heaven with its omnidirectional
brilliance, its unceasing
labour of song,
so that the angels,
to grasp the word 'ending', could only
fondle the boundaries of
their own bodies-and wonder
what that foreshadowed.

Cooper Esteban

the 2 colour photos are from the house of a sculptor who died recently, he had grafitti'd the whole place with angels, it was a very strange and mysterious building to walk into.

some other things

2009-04-15T20:44:00.003+03:00

i love the tones in this shot - its like a black and white- yet something of the color suggests it may be not - i assume i assume - yet nevertheless the less creates an intriguing atmosphere - the man - could be be doing any number of things - including adjusting his mental health - with a head tap - urinating or attempting to to push down the wall - all together the light -balance- combining with the color makes a very atmospheric shot

john lindus

recording time

2009-04-12T11:21:00.007+03:00

the omniprescence of photographs has an incalculable effect on our ethical sensibility. by furnishing this already crowded world with a duplicate one of images, photography makes us feel that the world is more available than it really is

susan sontag

observation reflects absence | allusion is pithily ironic | preemptive arbiter of ideas | caustic voice | we take our thoughts from the accumulated rubble of any single moment of our mental state and enter them into forms suitable for discourse - bochner 1971 | the embrace of a snapshot aesthetic | without strategy the images find a binding narrative of their own simply by being | people remain attached to the most recent past - rear view mirror | take the gun beyond the cliche - impossible | what are the challenges of a nonlinear story | non linear structures allow one to explore time - opening it up - pulling it back and revealing the inner workings of a single moment - doug aitken | film is a vehicle for recording time - silence and the still image also - its just that more is left to the viewers perception | the rationality of imposed structure - cinema is an imposed structure of time whether linear or not - as recent cinematography moves to expressing time in layers and folds - borrowing of earlier literary techniques | the top image is one of my favourite shots of john

je suis autre

2009-04-09T08:19:00.005+03:00

performance of obduracy | weightless dispersion | evaporation | all of us reinvent ourselves - some are more drastic than others | culturally displaced - seeking an identity in time - eschewing chronology in favour of loosely thematic clusters | jacques lecan - the impossibility of seeing the self - the idea of identity constructed in the nonrelation between the subjects misconstrued perception of his own autonomy - the mirror stage | ideas about identity and perception are as much matters of instinct as they are realisations of theoretical interests | an absent subject that knows itself to exist in other forms beyond the picture | the self portrait as representation is anything but transparent -reflective | they are performances of mutability fragmentation and fantasy in which the subject is anything but self meditative and the principle revelation offered is that the artist is someone else | provisional psyche | hegel -that which is capable of maintaining within itself its own contradiction | having the capacity to recognise that ones self is outside ones representation | je suis autre - rimbaud

available realities

2009-04-06T08:14:00.007+03:00

available realities -

even when the person photographed is still living, that moment when he or she was has forever vanished. Strictly speaking the person who has been photographed - not the total person, who is an effect of time - is dead: dead for having been seen - Pierre MacOrlan -what then is his|her relationship to the it that surrounds - which is also dead for having been seen in that moment

- question this - death in context to a captured moment has too much finality - an unseen photograph is sleeping, and time suspended wakes on viewing - this is not death, it is viewed within the context of its own time - every moment photographed has the potential for immortality | mirrors - water - objects are all means of containing the subject within an indirect vehicle as a suggestive presence -a hand placed beside an object within its historical and environmental context - where the object has lived - is a dialogue between the person whose hand it is and the spatial stage it shares with the object - that this frozen capture by light suspends dialogue in an eternal loop - this is not death - this is life - is this a true understanding?

what is a true understanding? even when ones own work emerges as a slow comprehension into an intellectual space - mirrors - windows - camera frame - a great lie? or an alternate truth ? the social photograph - mundane adherence to a realist moment can be used as a vehicle to enhance the subtle surrealism of existence - the contrived photograph - staged movement within a conceptual context resolves drama of light and movement before and after the frame - critical disturbance of space and time - offering the possibility of space narrative within a frame connected by the gaps of sequentiality - simply being alive - ie animate in time takes one out of the fixing of time - ie death - that a photographic representation suggests - the invisible 'frame after' also does that - i propose - potential of the photograph like the dream - to suspend time and transform space - sequential narratives - cinematic - figure holding a mirror infront of their body - different figure reflected - a duplicate visual proposal - movement within that secondary framing? cinematic is cohesive narrative - J is perfect for the tanneries because his insertion into location gives the place a voice - or gives voice to spirit of place about to vanish -hanging suit in the factory as a closing statement on the current series - does the dramatic quality of the holga work better than the subtle shift of the hasselblad - subject poised between presence and absence - undermining the stasis - cinematic sequential dictates the moment before and after the frame - in a still the physical presence of the 'filler frames' is not necessary it is merely a suggestion to the mind of the viewer - shape that disorganises organization - the subject becomes the way to forming a metaphor - is the location the metaphor? with its history seeping or is it the subject within the location? displaced by chronological context - historical - or is it a combination of the unconscious intent the subject and the location combining to form the metaphor - bringing the past into the present.

ecrasement du temps

2009-04-04T10:19:00.007+03:00

what is the strength of it? - 'it' being? - you can only usewhat is there but the elements come together to create something else | le carre - the right convergence of pressures and misfortunes | at what point do you sacrifice the attention for the work? re- soth's last blog entry and johns comments regarding it - eventually the attention consumes the work | internet=emperor's new clothes | social photography? deep in the ordinary and bland, stripped of drama is another kind of drama perhaps - something slower | le carre - tomorrow was created yesterday echoes J's writing | EXTRAORDINARY RENDITION | if there is something genuine in the work and that is what you are trying to find and express, then you have to hone in on that and pursue it otherwise it just gets lost to a virtual audience | he has always risked himself opining the truth of the work as he sees it | the whole world is a crock of shit run by the barons of hypocricy | the smudge - land on the horizon | haven't seen rain like this for years, dark enough late mornings imitate dawn, some hope in slices of light. torrential Marquez rain, a cigarette parenthesis in silence, floods on the land reach the sea. framed images on the wall reflecting windows, the next steps. floods and torrents - 3 days or 100, rain thickens and expands time | check the lottery! | a person scattered in space and time, is no longer a woman but a series of events on which we can throw no light, a series of insoluble problems - m proust | is photography neutral? documentary - social photography haunts the hollow space of objective recording and yet that neutrality in itself is subjective in selection | the before and after moment - is it necessary to eliminate it? or is it the exploration of this non space? [after a lengthy period of heady impatience in the pursuit of result - to produce evidence of learning and vision - i'm impatient to take pause] | i am a reflection photographing other reflections, it is a melancholy truth that i must always fail. to photograph reality is to photograph nothing - duane michals - a failed attempt to photograph reality 1976 | the relationship between the mark and the surface - not stealing the place sculptors house - stealing the memory of the place - the pursuit of decay = gothic? decay and the enviroment of history, memory contained in buildings - what is its balance within the contemporary? if it is merely a recording it proposes nothing but the dialogue of abandoned objects - each one a composit of someones history or lack of - every enviroment + objects is a composit of someone's history | the fixing of time in a photograph - ecrasement du temps - erasure of time - a photographs capacity in dealing with available realities

portrait

2009-03-25T09:21:00.005+02:00

how time passes or pauses and you miss it or catch it or it just drifts. we bargained some he narrowed it to [i can't remember what] the boy and i, he kept word and channelled the beach around himself. december like late summer still. these are time capsules things he can look at later and wonder at himself, hard fought for, perhaps enough moments recorded perhaps enough of his own evolution shown. for the little i do for the lack of interest i show. maybe its not enough ... or is...later will tell him that. He swam postponing til the sun had almost set always brave about the coldest waters. telling me what to shoot in these clear days of him and me, counting each shot as bargained. what can one ever do to readress the past? fasten your seat belt when seated, most times i make a pigs arse of it but just occasionally i can summon the humour that pleases him and lets him feel close. who can take into account the events of a decision not made - but prepared is not a word that comes to mind. J told me today that an average cloud weighs 40000 tons yet when you pass through it you barely feel the moisture, kinda considered that as an analogy for myself, could be a good day. but the boy don't like living here too much of late, considers samos mecca and has advised the purchase of a small property for himself there, how to explain that its not the place but the head set that makes it work... and what does anybody want in the long run but amusement distraction and toys to counter the human

condition... occupation, a dream social ... things and things all gradually eroding to nothing. so here is better in many ways for the boy and his many ambitions or fables about himself, they'd have stripped him bare back there where he was born. 14 years i've known him and now am unknowing more than that ever amounted to thats how it passes by, especially with a memory like mine. I'd like to go for a journey with him, though he'd probably be too embarassed to be seen with me now. think he's got some inkling of the cool potential of the cameras due to his friends i've shot and they were impressed so he came out of it with kudos.

galloping through the years.