Sebastiano Salgado was born in Brazil in 1944. After a short career as an economist in age of 29 he started working as a photojournalist and few years later moved to documentary photography. Salgado’s book was published in 1993 and presents final effect of seven years of traveling around the planet mainly to the “forgotten” places where world’s poorest fight for their existence. Our look is attracted by beauty and honesty of these photographs. They take us on a fascinating and true journey through perseverance, grace, dignity, devotion and endurance of working people. There is noticeable line dividing his work from typical photojournalism practice which main aim is to inform. We can see here Salgado’s sensibility and ability to identify himself with characters in photographs. Many times, during his travels, he “shared a bed” with them. Salgado clearly indicate one of the most important problems of first world civilization – its ignorance and brutality in striving to achieve its own goals; and building future on fundaments of poverty of third world. Although it is difficult not polemicize with Salgado. In dedication author says: “This book is an homage to workers, a farewell to a world of manual labour that is slowly disappearing and a tribute to those men and women who still work as they have for centuries”. He wrote these words just after second world fell into ruins. From perspective of nearly twenty years we can see that new millennium didn’t bring a change and poverty and manual labour spread even more widely across the world. Are we witnessing the situation where Fritz’s Lang vision became a true? Salgado also says: “The destiny of man and women is to create a new world, to reveal a new life, to remember that there exists a frontier for everything except dreams”. I think that in our world as it is in the eternal course of nature not all dreams and voices will be audible in creating a new future. Documentary film about Salgado (part one): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X76jieUgTQ&feature=related
Showing posts with label Maciej. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maciej. Show all posts
Monday, 28 March 2011
Sebastiano Salgado "Workers: an archaeology of the industrial age". (books)
Sebastiano Salgado was born in Brazil in 1944. After a short career as an economist in age of 29 he started working as a photojournalist and few years later moved to documentary photography. Salgado’s book was published in 1993 and presents final effect of seven years of traveling around the planet mainly to the “forgotten” places where world’s poorest fight for their existence. Our look is attracted by beauty and honesty of these photographs. They take us on a fascinating and true journey through perseverance, grace, dignity, devotion and endurance of working people. There is noticeable line dividing his work from typical photojournalism practice which main aim is to inform. We can see here Salgado’s sensibility and ability to identify himself with characters in photographs. Many times, during his travels, he “shared a bed” with them. Salgado clearly indicate one of the most important problems of first world civilization – its ignorance and brutality in striving to achieve its own goals; and building future on fundaments of poverty of third world. Although it is difficult not polemicize with Salgado. In dedication author says: “This book is an homage to workers, a farewell to a world of manual labour that is slowly disappearing and a tribute to those men and women who still work as they have for centuries”. He wrote these words just after second world fell into ruins. From perspective of nearly twenty years we can see that new millennium didn’t bring a change and poverty and manual labour spread even more widely across the world. Are we witnessing the situation where Fritz’s Lang vision became a true? Salgado also says: “The destiny of man and women is to create a new world, to reveal a new life, to remember that there exists a frontier for everything except dreams”. I think that in our world as it is in the eternal course of nature not all dreams and voices will be audible in creating a new future. Documentary film about Salgado (part one): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X76jieUgTQ&feature=related
Monday, 14 March 2011
Photography And Still Life: Symbolic Objects - Athens
Absolute Blue.
Garry Fabian Miller was born in 1957, he has been making 'camera-less' photographs since 1985. He works in the darkroom, shining light through coloured glass and over cut-paper shapes to create forms that record directly onto photographic paper. As he says he wants to catch light, not what light catches.
Rather than most photographers who use light as a tool by which they make their work Fabian Miller is interested in light of itself. He uses sensitive material that holds light and makes it constant. His practice brings him closer to early history of the medium and also change thought about what photography is and where it might exist beyond the common model. Years of experiments with light, the paper and every day life objects like case a blue drinking-glass topped up with water, wooden and cardboard vanes or shutters, created his recognizable and unique style. Every time he goes to the darkroom he needs to spend 20 min in darkness so eyes can adapt and see “deposit of light directed at the place where the paper will catch it begins to emerge from invisibility.” Only now he can manipulate the image. Then the beam must be turned off and the paper positioned in complete blackout. Finally, the exposure may take as long as an hour.
The results are so unconventional that many viewers are unsure what they are seeing and how to relate to it. Miller says, “It's like nothing you've seen in the world before”
Link to Athen:
http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com/hww/results/external_link_maincontentframe.jhtml?_DARGS=/hww/results/results_common.jhtml.44
Garry Fabian Miller was born in 1957, he has been making 'camera-less' photographs since 1985. He works in the darkroom, shining light through coloured glass and over cut-paper shapes to create forms that record directly onto photographic paper. As he says he wants to catch light, not what light catches.
Rather than most photographers who use light as a tool by which they make their work Fabian Miller is interested in light of itself. He uses sensitive material that holds light and makes it constant. His practice brings him closer to early history of the medium and also change thought about what photography is and where it might exist beyond the common model. Years of experiments with light, the paper and every day life objects like case a blue drinking-glass topped up with water, wooden and cardboard vanes or shutters, created his recognizable and unique style. Every time he goes to the darkroom he needs to spend 20 min in darkness so eyes can adapt and see “deposit of light directed at the place where the paper will catch it begins to emerge from invisibility.” Only now he can manipulate the image. Then the beam must be turned off and the paper positioned in complete blackout. Finally, the exposure may take as long as an hour.
The results are so unconventional that many viewers are unsure what they are seeing and how to relate to it. Miller says, “It's like nothing you've seen in the world before”
Link to Athen:
http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com/hww/results/external_link_maincontentframe.jhtml?_DARGS=/hww/results/results_common.jhtml.44
Tuesday, 1 February 2011
The abject body - books
The abject body as a subject has been widely represented and explored in all periods of history of photography. From 19th century daguerreotypes (pictures of dead infants) to late 20th century works of Rudolf Shafer; from grotesque through diseases to death.
There are some interesting publications, which are worth taking into consideration:
Vile Bodiles: Photography and the Crisis of Looking, 1998. Towsend, C. Prestel
One of the most complex positions includes areas of death, pathological disorder, ageing or physical disability. Author tries to break a taboo that is fear about our own bodies and damaged bodies of others. The voice of artists forces us to re-think how we look at the photography and the body. One of the photographers – John Caplans says: “I am not dealing with the perfect body, I am dealing with another kind of truth, that is how the body really is and why don’t we accept it, because that’s our norm.”
The Dead”, 1995. Williams V; Hobson G. National Museum of Photography.
The book focused mainly on picturing of death in late 20th century. The main aim of the author was to examine the ways in which photographers and artists explore ideas of mortality and how they ask important questions about taboos, which surround picturing of death. Wide spectrum of photographers represented in this publication and vast area of interpretation give us possibility to renew our thinking about death.
There are some interesting publications, which are worth taking into consideration:
Vile Bodiles: Photography and the Crisis of Looking, 1998. Towsend, C. Prestel
One of the most complex positions includes areas of death, pathological disorder, ageing or physical disability. Author tries to break a taboo that is fear about our own bodies and damaged bodies of others. The voice of artists forces us to re-think how we look at the photography and the body. One of the photographers – John Caplans says: “I am not dealing with the perfect body, I am dealing with another kind of truth, that is how the body really is and why don’t we accept it, because that’s our norm.”
The Dead”, 1995. Williams V; Hobson G. National Museum of Photography.
The book focused mainly on picturing of death in late 20th century. The main aim of the author was to examine the ways in which photographers and artists explore ideas of mortality and how they ask important questions about taboos, which surround picturing of death. Wide spectrum of photographers represented in this publication and vast area of interpretation give us possibility to renew our thinking about death.
Monday, 31 January 2011
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer “Recorders”
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
“Recorders”
Manchester Art Gallery
25.01.2011
“Recorders”
Manchester Art Gallery
25.01.2011
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is 44 years old, Mexican born artist who lives and creates his artwork in Canada.
Lozano in his exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery tries to put attention on important issue of technology in our live. He, also, tries to ask some questions: how technology influences on people? How does it change our surrounding and us itself?
The whole exhibition and its individual parts seem to be planned and arranged deliberately. They form a logical sequence which harmonize with space and lead a viewer through a play to a very significant final end.
The author’s intention was to make us (throughout voice, image and pulse recording) observers to communicate and associate with technology which in some moments starts to be prolongation of our biological attributes. It is worth mentioning, as an example, the installations made of few hundred bulbs hanged down from a whole sealing. The bulbs flash with the rhythm of pulse of people who previously visited the exhibition. Apart from visual effects there is some irresistible impression of being connected with the installation, being an essential “working” part which brings a sense to it.
There is no doubt that in the first room viewer interacts with the installations based on biometric technologies. It shows a clear analogy to places where those techniques are used to control and monitor people’s traffic, access to institutions and services in real world. In the next sections spectator by using senses of touch, sight and hearing becomes integral part of the performance. But the most symbolic and significant is the last display which brings final conclusion to the whole. While walking into the last room observer is recorded and displayed in a large scale on the wall, in the next few steps he becomes a shadow with a number above. The shadow appears here as a symbol of human devoid of personality and voice, who exists only as a number, a segregated numeric function in the system.
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