Showing posts with label famous photographers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label famous photographers. Show all posts

9.7.12

Monday Column: Why a Vampire Can Not Be an Analog Photographer


As an analogue photographer you have all experienced how is to be hours and hours in the darkroom. I don’t know about you, but I had, after several hours in the darkroom in the middle of the night at local elementary school, a strange feeling of presence. I knew that I was alone in the school, but... Hopefully I’m not paranoiac, but as part of consumer of modern popular culture, we are all bombarded with stories about supernatural creatures. And one of those creatures fit perfectly in the dark lonely corridors of the empty local school in the middle of the night.

Could be a vampire? A lonely sorrow creature craving for the blood. And a lonely sorrow analogue photograph in the darkroom seems to be a perfect target. Not! As commonly known, vampires have some deficiencies. Among allergy for garlic and UV light is also allergy to silver. Be thankful to that, that analogue photography is all about silver those days. In the modern films, the vampire killers uses bullets filled with silver nitrate for killing vampires. So, if you are afraid of the vampires, just keep some of used developer. After you develop a film or photographic paper, it has a lot of washed away silver from not exposed parts of film in it. So in the case of need, just pour it over the creature. Guarantee success.  So you don’t need the garlic wreath on the door of the darkroom. You could be sure that no vampire will come and bother you, when you are printing your precious photos.

But hey! Maybe they are not so bad after all. And after all you could find a brother soul in analogue photography? Oh, there is a problem. Photography is all about light and vampires are allergic to the sunlight. But they could be nightlight photographers and they could produce masterpieces like the Edward Steichen’s Pond – Moonlight?


                                       Edvard Steichen: Pond - Moonlight                                                                                  
    Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/ThePondMoonlight.jpg




And others could develop and print the photographs for them, as they did for the Henry Cartier Bresson (and many others photographers too). But why they would bother? At present days, for night time photographers, you have are more appropriately suited tools. A blasfemy for analogue photographers, but nevertheless, vampires goes digital. We already stated that when we are talking about soul in photography, it is analogue. Vampires have no soul. So that’s the ultimate reason, why a vampire could not (wont) be an analogue photographer. They don’t even bother about, they have ISO 204,000.

7.7.12

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust

No, it's not a post about some Danse Macabre stuff....these were just my thoughts when we took a visit to Helmut Newton's grave in Berlin, back in May. First we took a mandatory visit to his museum on Jebensstrasse which is pretty easy to find, just behind the (in)famous Zoo Station. There, at the museum, you can really get a grasp of his life and work, glamorous and controversial, but also about more intimate aspects. And it takes a while to get through all three museum floors, too. Diametrically opposite is the impression when you visit his grave, unnoticeable and humble, just a few meters away from Marlene Dietrich (it was his wish to be buried there). We were lucky enough to meet two graveyard employees, so the quest was relatively short. I am not saying I was expecting a mausoleum or something, but realizing that one of the greatest photographers (his ashes, actually) is buried there, being visited only by a bunch of visitors, here and there, made me a bit sad. On the contrary, Marlene's grave gets much more visits (if you compare the stones put on the gravestone).
Helmut Netown's grave in Berlin.
Bottom line: take care of yourself and of your dearest here and now. It won't really matter after.

Helmut is buried in the Städtischer Friedhof III cemetery, not really a "high point" of Berlin. Sadly, even many locals are not aware of the cemetery itself, let alone of Helmut's grave. Hint: it improves your chances to get in the right direction if you ask where is the cemetery where Marlene Dietrich is buried, but it's not necessarily 100% proof (that's our experience).
Mitja