“LOOK3 is hosting an experimental two night event to present the work of 90 innovative photographers on a farm 30 minutes west of Charlottesville. This initiative, which we are calling LOOKbetween, is designed to showcase early-career talent and engage the presenting artists with media professionals on practices and trends influencing the direction of photography today. We want to turn the traditional mentorship model on its head and let the next generation of photographers, editors, publishers, curators, and media professionals share their vision for the future.”
At this point I want to thank the amazing organization team from LOOK3 for their seemingly supernatural efforts. It was PERFECT! Just as if practiced for many years – but hey, no: the event at the Deep Rock Farm was a first timer for everybody! Unbelievable.
LOOKbetween was a magical experience. And I am still a bit at loss for words – and images. So if you want to see more about the event, I encourage you to visit the LOOKbetween tumblr page and to take in the impressions.
I think I can talk for most of us that we were a little overwhelmed and that we would have loved 1-2 additional days to really fully unfold the potential of this awesome get together. And I think the connection aspect is one of the central ones of LOOKbetween.
I am immensely greatful to have been chosen to be in the first group to attend LOOKbetween. If anybody ever gets the chance, please do yourself a favor and attend! Regardless of if as an invited artist or as a visitor.
Below just a vage impression of mother nature watching our show … Huge insects in the projector’s beam of light, like erratic shooting stars, of which there also where many. Enough to make our dreams come true? We will see … and certainly do our share for it to happen.
I regularly get asked if I am still working on MEANING.
I am.
From time to time I have to bridge gaps that become as wide as the universe. Then I stop to think about what I am doing, which usually does not give me any usefull answers. There is a pattern in this experience: Like probably most of us, I do have a very specific image of myself and I often use this image to help me with my important decisions. This sometimes results in a nightmare in which I end up in some corner where I never wanted to go. Why? Because the image I have of myself seems to be pretty inacurate at times and it leads to the wrong decisions.
The gap between phantasy and reality amazes me. Not only in my own person but also in other people, in whole societies even …
This is what got me started with MEANING.
I began with this project a month after I seriously stumbled upon photography in 2008. There was a lot of turmoil in me in direct consequence of that. A world upside down. Very surprising really, to have your life concept shaken up by some event you considered “random” at first – a “simple”* photography workshop. Very disconcerting too. But totally fascinating at the same time!
And even though I actually found all my essential puzzle pieces that year, I still did not have the clarity of vision back then to finish this project. My sight was a bit muddy.
The last 2 years where full of experiment. Experiment with the medium and experiment with myself. Why was I so fascinated by this? What was it? Who was I? Different again from what I thought? Yes, different again.
So now I am putting the pieces together. I am sure it will not go straight. And I will be looking at some more corners before I am done with this. So be it.
That is just how it is with MEANING.
.
*Just to put that one right: I was no photographer back then and my point and shoot did not ask me to know anything about f-stops. I thought that a photography workshop in Tuscany would be a nice kind of holiday with some good talks at most – not unlike other workshops I had visited so far. How mistaken I was! And happily so! I had one of the best and most intensive times in my life. If it had not been this way, it would not have shaken me up as it did.
Here is the first book cover image. Even if I have not started officially yet with this project, I need some stepstones for my thoughts. This is one of them. There are others.
Still working on the detailed concept though – on the narration, which will have much more importance than usual. Still not sure if I will do it all myself or if I will include other people – I guess it means that I have not met the right people yet.
The overall concept of Overtone is clear since September 2009, when I visited Lobo and Marfa in Texas. We were driving through the desert at night, minds wandering, when it struck me out of nowhere. Guess that is how these things always happen.
It was the beginning of a long process of thoughts, of many hours of online research, and of a long list of books I went through. Overtone is going to take me into the music scene … somewhere I have never been due to my damaged hearing, that make me prefer silence over sound. I never bothered about it and I never felt that I really was missing anything. I just concentrated on the visual side of things. Now, obviously, I am totally curious about finding ways to translate sound into an additional layer of meaning for the images I want to do for this project.
I would love to put the project statement up here right now, because I am so excited about all of this, but it will have to wait. I would give away too much by doing this, because there is a relevant twist to the story in this project. And I do not want to spoil the surprise.
I set this project to officially start in 2011. Until then I will be busy with research and with the first part of MEANING, which I think will be a good preparation. A whole new world ahead of me! I love it!
Stay tuned …
first OVERTONE blogpost
blogpost Texas Roundtrip I
blogpost Texas Roundtrip II
blogpost Texas Roundtrip III
blogpost Texas Roundtrip IV
