Andreas Bee, longtime curator and deputy director at the Museum der Modernen Kunst (MMK) here in Frankfurt, moved on. Together with Carsten Wolff, an art books publisher, he opened his own gallery a couple of months ago, the Fine German Gallery, and I have to say that they have adopted a quite individual approach.
But this is not more than an announcement – I will come back to the Fine German Gallery. Andreas and I are planning to meet as soon as another friend (finally!) opens his new bar around the corner, and I will pester Andreas about his concept. I am thinking about a new rubrique here ont the blog … Showing that there is always a way to get something done, even if this means that you have to create your own path to walk on. So I will be talking to some people who invested time and energy to do so.
It is actually difficult to photograph anything in this appartment. It is dark here. Always. We are up under the roof – near the skys but with small windows only. Very few spots with light – cave like. So without studio equipment – which would be a bit over the top for this – I am actually having a hard time to find the right spots for the objects. But it will do for what I have in mind.
Just happened to find this as I was looking for something else in the archive. What you probably would not guess by the appearance is, that it was shot last year on December 13th. So the small dots you might still see in this miniature version of the image are actually christmas lights. Very decorative :)
But still, nobody around. At least they took the umbrellas away.
(If you have no clue about what I am talking about – click on the category “backyard” below the title of this post. It is just a little fun I am having here documenting a backyard.)
Most people who know me are aware of my little dog called Hunter
What most people do not know is that Hunter is not a hunter but a collector. A very enthusiastic one on top of it all.
His preferences: rubber objects, wood knots and strange plastic things. Last week we had to convince him to leave a pink rubber sex toy behind, which he had found in the bushes and wanted to add to his home collection. You cannot imagine the drama that was.
On the pro side: we do not need to buy him toys as he finds them all in the woods: balls, balls and more balls.
It is not an easy task for him to carry some of these pieces home from wherever he finds them, but he does so proudly, tail straight in the air and totally sure of himself, even if he can hardly keep it up due to the size and weight of his findings – much to the amusement of people we pass. Once he collects something, we have to abort our walk and go straight home so he can put his new object in his treasure box. Is this a dog or what?
I am still annoyed at myself that we did not take a picture of that pink sex toy. But yeah, it was a bit disgusting (one more reason to regret the missing picture). Next time.
Why am I telling this here? Shhhhht … it is still a secret, but I will tell you soon. Promised.
After I posted the last images here, someone asked me if I do a lot of landscapes. Well … not really. I generally do take “reminders”, as I call them, “visual notes” on places that I could revisit. My personal location scouting so to say.
If you look at the image above, which is such a “reminder”, that would be a place where I would stick around to get that “extra”, which is not in there now. Also I would prefer a different light situation. Not a sunny, but a more gloomy one. That has also to do with the camera I am using, which is a Canon G10, whereas a larger format would be desirable here, if you really wanted to get all the detail. So I am not after the detail here … not with my equipment.
Sure enough once in a while I get this itching to acquire a large format camera, although I would not do it without a project making this step necessary. I like to keep things as simple as possible and definitively not more complex than necessary. Same goes for my equipment.
I have my G10 with me for this form of visual notetaking. And that is fine. You never know what images will come along and when – the G10 is always ready to go for it. And I collect them all, if I have the chance and if they fit into my pattern. It is a bit like treasure hunting and just as exciting. Even if the only place where they might get shown is in this blog, which for me is not a tight place to “sell a style” but a place of loose conversations and brainstorming.
Both of these images were on the sd card that I uploaded today.
There is a certain type of landscaping that I like to use for myself and other type of landscaping that I would consider more suited for other photographers. A matter of taste and decision.
Nonetheless sometimes you stumble upon a certain image and – even if it does not feel totally yours, you take it, right? Right.
Although I was a bit too slow here. I just saw the boys when their mom called for them to come out of the water. In the picture you see the blond boy turning his head, and then off they went with the spead of light. Too fast for me to reposition myself to separate them better. But it is a reminder for me to get back to that place with more time and – most importantly – alone.
I can spend hours waiting at a certain spot for the right thing to happen or the right person to pass by. I do not mind at all. At the same time I always think that others would mind waiting with me (and they usually do), so it often happens that I go out with people and then separate from the group to pursue something I have seen. Guess my friends got used to it. Today it was not possible. And I got there too late anyway.
So here is a another shot of our strange backyard. I found out that if I lean outside of the kitchen window I can actually get it without the scaffold next door.
It is getting autumnish here …
Overtone is getting darker. I have a lot on my list. Moving forward slowly but steadily.
No panic please, there definitively is no snow in Frankfurt at this point in September, but this is the promised follow up from the post “New Snow in Town”.
The scaffolding has been removed, yes. But a new one has been put up on the building next to ours. So now the view is even worse – that is why I choose not to do a landscape format.
The city of Frankfurt has new laws for building insulation. So there are scaffoldings popping up everywhere.
I like that place in the backyard of our neighbours. It seems so strangely surreal, very fake, and despite of the fact that someone is moving the furniture around and keeping that pond going, I have never actually seen anybody there. Never. Despite eyeing it quite often from the kitchen window.
This was definitively not the last picture of that backyard.
So finally I will be neutralizing the green background of this website, which was kinda getting in the way more and more lately.
It has been a long time since last looking at the code, so I am very sure it will take me a while to get everything straight. Surely it will look a bit of a mess here in the hours to come.
I apologize for that.
…..
Colour work is done but some minor details. Still green, but less dramatically so. There will be more changes to the design in the near future with the aim to give the content more air to breathe. Always the most difficult part for me to explain to webdesigners is, that I need SPACE. :)
