A thorough job, indeed. Even the palm trees under their little umbrellas are white.
Monthly Archive for November, 2010
While in Paris for the Paris Photo, Laura Montanari led us to the best couscous in town at Chez Omar.
(I know, I know … I am a ceiling fetichist :) – I am sure you can find a picture of the rest of the place online :) Just follow the link above)
What apparently once was a insider’s tip, seems to be widely known by now, as we hurried to get the last table of the spacious but overcrowded resturant. When we left around midnight, people were still standing in line to get seated.
We had a remarkable evening and, as you can see below, we dutifully cleaned our plates. Unfortunately the weather gods were not impressed and we had some rain the next day despite of our efforts. But who really cares about rain when you are in Paris, right? Right. Especially so when you have beautiful photography shows to go to!
The Ligovsky Prospekt is one of the largest streets in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The image above only shows a small excerpt of the whole composition of old photographs à la Ed Ruscha, which went around several walls at Paris Photo. The photographs are said to be from 1933 (photographer unknown?), apparently made to assist some vast rebuilding of the area. Which might explain the pencil sketches on the work.
See also this French documentation of the project.
“Rachel, Monique” is the name of the present show from Sophie Calle in Paris, and focusses on work that is based on the recent death of her mother. It is located in the basement of the Palais de Tokyo, a space that connects to the neighboring Musée d’Art Moderne.
It was the first of Sophie Calle’s shows that I have ever seen, albeit having heard of some of her projects before, which I found of great interest. Shockingly enough, especially in regard to my recent experience with my father, it did not touch me at all. It was a bit too illustrative for me, not elliptical enough (for my personal taste). And it shows just how difficult it is to deal with such a subject – despite of the giraffe head, which I loved a lot.
It is certainly something I will have to chew through for my own project about my father. It is very difficult to obtain the necessary distance from the subject to balance the proximity and emotions out.
I am not trying to give a review here, just really wondering about the pitfalls of these kind of projects … But if you care to read more about this show, you might be interested in an interview Sophie Calle gave to Art in America Magazine.
Just returned from Paris Photo. While waiting for the water to boil for the last of today’s teas, I took a chance to sneak a night image of the backyard, which has been in quite some pictures now.
12.11.1840: Auguste Rodin (†17.11.1917)
The image above of Rodin in his studio was made by the young Edward Steichen.
After being introduced to Rodin by the painter Fritz Thaulow, Steichen visited Rodin every week for almost a year before he brought his camera and made 4 plates. The image above is a composition of two separate photographs, as Steichen’s Rapid-Rectilinear lens could not capture the whole scene in one.
At the beginning Steichen did not have the know-how to combine two negatives into one, and so he started by glueing the prints together, it took him 2 years to find a way to combine the negatives in a satisfactory way.
(I got the information out of this book. It is in German but I assume there is an English version of it.)
Jörg Colberg over at Conscientious just posted a link to Stuart Whipps’ website. Apart from the project that Jörg pointed out, there are some other nice approaches. The one pictured above is from the series “A Thing Of Beauty and a Joy Forever”. It is certainly an approach that one has seen before in similar versions – I have a multiple from the German artist Matthias Vatter (no website?!) next to me, who did a similar work with a whole issue of “Der Spiegel” magazine – but so what?! I like this press cuttings version!
You might also want to check out Suart Whipps’ other projects. There is more than one that crosses the borders of pure photography.
In the last days I have written to a handful of people throughout the world and asked for some of their time.
I did include a link to a post that I have written a couple of days ago, hoping that it would make the nature of this favor that I am asking for a little bit clearer.
In the light of what happened and of what is still to come, I am trying to work my way through the images and emotions that are currently incapacitating me. I need to WORK through it, literaly, and so I decided to do a personal project (for lack of a better word) and finish up – hopefully in time – a small book with text & images to give to my father. Because spoken words just fail me, and they might fail me until it is too late.
I am very humbled that I have gotten such a tremendous response so far. I am very, very thankful, that all of you, who I have asked for this favor, offered to help without hesitation:
Nico Chiapperini, The Netherlands
Laura Montanari, Italy
Iztok Boncina, Slovenia
Annette Gloser, Germany
Cate and Duncan, England
Audrey Bardou, France
Ross Nolly and John Earney, New Zealand
Kyunghee Lee, Korea
Bill Hess, Alaska, USA.
.
Sofia Wendler, Iceland
Tobias Tuttlies, Belgium / Brazil
Ana Yturralde, Spain
Katharina Hesse, China
Marcin Luczkowski, Poland
David Bowen, Norway
Lee Guthrie, Hawaii, USA
Civilian, Greece
Stephan Boden / Gastraum, Germany
Alex Reshuan, Equador
Sam Harris, Australia
Bouhlou, Morocco
I will be writing to some more people in the days to come. I fear I am not very fast right now, but I hope to be fast enough.
As soon as things materialize, I will be posting more openly.
All of you humble me. Thank you again!
