Archive for the 'Projects /own' Category

MEANING – next step

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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.

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*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.


OVERTONE

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



Spilling the beans, er, coffee …

Ok, I got real flak now by some of the readers of this blog because I was so wage in my last post. Sorry. I did not think it would be so terribly interesting to talk about projects that are still in the making, furthermore, well, there is just a lot that still can happen and projects might shift. Apart for some logical reasons for not putting it all on the table right away.

But ok. Let me spill the beans a bit, right? I am so behind on everything do to my lost 3 months, that this might just give me a further push to hurry.

I actually listed the three new projects in the sidebar as work in progress already. Althought merely with working titles.

HUNTed Frankfurt is going to be 100% documentary. But in a different way. From a different angle. It is about the place I am living at in Frankfurt now. Most “normal” people would try to get away from here rather than to move to this area. But I just really, really love it. It feels much more real than the rest of Frankfurt.

Some of you might know “La Grande Bouffe”, a film (1973) directed by Marco Ferreri, starring Marcello Mastroianni, Michel Piccoli, Philippe Noiret. More here and there is some in YouTube too, only that I do not have the time right now to preselect links for this post here … I will certainly come back to that later, even though I did get the dvd.
It is a critical film … so I cannot but smile when I go through google and see how they put a “wedding service” up with that name etc. I certainly would not want to be married under that star.

So two of my projects have a reference to that film. A smaller project, which only needs a couple of days additional work, and a larger one. More of an OPUS really, which will certainly need at least 2-3 years of work. The smaller one is highly conceptual, the larger one is documentary. I have a lot of expectation regarding both of them, especially because they will use a completely different approach to say a similar thing.

So much for the new projects.

Concerning the “old” ones, that I am working on again, I was talking about the “Catch me if I can” Journals.
I just came up with an additional way of presentation, as the original way, that I had planned, has still not found a way to be materialized in a way I could accept. That one is ready to be printed out. All settled and done. I will now make a series out of it, to broaden the message.

I was also talking about Wallpaper. Same same. Rework on it is done, all is ready for the printer and … it is definitively going to be a series.

Next would be “A Stranger’s Wish”.
It is amazing how things expand sometimes when you have time to think them over. I always had this hate-love relationship with this project. I knew what part I hated and so the point was to eliminate that part. I worked hard on this one, and then I put it into a drawer for some time. The best thing to do when I get stuck – and the reason why I like to work on so many different projects simultaneously. It actually is not simultaneously, but it gives me time to step back and get a fresh look at things. “A Stranger’s Wish” – or the postcard project – evolved into various different branches. Each of which I like now. No. Each of which I LOVE! So it was a good thing after all.

Concerning the old projects, my first aim was merely to get them OUT there. They were finished, but I never worried about having them published or displayed because I was already working on the next projects. It is more interesting for me to work on projects than to worry about them once they are done. Nevertheless it leaves this feeling of incompleteness … And I cannot really present the project on the website either. It is stupid. So that was my main reason to get back to them. Just – and I knew that would happen – once I look at them again, I need to work on them again too. Not necessarily in a sense of change, but in a sense of addition. I just become aware of further possibilies that I REALLY would LOVE to add to it. All my projects really go in chapters. And probably they will accompany me until my last days. Who needs more projects, right? What is a project anyway? For me it is nothing but a name for something that I am interested in as a person. An idea. A concept. And I will still be interested in this after the end of a specific project … so it is no wonder it feels like I could go on turning that theme around in my hands.

Everything I do here, including the Illustration&photography posts, is of utter importance to me. I think about it and work with it regardless of if I write about it or not. It has always been like this, there is no reason for it to change. Especially not as long as the topics are fairly universal. And my topics are universal. “Meaning”, right? It is all about that one. Everything I do. So much so that I will probably take it away as a project and just write a blogpost about it. At the end of the day “Meaning” is the only project I am working on. Every other project could be considered as a subproject.

Sorry, rereading the post, I see that everything is still cryptic. Actually I am a little overwhelmed. I DID think until recently, that I was doing a monologue type of thing here. I did not look at the statistics, which tell me that I have several hundred readers here every day. So my feeling of responsibility just did a big awakening jump. I might find a way to show some work-in-progress type of thing. Maybe with a newsletter that requires registering. Let me think about this for a while.


New Book Design

After coming up with the logo, the new bookdesign was a logical step.


Presentation is (Almost) Everything

As secretly expected I was terribly unhappy about the PINK LOBO dummy books that I got from several online printing services. Every book looked totally different and none looked like it was supposed to. Too bad … So I am stopping this ousourcing experiment for PINK LOBO, which in fact is a hard nut due to it’s colors in any case.

I got me an Epson Stylus Pro 3800 a while ago and will start to do my own prints. I am really sick and tired to wait and to depend on others when it comes to this utterly important part of my work. And I just have to be honest with myself here: my work IS hard to print! At least most of it – yes I know.

Actually I am looking forward to do my own printing. It is good to stay in control when it comes to presenting your work.


PINK LOBO – The Preview And Some Notes

If you are interested, then have a peek.
Feedback is always welcome.


ASW is online!

asw02

It took some massive efforts and sleepless nights but now the site for “A Stranger’s Wish” is online.

There will still be some minor adaptations but the direction is there and I think it works – it is the only way I can think of to make it possible for everyone involved or interested in the project to follow up: A web based (basic) presentation.
Basic? Yes, of course, because everything is tiny and packed together. On top of this everyone of you will see it differently depending on your monitor & settings. So it is a basic presentation, but an important one, as I see it. I will be writing more about this at a different time.

A question that will arise is: why are some of the listed names not linked to a page?

This is a growing project, as you might have noticed if you followed the “news”. At the very beginning I was planning on getting a handfull of images for a workshop. Then I thought about expanding it to maybe 50 images … And now? No limits! No limit in time, in place or in numbers of portraits. Quite a different setting than at the beginning! And it is more or less due to these and some other alterations that I took some of the portraits out again, as they would not have fittet what I am after now. This is very sad as it meant to take some nice images out. And some excellent stories. I am not sure if I will get the chance to revisit everyone to redo the portraits, but I will try to find ways to revisit as many people as possible, to let them be seen and their voices be heard (I will try to add as much audio in the future as possible).

As everyone knows we do have a minor worldwide economical incident … so I did in fact postpone the travells which were planned for the next months. I will stick around here for a while, adding locals to the project. Frankfurt is very international, so I am sure I will find interesting characters for “A Stranger’s Wish” … And who knows what will happen? Something always happens when I am “out there” … The adventure changes a little, as it most likely will change again in the future, but it goes on stronger than ever!!


My “2 cents”

two cents

Forget everything I said about “no more projects”. Yes, I have quite a lot long term projects going on right now, BUT: This one was missing. Definitvely.

“Two Cents”, or “My Two Cents” does not have a specific topic apart from whatever is going on in the world around me. The big and the small pictures. Details that catch my eye but normally would not find a place to stand. It is a humble project with humble pictures. No censorship. Just life as it presents it’s various facettes. It is solely about that. Not more, not less.

I will not force myself into having to take the famous “one picture a day”, but as with few exceptions I actually do take pictures daily, it should not be a problem to come quite close.

Due to circumstances the little slideshow, that I will put together, will be updated irregularly.


Separate Site for “A. S. W.”

My friends at Vektorrausch have started to programm me a separate site for “A Stranger’s Wish” and first results were tested today. Apart from 1mio things still missing, I already find it quite impressive! The countries, which I have already visited, will be shown in cyan. Once you click on them you will see a zooming effect and the visited cities will appear. Going into those you will find the portraits. And the stories.

Still struggeling with some of the intendet additional information. I will be changing my plans because I now saw a site that unfortunately is quite similar … On top of it all from a pretty famous photographer … It is all similar on the net, if you use the same features. But … I will try to find another way nontheless. It really bothers me!


A Stranger’s Wish / Finland


HELSINKI

Back from Helsinki with a bag full of impressions, postcards and portraits. It was absolutely amazing and I am looking forward to get everything ready to show. It will take me some time I fear, until I have it all ready, so I start with a little teaser and will come back from time to time to put more on here. My priority now lies in the portraits which I want to have ready soon so I can sent them back to my “collaborateurs”.

More about Finland / Helsinki …