Exposures: An Aperture Blog

"Exposures" Has Moved!

2007-10-11T13:01:00.000-05:00

It has been our pleasure to test the concept of an Aperture blog via Blogger this summer season. As the weather cools and the season in photography heats up, we've decided to move affairs over to a more robust location.

Please find the new Exposures at http://exposures.aperture.org. Upcoming features include an interview with Larry Fink, co-curator of the current Aperture exhibition "Lisette Model And Her Successors," as well as notes and clips from "The Passionate Eye II: Conversations Between Collectors, Curators, and Critics," taking place at Aperture on October 14.

This site will remain up for a number of weeks, but all new posts will be made on the new site. We thank you for your understanding, and welcome your comments and suggestions on the new space!

Richard Ross/John R. MacArthur Lecture, Part 4

2007-10-08T16:02:00.000-05:00

The following is the final installment of a conversation between Richard Ross and John R. (Rick) MacArthur, regarding Ross's work and his book Architecture of Authority, published by Aperture this fall.

To read opening remarks made by Diana Edkins of Aperture Foundation, click here.

To read the first installment of the conversation between Ross and MacArthur, click here.

To read the second installment of the conversation between Ross and MacArthur, click
here.

To read the third installment of the conversation between Ross and MacArthur, click
here.

JRM: …I say in the essay that there would be no point in trying to do the Abu Ghraib photos in any other context. As if, in a perfect photographer’s world, Richard… [snuck] back into Abu Ghraib and took photographs of the guys with the hoods on, and in what I call the tableau vivant of the torture victims, with [Army Specialists] Lynndie [England] and Charles [Graner] and their persecutors torturing them, but doing it from an artist’s perspective. Or a photojournalist’s perspective. Because you know the pictures we’ve seen of Abu Ghraib are mostly cellular phone pictures. Right?

RR: Or digital cameras. Small cameras.

JRM: Right. …They’re not set-up shots. They’re not done by professional photographers. But my feeling when I saw his empty spaces was that it’s just as well. You couldn’t reproduce the shock value of those amateur photographs. And just for the hell of it, I wonder if you think if such a thing is reproducible. I mean is that something you’re interested in? Because all the pictures you see, they’re all empty, you rarely see a person. The minute I saw the Abu Ghraib shots, and the Guantánamo shots, my thoughts turned to the amateur shots of Charles and Lynndie torturing the prisoners.

RR: Well, one of the images that isn’t in the book or the exhibition was that same space where Lynndie England was one of those who was torturing. It had almost souvenir value—a perverse souvenir of Iraq. Like going to Minnesota and photographing a men’s stall, which has become one of the big tourist attractions at that airport. [Laughter.] But it couldn’t be reproduced. In other words, in creating these, I don’t want to be falsely flattering. But I wanted to make beautiful spaces that seduced you into them. That made you think, “This is very beautiful; I’d love to be there,” but then realizing the horror of some of these spaces.

In some cases, I certainly couldn’t go to photograph that; the timing was off, and just in going to Iraq, I couldn’t have gone earlier, and I certainly wouldn’t go today. It becomes irrelevant. When you’re there in a particular spot, you photograph what you’ve got.

Photograph from Architecture Of Authority, published by Aperture, Fall 2007.

You go and anticipate what it’s going to be, but you find whatever happens to be there. I do have to say that the most difficult part about going to Iraq was convincing my wife and kids that I was somewhat sane and that I would have a marriage to come home to and a family to come home to. That was much harder, truly, than convincing the military to let me in there. My wife made some comment that if you were embedded in the military, you’re not embedded with me. [Laughter.]

Richard Ross/John R. MacArthur Lecture, Part 3

2007-10-04T16:29:00.000-05:00

The following is the third installment of a conversation between Richard Ross and John R. (Rick) MacArthur, regarding Ross's work and his book Architecture of Authority, published by Aperture this fall.

To read opening remarks made by Diana Edkins of Aperture Foundation, click here.

To read the first installment of the conversation between Ross and MacArthur, click here.

To read the second installment of the conversation between Ross and MacArthur, click
here.

JRM: I wish I’d asked you [why the subjects were so cooperative] when we first met, because the key phrase is “THEY don’t understand the power of the camera.” That’s crucial in understanding why you were able to get away with it.

RR: I did one singular image of a chair which I thought was pure Josef K. Kafka, and they approved it digitally at Guantánamo. And I happened to be there when the military was accused of flushing Qur’ans down the toilet. It wasn’t proven positively or negatively, I think. But the image went to AP, it was picked up by Time, and a great art director there took the image and desaturated it, made it black and white, and had it as the opening spread to the special issue in Time of [Detainee 063] at Guantánamo.

Photograph from Architecture Of Authority, published by Aperture, Fall 2007.

[See the image as it appears at Time’s website by clicking here.—ed.]

And it became one of those rare events in my world, where I had a visual idea of what I wanted, I was able to convince someone to give me access to it, and I got the image that I wanted and it appeared in print, probably, ten days later. It rarely happens like that. It’s always post-justification or some miracle if something like that actually comes to be.

But they did not understand the power of the photograph. They were too concerned with not wanting two landmarks on a hilltop that would compromise fort security and tell some foreign power where this building is versus that building. And I didn’t say to them, ‘Well, pardon me, but this base has been here since the Spanish Civil War. I could go to Google Earth and look at it.” [Laughter.] “If you think it’s gonna compromise something…” Psychologically, they didn’t get that this was a more dangerous photograph for them.

JRM: I just have one thought, which I had before, but has come back to me, that the American military is not obviously monolithic any more than any other big bureaucracy is. And I don’t want to suggest that the Army which Americans, I’m sad to say, …believe is the only redeemable institution left in American society. “It’s the only place you’re gonna find straight shooters.”

But that being said, it has been my experience, in my limited reporting with the military—because I was never a war correspondent—but also in speaking at WestPoint, that the military intellectuals that I’ve met over the years—and this doesn’t necessarily filter down into the lower ranks—are much more intellectually curious and open-minded than a lot of university intellectuals that I’ve met, or rank and file journalists. And I am supported in this thesis by Marjane Satrapi, the author of Persepolis, who had precisely the same experience at WestPoint. She was shocked at how open-minded and interested, conversational, up for any kind of discussion were the teachers and the cadets.

So I’m not suggesting that we pin our hopes on the U.S. Army, but there are elements in the military—in the Marines, too—who are more democratically inclined than you might think. However, I’m still amazed that you got away with what you got away with. Especially with all the bad publicity.

Richard Ross/John R. MacArthur Lecture, Part 2

2007-10-03T15:34:00.000-05:00

The following is the second installment of a conversation between Richard Ross and John R. (Rick) MacArthur, regarding Ross's work and his book Architecture of Authority, published by Aperture this fall.

To read opening remarks made by Diana Edkins of Aperture Foundation, click here.

To read the first installment of the conversation between Ross and MacArthur, click here.

JRM: Probably the emblematic photograph in this context is the one of the 70th precinct… Does anyone have an association with the 70th precinct in Brooklyn? What happened there? [No response.] It’s the Abner Louima precinct.

Photograph from Architecture Of Authority, published by Aperture, Fall 2007.

[In 1997, Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant to the United States, was arrested by officers from the 70th precinct. He was brutally assaulted by the arresting officers at the precinct, and an attempt at a cover-up was made. Several officers were eventually indicted and found guilty of various crimes; the longest sentence issued was 30 years and almost $280,000 as restitution. New York City also settled a civil lawsuit for $8.75 million. –ed.]

…[Richard’s] father worked in that same precinct, what, fifty years earlier. And I suggest that, even in those days, such a thing could not have taken place. Now, I don’t know for a fact that nothing like that ever happened, and I stipulate in the essay that, after all, lynching was going on unpunished in the South into the early ‘50s. But it’s still really different. The 70th precinct is the same building, but it’s a different world. And [Richard] is bridging it.

RR: Well, fifty years ago… history kind of repeats. The scene of one of the more notorious police scandals in New York City history… The claim to fame was when I sit there with my wife and watch Serpico. [Al Pacino’s] Serpico says, “This is so big, this is so corrupt, it’s bigger than the Gross bookmaking scandal!” And it’s something that took place in the ‘50s.

[Harry Gross was a Brooklyn bookmaker who hit his prime in the 1940s, employing public servants, like police officers, in a successful attempt to hide his growing illegal profile. He was eventually charged, tried, and convicted in 1950 and spent eight years in jail.—ed.]

When I found out about what went on and why, a million bits of family history that were well-buried—I did some research in the Times archives and the Herald-Tribune, the World Telegram and Sun—this all bubbled to the surface. I found out more about white collar crime and the ‘50s. Which was all very benign, theoretically, but then repeated itself with crime that was not so white-collar in the ‘80s.

RM: The other thing I wanted Richard to talk a little bit about is what it’s like dealing with the American military, and authorities like the Secret Service and various police organizations. Because—and you picked up on it when [Richard] was talking, probably—there’s a kind of a strange cooperation between authority and our photographer here, which I don’t understand. As a reporter over the years, I’ve bullshitted my wan into dozens of places I wasn’t supposed to be in. But you’re only carrying a notebook. You don’t look threatening in the least. You can convince the person that the stuff you’re scrawling into your notebook isn’t gonna do them any harm; they shouldn’t feel threatened by it. You show up with a camera, it changes the relationship immensely. I’ve had it myself, when I’m shooting pictures myself…when I was in Africa, for example, in Uganda, I’ve had that experience of the guards grabbing for your camera and trying to pull the film out. So I know that cameras are threatening to authority.

So why in the hell were these people so cooperative? There’s that tense moment where they’re almost not gonna let you do it, but then they do let you take pictures of the isolation cells, the outdoor cells.

RR: Forty percent of the military force in Iraq, when I was there, were reservists or National Guard. And these are just absolutely normal people that are caught up in something they didn’t necessarily want to be in. And as long as you treat them with respect, and as long as you tell them absolutely everything that you’re doing and trying to figure out, and don’t bullshit them, they’re fine. They don’t understand the power of the camera. They don’t understand the power of a photograph. And it’s a batting average. You don’t get to everywhere that you want to go to, but if you’re persistent, you get a lot.

Going to Guantánamo took nine moths of persistence, and my hero is always James Garner on The Rockford Files. [Laughter.] Where he would have an offset printing press in his glove compartment and he would be Jim Anderson, insurance investigator. And he would make up a card and go into whatever situation he needed. So I wear the hat of a university professor, I wear the hat of a photojournalist, I work for a European journal, I can work for an American publication… it doesn’t matter.

Photograph from Architecture Of Authority, published by Aperture, Fall 2007.

And also, the nice thing about growing up in New York was that “no” was always a starting point. So if somebody says to me, “No,” that just means I have to figure out some other way of doing it. But I said to Rick earlier, in looking at conversation and interview/interrogation, I was trying to deal with people at Fort Huachuca, in Arizona. And originally they said, “You can come and photograph,” and later they said, “We did some research on who you are, and who you’re working for, and we don’t feel that your photographs will be complimentary.”

So the first day they say, “You can come,” and the next day they say—and this is in an email—not complimentary. And I’m looking at their website and their mission statement from the Pentagon, and it says that the public information office is to make [the fort] apparent, transparent and information accessible, to the U.S. military and the American public. And somehow, it doesn’t say “complimentary.”

Yet this is the relationship that the media has evolved into, where it has to be adversarial. And there are people in the military, and a lot of people in the bureaucracy that feel comfortable, and people that DON’T. And you have to seek out the people that want to help, and seek out the people hat want to tell a story that they feel will be honest. And people that don’t want to be used. And I think the book is pretty honest. It’s drawing some conclusions visually, that are maybe surprising to some people, but I’m not lying or fabricating, and there’s nothing Photoshopped in there.

So it’s an ongoing battle, but it does come back to the idea that is that I’m not a good artist, but I’m a good photojournalist. No matter what Rick says. And I have a hard time accepting no as an answer.

The Padre, And Cathedrals

2007-10-02T15:15:00.000-05:00

A very important figure in the south of Italy is the holy Padre Pino. You will find his image all over the place and in every house there is a picture of him on the wall.A resemblance above, perhaps.Being a very Catholic country, the churches and cathedrals are true pieces of art and richness.Old graves of important priests can be found with the most impressive sizes and decorations.

Richard Ross/John R. MacArthur Lecture, Part 1

2007-10-01T13:47:00.000-05:00

The following is the first installment of a conversation between Richard Ross and John R. (Rick) MacArthur, regarding Ross's work and his book Architecture of Authority, published by Aperture this fall.

To read opening remarks made by Diana Edkins of Aperture Foundation, click here.

JRM: You can see why I had so much fun writing the essay for this. It wasn’t even necessary to write an essay; Rich is a good writer. His afterword is very good, and he describes the work intelligently and in an interesting way. But what this proves when you look at [the book] and, believe me, I don’t classify it in any way as a photojournalist… What we learned as police reporters, when I was a police reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times, was that photographers are always better reporters—better journalists—than reporters are, and the way to get to the story, or to get to the heart of the matter, is to follow the photographer.

…I want to urge all of you to buy the book, because I’m not going to give away the secret of Richard’s father’s fascinating story [told by Ross in the afterword]. But what struck me when I looked at the pictures for the first time on the computer screen were the juxtapositions. I mean, [Ross] is a guy with an imagination which is above and beyond what you usually see in photography books. He’s making associations and connections that HE doesn’t even understand. And I saw it as my job to draw some of them out.

Photograph from Architecture Of Authority, published by Aperture, Fall 2007.

Now, maybe he’s going to tell you more about his background when we get a little more into the conversation, or his childhood, but for me it became kind of an investigative interview, and I really wanted to know more about what was motivating him to make these connections. Because to put a Montessori circle at the beginning of a book, with the little opening, for any parents who have individual children in circle time, in any school, and a death chamber, a lethal injection chamber at the end, is something from someone who’s doing something a little more interesting than the usual photography.

Photograph from Architecture Of Authority, published by Aperture, Fall 2007.

The other point I’d make is about what you see when you see these photographs on the screen. To show you how little I know about production and photography, even though I’ve been a publisher for twenty-three years… the stuff looks different on the printed page than it does on the screen. When the book finally came out, I was really jarred by some of the images in a way I wasn’t when I first saw them on the computer screen. Now, what I was looking at when I was writing were, I don’t know what they were… just computer printouts, color Xeroxes, or what?

RR: Some of them were prints; some of them were low-res [digital images].

JRM: Right… they weren’t as good as what you see in the book. Which is a tribute to Aperture, I suppose, and in any event I think the whole project is interesting on two levels. …First of all, Rich is an artist, not a photojournalist, and this is—I believe I quote Arthur Danto in the essay—for me disturbatory art. It’s upsetting, but it’s also working on an aesthetic level that’s very challenging and very interesting. So when I was trying to figure out what to say about it, I gave myself plenty of license. I drove off the road to hit Picasso just for the hell of it, as you’ll read, but I was trying not to turn it into a polemical essay, because obviously when you look at these pictures, you want to make political associations with our policy in Iraq, the invasion, and so forth. America becoming a torture state.

So it’s not easy to look at these pictures and [resist making] the obvious political associations. …Nancy Grubb, the editor of the book, was also very good in getting me to think about the aesthetic point of the book, which is different, I think, from the political point.

So what I wanted Richard to talk about was how he saw the balance between an aesthetic approach to architecture of authority, and genuine political outrage which, believe me, he feels. When we talked about it, it became quite evident. So can you talk a little about balancing it, if you even thought about balancing it?

RR: Part of it is… yes, it is political outrage, and it is a fascination with how we’re—I’m not going to go off on too much of a diatribe—how we’re sheep being led in a direction [that is] unbelievable to me, because I really feel like I grew up in a golden age, absolutely. Going to every play on Broadway for $2.60… my parents were very cultured. Very modest means, but we would go to a lot of museums and institutions. And then I look at what goes on today, and I see a very different world. Especially in terms of Congress. So I try to figure out how we got here.

And I did a talk in Claremont, where instead of being introduced, I asked them not to introduce me. And people are just milling around, and everybody was chatting, and I just stood there. And then, when I didn’t say anything after awhile, people were just quiet. I’m behind a lectern. And a couple of people were still talking, and then it stopped completely.

And then I introduced the whole concept of the authority of silence. In ways that you’re not accustomed to it. You have to become aware of it. So just as Rick and I are sitting up here, and you’re listening to us, sitting there in parallel rows that extend… there’s a certain authority here that you’ve ceded to us.

And we have ceded so much as a society and a culture. It’s unbelievable. And everything that goes on in terms of the perfect timing. People interned at Guantánamo, at trial now—the appellate court has said these people can face military tribunals because they’re now enemy combatants, but they’re something else now… it’s almost like I Spy, or Maxwell Smart, something super-secret that they’re now dubbed, and “Now we can try you [in a military tribunal].” How can you do this? Where is habeas corpus? How has this been allowed to continue?

So in a very simple way, I’m not sure if I’m flattered or insulted that Rick calls me an artist rather than a photojournalist. I’ve always aspired to be a photojournalist. But I feel there’s a limited amount of time in which you can do work that you look at and you say, “Line, form, texture, composition.” It just doesn’t make sense in the contemporary world. It has to be engaged for everybody at every level, to do something that’s more assertive in recapturing something.

Richard Ross/John R. MacArthur Lecture, Opening Remarks

2007-10-01T13:38:00.000-05:00

What follows are opening remarks to a lecture and conversation between Richard Ross and John R. (Rick) MacArthur, regarding Ross's work and his book Architecture of Authority, published by Aperture this fall. The remarks were made by Diana Edkins, Director of Exhibitions and Limited Edition Prints.

To read the first installment of the conversation between Ross and MacArthur, click here.

DE: Good evening, and thank you very much for joining us here at Aperture Foundation for our first educational program of the fall season. My name is Diana Edkins, Director of Exhibitions and Limited Edition Photographs at Aperture.

We will be featuring Richard Ross’s exhibition, Architecture of Authority, next May, and I hope you all come back for that. And I am pleased to welcome Rick McArthur, and Richard Ross tonight, for what I’m sure will be a very provocative discussion of Richard’s work.

Richard Ross has taught at the University of California Santa Barbara since 1977. He has published nearly a dozen books, including Museology, published by Aperture in 1989. We are thrilled to be working with him again. He has just received, in 2007, a Guggenheim Fellowship for this project, Architecture of Authority. It is a comprehensive socio-political investigation of architectural spaces that exert psychological power over the individuals within them. Ross’s approach to photography is to show you an idea and then ask you to think it through for yourselves.

Rick McArthur is president and publisher of Harper’s Magazine, and an award-winning journalist and author. He writes monthly columns for The Providence Journal in English and for Montreal’s Le Devoir, in French. Since 1994, the magazine has received eleven National Magazine Awards, the industry’s highest recognition.

Making Do With What You Have

2007-09-28T09:43:00.000-05:00

You can tell the houses are small by the way the Napolitanos dry their laundry.Here is another example of how people know how to take advantage of the limited space they have. Those living in this home grew their grapes in their courtyard, but the sun hit the front of the house, so they made a hole in the wall for the vines; the vines thus grew toward the light.

A Matter Of Convenience

2007-09-26T13:18:00.000-05:00

Another way of transportation (in Naples) is the basket on a rope.When people live on the top floor and somebody comes along for a delivery, they let down the basket to avoid having to go up and down all the narrow stairs.

Italian Streets, Italian Alleys, Part II

2007-09-25T13:05:00.000-05:00

Yet, Italy is the place for motorcycles.
You will stumble upon them all over, especially in the cities.You’ll find they’re also used for all transportation needs.

Italian Streets, Italian Alleys, Part I

2007-09-24T13:51:00.000-05:00

Many cities are built on top of mountains and hills. It means that there is limited space. Streets are therefore very often very narrow and cannot be taken by car or motorcycle.

Matera

2007-09-19T15:51:00.000-05:00

We visited Matera.

Matera is a very old town where the people used to live in caves. Matera is built on top of the ridge now, but in the old days the people lived below the city inside the mountain. They had a complete city including churches, shops, houses and water containers, all dug out of the rocks.We went in with someone who was involved with the restoration of the caves.

Years ago a politician came by to visit the place and he was shocked by the sight of people still living there. He passed a law that forbade people to live in the caves any longer. Soon the caves were abandoned. They even disposed of the water that had filled the containers for centuries.

After they realized that they also had something very valuable in their midst, they went back to restore the caves. When they tried to fill up the fresh water containers again, they found out that the water was disappearing into the stone as quickly as it was poured in. After a study they found out that the people who had built the caves used some kind of egg-white with which they treated the walls of the water containers, so they would be watertight. Now they are trying to restore even that.

Some people even went back into the caves because they didn’t like living in houses on top of the ridge.

During the period in which the caves were abandoned, thieves came along to chop out the faces of centuries-old frescos. Now they are behind bars.In the lower picture you can see how they have been carving off the surface in order to take out the entire face of this fresco.

This place was also the setting for the last scene of the Mel Gibson movie The Passion Of The Christ.

A Man And His Horse

2007-09-19T15:47:00.000-05:00

At the end of this leg of the trip, we even met a farmer who lived in the same space as his horse did. The farmhouse was just one big space and in the back there was a second level where the man slept and the stable for the horse was underneath his bed.

Free Range

2007-09-18T10:32:00.000-05:00

Another thing that struck me was the fact that farmers here would still have all their animals walking free and amongst each other. On the premises you would find cows, pigs, chickens, geese, dogs and cats all walking loose. Even in Portugal and Spain you would not find such circumstances. European rules strictly forbid this because of fear for diseases.
I wonder why this is still the case here in the south of Italy. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the “Slow Food” organization finds its roots in Italy. I don’t know. Italians are the people that value true taste more than any other European and they try to hold on to their “appellation” as no one else.

Bare Sand

2007-09-17T14:42:00.000-05:00

The countryside of Italy is something special. We have traveled through tracts of land that were totally abandoned. I’m talking miles and miles. There was one part that used to be the biggest grain producing area of Italy that now lies fallow.All villages had been abandoned and the fields were bare sand.

Fishermen, And A Statue By The Sea

2007-09-13T11:59:00.000-05:00

In the fishing town local fishermen were working on their nets and a nearby statue reminds of the ones that were taken by the sea.

Like in Spain where I tried to find authentic fishermen’s houses, here too they were gone. The seaside always generates more money than the countryside. Therefore the people on the coast have more money; they renovate their houses well before the farmers do.

Italian Marble

2007-09-12T11:24:00.000-05:00

Marble is extracted from nearby quarries; the road that went past them had all these marble pyramids by the side.These little mountains were built from the pieces of rock that would have to be dug out before reaching the actual marble. In Belgium and Germany (even in the far south of Holland) you will find similar heaps of earth where they used to dig for coal. They are the remains of years of work underground.The marble is a typical Italian product and you will find it back all over the country in houses, castles and churches and cathedrals. Like in Naples:

Shopping Cars

2007-09-11T10:03:00.001-05:00

We didn’t stay in Apricena, but we went to a small hotel in a nearby village.

The very first morning when I woke up I heard the voice through a loudspeaker in the streets. I went out to have a look and I saw this car driving around with all his merchandise on top of the car. It was a driving fashion shop.

Like I had seen in France here too most of the shops had disappeared from the villages and traveling salesmen were appearing in the streets to sell their merchandise. Soon after this one there came a fisherman, a butcher, a greengrocer, and a car that sold all kinds of stuff you might need—a small grocery car.
Soon after, we had to change hotels, and ended up on the coast. Here we found one of the few hotels still open (it was late in the season). The place was packed with hunters who partied until late and woke up way before the sun would rise. The hotel was of the kind that had all stone and marble walls and floors that make for tremendous noise; you would hear literally every noise that was produced. You could hear your neighbor snore, wheeze, and cough.

Italy

2007-09-10T08:19:00.000-05:00

I toured Italy with Frederique, a young radio journalist who had studied there for two years. She had her way of dealing with the Italians and her way worked just fine for me. We flew to Naples and rode off for a two-week journey; that was all the time she could make free for me. I thought that could be enough and Frederique set her mind to find me at least 30 good places.

Cribyn, Part IV

2007-08-10T10:47:00.001-05:00

Here you can see some modern conveniences coexisting with such an ancient shell.

Cribyn, Part III

2007-08-08T10:19:00.000-05:00

Another photo from Cribyn; here you can begin to see how simply constructed the roof and walls are--again, just tree trunks and heather, loam and straw.

Cribyn, Part II

2007-08-07T15:37:00.000-05:00

Another photo from the home in Cribyn.

Cribyn, Part I

2007-08-06T15:13:00.000-05:00

One great household in particular was one we were shown in Cribyn. Here we found a father and son living in a house more than four centuries old, built out of loam and straw. The roof was made of tree trunks, the holes filled up with heather. It was completely authentic.

They slept together on the upper floor and they allowed me to go up there and take some pictures. It was amazing to see how such a house still served its purpose. Everything was still functioning as it was always meant to be, despite the extreme old age. The son told me that the year before they wanted to tear down a piece of a wall that no longer served a purpose. We are talking about a simple loam and straw wall, but it still took him the whole day to get it down.

It was as hard as a rock.

Over the week, more photographs of this cabin will be posted. Next week a series on my visit to Italy will begin.

Good Men And True

2007-07-31T15:28:00.001-05:00

In Wales, we found a shepherd named Erwyd Howells. He seemed to be the right guy to takes us around and point out the interesting places. He knew all about the region's history, and actually even wrote a book about it which was due to be published, titled Good Men and True.

At first, he didn't understand what we wanted and he brought us to the wrong places. You could tell that he felt uncomfortable but nevertheless he managed to show us a few good sites.

The very next day he was busy and couldn't do anything for us. He had to slaughter two lambs for another shepherd. But the following day he called us up and told us that he had figured it out. Suddenly, he had a whole lot of other places that he wanted to show to us. This is something that happens often. Once someone starts thinking about the whole subject, thoughts keep coming. In the end, you will have seen everything that could be of interest for you.

Erwyd enjoyed the ride through the Welsh countryside next to me and the talks with all his acquaintances. In the end we managed to collect a great series of Welsh households.

Achaglachgach

2007-07-26T16:20:00.000-05:00

The names of the villages and families are difficult to understand and to pronounce.

In Wales, we found ourselves in a completely different country. Once we were there, we went to see our first contact, an old lady who lived in a lovely place in one of the valleys east of Aberystwyth. We were talking to her in English as she got a phone call. It clearly was from somebody in the neighborhood, and they spoke in their native language: the old Gaelic.

Nothing to understand here. But absolutely nothing.

I have also experienced this in parts of France, where there are still people who speak this same language. It is one of the oldest European languages and it was common all along the coast, from Galicia in Spain’s northwest, all the way up to Normandy; across the North Sea to the south of England around the corner to Wales; again across the Irish Sea to the South of Ireland. This land was part of the mainland before the last Ice Age.

Largs, Arran, Kyntire

2007-07-23T16:04:00.000-05:00

The skyline of Largs, on the coast across the Isle of Arran. We spent the night there before taking a boat to Arran, and from there to Kyntire.

On Kyntire we spent some time on the estate of Dunmore with friends of my companions. It was a very old big traditional Scottish manor where, when in full glory, there used to live some twenty-plus people. Now, only the owner lives there with his wife and daughter. The house is far too big for them. You could see the decay; the house is too big to be made sufficiently warm, and so moisture takes its toll.The place is like nothing else on this earth; it is the end of the world facing the sea, surrounded by the most beautiful old trees. It really has this haunted feeling. I was reminded of the old Sherlock Holmes movies.

"Right To Roam"

2007-07-18T15:01:00.000-05:00

A very important law enacted is the so-called "right to roam" law (officially, the Countryside and Rights of Way Act). If you follow the links at Naturenet (start here), you’ll find that farming and grazing land is not automatically excluded from this law.

This means that travelers have the right to walk wherever and whenever they like. Any farmer has to accept that any person can walk through his fields and even his yard. The farmer is obliged to provide anyone who asks with passage. The people from the city who take advantage of this law come to the countryside to walk and camp, even during breeding-time. They disturb birds and cause damage to crops.

Also, when cows have calves they come and guess what: they see a little calf, approach it to stroke it, and get attacked by the mother cow. The farmer now is responsible for the damage the roamer has suffered and will be prosecuted and sued. Yet the farmer is not allowed to chase these people from his property to prevent things like this to happen.Personally I think these laws are ridiculous and have only been passed for political reasons. I think that city people have been misled by the so called nature-friends-activists in order to get the votes to change these laws.

This is another example of how we are getting further away from nature, becoming aliens in our own world. We don't want to know how you need to kill an animal in order to get its meat on the plate; we don’t want their cultivation to interfere with our desire to feel we’re masters of our land; yet we demand our food comes cheap every day.

Moles

2007-07-12T13:49:00.000-05:00

Another problem for farmers is mole infestation. The farmers hire professional mole catchers, and show the landlord how hard they are trying to get rid of the animals by hanging them in the barbwire. You also see this habit in other countries, where farmers show the landlord their efforts by hanging killed foxes and polecats on the fence.

Legislated

2007-07-11T15:40:00.000-05:00

The fox hunt law isn’t isolated. The last few years, politicians in the UK have passed a number of laws drastically affecting the lives of British farmers. Many of them consider ending their business. I have spoken with some who’ve left their homes in the valley for the first time, to protest new country and hunting laws in London. These farmers were in their eighties.

Dutch visitors to Spain have begun protesting the bull fighting there, because they believe it to be cruel; in the meantime, we in Holland are one of the biggest producers of meat. And you should go and have a look how we breed and raise our livestock. It happens in the most terrible way. The chickens we eat are not even eight weeks old, and have been treated with hormones and antibiotics. The animal itself is too weak to stand on its feet. Pregnant pigs have labor induced on Thursdays, so the farmer does not have to stay up all night, all week, waiting. They’re bred to exact standards of size and weight, processed in batches at the same age. They only see sunlight when they leave for the slaughterhouse.

This I tell you just to show you what I have encountered on my travels; the country side is being abandoned and nobody knows where the food that we eat every day is coming from anymore. Actually: where does it come from? All the farming land in Europe lies fallow!

The Two Sisters, Part II

2007-07-10T14:52:00.000-05:00

They were a lovely couple and they too were farming sheep like all the rest. We were there in the midst of the lambing, in fact. Every farmer was working long days and facing fox attacks. Fox attacks are a common matter to British farmers.

As you may know, the British have banned the traditional fox hunt (with the pack of dogs and hunters on horses). The dogs chase the fox until it is caught. The fox is then torn up by the dogs. The hunt is a very old tradition.

Constant protests from people in Britain’s big cities, who have no idea what’s going on in the countryside, led to the law’s passing. You have to understand that foxes kill for pleasure. I visited one farmer who just had returned from a meadow, where he found twenty-five of his lambs killed by a fox; the fox had only snapped their little necks—not one of them was eaten. I heard this story throughout England: pointless killing of their livestock is what farmers now have to face as a result of the hunting law change.

The UK And The Two Sisters, Part I

2007-07-09T14:51:00.000-05:00

Great Britain would be the fourth trip I would make with the same companion. I had to end this trip a week earlier than planned. The reason why I do not want to get into this matter is because trust was ashamed and a friendship ended here. Nevertheless I coped with it in the diary but in a very abstract way; pictures of arrows, and numbers in a countdown.
I won't go into the matter further.

The two sisters were pointed out to me by several people. When we arrived at their door we were warmly welcomed. They were about to have a sandwich but they stopped eating because of us. After I took their photograph, they wanted to point out another interesting address and they did that with verve.One of them saw our rental car and said, “Oh, what a nice car that is. Can I sit in it?” She had never been in such a beautiful car before and first I thought she wanted to go for a ride with us. But no, she wanted to sit behind the wheel and I had to take her picture.

A Goodbye To Spain

2007-07-06T12:24:00.000-05:00

Elvita was a very funny and lively lady who lived by herself in a very big house. We were with her for more than an hour and a half because she never stopped talking about her life, her husband who drank all their money away (and who was in the hospital now) and about the land she was selling to get the money to finish the restoration of her big house. She had to convert it into a hostel; the guests that would come would make her some money again.In the meantime she fed the chickens, the ducks, and the rabbits, and showed us the new plumbing that was built-in, but still not covered with cement, because she ran out of money, and it went on and on and we were sorry to have to leave her while she was waiving us goodbye...

Sunday

2007-07-03T09:19:00.000-05:00

On Sunday morning after church, the people of Salamanca come together on the Plaza Major and walk around in the first sunlight of February. They stroll and the women show off their fur coats. After the walk they sit on the terraces and drink their coffee.

Cider

2007-07-02T11:59:00.000-05:00

In the north part of Asturias people make cider. In the pubs and restaurants over there the waiter will pour the cider by holding the glass in his left hand way below his waist and the bottle as high as possible in his right hand. Then he pours the cider in the glass in a trickle from the bottle. In the meantime he looks straight ahead; not at the bottle and not at the glass. He will spill some of the cider when it falls splashing into the glass, but the spilled cider collects in a pond-like structure in the middle of the bar. In the middle of this pond there is the table on which the bottles and glasses stand. The drinkers sit on high stools around the pond, waiting until their glass is filled. They do it this way because the cider needs exposure to a lot of air before you drink it.

Mousetrap

2007-06-28T15:16:00.000-05:00

We found this man in a little village; he was just walking around. We tried to talk to him and to find out where he lived. Apparently he was a little deaf because all he showed us were the nearby fields, not the house. After trying a few more times, he eventually brought us to a barn, opened the door and entered, gesturing us to follow.

We walked into the stable in which the cows roamed free. We thought he misunderstood us again, but then he opened another door behind the cows he pushed aside. We followed and finally entered the house. We later learned this is the normal way to enter a farmhouse. In the kitchen there was a youn(ger) woman trying to make a phone call. She appeared to be his daughter. And she looked quite surprised when we came in after the old man; she ended the conversation. When we explained what we came to do, she agreed to be photographed.

As I was putting on the black cloth over my head to make the photograph, I noticed that there was a dead mouse lying behind me on the mantelpiece. The old man saw that I had discovered the mouse and started laughing. He had caught it himself and he kept it here as a present for the cat. The woman sort of felt ashamed of the situation and covered her face with her hands while she laughed. After the shot, he had to show us his mousetraps. He had many of them and all were self made. The big one in the photo is a guillotine-like trap: the mouse (or rat) enters the trap, after which a very heavy piece of wood falls on its head.

The Prestige and La Costa De La Muerte

2007-06-27T13:59:00.000-05:00

In November 2002, the Greek oil tanker Prestige found itself in trouble during heavy weather near the coast of Galicia (which is also known as the Costa de la Muerte; “Coast of the Dead”). The Galician coast is one of the most fertile fishing grounds in Europe. Authorities failed to take the right actions when the ship called for help and the boat eventually broke in two, sinking and spilling some 130,000 liters of raw oil every day. The oil damaged the Galician coast and thousands of fishermen were out of business for years to come.

In the village of Camelle used to live a German artist. He is still called "the Alleman" and he had built his little shack on village’s rocky coast. Over the years he transformed the coastline directly in front of his hut into a work of art, cementing the round stones together into various sculptures.After the disaster with the Prestige, he died. The community claims that he died of grief. They protect his little shack and the sculptures around it. Some sculptures reminded me of the structure of a bridge that I photographed a few days later.

We Have All We Need

2007-06-26T14:56:00.000-05:00

We found her aside the road chopping firewood, and when we started talking to her she took us to her house. There we met her husband. The living room was like I never had seen before. The fire was right in the middle of the room on the floor; there was no mantelpiece, nor was there a chimney. The ceiling just went up and ended in a small hole in the roof. So you could say that the room was a fireplace in and of itself. Everything in the room was black. Black from the smoke and tar that comes from fire. You can't see them in these photos, but in the Domestic Landscapes series you see the iron chain on which they hang the cooking pot. It is attached to a beam that can be swung away.There was absolutely nothing in the house that they didn't need to live their lives. When asked if they were lacking anything the man stood up, walked to the chabot in the back of the room (see the photo on my website by clicking here), opened it and said: "We have everything we need." Inside we saw a piece of homemade bread, homemade cheese, homemade chorizo, homemade olive oil and homemade wine. "And besides that," he said, "we have each other," and he sat next to her to be photographed.

My guess is that they are way up in their eighties or even nineties and they have lived all their lives in that smoky house. They were each as strong as an ox.I have met many people like them, living high up in the mountains and taking care of themselves until they die. They very often do not even exactly know their own age. The thing is that they would not be registered until they were old enough to make the journey to the city to be registered. Both their parents and they themselves never learned to read or write; they often think that they must have been five or six years of age when they were registered. So the official documents are always five or six years off-track. It also shows that smoke isn't the big killer in areas like that.

(My guess is that stress is much more dangerous to people than smoke.)

Native Tongues

2007-06-22T11:18:00.000-05:00

Galicia has another peculiar story to it. The local dialect is almost exactly like Portuguese. Long ago, the king of Galicia made a pact with the king of Portugal to work together economically and against the Spanish. When the king of Castille heard of this, he sent his troops to the kingdom of Galicia and conquered the area; it later became the Spain we know.

The people of Galicia are (like the Basques and the Catalanes) proud of their own culture and language and they always say that the Spanish cannot understand them, but they can understand the Spanish. Here too local culture, language, and habits are too strong to disappear.

Sculpture Project 07 Münster

2007-06-21T09:38:00.000-05:00

I have just spent a few days at the new Sculpture Project 07 in Münster. This is the fourth installment of a city sculpture project that happens every ten years. If it's not too soon to judge, past years have been much, much stronger. Still there was much to see.

(You may find the official Skulptur Projekte Münster 07 website at http://www.skulptur-projekte.de/. If you don’t wish to read the site in the original Deutsche, note the “English” link at page bottom.)

On the first evening, we bravely struck out on our own without a guide. What followed was a farcical Roland Barthes treasure hunt. We had a map with the general location of the work, a list of artists, and a few titles. Armed with that, we were quickly reduced to pointing at random objects asking, "Is that a sculpture?” “Is that a sculpture?” is THAT a sculpture?" To be sure, we found a few of the obvious works: Martha Rosler, Isa Genzken, and Hans-Peter Feldman for example. But something like Mark Wallinger's circle of fishing line mounted six yards above our heads and extending most of the way around the inner city completely escaped notice.

The next day our group was given a docent/guide. If you go to Münster, this is the way to go. There is just no way to find all the work on display without help. Our guide was incredibly knowledgeable, helpful, and articulate.

The highlights for me were few. Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster explored memory and nostalgia by creating a mini-theme park of 1/4 sized reproductions of many of the sculptures from previous years. Her idea is that, since this is the fourth installment of the Project, and our memory stores only about one-quarter of what we see, her miniatures recreate a semblance of what we really remember. When I was there, the park was filled with squealing children and families having the best time crawling on and around all the mini-sculptures. To see a Richard Serra in 1/4 size is to really understand what scale does for his work. I loved everything about this—its accessibility, its multi-layered meaning, and its combination of child-like pleasure mixed with real intellectual rigor. Great.

Bruce Nauman submitted plans for an inverted pyramid for a previous fair that was never built. The result, which was built this year, is remarkable; defined negative space that rewards the eye from many vantage points.

Susan Philipsz had a sound installation under a bridge that was quite haunting. Singing the “Barcarolle” from Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann, her voice was projected by speakers from each side of the river. The score is based on The Story of the Lost Reflection by the German Romantic writer E.T.A. Hoffmann. It is the story of the seductive yet unfortunately vicious charm of the courtesan Giulietta, whose spell men cannot resist, thereby losing their own reflection, so that neither their wives nor their children are able to recognize them. It was creepy fun.

Coming up in a few weeks: Rencontre de la Photographie from Arles, France.

Corn House

2007-06-20T15:39:00.001-05:00

The little stone house you see is built to keep corn from rats. The ten stone legs all have big flat round stones on top of them and it’s on top of that the house is built. This way, the rats cannot come past the round flat stones and thus not into the corn house. The buildings are very old and typical for this area in the north of Spain.

Documenta

2007-06-20T09:36:00.000-05:00

On a bus between Documenta and Münster.

I've just spent two days at Documenta. It wasn't nearly enough. Unlike Venice and Basel, it wasn't really crowded, but there was so much to see and digest that two days seemed only enough for a rough overview.

Documenta prides itself on being firmly anti-art market, as well as having a deep
intellectual foundation. I found myself at a disadvantage by not buying the extensive catalog and ancillary magazines, which provided ample supporting essays and information. Other than the art, there just isn't that much information available in the galleries. In some cases that was okay. Either the art spoke for itself or there was some other pleasure to be found in the works. But other times, one just really needed help. The information on the wall tags was spare and merely factual in most cases. I was left wanting more.

I’ll give an example from work I know and love. Zoe Leonard’s set of three hundred-plus photos, documenting the demise of her Lower East Side neighborhood, which morphs into her tracking of piles of donated clothes to Africa, was offered at two sites. The first site presented the complete portfolio of work. The second site had her suite of forty photos culled from the larger set, which she has sumptuously printed using the dye transfer process. I can make up my own stories about this beautiful work. I especially love the dye transfer set. But if I didn’t know that there was a complete and engaging narrative explicit in the work, I would never know it without a guide or by buying the catalog. Call me lazy or cheap, but I think a curator owes me a bit more.

Also on display were two South African photographers whose work I admire: Guy Tillims and David Goldblatt. Their solid emotional message combined with satisfying formal footing made their work stand out to me against the large collection of ‘70s conceptual work that was everywhere at this Documenta.

Other notable photography was hard to find. One of the standout works to me was a sculpture by the Brazilian artist Iole de Freitas. Her work takes over architectural space like a virus. In this case, it even spilled through the walls to start again outside, and pierced the outer walls again to move inside. It looked like art had invaded the building and taken its basic form for nourishment, growing in any direction like kudzu. Fabulous. For me, it mirrored the work of Monica Sosnowska at the Polish pavilion at the Venice Biennial. Both artists invade their space in dramatic, telling, and satisfying ways. They were two of the best things I saw in my whole trip.

On To Basel

2007-06-19T09:53:00.000-05:00

For those of you who haven’t been to Basel, take note: it’s huge. Forget about the satellites or the corollary museum shows. There is more art here than one could ever see in one place. An art market Uffizi. A super-sized Warhol, Rothko, Picasso Big Mac mega meal. With fries.

[For information on the next two Art Basel exhibitions: this year's Art Basel Miami and Art 39 Basel, go to www.artbasel.com.]

I thought I had seen big shows. I've been to Art Basel Miami, Art Forum in Berlin, FIAC in Paris and Paris Photo, but this is the mother ship. The catalog has the heft of a phone book. I thought I had chops to absorb loads of art in an art fair environment. This was too much even for me. After a day spent zig-zagging through a seemingly endless maze of galleries and installations, I was hard-pressed to remember a single thing I’d seen.

But... it’s my job to remember something, right? So here goes.

Blue chip is the name of the game here, and photography is no exception. I found some of the great photo galleries of the world strutting their stuff. Rudolf Kicken´s booth had beautiful examples of vintage Otto Steinert, Ryuji Miyamoto, and Christoph Stromholm, in addition to relative newcomer Götz Diergarten. Mr.Kicken always has a fantastic booth.

Jeffrey Fraenkel had a marvelous small installation of portraits from the collection of Richard Avedon alongside a number of smaller scale portraits by Mr. Avedon. It was sublime.

But the treat for me was a gallery that may be less well-known to Americans. Francoise and Alain Paviot have been running a first-rate gallery in Paris for twenty years. They specialize in 19th century French photography; Man Ray; Brassai; and a well-curated collection of newer artists. Their booth was a revelation. First off there was a large Dieter Appelt twelve-piece installation. Very dark and conceptual, as his work always is, but very emotional in this case, too. Also on view were five very early Edward Weston nude studies. I had never seen anything like them. There was much more. Truly a gallery to check out.

Of course, there were all the big names you would expect: Becher, Gursky, Struth, Sugimoto, Lawler, Sherman, et al. But you knew that, didn’t you?

More later, on some of the satellite fairs, and then on to Documenta in Kassel. The caravan continues!

Chop Wood

2007-06-18T15:25:00.000-05:00

In the hills above Portosin we found a couple of interesting people. One of them was a woman who lived alone with her two dogs. She must have been well over sixty years old, yet she showed us how she still chopped her wood for the fireplace.It was a way of chopping as I never had seen before: she would hit the wood with her axe and then she would hit the chopping block again with the back of the axe first and the wood-to-be-chopped on top of it. She did it with great precision and it worked out great.

Venice Biennial, Part II

2007-06-18T15:03:00.000-05:00

Just a few more notes in passing about the Venice pavilions. I know this is a photo-centric blog, but Venice has so much great non-photo art, it's hard not to mention a few highlights.

The Korean Pavilion had the work of artist Hyungkoo Lee.Mr. Lee imagines a world where we have invested so much into the characters in our cartoon, animatronic, and fantasy worlds, that they can actually become something corporeal. He has meticulously recreated skeletons of the likes of Tom and Jerry and presented them as some kind of fabulous blend of Hanna-Barbera and a natural history museum. The first pass is one of fun and humor, but of course deeper waters lie under the cartoon surface. This was a great show and an artist whom I want to see more of.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am no fan of large art for the sake of largeness. When it works, though, there is no denying its power. El Anatsui had just such a piece in the Arsenale section of the Biennial. He "wove" thousands upon thousands of bottle caps (and in another case, the metal wrappers from the tops of liquor bottles) into a tapestry that must have been thirty feet high and twenty feet across.From across a large room, the work seems to be spun of gold and precious fibers. It has a look of antiquity, like loot from faraway lands.But as you come closer, you realize the humble thread of this tapestry; it's the detritus of a consumer society writ large and gorgeous.I can't stop thinking about it.

The Harbor in Portosin

2007-06-14T09:50:00.000-05:00

I started the trip to Spain in Portosin, a small fishing town on the west coast of Galicia. I photographed the harbor at night from my hotel window (see above).Earlier, I visited the harbor as the fishing boats were coming in to unload their carriage: mostly horse mackerel or carapau, a small fish that normally only locals eat. In Holland it is the cheapest fish you can buy and when you can it is mostly bought by foreigners. I learned to appreciate this fish in Japan where it is called aji. There is a very tasty appetizer called aji no tataki which is absolutely delicious but is nothing more than chopped aji mixed with freshly chopped ginger, chiso, and a little bit of soy sauce.

A woman ferries ice to cover each fish-filled crate with a shuffle. The harbor has its own ice factory and the woman went along to every unloading ship.The harbor is at its busiest at night; while the ships come in, the pubs are all open for drinks and bites to eat.

Venice Biennial, Part I

2007-06-13T12:21:00.000-05:00

Evan writes on Monday, June 11th. The Biennial held a preview for professionals and press from June 7th through the 9th, and is now open until November 21st. You can visit the official site at http://www.labiennale.org/en/biennale.

This is my third day at the Venice Biennial. I've waited a few days to file. I was worried that my first impressions would not be accurate, since logistically the days have been a challenge. The challenges made me cranky and certainly influenced how I saw what I saw. As the weekend progressed, the situation improved, though I still believe this is a very difficult place to have this kind of an event.

The biggest challenge is just getting from one place to another. If you want to see something which is outside of the two principal biennial venues (Giardini and Arsenale), you can spend an hour or more in transit back and forth. It can really eat up the day. Long lines, prices bordering on extortion, challenging public transport—a lot of factors contribute to making this a difficult experience.

I could really start ranting on that topic, but I would rather stay positive and talk about the art. Where shall we start?

There is a lot of photography on view, as one would imagine. Of special note is a site specific installation by Thomas Demand. In his signature style he has created a photo of a fantasy grotto complete with stalagmites, stalactites, and rocky caverns made entirely with cardboard. The exhibit estimates that over 900,000 pieces of board were used. What is not typical for Mr. Demand is that the "model" (life-sized) and all of the process involved in producing the photo are on display as well. It isn't my favorite work but it was a fascinating glimpse into this artist's process.

Plenty of younger artists are on view as well. Yto Barrada is a photographer from Tangier. Her work, which I like very much, was highlighted in one of the first galleries in the Arsenale.

Also in the Arsenale was the work of Spanish artist Ignasi Aballi. On view was a collection of lists. Mr. Aballi cuts out various pieces of information from the newspapers. Numbers of dead, amounts of money, quantities of each nationality—the different categories create their own list. For such a minimalist subject, the photographs were quite appealing visually. From a political and taxonomic point of view, they are unforgettable.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer was the artist chosen for the Mexican pavilion. Check this guy out. Really. Space prohibits an exposition of his work but to me it was one of the best. It combined gee-whiz cool with genuine artistic, intellectual and emotional content. Great.

But my most satisfying overall experience came at an exhibit outside the official biennial sites. Palazzo Fortuny had a show called "Artempo". The theme was the intersection between works of antiquity and contemporary art. Alex Vervoordt put this show together and he didn't miss a note. One after another, there were remarkable and eye-opening juxtapositions. Francis Bacon, Hans Bellmer, Paolo Giacometti, Anish Kapoor, and an especially rich and varied selection of Lucio Fontana’s work were all on offer. Mr. Vervoordt placed his well-known artists in contrast and context to other art. Everything from anonymous eighteenth-century art to Buddhist scrolls to lesser-known artists was fair game. The resulting conversation among the artworks in the space was one of the most scintillating I've experienced in years.

Next: more Venice pavilions. Art Basel and the satellite fairs begin today. I will file my impressions as I get a handle on the scene.

Truckshop

2007-06-11T10:40:00.000-05:00

I used the time I spent at their place to buy some wine at my favourite vineyard and to take walks along the ocean beach and into the woods before leaving for Spain.

One day my sister-in-law went by a “truck shop”: a large truck that carries all kinds of general supplies.Because the countryside population is disappearing, the shops of course also disappear. When those who are left must shop, they usually have to drive over fifty kilometers to the nearest stores, which for this area is a lot. Not even fifteen years ago would you be able to find anything you needed within your own town. Not anymore. So now they come with these trucks to provide the people with their needs. This includes perishable foods: fish, meat, and now also bread.

Photo-London, Part II

2007-06-08T10:39:00.000-05:00

In my last post, I promised to talk about the panel discussion called How to Collect Contemporary Photography. This was a discussion moderated by Anna Somers-Cocks, founding editor of The Art Newspaper, with Francis Hodgson, head of the photographs department, Sotheby's London; Jeffrey Boloten, partner, ArtTactic; Greg Hobson, curator of photographs, National Media Museum Bradford; and William Hunt, partner in Hasted/Hunt gallery (and well known to Aperture audiences).

Mr. Hodgson weighed in passionately about a subject that is near and dear to my heart: conservation. He mentioned that when the photo conservator at the V & A, Elizabeth Martin, passed away four years ago, her position was not filled. He stated that this has left a backlog of photo conservation and restoration projects at the major British museums that would take "lifetimes" to complete. Remarkable! I think there needs to be much greater awareness—and tons more information disseminated—about how to care for photographs. Mr. Hodgson's comment elicited multiple responses from the panel, including Mr. Hunt remarking that his own awareness about the non-archival quality of face-mounted plexi [Plexiglas] had prompted him to insist that no artist in his roster use it. Of course, it was mentioned that the "most expensive photo in the world," a.k.a. Gursky’s 99 Cent II Diptychon, is on face-mounted plexi.

(Stay tuned for next season's programs at Aperture. We will present two of the finest conservators in the world discussing just such issues. It's such a big and challenging topic that I hope to make a regular fixture of Tuesday nights at Aperture.)

This was a fabulous panel. Each member was articulate, informed and passionate about the topic. Debate was lively and spirited. It both answered questions and posed new ones. Really a treat.

A few last notes about art on view:

This was billed as a contemporary photo fair, which meant that there were fewer mid-century blue chip photographers on display and many more up-and-comers. In the blue chip category, Camera Work from Berlin had a stunning vintage print of William Klein's "Smoke and Veil." London gallery The Approach had a number of John Stezaker's collages of found images. I have seen this work at a number of other fairs and most recently at the auction to benefit White Columns in New York City. The work always attracts my eye and engages my mind. Even though similar techniques are applied to all of them, each one looks fresh and original.Also looking as good as ever to me was a large scale urban landscape by Stephane Couturier. I continue to be impressed and engaged by this artist:Filed under up-and-comers, Laurence Demaison at Parisian gallery Esther Woerdehof has been exploring self-portraiture for a number of years. Her best, to me, have been where she explores her relationship to and with water. There have been a number of series where she submerges herself in a pool to be photographed. Some of these just present the natural distortion of the water, while in others she creates wave patterns to further evoke a painterly effect. I think there is a link to the work of Susan Derges who I mentioned in my first post. Derges' Observer and the Observed series also uses water and self-portraiture to striking ends. In Demaison's newer work, water is just a puddle in which to catch fleeting glimpses of a fractured self. In a B/W format there is also some question to the viewer about whether the liquid is water. Titled "Jour de Sang," I am told the phrase translates as “day of suffering” or “sacrifice.”Next stop: Venice Biennale.

Mitch

2007-06-07T15:31:00.001-05:00

My eldest nephew, Mitch (pictured in the first photograph and then again with his brother Nils on the left), has a very special gift. He knows literally every dinosaur by its Latin name, and all specifics about each of them. He draws the animals all the time and he must have hundreds, maybe thousands of drawings of these dinos. When asked, he refused to give me one and so I asked him to draw a couple in my diary, which he did.
When you look carefully, you will always see the little eye in the head. Also he draws them almost with one stroke; he almost never takes his pencil off the paper.

Photo-London, Part I

2007-06-05T10:07:00.000-05:00

Evan Mirapaul writes from Photo-London on June 2, 2007. The fair ran from May 31st to June 3rd.

A former 19th century fish market, Old Billingsgate was the site of the Photo-London fair this year. The closest thing we have to it in New York is the Lexington Avenue Armory, though Billingsgate is quite a bit smaller. This makes for a rather intimate fair (just 42 juried exhibitors). After having been to the behemoth fairs like Armory, Art Forum, Basel/Miami, and Paris Photo, the smaller scale was welcome and pleasant. At least on the days I went, the fair was not too crowded, and seeing the work on display was easy.

Several works immediately caught my eye. At Zebra Gallery (London) Julia Glover had a new take on stereoscopic images I found intriguing. She mounts stereoscopic viewers on matte board in a frame so it appears on first blush that the viewers are the Duchamp-like art.But when you step up and look into the lenses you find a voyeuristic look into dark, crowded rooms occupied by a man surrounded by the ephemera of whatever collection he has created. Entitled "Men Only", I found it very good and not a little creepy. The 3-D effect of the stereoscopic viewer makes one feel as if you are literally looking through a hole in the wall to spy on a private scene. Fascinating.

I suspect some readers will share my weariness at seeing so much Photoshop-created faux reality. Still, a few photos in this genre bullied their way into my imagination. Galeria Bacelos (Spain) is showing the work of Victoria Diehl. Ms. Diehl superimposes parts of a human figure with parts of decaying statuary. The net effect is haunting.Though the figure alone would be beautiful and the statuary alone would be perceived as beautiful, the combination is a kind of horror show. By using male and female models, Ms. Diehl effectively asks questions about aging, the nature of beauty, and what it means to idealize the form.

Another Photoshop work was created by Chen Chieh-jen. Best known for his video art, the Parisian gallery Alain Le Gaillard showcased his photography. Of particular note to me was his photo "Self-destruction 1927-1997". Mr. Chen inserts himself into an historical photo of Chinese civil war from 1927 mirroring the violence in the original photo by showing himself both being beheaded and beheading others. Chen has stated that he does not consider himself a political artist but an artist from a violent culture. He seeks to portray that violence which he feels is an indelible part of his self.

There was also "straight" photography that was of note to me. Many viewers will know the work of Helsinki school artist Jorma Puranen. Purdy Hicks Gallery (London) was showing some of these exquisite large-scale photos of reflections. Sumptuous.

The photo work of Sean Scully was beautifully presented at Ingleby (London).His "Walls of Aran" series was presented as both visually poetic and typological.

Both Purdy Hicks and and Ingleby had the work of Susan Derges.It seemed that this artist was being re-examined and reappraised, perhaps because the show is held the UK. Regardless, I like her work very much.

There was much more art to comment on. In the next installment I'll mention a few more artists, and provide an account of a fascinating panel discussion with Bill Hunt, Greg Hobson (from the National Media Museum , Bradford), Francis Hodgson (Head of photo dept., Sotheby's London), and Jeffrey Boloten, moderated by Anna Somers-Cocks (founding editor of "The Art Newspaper").

Before Spain, A Little France

2007-06-05T09:13:00.000-05:00

On my way to Spain I made a stop to see my brother and sister in law and their two sons, Mitch and Nils. They live in the middle of Les Landes, a big area south of Bordeaux which is actually nothing more than hundreds of acres of pine trees (some corn is grown on this land as well).

Napoleon used to give pieces of this poor land to officers of his army as a reward for their loyalty. This way he hoped that the land eventually would become useful. For many years it housed shepherds and small farmers. The trees that are there now live off the water in the swamp (which was why they were planted in the first place) and are now used by the paper industry. The last few years flower bulb growers (mostly from Holland) have come to buy the land because it seems to be good for their business.

Ironically, there are huge brush fires every year now because of the lack of water. The local airfields house numerous yellow firefighter planes. The one in the photograph is a model that was put up in the middle of a roundabout.

Country Roads

2007-06-01T10:33:00.000-05:00

It was a quarter to five on Sunday morning, February 6, 2005, and I had just left home for a journey to Spain to collect another bunch of Domestic Landscapes in the provinces of Galicia, Asturias, and Castile & Leon.

While John Denver sang about his country roads, I hit the highway. Two owls flew across the road in front of my car. The song was part of a marathon interview on the Dutch radio with a guy called Rob Bruintjes. Rob is (or was) the tallest man in Holland (2.21m) and the spokesman for all people with odd sizes.

Rob and I go back a long way, when I first got involved in commercial filming and we needed a very tall and a very short person to sell a telescope lamp for “Mr. HUBO.” That time made me very clear that commercial filming was not my cup of tea. In fact, commercial photography is not altogether fulfilling and that made me go a different road than the one I was on at that time.

When I changed directions carefully in 1996, I never dared to dream of the things I’m doing right now, that also brought me to Spain and a whole lot of other places to look for and to photograph the most beautiful places and its inhabitants on earth.

When I started driving the first of the total of 1160 kms I had in front of me that day, I wondered whoever would be listening to an interview with Rob, on this Sunday morning from 4:00 until 6:00, until I realized that it doesn’t really matter whether there will be anybody listening or not. When you're given a chance, you will talk, no matter if any other people are listening, just as long as the person you're with wants to hear what you have to say.

I saw this happening time and again when I was shooting Domestics; as soon as you give some real attention to someone who lives a bit isolated (or even within their own community) they start to talk and never stop. It seems as if they have no one around that wants to listen to them anymore and the first person who comes by and gives attention, they claim to give their story. It often goes with very heavy emotional reactions.

The people I met in the next few weeks also got a short bit of unexpected attention; it made them feel important for a while. It is very well possible that the day after they asked themselves if they did the right thing by letting me in to have their photograph taken by this totally strange guy. Maybe they regretted it. I just hope that they felt good again after having received the print I sent them.

Country roads, here I come...

Japan's Grand Finale, Part II

2007-05-31T13:50:00.001-05:00

You may ask the whereabouts of the photograph of the woman we met (see yesterday's post). Read on...

She was happy to meet the first foreigner in her life. Such a nice person, and a handsome one too! And she and the lovely Yoshiko spoke as if they had known each other all their lives. And there was cake and tea of course.

Then, when I thought it was time to make my Grand Finale, I took my equipment out of the car and started setting up the camera in her kitchen. Her kitchen was simply beautiful and had only one little window that cast a beam of light right over her kitchen table. What a great picture this would make.

And there she was, sitting on her porch and not moving one inch!

And with the sweetest face the softest voice and the biggest smile she told me that today was maybe not such a good day to make the picture! Maybe next time was better, yes. In fact I had to come back another time and then we would make the picture. Wasn't that a good idea? Just come and sit next to me on the porch and let's talk a little more and have another cup of tea, because I am so happy that you came by.

And so we did. And we had another cup of tea and we talked a bit longer and after a while we left without taking the picture.

And I didn't feel sorry. I had seen one of the most beautiful pictures I ever could have made in Japan, and I didn't shoot it, and it felt so good! I had made my last Domestic Landscape in Japan and I felt completely happy about it. What a great experience it was and how lucky I am.

Japan's Grand Finale, Part I

2007-05-30T11:33:00.001-05:00

After four days, I found I had only just enough film left for four more portraits. I told her that if we were lucky the next day, we could finish the job and have a day off after that, before we had to return to Holland and Tokyo, respectively. We went early the next day and we were off. The small, narrow, but beautiful roads led through the mountains right into the heart of Wakayama Prefecture. We sought, found, and got in, and before lunch we had done three out of the four.

After lunch I said to Yoshiko: “Let's go for The Grand Finale. Let's find the one place that will be a true Domestic Landscape and finish the job today.”

And off we went again. After that successful morning, I felt so lucky that I did not shoot the first three places that we found and that would have made great pictures. I wanted something special and I knew I was going to find it. And special she was!

We met with the sweetest face, the softest voice and the biggest smile in all of Japan. And what a beautiful place she lived in: the words on the façade told us that it once had been a tailor shop. She invited us to sit down on her porch and have a little chat. Opposite her place, carpenters were building a beautiful, big new home. “My son's,” she said proudly, “and the one next to that is also my son's.” And she told us about how happy she was to live here and how sad it was when her husband—the tailor—died in a car accident, leaving her with three kids to care for, and she just in her early thirties.

She was all alone, with no money and no income. She told us that she managed to make a living as a farmer because, she said, that was what she was: a farmer. And she brought up her three children without having complained once. I could tell that by looking at her face, her lovely face, and by listening to her precious, soft voice. She never complained one time. She took things as they came and never forgot to enjoy her children and the life that was given to her. This was a true traveller on the road to heaven, and she had found paradise.

Tanka

2007-05-29T13:53:00.000-05:00

I photographed a woman that can be found on my website (www.bertteunissen.com) under number 23 in the “Japan” section. She was a professional haiku and tanka writer/artist, and after I photographed her, I asked her to write me a poem in my diary. This is the one she wrote for me.
She wanted to let me know that she understood and appreciated my work. They call this style of poem “TANKA.” It’s longer than a haiku, using five lines.

“Climbing the slope
invited by
a red dragonfly
I offer flowers
to the grave of my parents”

I like to think in the end, this poem is all about the journey to heaven in all its meanings.

The translation was made by Mr. Ban'ya Natsuishi, director of World Haiku Association. His generous efforts were arranged by Mr. Shuji Kogi, Secretary General of the EU-JapanFest (and Yoshiko's father).

Below are images of Mr. Natsuishi translating this tanka, and then he with his wife, Ms. Sayumi Kamakura. I am very grateful for everyone's help with this.

Festival, Part II

2007-05-25T12:03:00.000-05:00

More images from the "Moon Viewing Festival." These candles spelled out a message for the revelers.

The EU-Japan Fest in whole represents a desire that's pretty unique in scope. Years ago, as the European Union (then the European Community) solidified deep relations between its member states (think of it as a group of people getting together for business interests and sticking around long enough to become a family), some called for this understanding to be made, in a sense, official.

Their festival website quotes the Greek Minister of Culture in 1985, Melina Mercouri: "A mutual understanding of our cultures, our identities, is essential to true European integration."

So while knowing that their economic ties weren't enough to make a European Union identity one as complete as, say, an American identity or a Brazilian identity (Brazil's being the more fun of those two, perhaps), the EC's Council of Cultural Ministers decided a new Cultural Capital of Europe would be declared each year. The program gives that capital a chance to showcase their country's way of life on an international stage. Since the Maastricht Treaty was signed in 1992 (replacing the EC with the EU), the cultural exchange with Japan has gone strong with the EU-Japan Fest. Each Cultural Capital since 1993 has worked with the festival. Again, this is pretty unique: a large international body seeking cultural relations with another international body, for the purposes of celebrating ideas and traditions that are really personal.

Festival, Part I

2007-05-24T16:04:00.001-05:00

Every year, the Japanese celebrate the moon with a festival called the "Moon Viewing Festival." Over the next couple of days, I'll post a couple of my photos from that festival.

It begins late in the evening when people gather for the Ma Cha, the tea making and drinking ceremony. In the meantime, all kinds of performances are held for the picnicking audience.

When I was in Japan for the fourth time (to open the second exhibition in Nara), I was invited to the festival and asked to tell the audience about my involvement with EU-Japan Fest and my experiences with it. Being invited for the opening also meant I had to do publicity for the organization, like giving lectures and leading workshops.

It also meant attending the actual opening ceremony, which was also something memorable: the whole ceremony is rehearsed with the entire crew the day before, to ensure that everything goes as planned. As one of the five or six opening ceremony celebrities, you get a big red and white flower made of ribbon, white gloves that are always much too small, and a pair of too-small golden scissors. Then, on the ceremony-master’s signal, we all cut our part of the ceremony’s ribbon at exactly the same time. I did this twice and it is a great privilege but also great fun.

Therapy

2007-05-23T13:55:00.000-05:00

The worse thing of all (see the last post: "Skybox") was that Miho had to return to Tokyo and therefore never had the chance to improve on the job. I'm very sorry she had to go in such circumstances. Miho, the pictures that we did make together are simply beautiful!

Alarmed, I decided to be even more careful with my next and last assistant, Yoshiko (seen here photographing a massage therapy session), who arrived on Miho's last day in Wakayama. Yoshiko would stay with me for the rest of the trip; we would have 6 days in total. With her I thought I might have a chance to build a real team.

First we tried our luck in a little harbour where I started my trip in Wakayama. I had seen some more places that looked good to me but I never had the chance to check them out, because we always had to leave once we were there. I watched Yoshiko closely when she gave her first performance and after the second idle attempt I saw what she was doing wrong. It seemed she was trying to sell something to the other person and that, of course, didn't work. After I tried to explain to her what I had seen, I told her to try and do it simply, her own way. We called it a day and left for the south to our Bay Hotel in Minabe Town.

(This was a great place by the way, the owners really made you feel at home and the cooking was great.)

After a while Yoshiko began to get lucky, and I saw she was enjoying it when she found success. She loosened up and started to get the right feeling. It was good to see her being herself and approaching people with great confidence and in a very natural way.

I found the places and she got me in time after time.

Skybox

2007-05-22T14:19:00.000-05:00

I wound up having five different assistants in Nara (not six), and they helped me for a couple days each. That can be a problem because you do not get the chance to become a team in that short a period, but in Nara it worked out just fine.

Wakayama was totally different, especially in the beginning. Here we got no for an answer time and again. I was travelling with Miho (that's actually Yoshiko, above--more about her in the next post) and I felt that it would be better if we moved to the south, somewhere halfway down the coast, and find ourselves a good hotel from which to work. The only thing was that the appointments were again scheduled throughout the week and all in the north around Wakayama City. Blast!

And that’s when I lost it myself: after two days of struggling and getting no for an answer I began to lose my patience and felt uneasy about what was going on. I gave Miho a hard time about the appointments and in doing that I made the biggest mistake I could have made. I killed the team spirit and wasted my precious, vulnerable assistant. And nobody was more sensitive to that than Miho. I apologize for that and I want to stress that she was a great help while she was with me, and that I enjoyed her company very much.

At the same time, I also realized what we were doing wrong. We were simply trying too hard. We pushed the rope instead of pulling it gently and we were aiming only for paradise, paying no attention to the road we were travelling on. You see how easy it is to fall into the trap, even for me.

The Thing With Assistants

2007-05-21T11:17:00.000-05:00

Above is me with Mikiko, curator and artistic director of "European Eyes on Japan." Her email about preparations for my project stated: “We are organizing your assistants, maybe six different ones and probably all young girls."

Well, I had no problem with six different assistants and I had no problem at all with young girls.

The only thing with young assistants (boys or girls) is that they tend to try too hard to succeed and are very afraid to fail. This makes them very vulnerable and insecure individuals, and in that condition of no use to me at all. Just imagine yourself being approached by a stranger -- a foreigner -- who is going to ask to take your picture inside your very own house... ? If I'm honest, I don't think I let the guy in myself. It would take a very confident person to have any chance of success at all.

Before I decided to become a photographer professionally, I was afraid to lose my hobby; the joy of simply making photographs. I told myself that that would not happen if I kept an eye on that. The only true way to become a professional photographer at that time was to get a job as an assistant photographer. This was very difficult. There were not that many professional photographers around in Holland and totally not outside of Amsterdam. Assistants were standing in line to get a job.

I was very lucky to get a job within no time and find myself in a situation that was beyond my imagination. It was completely different from what I expected. Away went my ideas of the future. At the same time I had to pay great attention to what was going on because it was all new to me.

Before I knew it, I was in the same line of work as these photographers and far away from my ideal: to become a true independent and well-respected photographer. All I knew from that moment on was the struggle to get work and to survive. The ideal life of the independent photographer whose work is respected by the audience was not in sight anymore. It took me ten years to realize that, and I weathered a big financial disaster during which my two daughters were born to make me change my direction, and try to go back to my first ideal. You can compare this with swimming against the stream of the river. It is extremely difficult and can only be done by not letting your mind get distracted from the other side that you want to reach.

I want everyone involved to have the same experience of enjoying what they're doing up to the highest possible standard. That is the only thing that I demand of my so-called assistants. Because they are no assistants of course; they are my keys to the houses of the people I want to photograph. I believe that only when both of us are really enjoying the hunt, we can succeed. It's called teamwork.

Deer

2007-05-18T13:22:00.000-05:00

Only now do I know with certainty that it is almost impossible for me to pursue this project in a city, simply because of the fact that in a city I am never able to tell/smell from the outside what can be expected on the inside.

I never experienced this before.

Please note that I have no regrets at all about anything involving this experience! The results showed the differences between city and country living in Japan at the beginning of the 21st century, and will therefore be a great contribution to the documentation of Japanese inhabitation during this period.

In this area of Nara, deer come down from the nearby mountains and roam about. The deer are simply there, like pigeons. The inhabitants straddle a duality: they accept the deer being there and also exploit the fact that they are. Note the teenage girl's headband.

There is a larger duality that the culture is dealing with, especially now. In the countryside, life is pretty much the same as country life everywhere: lots of people working in the fields with their hands doing what has been done for centuries. And yet they long for new and modern (Western) values. When I got out to the country, finding domestic landscapes was about the same as finding them in Europe, I would say. It was not easy, but they were quite extraordinary.

On the other hand, technology is very important to them. Mobile phone connections are available even in the remotest areas, and you'd be able to find the best hotel around and book a room, all on your cell phone. There's phone and internet access even on the subway. Everyone's always ON.

At Work, Part II

2007-05-17T11:20:00.000-05:00

I took this in Nara, the second prefecture I visited in Japan.

Traveling to this totally new culture made me decide to take snapshots while I was doing it. I thought it would be a shame not to photograph other things than just what I came to do. I chose to use a small and simple camera (an Olympus Pen) and started to take black and white pictures with it.

As I’ve said earlier here, I am highly influenced by the works of Daido Moriyama. He also shows the need of making an image rather than telling a story. Afterward, the entire story comes out anyway, but that depends on the edit and use of the image. It is a great way of telling/showing the inner feelings of the person.

I liked making my first diaries so much that I decided to do this more often and more consistently. I have also made diaries of holidays, small trips, and even of my trips for commercial purposes. It gives me the chance to bundle the snapshots that normally end up in an envelope or a box and never come out again.

I discovered that it gave me great joy working this way and I became looser after a while. It is not just about "the score"; in fact the real score is to be aware of what you do while you do it and to make the best of times when you're there. By making the diaries I was much more aware of where I was at that moment and that gave me a much clearer look on the trip afterwards. The memories are much deeper and the awareness is greater. I also feel very happy to be able to tell a story this way and to add very personal and sometimes abstract images. This is true and pure photography to me.

At Work, Part I

2007-05-16T09:24:00.000-05:00

A map of Wakayama Prefecture, the third prefecture I visited in Japan (the first two were the Miyagi and Nara Prefectures). Click on the image to enlarge. The numbers circled on the map represent places I found and photographed.

My project was an initiative of the Japanese organization called EU-Japan Fest and the photography project within that, which was called “European Eyes on Japan.” They wanted all Japanese prefectures documented by European photographers. The project is now in its eleventh year.

(Visit the EU-Japan Fest page by following this link: http://www.eu-japanfest.org/english/index.html . It is also available in the original Japanese.)

Normally, this organization invites four photographers and each covers one prefectures; a total of four. Because I would be the first one ever to photograph inside people’s homes, they wanted me to cover the three prefectures that the others did. Because it would take too much time to cover all in one trip, and because I had a commercial job to do in the USA in between, we decided to cut the trip in two.

First they wanted me to cover Sendai, which is just a town in Miyagi Prefecture. Because they were very afraid that I would never be able to enter someone’s house without an appointment, they organized everything for me. This meant that they decided what places I’d go to and they used their own connections. But nobody really understood the rules by which I make my work and so I ended up in places that I was not interested in.

After the trip I spoke to the people of the organization and asked for a different approach. I told them that I wanted to drive around by myself and all I needed was someone to read the signs and to translate for me. In the end they agreed, and the second trip was done in a completely new way (for them). Initially, I had some problems with guides who still were not able to feel free enough to just go to a house and knock on the door, but after a while they all got the feeling and started to enjoy doing so. And it worked!

Altogether I spent over two months in Japan in which I photographed over ninety houses, gave two workshops to school classes and opened two exhibitions, giving talks to audiences.

Sending me there gave an extra dimension to my ongoing project Domestic Landscapes and I discovered that even in Japan the situation is exactly the same: the old, traditional way of life makes way for the new and modern style.

Views In Rain and Sun

2007-05-07T10:57:00.000-05:00

I took these photographs from our hotel in the town of Neureichenau, Germany.

Domestic Landscapes is a parallel story about atmosphere and light on the one side, and authenticity and originality on the other. In the beginning I tried to take the landscapes in black and white, but the format does not capture the information about the interior that is so important for this work; the color of the atmosphere and the light.

But I just love black and white photography; I need to be in the darkroom once in a while. I am highly inspired by Daido Moriyama, Walker Evans, and Aaron Siskind when I take these black and white pictures. It is a second way of taking photographs; they are made by my belly. It is not at all about technique; it is all about composition, moment and feeling.

And as I’ve said elsewhere, the story is also about me I simply have to make these photographs. There is no way I can, or want to, resist the need to do so. When shooting in black and white, I shoot with that sense of feeling rather than with my mind. Lovely!

Sketch

2007-05-04T09:20:00.000-05:00

Once I've arrived in the area that I picked out to go to, the search begins. There are many different ways of getting around and finding places. It all depends on the people of that particular region. The simplest way is to drive around and start knocking on doors, and see what happens. In some countries this works, but also only up to a certain level; sometimes you arrive in an area where strange or bad things may have happened awhile ago. There, people will no longer let you in.

And sometimes you just know that there are interesting places that you want to see, but you don't want to knock on the door. You're afraid it will be a great place to photograph but they won't let you in. In Germany (Das Bayerische Wald, where I traveled with my daughter), there were a couple of places like this; I had seen them and I was afraid to spoil the opportunity. In that case, there are several ways to get around. One of them is to ask around and see if you can find someone who knows the person living in the place in question. You try to get an introduction from this intermediary.

You see some of the directions that were given to us when we were trying to approach certain places. I made a simple sketch of how to get there (or to show the informant which place I wanted to get into) and I wrote down the names that were important for me. In both situations, it worked out.

After I had found people who knew these places and the people living in them, they told me to go there and tell the inhabitants that I had been sent to make the photograph by the go-between; often this was enough, and often this IS enough. If you have a name of the person who introduced you, and the name of the person you want to meet, you come in with an air of trust. People feel much more comfortable. In Portugal for instance, we often went to the local fire brigade and talked to the commander-in-chief. If we then knocked on certain doors and said that Mr. So-and-so—chief of the fire brigade—had sent us, no questions were asked.

Kohut

2007-05-02T09:28:00.000-05:00

My travels made me face the facts: the people I portray are an endangered species. One such member of that species is this man, who lives about 50 meters away from the Czech border, which in this area is marked by a creek.

(The second photograph is my daughter’s.)

There used to be a farming community across the creek. After the Russians took over and the other side became communistic, a five kilometer-wide buffer zone was established at the border; all houses in the zone had to be destroyed, and all the people who lived there had to go. Meanwhile, Germany began installing electricity and running water in outlying homes. But because he lived far from the public road, plumbing and electricity would cost extra. He and his mother refused to pay. They never got any electricity or running water. He just collects wood for the fire; the entire house is filled with it. He was kind of a strange guy, but a lovely man with a very basic life.

Bomb Shelter

2007-05-01T09:01:00.000-05:00

World War II turned decisively against the Axis Powers when they were pushed back on the eastern front by the armies of the Soviet Union. It was after this failure that the German Resistance became determined to assassinate Adolf Hitler and his closest deputies, in order to form a government that would surrender to the Allies instead of being overrun by the Soviets. Hans Georg Klamroth was a member what became known as the July 20 Plot, was captured just like the rest, and executed in August 1944. I was in Germany on the anniversary of this attempt, and made this composite photograph of the TV movie about the assassination, aired on that day.

Klamroth’s youngest daughter, Wibke Bruns, wrote a book about her family and how they entered the World Wars; it sheds light on the thoughts of the German aristocracy around that time. (The book is titled: Meines Vaters Land: Geschichten einer deutschen Familie.) Wibke Bruns would present the German television news when I was a young boy. We watched German television much more than Dutch television because of the bad reception and limited programming at home.

The Red Army marched into Berlin in April of 1945. Ultimately, not only did the German Resistance fail to assassinate Hitler, but their larger goal was never realized: the part of Berlin occupied by the USSR became the capital of Soviet-controlled East Germany.

This man was the uncle of the guy who helped me prepare my trip to Germany. He told us about life in the area close to what was then the East German border. Back then there was a big military compound just across the border, and he was afraid that if a confrontation arose between East and West Germany, the compound—and his home nearby—would be a target for an American nuclear bomb.

He was the only one in the whole neighborhood who had a bomb shelter built in his yard. He showed us how he could survive an atomic attack and how he would live off his supply of food and water. It was a strange experience to see how anyone could have thought to survive an attack like that at all. It must have cost him a fortune to have it installed; his neighbors never really took him seriously.

Rosa

2007-04-30T09:07:00.000-05:00

The house where I was born and raised was knocked down when I was nine years old. Right now I live in a typical post-war house in what we call a forensic town. All the houses in such a town look the same and have the same kind of interior. This village of two thousand has grown to forty-three thousand, all commuters to jobs in distant cities. This house, and this town, no longer supports the atmosphere that my project is about.

Rosa’s did. Rosa lived all alone about 50 meters across the Austrian border. We were sent to her by a guy who used to deliver bread in that area. She was happy with our visit; since her dog died, she felt quite alone. She still had the warning sign for the dog in the garden. It served to keep intruders away. Last winter she had so much snow on her roof that it almost collapsed. You can still see some of the beams her son put in, which help the fragile structure hold together.

I keep a diary with all the places that I photographed: notes about things that I’ve seen, heard, and don't want to forget. I also put in the 4x5' Polaroid that I always make to check the angle and the equipment before taking the actual photograph.

My daughter Sophie can be seen in the top frame, next to Rosa. She learned how to recognize good places from a distance, and she looked carefully inside when we were welcomed. She also took pictures, like the one of me next to Rosa in the bottom frame (in it, I am writing down her address). I was struck by the beauty of them; the way she looked at different artifacts when she took the photographs. She has a sharp eye and she shows what drew her attention in those places.

We would talk afterwards about the homes we saw. I must say that she was in a strong way very involved in the project. As you can imagine, it made me feel very excited and proud.

The Road To Heaven Spirit

2007-04-27T12:00:00.000-05:00

The story that I always tell my assistants is the one about the road to heaven, in which I explain that you will find happiness in your life, but only when you enjoy trying to reach for it. It is not heaven that will bring happiness, but the search for it. Don't forget to enjoy it when looking for it or you will miss the point.

In this photograph, I am bound for Germany. This was the first trip in a long time without the company of my usual traveling companion. I had been so occupied organizing the trip: where to go, who to meet, and how to get along in that country, that I totally forgot to think about whom would come with me. Who will guard the equipment when I need to go to the bathroom? Who will sit on the other end of the table when I am having dinner? Who will sit next to me when I try to find the way and whom to talk to during the next few weeks?

Then I remembered that Sophie, my eldest daughter, who was then almost thirteen years of age, had finished lessons and had a two and a half month holiday period in front of her. She said needed some time to think, but the next day she agreed to come. Thrilled, we started organizing things.

When she sat next to me in the car, she looked with me for interesting houses. Two days into a ten-day trip, she was setting up the camera for me (without me asking), and whenever the situation was right, she asked if she could take some pictures of the house herself, using a small Olympus Pen (the half frame, point and shoot) with a little flash.

She has experienced me knocking on doors, being rejected, getting welcomed and invited. And she has also seen the situations those people lived in, hardly known to her. We had dinner together every night and we slept in the same room. We played cards while watching Euro Sport and we went for a swim in the pool of the hotel. In the car we played The Doors and Deep Purple. We enjoyed every minute of it and I will never forget the experience.

That is the real “road to heaven” spirit. For that I feel grateful and rich.