Agression evolves

April 28, 2012

We’re becoming imune to subtlety. Any form of effort is likely to discourage an individual to pursue anything that is not strictly related to his daily routine. Well, of course there are exceptions to this.
Last autumn I saw the World Press Photo exhibit in Montreal.

Copyright Jodi Bieber, 2011, World Press Photo of the Year

Looking at the photo of the year I couldn’t help remembering Paul Strand’s Blind woman.


copyright Paol Strand, 1917

To me both images are accusatory both of them say “look at me”.

We live in such a different age now.


RAW, JPEG and Pizza

March 2, 2012
margherita

Some time ago I was at Nikon Service centre in Montreal, waiting to fix my old FE2 film camera. In the waiting hall there were various prints, promoting Nikon cameras. Another guy was waiting his turn, holding his Nikon D300. Having nothing else to do, we were both looking at the images on the wall, [...]


Light from Within – the Portraits of Morfi Jiménez Mercado

March 1, 2012
morfi jimenez mercado

While writing my post about HDR portraits I remember seeing a while ago the work of a fantastic photographer from Peru, Morfi Jiménez Mercado. I remember getting lost in the story the characters were telling, and the thing that I was appreciating the most was the humanity that transcended his images. Technically, he shoots in [...]


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A Post About Baudelaire, His Mother, And HDR Portraits

March 1, 2012

I am a firm believer that photography does not have to present reality (whatever that is), but rather to convey a feeling, an emotion, to allow the viewer to be taken away by a story or by a character. In december 1865, Charles Baudelaire was writing to his mother: Je voudrais avoir ton portrait. C’est [...]


A Superb Recording – Murray Perahia and Radu Lupu

February 20, 2012
schubert

To me, all art forms are similar, they are about the emotional response they trigger in an audience. It’s about the trip they make you take. It’s about letting go, losing the self and allowing a different dimension to take over. Schubert’s Fantasy in F minor in the brilliant interpretation of Perahia and Lupu, from [...]


It’s Only Art…

February 20, 2012
lennen-portfolio_large_large_large_preview

I love this image by Gary Campbell. And this is one of many, hundreds of expressive photographs taken with a 15$ camera… a Holga. Granted, the price can go up, but you’re still talking something under 50$. What’s so nice about the Holga cameras is that the very thing that makes them cheap (plastic body, [...]


Yann Gross – Lavina

February 18, 2012
avalanche1

I loved these images for the sheer power of the avalanche cutting through the landscape. There’s something special and raw, untamed in these images. Photographer’s website is here.


Paolo Ventura

February 15, 2012
PVentura-Lonely-Vista

I’ve seen his work in Aperture and I look forward to seeing one of his exhibitions live. In “The Automaton”, P. Ventura tells the story of an old man living in the ghetto of Venice during WW2. He does a beautiful job creating models, environments and then telling a cohesive and pretty complex story photographing [...]


Occupied by Wall Street

February 10, 2012
strand_wall_street

In the previous post I laid out the principle I was taught a while ago: when the photograph is about something else than colour, shoot black and white. I kept thinking about iconic images in black and white and one of the strongest I know of is this image made by Paul Strand showing people [...]


Wild Colt

February 10, 2012
wild colt

In his 50 years retrospective book, Bill Allard talks about how this image changed his perception on colour photography. The image of a wild horse on Sable Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia, where all we actually see is the beautiful golden colour, and the horse’s silhouette. I think that this photograph shows beautifully [...]


Music Education for the Masses

February 8, 2012

Hats off to UK on this one. UK are giving roughly 60 million pounds every year starting now until 2015, to support the music education. The Importance of Music – National Plan for Music Education Can it be that somewhere in Europe, a government is actually realising that culture, being music, design, drama or any [...]


The Life and Death of Images

February 8, 2012
lifeimages

This is the title of a very hard-to-read book. Hard for me, anyways. However, it brings some very valid points about how our perception of the image and what the image should represent has changed over the years, and continues changing. From beauty to realism to abstract to ugly to kitsch and now, apparently, back [...]


RSS Open Photo Competitions

Oscar Peterson and Ray Charles

February 8, 2012


Hope for Egypt

February 6, 2012
egypt-1

This morning in the subway my eyes glimpsed over the newspaper that announced a 4th day of violence in Cairo. It seems so strange to me that the city where I spent a year of my life in and that I come to love be the scene of such violence, one year after the fall [...]


Small Trades

February 6, 2012
ipenn

Irving Penn, famous for his fashion photography, started off in this area with some smaller-scale assignments. In the 50′s he visited Paris and produced one of the most beautiful bodies of work, documenting various professions of the age. Normal folks in their work outfits. His portraits in this book are outstanding and he manages to [...]