July 2009
98 posts
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Shooting Notes - 30 July 2009 (with photos)
Today was a violent trek. Landed in Gulistan, walked to Sadharghat, got mixed up in a fight and then caught a bus which sneaks along the edges of the city to get back. The light wasn’t great which made the work hard. Worked form 2pm to 7pm. 255 pictures.
Small DOF so out of focus shots. I need to be less scared about bumping up ISO to 1600 to get the shutter speed and large DOF required....
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Aphorisms 9 - 31 July 2009
A picture of my Grandmother
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Reading about the art world is like reverse-therapy. But you still have to pay.
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It helps if you are short sighted.
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Photography that says too much about how the world should be is like the country bumpkin who smears the food all over his face. There’s nothing wrong with it ethically, it’s just a little inappropriate.
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Is the most artistic thing...
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Photo Note - Rain Seen Through Bus Window
Something different again.
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A Conversation With Jeff Wall (2000) →
A Shit Picture by Jeff Wall
JW: The aesthetic norm of fragmentation implies that the avant-garde movements made a fundamental and irreversible break with the past. The art of the past is defined as “organically unified,” art that does not want to recognize its own contingent character, its own fragile illusionism. It wants to revel in the illusionism, for its own sake and for...
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Photo Note - Streetfighters 2
I made some jokes about street fights earlier this week. And it’s true that most are harmless. But the one I witnessed today was of a different kind. It was a brutal attack on a thief by four or five other men who were merciless. You could hear the thunk of bone hitting bone and the sheer ferocity of the violence propelling the combatants back. The thief ran away through the sprawling...
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Shooting Notes - 29 July 2009 (with photos)
I had bad light for most of the day. It seems the weather has turned here and we are going into the rainy season proper. The task will get harder from here on. Less hits. A lot of walking today as I thought I’d fuck the excruciatingly slow bus service and just walk the 6-7 kilometers to New Market. Surprisingly a decent haul of 230 shots. Worked from 2pm to 8pm.
Many technical issues mostly...
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Photo Note - An Accident in the Night
Sometimes you make a mistake. Then you look down at the camera and it’s not one of those ten million mistakes you make daily. Those throwaway mistakes. No, it’s a mistake you want to keep. It’s a miraculous mistake that hints at something that you couldn’t have imagined before.
Tonight as I was coming back home, it grew dark, and the streets were flooded and I was bouncing on a rickshaw. I...
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Photo Note - Waterfights
Dhaka is flooded right now. But that isn’t cause for the grief, and protracted insurance claims that would happen back home. Here the rain is a time for celebration. I’ve never seen people so overjoyed to get completely wet. Sure, it increases the chances of a host of diseases and ailments, but people here love it. (Of course the middle class drag themselves inside, they want to live, to prosper...
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Paul Graham - Photography is Easy, Photography is... →
Photo by Senami d’Almeida
It’s so easy it’s ridiculous. It’s so easy that I can’t even begin – I just don’t know where to start. After all, it’s just looking at things. We all do that. It’s simply a way of recording what you see – point the camera at it, and press a button. How hard is that? And what’s more, in this digital age, its free - doesn’t even cost you the...
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What Do I Look For?
What do I look for? I look for something that no one has seen before. Since this is impossible, I look for something that I’ve never seen before. This is possible.
I look for something that means something. Since this is impossible, I look for something that may mean something to me, that may hint at something in my psyche. This is very possible.
I look for unadulterated, raw emotion. Since...
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Szarkowski on Eggleston and Colour →
William Eggleston
It is not easy for the photographer to compete with the clever originality of mindless, mechanized cameras, but the photographer can add intelligence. By means of photography one can in a minute reject as unsatisfactory ninety-nine configurations of facts and elect as right the hundredth. The choice is based on tradition and intuition - knowledge and ego - as it is in...
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Shooting Notes - 28 July 2009 (with photos)
Some good shots snatched from the maws of a difficult day. I’d only slept 4 hours the night before, had an angry blister on my right foot, and had severe diarrhoea which meant I was looking for toilets every 10 minutes. If you know the ratio of toilets to humans in Dhaka you’d know how funny that is. To make things worse, there wasn’t much sun. I worked for 5 hours and got 170 shots.
Didn’t...
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Kundera Solves All Your Problems (story)
At that time the beaches in the west of Europe were covered in summer with women who wore no tops to the bathing suits, and the population was divided between partisans and adversaries of bare breasts. The Clevis family—father, mother, and fourteen-year-old daughter—sat in front of the television set, watching a debate in which representatives of every intellectual current of the day...
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The Discrete Charm of Stalking the Famous
A portrait of the famous photographer
All my friends (except one cunt) and loved ones think what I’m producing is getting better, is good. I’ve been working hard. But they are supposed to say placatory things like that so I don’t reveal their despicable secrets. Also, they’re all very nice and all have great taste (except one cunt), but they don’t work at this everyday, so the advice...
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Photo Note - The Chariot of the Gods
Rickshaws are it. A chariot of the gods. But instead of horses you have another human being profusely sweating as they drag you around for 20 cents. I travel around on rickshaws everyday. They aren’t as cheap as buses but they are a lot more fun.
Rickshaw drivers are the most offensive people I’ve ever met. I mean offensive in a good way. Within days I found out ‘madhar chote,’ means ‘mother...
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Photo Note - The Gayest of Friends
You think these two guys are gay? They’re not gay. They’re just really good friends. Islam frowns upon same sex relationships. But it frowns on inter sex relations (unless you’re married) even more, and so you get photos like this. Here, it’s like Mardi Gras is everyday. Guys caress each other, stroke each other’s butts, hold hands lovingly. In a bus, I’ll have at least three crotches slap...
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Where Do I Go Next?
It’s hard being on a junket of self discovery. I can go anywhere so it’s really hard to choose somewhere. There is a fierce battle being fought by anywhere and somewhere with nowhere approaching on the horizon.
My Paltry Requirements
It mustn’t be overrun with tourists. I can’t handle tourists. They always ask me to have beers. I feel like slashing their pudgy faces. Especially those tourists...
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Photo Note - Duck Step
The coolest people I’ve met in Dhaka are, quite unexpectedly, all ducks. I met these guys at a dubstep gig the other night. That’s Kwan in the centre trying to suck his own dick (‘Cause you can’t bitch!’), and Tez to the right (who copies Kwan like all the time), and that’s Bree to the left.
Anyway, Kwan sent me this Gawker article on Dash Snow dying, saying ‘Hey ma, the rains are...
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Photo Note - Streetfighters
One of my guilty pleasures here in Dhaka is watching street fights. But there’s not much guilt because here everybody loves watching, and getting into street fights. It is the travelling theatre of Bangladesh. Often they are about the most miniscule causes you can imagine, like bumping rickshaws (it happens a million times a day), or as is happening here, not liking the colour of some other guys...
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Shooting Notes - 25 July 2009 (with photos)
A massive amount of 430 pictures today, but decidedly mixed results. Lot’s of just good enough pictures, and interesting pictures, or ‘oh, that’s nearly there’ pictures. But nothing that blows you away. Worked at Motijheel, Sayedabad, and most of my time was spent in Sadarghat (or ‘Old Dhaka’).
Played around with focus quite a bit and the results were all over the place. Although the close...
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Photo Notes - My Lunch
In Bangladesh there are no McDonalds. And since there are no McDonalds, there are no condescending McDonalds ads which tell you where the chicken in your McNuggets came from, or the name of the cow you are eating in your Big Mac (I’ve never done any of these things, but I hear that everyone goes to ‘maccas’). But even if there was a McDonalds, there would be no need for commercials like that...
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On the Street Note - Mohammed Khotab Hussain
“I’m 66 years old. My name is Mohammed Khotab Hussain. I moved to Dhaka in 1974 from Jessore. I was blinded in a factory fire shortly after arriving. It’s a bitter sweet day for me today. I’m on my way to shake hands with my youngest daughter’s future husband and his father. They are a very good family and he is educated. A bookkeeper!
Of course, marriages are in the hands of Allah, and...
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On the Street Note - Reja Moshed Ahmed
“My name is Reja Moshed Ahmed and I’m 36 years old. I’m surprised that you took my photo, but looking at the photo I guess I shouldn’t be. People always have something to say about my ear. I must have told the story a thousand times. It’s a birth defect. It does make it harder for me to hear from my left side, but it’s not the top problem in my life. I met my wife when I started my first...
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On the Street Note - Dr. Muthiam Chowdhury
“Well of course I come across as a little silly with my hair in this photo, but it looks threatening and that’s a good thing in my line of work. My name is Dr. Muthiam Chowdhury and I’m 51 years old. I’m a professor of philosophy at the New College. Can I ask you why you are taking these photos? Are you looking to become published?
What you are getting isn’t of any value if you’re looking...
Kundera and Telling Lies
They got into a conversation. What intrigued Tamina were his questions. Not their content, but the simple fact that he was asking them. My God, it had been so long since anyone had asked her about anything! It seemed like an eternity! Only her husband had kept asking her questions, because love is a continual interrogation. I don’t know of a better definition of love.
(In that case, my friend...
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Walker Evans by Leo Rubinfien →
Walker Evans
An excellent article on Walker Evans. I knew he was a curmudgeon in life, but not that he was in his art. I took some notes, wrote some aphorisms as I was reading this:
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His method was gathered from Flaubert. A meticulous hard gaze at the subject. A slow stocktake of what is there. But his meaning came from Baudelaire, the ‘spleen’, the distaste of what exists. Although,...
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Shooting Notes - 23 July 2009 (with photos)
A death defying day in the middle the most hellish traffic. I spent a bit of time trying to get close to rickshaws to capture some of those public/private moments. Not much luck. A lot of walking as buses are just a waste of time. Some good photos came out of the 261 taken today.
I jumped off my stalled bus to the sound of Dizzee Rascal. This made me aggressive and I got close into...
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Adam Jeppesen - Wake →
Adam Jeppeson
I’m liking the work of Adam Jeppeson. The colours are deeply evocative of the mood in the pictures. You can feel how alone the photographer was there, huddled in the closeness of nature. I was attracted to this kind of work in the Quiet Nights series, but he is obviously more skilled at it, has spent more time. Doing this kind of work is a different kind of hard, but...
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Photo Note - Elite Forces
All around Dhaka you will find the most unthreatening, hapless security guards you’ve ever seen. They are scrawny kids who stand for hours outside resturants, atms, shoe stores, building sites. They carry antiquated rifles from the time of the 18th century which haven’t been fired ever. Most of them are unfailingly nice, and push overs if you need to get past them. Their uniforms are festooned...
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Shooting Notes - 22 July 2009 (with photos)
Only a 100 photos today but a lot of thinking about the process of live photography. Most of the day was spent, pleasurably, on local buses that travelled at the customary 5 kilometres per hour. It started raining at one point, and I’d decided to get the longest hair cut in the world (it took over an hour) so I didn’t get much shooting time.
For locations a new idea is taking shape. I think one...
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Photo Note - Band of Useless Brothers
The unemployment rate for 18-24 year old males in Bangladesh currently hovers around 104.2%. Although this is significantly better than what the rate was in the last decade, there are still plenty of errant groups of young men cruising around with their equally unemployed friends. Since Bangladeshi girls are solely, without any exceptions, interested only in men who have money and a job, these...
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Editing Notes - Burqa 22 July 2009
I started editing the Burqa series. It’s something I’ve been putting off because I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to say with it. I put on some music and got into the 600 photos of girls/women in Burqas. I was trying to make it as fun as possible so that I’d actually do it.
The 1st cut got rid of pictures that were technically unusable, or were just had no aesthetic reason for being...
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Shooting Notes - 20 July 2009 (with photos)
A disappointing day with no good photos and 4 or 5 acceptable ones out of a total of 224. I had such high hopes for the location too.
Motijheel is the financial heart of Dhaka. It’s main street runs east to west so the sun is available for most of the day in large swathes through the streets. Rather than an advantage this turned out to be a problem. When there is too much direct sun it...
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Rumpus Interview with Zak Smith →
Michele: How does your environment influence your work or the way in which you work?
Zak: When I lived in New York and I painted a girl sitting on her bed, there was a fire escape out the window, so there was a fire escape in the painting and I had to figure out what made fires escapes interesting to look at. Now there are palm trees out the window, so there are palm trees in the painting and...
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The Modern Word - Zak Smith Interview →
Erik Ketzan: So you created an illustration for every page of Gravity’s Rainbow. How long did that take?
Zak Smith: It took like 9 months, but I was working on other stuff, too, at the same time. People always go “Wow, you must’ve had a lot of free time on your hands,” but, y’know, it’s my job to. You do something 14 hours a day every day, you can get a lot done. I think people are conditioned...
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Am I the Greatest?
No one is doing what I’m doing.
No one is working on the street and getting as close as I am. No one ever has. No one is using such shallow depth of field and getting the shots that I’m getting. No one, is producing the quantity of stunning colour that I’m producing. No one’s out in the third world shooting street photography everyday for months on end. No one is showing...
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Aphorisms 8 - 20 July 2009
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Without a camera you must be the most thoughtful, well read, cultured person you know. With a camera, you’re a dumb, pointing, drooling hick.
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Photographers are like ex-girlfriends, thoughtful and calm one moment, and full of violent reactive action the next.
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Photography is diarrhoea.
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Photography says far less than words ever can. It is more ambiguous, more uncertain, and far more...
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Shooting Notes - 19 July 2009 (with photos)
An epic, fascinating day of shooting, where expectations were mere chaff to be thrown to the winds. But it didn’t start out that way. I shot at Moghbazar, Gulistan, and Newmarket from 12pm to 7:00pm. 318 photos.
I left early in the day, but it was one of the most frustrating start to a working day ever. It took nearly two hours to get to Moghbazar because of traffic jams. Packed in like...
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Michael Fried on Luc Delahaye →
Luc Delahaye
Michael Fried babbles on academically, which means, nonsensically about Luc Delahaye, but the article has a lot of the important recent works by Delahaye. I don’t have many contemporary photographers that I really admire, or who’s work I can look at over and over again, but Delahaye is one of them.
He’s recent works are an innovation. Quiet, large...
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Photo Note - Back to the Scene of the Crime
It’s a strict no no for a criminal to go back to the scene of the crime. But for a photographer it’s often very revealing to have a couple of goes at configuring the reality of a situation. Since every millimetre of movement creates a new view, it’s worth exploring whether there is a thing in itself, an unchanging essence to an object, to a face, to a person, or if the...
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Photo Note - Rooftops
Life in the afternoon in Dhaka is lived on the rooftops. Children play cricket, or kick a ball around, or fly kites. Young men contemplate, wander silently, at the very edge of the precipice. Mothers watch carefully as their sons run around. Groups of girls show their faces for the only time in the day they are given the freedom.
The rooftops float about next to each other like flowers on a...
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Shooting Notes 17 July 2009 (with photo)
A laid back day of shooting. I stayed away from close in work to concentrate on something different. I shot from a distance and tried explore some landscapes (See previous Photo Note). I was being all fine art and shit, with emphasis on the fine.
Focus wasn’t a problem. I did try to shoot at f14+ at some points to get a deep DOF but it seems that I have difficult even hand-holding 1/80 out in...
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Aphorisms 7 - 18 July 2009
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I’m an architectural photographer. Of the human face.
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A photographer is a passive aggressive, he desperately wants to show the world with its pants down, but must wait for the world to undo the buttons.
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Randomness is a better guide for what you should do with your day than what you think you should do. I don’t mean the shallow randomness of the dice. I mean the intense randomness of...
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Photo Note - Brickscapes
Can I take a photo without a person in it?
Obviously the answer is no. There’s a person lurking in this set of 3 that I took today. It’s funny what photographers are attracted to. I have such deep unresolved problems with personality and consciousness that I’d rather concentrate on humans, how they move around and into one another, their faces.
Landscapes are nice and...
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Shooting Notes 16 July 2009 (with photos)
Rotten teeth, pockmarked faces, gummy eyes. That was what I shot. Old men with beards which look like frothing seas. I did a lot of close in work under good light and there were some nice shots, but no killers. Worked well from 2 pm to 6 pm: 350 photos.
Worked under intense downward sunlight. Although it gives me the very detailed image that I want, it does create strong shadows...
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James Agee on Helen Levitt and Much Else →
Photo by Walker Evans (via)
On thought in art
“It would be mistaken to suppose that any of the best photography is come at by intellection; it is, like all art, essentially the result of an intuitive process, drawing on all that the artist is rather than on anything he thinks, far less theorizes about. … As small, quick, foolproof cameras became generally available, moreover, the camera...