This has been a source of major heartache. I’m always worried when I’m not working. I don’t know if the tap will run dry. But I haven’t really been able to get excited about shooting in Europe for a number of reasons.
- It is too familiar. I know these people. I know the streets. I know the pace of life. I know their secrets. All of this is what I grew up with back in Sydney and I don’t find it immediately interesting. If I did I would commit myself to finding the stories that exist on these streets too. I left to Sydney to escape this. It makes me worry about what my three months back in Sydney is going to be like photographically. I can’t just market and study. What will I shoot?
- I don’t have a base of operations and the clear free-time to go out and explore and really settle. Everything costs so much in Europe even though I’ve had free board in both Vienna and Paris. But it’s more a matter of coming up with a regular stable pattern of working. That just hasn’t been possible.
- It is boring. Maybe I should try harder but Europe is the epitome of bourgeois values and the urge isn’t to capture it but to puncture it with some performance art.
- People are powerful and bourgeois here and are much more likely to get pissed off. It is also illegal to shoot someone without there permission. Neither of these things should stop me but I’m afraid that they probably have had an impact. Sad.
- I just don’t get the light. The light is crystalline. Pale, wan and boring. I don’t know how to get contrast here in the colour pictures. Everything comes out limp and lifeless. Of course, this is probably also a matter of effort but I think that I just don’t love this place aesthetically. I can’t put my heart into it. It took me a long time to get the colours right in Bangladesh and I loved it once I did get them right. I’m a little worried that Australian light will be like this in the outback and that this will make the project that I’m planning difficult. I just have to wait and see.
- I need a break after all the work in Bangladesh. I’m not sure if I believe this though. I think that I did need to spend time editing and I’ve gotten all of that done in Europe which has been great (although it took a longer that I expected for the Twilight set). I also had no access to books in Bangladesh and that’s been nice to have that here and be able to research a bit. It’s not that fun looking at pictures from new photographers, the quality is very low and I’m rarely moved but there are some good things and the classics are always very good. It was lovely to read Szarkowski’s essay on Winogrand when I was in Berlin.
Excuses, excuses, excuses. We’ll see what’s what when I get back to Australia.
Posted 2 years ago
