The biggest problem that has been occupying me in Paris is the construction of sets and the inter-dependence between individual pictures. I wrote an essay earlier on the slow building up of symbols and feelings that I’ve been attempting for the twilight set. In these pictures I’m trying something more obvious, just a straight, simple narrative. The light was good and I figured out a way to isolate my head in the apartment today. I didn’t make any noise.
Posted 10 months ago
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This group of young men are being sold snake oil. The shaman-salesman is selling love potions and they are listening intently, with groaning adolescent lust. In the gloom they exude the heated, rabid desire of the male virgin.
Posted 11 months ago
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The mental disorder of light continues.
The power of the photograph to slow things down is crucial in revelation. We’re being shown something that is beyond our humanity, that which we cannot see ourselves, that which transcends our senses. This very definition of magic is a key use of the photograph. Or another reading: these are photos of people welding.
Posted 11 months ago
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Sometimes you wander into something so wonderful, so full of possibility that all is forgotten, and you start shooting madly. You try not to think about that moment again because the urge to run home and have a look at the photos would be overpowering. You finally do get home, and you have a look, and it’s more than you could’ve expected. But always less than you hoped for. There are always regrets.
In these pictures light has a multiple personality disorder.
Posted 11 months ago
One of the beautiful things about being in a country like Bangladesh is that things are revealed. Well, more that they aren’t hidden. In the West our concern for safety, procedure, and sense of propriety means that many things are off limits, difficult to see. But here things spill out onto the streets. Like this building site, where a horrendously dangerous environment has been created right on the footpath as the builders have decided that that’s the best place to dump their rocks and steel bars. It’s a random act of civil landscaping. Impermanent, spontaneous, and revealing. I didn’t even think that buildings were made out of rocks. But they must be because there they are. And if I want to I can wander around the entire building site figuring out how a building is put together. That is, I could have if I hadn’t sprained my ankle on those steel bars. But it’s the potential that counts.
Posted 11 months ago
The strategic evolution of the begging economy in Dhaka is fascinating to watch. Since everybody has now seen Slumdog Millionaire with its depiction of the systematic disabling of perfectly healthy children to be used for begging by organised criminals, the fact that we can do this to each other should be no surprise. Actually, it is the ultimate form of a market economy where the biggest economic profits are fairly well correlated with how horrific the disability is (and how old or young the person is), and so that is what people are subjected to. But with the health ecosystem being what it is here I’d imagine most deformities are naturally caused, or accidents on the roads or in workplaces.
In this picture however, the effect is more subtle. The way he doesn’t wear a sandal on the deformed feet, to draw more attention to it. He lives with and off that feet everyday, and has the time to think of something like that.
Posted 11 months ago
Ah, sweat. I could write a volume on sweat. Dhaka is a town where sweat intermingles. You walk onto a bus with your shirt drenched with your own sweat, but soon, you’re squelching onto others, and you walk off the bus with the distinct smell and wetness of five other men. It’s pretty fucking gross. Your shirt dries hard. But another phenomenon caught my eye the other day: I couldn’t figure out why my shirts and jeans had horizontal white stains all over them. My auntie explained to me that the salt in the sweat solidifies as the shirt dries out. I’m caking my shirts in salt in some kind of geological process. My auntie is so smart.
Posted 11 months ago
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After seeing the extreme degradation that humanity is subjected to on the streets of Dhaka; after seeing the very hellish depths of human suffering, what you really want is a drink. No. Not a chance. It’s a Muslim country and unless you ferment your own, or live the heady life of an expat (instead of the ragged life of an unemployed try-hard) you’re out of luck. But strangely enough, this has been ok. I’ve drunk twice in the last two and a half months and both times were uninspiring. More often it felt like a waste of time, an obstruction. I had nothing that I wanted to forget. Instead I had a lot that I wanted to remember and think about. I’m drunk on poverty baby.
Posted 11 months ago
I have been watching Bangladeshi men very closely whilst they’ve been pissing. In Islam, it is prohibited to pee standing up. Of course It’s best not to question these things, but the answer usually is that it’s dog-like or something. Really. In any case I often stare with a jealous look on my face as someone squats down on their haunches, and whilst fully panted somehow still manages to pee. This all happens whilst my bladder is bursting like an 18th century court maiden’s. I want to get closer to see what’s really going, but for obvious reasons, that’s a little dangerous. How do they do it?
Posted 11 months ago
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I’ve thrown all restraint aside. I present, 9 heads of people you don’t know and will never meet. But look closely, you’ll see hairs, scars, smiles, beards that look like a shedding cat, shocking front teeth, innocence, jowls caked with fat, self-satisfaction, droopy thespian eyes, the unfortunate lack of a chin, you’ll see stories. It’s hard to tell someone’s character from their torso. It’s only slightly easier to tell from their heads. Who are these people? Go and look at your own head in the mirror for a while. It’ll feel like you’re looking at someone else.
As an aside, these were all taken yesterday. The light was good.
Posted 11 months ago
