Really, for me, if we are speaking of photography in terms of love, it has to be film. I like to get involved with the little machine, the camera itself, focusing, setting the aperture and shutter speed, estimating the best effect. I like the relative permanence of the negative, stored away. We have, in some ways, had digital thrust upon us and for me modern cameras with automatic everything and immediate results on the screen, can both enchant and disenchant. Sometimes delayed gratification is the only way! But having bought myself a Lumix G1, I have also bought some adapters so I can use old lenses on the digital camera. So far my adapters are Leica screw, Olympus OM and Nikon. The Leica seems maybe a bit more specialised because the main reason for buying it was to use my one Leica screw-mount lens, a scratched old Summar. However, I also have a Jupiter lens from a Zorki and that should be interesting.
Both the Nikon and Olympus adapters work very well with the lenses, completely manual focusing of course, and I will post stuff up as soon as I take something worth seeing. I want to get at least one more though, so I can use my Voigtlander Bessamatic lenses, especially the Septon. Here is an interesting and comprehensive review of that lens on a digital camera:
http://forum.mflenses.com/voigtlaender-septon-2-50-for-bessamatic-review-t33501.html
But I don't think I will ever give up film. I am dying to get out there with my Rolleiflex or Mamiya 645. Film just has something, and what can seem like inherent limitations of the medium are, like some of those old lenses, more a matter of character than a limit and a spur to creativity.
Tuesday, 12 February 2013
Thinking on photography
Apologies first for the 'dead' links here, cut and paste them and they take you to the Flickr page. In future most of the images will either be cut and pasted into the entry or there will be a live link. And starting with the question: what sort of photographer am I? Because although in some ways I have defined this for myself a long time ago, through my participation and my passionate engagement with the work of Emila Medkova, this can not remain a static thing. It is to some extent redefined by every new photograph and by the examination of every old photo that I rediscover. So, if I look at an oldish image like this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuartinman/2804816221/in/photostream/lightbox/
it seems not so different to one such as this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuartinman/7537967230/in/photostream/lightbox/
in that it is the result of wandering and looking and finding that extraordinary double-image, the extrusion of the imagination into the real world. So what about this?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuartinman/6258929944/in/photostream/lightbox/
Admittedly the last shot was done as part of a project for a friend organising a Burlesque show, but I think that in the end I put as much of myself into it. Then again, going back to the 'paranoiac-critical' image, is this in some way different?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuartinman/7585439288/in/photostream/lightbox/
It seems in some way more obviously convulsive and chaotic, but maybe that is just me. Maybe it is just the demands of each image as I find them.
What all this does though is show moments that perhaps defined me at that moment, but neither define me in any permanent way nor in this present moment. Isn't that actually the way it should be?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuartinman/2804816221/in/photostream/lightbox/
it seems not so different to one such as this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuartinman/7537967230/in/photostream/lightbox/
in that it is the result of wandering and looking and finding that extraordinary double-image, the extrusion of the imagination into the real world. So what about this?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuartinman/6258929944/in/photostream/lightbox/
Admittedly the last shot was done as part of a project for a friend organising a Burlesque show, but I think that in the end I put as much of myself into it. Then again, going back to the 'paranoiac-critical' image, is this in some way different?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuartinman/7585439288/in/photostream/lightbox/
It seems in some way more obviously convulsive and chaotic, but maybe that is just me. Maybe it is just the demands of each image as I find them.
What all this does though is show moments that perhaps defined me at that moment, but neither define me in any permanent way nor in this present moment. Isn't that actually the way it should be?
Back to the blog
I thought it was time I started writing things on this blog again. Of course, the internet is littered with dead blogs, and in many cases their death is unmourned, so I can only hope that if this one returns from the dead (or was it only sleeping?) it will not be met with utter indifference in every quarter.
I have had plenty of time to reassess what it should be about. I am as prone as many to give vent to a little rant on the state of things, the world, the dreadful ConDem government, young people - young people??? - no, I am not quite that old yet. But I'm thinking there's areas I have not explored in writing and maybe I will be less boring than some and that in an age when the blog has become a universal Diary of a Nobody I won't become too Pooterish.
So, poetry, photography, drawing and painting, art criticism, thoughts on surrealism, mythology, politics , architecture and wanderings, what else? Well, it will surely come to me as I proceed is it premature to say watch this space? We'll see...
I have had plenty of time to reassess what it should be about. I am as prone as many to give vent to a little rant on the state of things, the world, the dreadful ConDem government, young people - young people??? - no, I am not quite that old yet. But I'm thinking there's areas I have not explored in writing and maybe I will be less boring than some and that in an age when the blog has become a universal Diary of a Nobody I won't become too Pooterish.
So, poetry, photography, drawing and painting, art criticism, thoughts on surrealism, mythology, politics , architecture and wanderings, what else? Well, it will surely come to me as I proceed is it premature to say watch this space? We'll see...
Sunday, 20 June 2010
Saturday, 19 June 2010
Svankmajer on cancelling his attendance at the West Dean conference
The Leeds Surrealist Group have published texts by Jan Svankmajer and the Czech and Slovak Surrealist Group concerning his decision to cancell his attendance at the conference on surrealism at West Dean:
http://leedssurrealistgroup.wordpress.com/
A statement in support of him will soon be available on the London Surrealist Group blog.
http://leedssurrealistgroup.wordpress.com/
A statement in support of him will soon be available on the London Surrealist Group blog.
Monday, 7 June 2010
Magon and Zapata Spoke Through Them
I have just received the following tract by the Paris Group of the Surrealist Movement. I thought it worth further distribution.
MAGON AND ZAPATA SPOKE THROUGH THEM
On the murder of Betty and Yiry
In a declaration made shortly before her death, Betty Cariño said: “Our feet firmly on
the ground, our heads held high; with dignity, a focused spirit and burning heart.” Her
heart, like that of the young Finn, Yiry Jaakkola, has stopped beating, victims of the
PRI paramilitary hired killers responsible for the abuses against the autonomous
commune of San Juan Copala, the village of the rebellious Triqui natives whom they
would like to cut off from the rest of the world; the assassins responsible for the
armed attack upon the solidarity caravan, taken in ambush. Through our voice, Betty
said, speak the voices of the Oaxaca women in struggle, the voices of Magon and
Zapata, the voices of all our ancestors who have fought for freedom. This heart,
which she recently compared to that of a flower opening towards the sun’s rays of
the days to come, continues to beat in Mexico, in France, wherever human beings
stand up against the intolerable submission to all the tyrannies on our planet. No
machine-gun can silence this voice, which will continue to resonate in the mountains
and valleys of Oaxaca and the whole of Mexico, to murmur in the rivers, to thunder in
the tropical storms, to blow with the wind, to sing in the waterfalls. It will manage,
inevitably, to break the jaws of the killing-machine used by the oligarchy and by
Capital.
Paris, 11th May, 2010
The Paris Group of the Surrealist Movement
Anny Bonnin, Michèle Bachelet, Hervé Delabarre, Alfredo Fernandes, Michaël Löwy,
Marie-Dominique Massoni, Dominique Paul, Bertrand Schmitt, Michel Zimbacca,
and their friends: Guy Girard, Jean-Jacques Méric
MAGON AND ZAPATA SPOKE THROUGH THEM
On the murder of Betty and Yiry
In a declaration made shortly before her death, Betty Cariño said: “Our feet firmly on
the ground, our heads held high; with dignity, a focused spirit and burning heart.” Her
heart, like that of the young Finn, Yiry Jaakkola, has stopped beating, victims of the
PRI paramilitary hired killers responsible for the abuses against the autonomous
commune of San Juan Copala, the village of the rebellious Triqui natives whom they
would like to cut off from the rest of the world; the assassins responsible for the
armed attack upon the solidarity caravan, taken in ambush. Through our voice, Betty
said, speak the voices of the Oaxaca women in struggle, the voices of Magon and
Zapata, the voices of all our ancestors who have fought for freedom. This heart,
which she recently compared to that of a flower opening towards the sun’s rays of
the days to come, continues to beat in Mexico, in France, wherever human beings
stand up against the intolerable submission to all the tyrannies on our planet. No
machine-gun can silence this voice, which will continue to resonate in the mountains
and valleys of Oaxaca and the whole of Mexico, to murmur in the rivers, to thunder in
the tropical storms, to blow with the wind, to sing in the waterfalls. It will manage,
inevitably, to break the jaws of the killing-machine used by the oligarchy and by
Capital.
Paris, 11th May, 2010
The Paris Group of the Surrealist Movement
Anny Bonnin, Michèle Bachelet, Hervé Delabarre, Alfredo Fernandes, Michaël Löwy,
Marie-Dominique Massoni, Dominique Paul, Bertrand Schmitt, Michel Zimbacca,
and their friends: Guy Girard, Jean-Jacques Méric
Tuesday, 16 March 2010
Patricide
This morning I received my copy of the new magazine Patricide in the post. The subtitle of this magazine is 'documentary surrealism' which explains to some extent why I chose to send one of my photos to the editor, Neil Coombs, and why I received a contributor's copy. I must admit to having had some qualms, I have seen a good many publications over the years, claiming to be surrealist, but with little, if any, idea as to what surrealism might be and why the magazine should be so considered beyond possibly an adherence to the wacky.
Having had brief discussions with Neil Coombs, I was reasonably convinced that this would not be the worst publication under the surrealist rubric and it would not be a waste of my time contributing, but was till unsure as to what degree it might be considered authentically surrealist. I knew that at least a couple of other surrealists known to me were contributing and that Coombs was not wholly ignorant of the subject, so it was a risk worth taking, even if the magazine was a disappointment.
Patricide is well produced, rather in the style of an academic journal, over 100 pages of essays, photographs and drawings as well as various quotes from surrealist or quasi-surrealist sources (Breton, Debord, Painleve and Matthias Forshage among others). I would say that it is indeed a worthwhile publication, but don't think that as yet it has shown itself to be a surrealist publication, rather it is an eclectic effort that has set up camp in the interstices between surrealism and other ideas and practices. This is a criticism, but not a condemnation.
To my way of thinking, in order to really qualify as a surrealist publication a magazine really needs to engage with surrealist ideas and activities to a far greater degree than does Patricide. Really it touches upon them and adds them to a mix that involves much else, often worthwhile in its own right. For the most part it does not have a genuine surrealist perspective so much as present a collage of image and text that dips in and out of surrealism in various ways. Again, not a condemnation but a criticism as this can be a good tactic; after all, the most important surrealist journal currently in publication, Analogon, constantly crosses the borders between surrealism and other currents and has published much that is explicitly not surrealist. The difference is that Analogon brings these together within a framework of surrealist perspectives and critique and the first issue of Patricide does not.
To be sure, Coombs' editorial does show some commitment to the surrealist vision, he specifically says that:
"Academics and bourgeoise (sic) bohemians attempt to claim surrealism for themselves yet it stubbornly resists. Surrealism does not reside in the private and public collections of the art dealers and galleries or the purses of government agencies but in the practices of surrealist individuals and groups across the world." (Coombs 2010)
I have no argument with this statement whatsoever, I welcome it as the editor's perspective and it reflects my own understanding completely but it is far from being a complete statement of what surrealism, its ideas and practices, might be. Coombs does make a brief attack on capitalism and its meshing with "an ever more complex technological and theocratic apparatus" (Ibid) which all augers well, but does not go beyond the opinions of the editor himself, it can't be said to be a common position for the contributors of the magazine, although one might like to think that it does. Coombs admits that "Although they are not all active as surrealists, the contributors to Patricide have been appropriated by this journal..." (Ibid) and this is both an advantage and a problem. One drawback in some surrealist publications can be that the focus is too narrow, sure they reflect surrealist perspectives, but can come across as dogmatic, often in reaction to more eclectic approaches that do not reflect surrealist principles in any substantial way. In this instance there is no sense that the contributors have anything in common except the fact of being contributors and thus, presumably, have no objection to being in something with the surrealist label, but it seems to me to be too much of a label or a flag of convenience, perhaps not for the editor and I'd not wish to accuse any individual here among the contributors either. It is rather the unease of seeing a mass of material that can not be vouched for in any way within the context in which it demands to be considered.
Once again, I am not condemning, but criticising. Patricide has not yet proven itself as a surrealist publication, but this is only the first issue. It requires a far more rigorous theoretical stance, one that is both principled and flexible in its actual practice, well informed and concrete in its expression. It needs to articulate its position in a way that it has so far failed to do, but the most important words here are "so far". Patricide might actually show itself as an eclectic venture, running up surrealism's Jolly Roger as a flag of convenience or it might become something far more potent. I can only hope that it manages the latter, we could do with another genuine surrealist magazine, but what will happen remains to be seen.
The second issue will have theme of "seaside surrealism" a theme first broached in the 1930s. This has both possibilities of realisation and of potential limitations, perhaps we shall then see what it really is. Meanwhile, for anybody who is curious I would suggest acquiring a copy as it is certainly worth reading, even with my provisos.
Having had brief discussions with Neil Coombs, I was reasonably convinced that this would not be the worst publication under the surrealist rubric and it would not be a waste of my time contributing, but was till unsure as to what degree it might be considered authentically surrealist. I knew that at least a couple of other surrealists known to me were contributing and that Coombs was not wholly ignorant of the subject, so it was a risk worth taking, even if the magazine was a disappointment.
Patricide is well produced, rather in the style of an academic journal, over 100 pages of essays, photographs and drawings as well as various quotes from surrealist or quasi-surrealist sources (Breton, Debord, Painleve and Matthias Forshage among others). I would say that it is indeed a worthwhile publication, but don't think that as yet it has shown itself to be a surrealist publication, rather it is an eclectic effort that has set up camp in the interstices between surrealism and other ideas and practices. This is a criticism, but not a condemnation.
To my way of thinking, in order to really qualify as a surrealist publication a magazine really needs to engage with surrealist ideas and activities to a far greater degree than does Patricide. Really it touches upon them and adds them to a mix that involves much else, often worthwhile in its own right. For the most part it does not have a genuine surrealist perspective so much as present a collage of image and text that dips in and out of surrealism in various ways. Again, not a condemnation but a criticism as this can be a good tactic; after all, the most important surrealist journal currently in publication, Analogon, constantly crosses the borders between surrealism and other currents and has published much that is explicitly not surrealist. The difference is that Analogon brings these together within a framework of surrealist perspectives and critique and the first issue of Patricide does not.
To be sure, Coombs' editorial does show some commitment to the surrealist vision, he specifically says that:
"Academics and bourgeoise (sic) bohemians attempt to claim surrealism for themselves yet it stubbornly resists. Surrealism does not reside in the private and public collections of the art dealers and galleries or the purses of government agencies but in the practices of surrealist individuals and groups across the world." (Coombs 2010)
I have no argument with this statement whatsoever, I welcome it as the editor's perspective and it reflects my own understanding completely but it is far from being a complete statement of what surrealism, its ideas and practices, might be. Coombs does make a brief attack on capitalism and its meshing with "an ever more complex technological and theocratic apparatus" (Ibid) which all augers well, but does not go beyond the opinions of the editor himself, it can't be said to be a common position for the contributors of the magazine, although one might like to think that it does. Coombs admits that "Although they are not all active as surrealists, the contributors to Patricide have been appropriated by this journal..." (Ibid) and this is both an advantage and a problem. One drawback in some surrealist publications can be that the focus is too narrow, sure they reflect surrealist perspectives, but can come across as dogmatic, often in reaction to more eclectic approaches that do not reflect surrealist principles in any substantial way. In this instance there is no sense that the contributors have anything in common except the fact of being contributors and thus, presumably, have no objection to being in something with the surrealist label, but it seems to me to be too much of a label or a flag of convenience, perhaps not for the editor and I'd not wish to accuse any individual here among the contributors either. It is rather the unease of seeing a mass of material that can not be vouched for in any way within the context in which it demands to be considered.
Once again, I am not condemning, but criticising. Patricide has not yet proven itself as a surrealist publication, but this is only the first issue. It requires a far more rigorous theoretical stance, one that is both principled and flexible in its actual practice, well informed and concrete in its expression. It needs to articulate its position in a way that it has so far failed to do, but the most important words here are "so far". Patricide might actually show itself as an eclectic venture, running up surrealism's Jolly Roger as a flag of convenience or it might become something far more potent. I can only hope that it manages the latter, we could do with another genuine surrealist magazine, but what will happen remains to be seen.
The second issue will have theme of "seaside surrealism" a theme first broached in the 1930s. This has both possibilities of realisation and of potential limitations, perhaps we shall then see what it really is. Meanwhile, for anybody who is curious I would suggest acquiring a copy as it is certainly worth reading, even with my provisos.
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