At The Cinema

Yesterday I went to the movies for the first time in a very long time to see Dune. I’d been waiting for the film for a months, having heard all the hype and watched the trailer I was excited because it was here.

Originally todays blog was going to be about my opinion of Dune, but let’s face it, I’m a photographer, not a film critic.

However, while thinking about critiquing the film, I remembered telling a cameraman at one of the zoom events I’ve had to photograph this past year that I really didn’t need to make new photographs for my blog, because I already had a photograph for anything I would want to write about, and it seems this may even be true.

It’s OK having a picture that relates to what I want to write about, but finding it in my semi-chaotic filing system can be a problem that takes time.

In this instance I knew what picture I needed. I had photographed the Odeon cinema in London’s Holloway district back in 1999, but never having had a need to use the images in 22 years meant the negatives could be just about anywhere.

As it turned out my old negative filing system was sad, but finding the negs was not that difficult..

I’m not sure why I wanted to shoot the theatre back then, or why I went back a couple of times to do so, but I did.

What? I ask myself now, was I trying to do with the hand-held night shots? 

I don’t remember, it was 22 years ago.  I do remember shooting the cinema during  the day and thinking, no, this needs to be a night shot. In all, for whatever reason I photographed this cinema I used two rolls of film, which for me is a lot on a mildly interesting building,.

As for Dune, it was OK. It’s a known space opera, the plot, is never going to change.Sadly the characters seem as underdeveloped and implausible in this version as they did in the first, which was a huge flop. Version two is better, but ………

Todays photos were shot with a Bronica SQA using Kodak T-Max asa 400.

Mask Thinking

The new mask regulations have got me thinking, not about the virus but about the human side of the tragedy. A couple of days ago I wrote about the rise of Lyme disease due to people spending more time in nature. Next day, a connection was made while watching a YouTube video presented by Michael Lambert, a small business owner who talked about the destruction Brexit was causing to his business (he is a small-time entrepreneur), a video I had watched a few days previously about the negative financial effects of the virus on small English towns and the mask rules now in force https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bkdzUIrmio.

The theme of Lambert’s video was how political decisions can have devastating effects on the everyday life of small business owners, which then extrapolates out into the wider community.

 An upmarket tailor interviewed for the pandemic piece told how he had saved his business by making exclusive designer masks. Before the pandemic he had had two shops but he had to close one and it was the masks sales in the second that were keeping him afloat.

To my point: many small entrepreneurial people in Berlin turned to making and marketing masks as both a safety item and a fashion statement.

They were being sold at markets and in some stores.

Not any more.

The new rule has just shut them down, all the money they invested gone, and it’s not like we had any previous notice, unless three days is considered enough.

Also, I was in a REWE store yesterday when a man wearing a surgical mask was refused entry. He asked if he could buy a FFP2 mask but they had sold out.

His conundrum, he couldn’t enter without an FFP2 mask, couldn’t buy one, so he couldn’t buy food.

So Michael Lambert is so right, badly thought-through political decisions have serious effects on us every day in so many little ways.

Bronica SQA, 80mm, Fomapan 200 ASA

Fashion Trends

New mask restrictions came into force in Berlin today. It is now mandatory to wear a FFP2 mask on public transport, in supermarkets etc. Further restrictions are also in place but that’s another story.

Because I have/had a beard I find FFP2 masks very uncomfortable to wear, so I usually opt for the surgical mask. However, while I do understand the reason for the new rules, the implementing of the mandate leaves a lot to be desired, but that too is not the topic for today’s rant.

No it’s fashion that has me thinking the days of the lush beard trend may become a victim of the FFP2 mask law.

I have a friend who has a large beard and when we met last week he was wearing a FFP2 mask. I had to look twice when I first saw him because the effect of the beard and the mask was, well, comical although to be fair to youth, he is not a young man.

But age is not the only criteria as the middle 20`s early 30`s hipsters with their masked designer facial hair are also an interesting spectacle.

The mask reduces the large, lush beard with manly lumberjack connotations too, I’m not sure what.

Also the masks are terribly uncomfortable and irritating when worn with a beard, which is why I took a razor to mine.

Not that it was a great sacrifice, I’m just too lazy to shave regularly.

I suppose to shave or not to shave will depend on how long the virus has its grip on the world. Lush beards take a very long time to cultivate and are often seen as a sign of virility, but maybe, like the pre pandemic hugs we enjoyed when meeting friends, beards will also not be part of the new normal.  

Bronica SQA, 80mm, Foma 200 asa.

Ambiguity can be a good thing

Rambling back through the archives looking for pictures I can use for my current project I stumbled upon a series of images I shot in Indonesia back in 2011, which confirmed my hypothesis that I’ve been doing the blurry un-sharp thing for more years that I can remember.

What do I like about this image?

The ambiguity, despite there being plenty of information in the image.

There’s a fire and it certainly has everyone’s attention but no information about the cause or what’s on fire, nor would you know it was in Indonesia without me telling you.

There’s plenty of action, danger and drama, but nothing about what’s going on. A picture is said to be worth a thousand words but in this case the words are a bit garbled, difficult to understand and yet, the photo is interesting.

Our attention, like that of all those in the picture, is drawn to the bright heat of the fire suggesting there’s an interesting story here, but offering no clear clues as to what it is, only enigmatic mysteries.

 However, if the photo clearly showed the whole story, it might be a pretty picture, but it would also be a pretty boring one,

which is why I like ambiguity in my photos.

As I’ve written before, I never intend my photos to stand-alone but be part of a wider story.

Canon 5D, 24mm, f1.4, 1/13sec, ISO800

Amusing Myself

Staying with the blurry theme; I feel it’s important to declare that most images I shoot in the street are never thought of as stand alone images. They’re not art and I never intend them to be.

Usually I’m shooting to a theme or some sort of narrative I’ve worked out in advance. This makes the process both interesting and a lot of fun. Often the results are very mixed. While some days it all just falls into place, on others, it doesn’t. On these days I’m trying to hard, thinking myself a genius at this sort of thing, only later when viewing the results on the computer do I see I’d been gloating over a swath of uninteresting, meaningless and useless very blurry images.

On the plus side, blur can transform the most mundane and uninteresting locations into vibrant street theatre, with pictures that can run the full metaphorical gambit of humorous, personal or dramatic, all without violating people’s privacy or contravening the local laws.  

When I was at uni studying photography my lecturer told me that if I wanted to learn a new technique the best way to do so was select one lens to use exclusively when practicing the technique. As a consequence, when seeking blur in the street I preselect and use a fixed lens. Either a 28mm, 35mm, or 50mm,but never the 24mm as I find the distortions from this lens a bit too extreme for this type of work.

The above picture was shot with a 50mm. I like it because it makes me chuckle.

Canon 6D, 50mm, 1/60sec

Rules of the Game

A few years ago it became unlawful in Germany to take recognizable photos of people in the street for any commercial purpose without their consent. I didn’t disagree with the law in principal because so many beginners were taking photos of people in often compromising situations, not for the public good, but for their own career path. This always was a one-way street and with the massive proliferation of cameras and camera phones it was only a matter of time before privacy protection laws came into force.

Just after the law was passed Euro Hotels announced a competition to photograph Berlin and I was invited to submit. Besides the usual rules it was made clear that if any people appeared in the image then a consent form was required, as was a permission form if any public statue was also visible.

At first the actual concept of photographing in the streets and getting consent forms just seemed to make things all too hard, but history is full of ways to circumnavigate rules and regulations.

Way back, I think it was the 50s or 60s, a group of Eastern Bloc photographers experimented with taking small jumps as they pressed the camera’s shutter release, a metaphor for movement and/or the constant flux of the city I think was the aim.

The idea didn’t really catch on, but maybe it was just too early, an idea before its time.

To overcome the new rule(s), I recognized that the keyword in the ruling is recognizable and so perfected this style of slow shutter speeds and movement that I still use in the streets today.

It really is like painting with light.

Things Can be Difficult Today

Yesterday I needed to travel from one side of Berlin to the far other, which, considering the current extended period of lockdown, was a considerable change to my routine.

The reason for the trip was my Pentax 6×7 Mk II, which needed repair. After phoning around Germany in an attempt to find anyone to fix it, I was forced back to a mechanic who had previously refused the job. The reason he was hesitant is because there are no parts for the MKII anymore, which means he didn’t want to dismantle a camera he didn’t think he could repair. But I knew the problem and no parts are needed. What was needed is someone with the skill to dismantle and reassemble a camera. So after I supplied the information needed for the fix and absolved him of any possible repercussions for breakages, said I would pay even if it didn’t work, he agreed to have a go.

Here we are in 2021 and finding a camera mechanic is difficult indeed and finding one who will work on non-standard cameras is next to impossible. Back at the turn of the century I had my cameras serviced every six months, which is why they have lasted.

Today, my digital cameras never get serviced.

When they break it’s fix or throw away.

To get to the mechanic in Schöneweide I needed to take the S-Bahn through the center of Berlin and, as mentioned, I haven’t been too far from home for a while. What I noticed was that the city is quiet. Sure, there are plenty of people going about their business but after the chaos that was Berlin before the virus,

it was – how can I say this – pleasant.

People were not aggressive as they were a little over a year ago, the trains weren’t full to  overflowing with loud groups having a wonderful time abusing the city’s infrastructure.

I guess when the pandemic is all over the crowds will return.

After all, the cranes and pounding from the constant building hasn’t stopped over the last year.

But it would be nice for us, the city’s residents, if it takes a few years for the chaos to get back up to speed.

FujiFilm X20, 100sec, ISO100

The Correct Exposure

As the week slowly passed I busied myself reading and looking at the work of other photographers, the Japanese in particular.

I have always like their work from the 1960’s and 70’s, especially the high- contrast urban work of Daido Moriyama who is possibly my favorite, although Shomei Tomatsu’s poignant images of the Hiroshima survivors are exceptional.

While watching a documentary on the work of Moriyama I realized that his preference for the small-compact camera had a lot to do with the images he made. Constant use will make you an expert at using almost any camera, but from the days of film until the current digital age, it’s been a lot easier to be loose and high-contrast with such equipment, at least it is for me. 

Paradoxically, while I like this type of work, at a very early stage in my career I forced myself to learn how to expose a negative for a full range of tones. A classical education, you might say. I belong to you have to know all the rules before you can break them school of thought. The benefit of this view is that, once you’ve mastered exposure, you can adopt any style you like without much trouble.

Daido said in the doco that he understands that the general consensuses amongst photographers is that the best work is done in their 20’s and 30’s, but he didn’t think this was true. The motifs change, but at 73 he still has the hunger to chase great images.

Daido loves photographing in busy big cities.

So do I, but we differ as to how they are depicted. His pictures are often the sleazy nightlife of the Ginza, whereas I go about taking pictures of the city during the day, photographing the everyday everybody dwarfed by their unrelenting surroundings.

Canon 5D, 24-70mm, f5.6, ISO500

Closing Time, Last Orders Please

On the last Friday night before the closing of bars etc. due to the corona virus in November 2020, I was at The Word, a general bar/ meeting place near Kleistpark, Berlin.

Along with a few of my friends we had begun gathering here on Friday nights over the summer months because Another Country, our usual haunt, was closed, the owner, Sophie, being a person considered at high risk to the virus.

Sophie also owns The Word which had opened in late 2019 and been devastated by the earlier lockdowns, which is why we met there, a sign of solidarity with  her for all she had done for us in the past.

The inspiration behind this image had come to me the week earlier and I had arranged with the young woman, who is also the manageress, to attempt a plausible reproduction of Manet’s Eine Bar in den Folies-Bergère

I know it’s difficult to see any similarity and I did shoot a couple of frames of her behind the bar in a similar position as in Manet’s painting but it was never going to work. The painter is free to imagine, whereas a photographer using a film camera is confined by what’s in front of him/her. In this instance, as compared to the previous  offering, I was unable to rearrange things to improve on reality.

 Manet’s painting of Paris nightlife came to defined a period historical exuberance, were as for us, the face mask may become a poignant symbol of our problematic epoch.

Bronic SQA, 80mm, Fomapan 120 film, asa100.

Just Thinking

It’s been a while since I sat down to write for the blog, years in fact.

And if you were wondering – yes, it’s a consequence of the virus, a strategy to evade the worst effects of cabin fever due to the lockdown.

This morning, while walking in the white stuff, I began thinking about the effects of lockdown and Jack Nicholson’s character in the film The Shining, who suffered from extreme cabin fever, which prompted me to resume writing this blog.

I get plenty of exercise with my early daily walks, which often are especially beautiful now with the temps dropping to minus 10 degrees and lots of snow.

Whereas in The Shining it was the absence of stimulation that drove  Jack Torrance into a murderous rage, in these difficult times, it’s the opposite.

Conspiracy theorists, climate deniers, Covid deniers, anti-vaxxers, flat earthers, the list of angry people shouting improvable theories is endless.

Against this voluminous cacophony of acrimonious noise it’s hard for intelligent voices to be heard, disguising the fact that unless societies work together as a single unity to defeat this thing, we are going to be in this shit for many years to come.

Parallels to the corrosive effects of the virus on society can be drawn from the omnipotent threat of nuclear annihilation that the world endured at the height of the cold war. The danger was both real yet distant, although always present in the way people went about their everyday living. Children in school were taught to hide under desks or stand in doorframes in the event of a nuclear attack, the traumatic effects of constant fear on children an issue that has never been addressed. The drumbeat of doom on the nightly news, garish headlines in the newspapers, all of which had a cumulatively negative effect on the common psyche, then as it does now.

In this exhaustive modern version of collective trauma the closure of shops and schools, enforced isolation, business closures and financial instability have massively disrupted everyday life, which suggests that without collective responsibility you have a very real recipe for social instability.

Oh I agree with the lockdowns, it’s the only way to contain the virus. This was proven in the case of African Ebola in 2014.

Rage is not the answer, community is.

There are no easy solutions, there never were, there never have been – growing up should have taught most people this simple fact.

Bronica SQA, 80mm , TRI-X, 400ASA