Alone Together

And different in so many ways

Invited guest: Ewa Stackelberg

I want you to meet Ewa Stackelberg and get to know her
vision and photography. My first meeting with her was when
the book "Tale for the living" Berättelser för levande was
handed over to me by Peter Ragnarsson (I will tell you more
about that later)

I was spellbound by the story and the photograms that Ewa
had created.
It´s my intention to present parts of Ewa´s work during a
period of a couple of weeks, beginning with five photograms
from her exhibition in April this year at Fotografins hus.

She called the exhibition "Surrender" and the three series
of pictures were presented in different rooms. I begin with
showing five pictures from the series called "The Woman"

Photograms are pictures made without a camera. Read more
about it here.
-urbano


There may be a sheet that shields us like a skin.
A thin sheet around our love.
That bears the newborn.
Cools the one that sweats.
Surrounds the lovers.
The ones who loved long ago,
in love scenes that precede us.
And then the sheet around the young.
I want to wrap up their openness.
Raise a weave against the red strobe.
There may be a sheet for the power and fragility of the body.
That surrounds and lets fall.
A cloth to give to the warm darkness.

Ewa Stackelberg























all pictures ©Ewa Stackelberg
invited by ulf fågelhammar

Invited guest: John Strazza (2)

Tableautin Series

Called Tableautin, simply meaning small picture ..Taken with a
Minox LX, a tiny camera using film the size of 9mm. (tiny)

This series points to what I used to call emotional seeing ..
really meaning subconscious seeing i guess.. whatever the case,
it's the background seeing that we do all day but do not focus on ..
these images (for me) touch the part of our mind where we store
what we see and take a second look at that (the memory) in and
of itself .. (so to speak .. ) I hope this rings true in some way ..
I hope it touches the part of our seeing that is truly primitive ..



These images share what I feel so strongly about in photography..
It's not so much about how clear a picture is, certainly not about
pixels or resolution ..

After so many years of making images those issues are long gone ..
a completely different set of issues is with me when doing images now ..
it goes so much deeper and what I find in these images starts to touch
that place where an image finds its life.



These particular series more closely touch the film maker in me .. looking
like 8mm films we saw as children, sitting with family and reliving times
we enjoyed .. it touches a place i can feel within ..

I love seeing these elements enter into the frame - a place where we think
we know what we are seeing, a man, a woman, a bird .. photography is
funny that way - it's a sense of reality .. but here the reality is challenged
a bit with less detail .. so it seemingly taps into our subconscious .. what
I love is seeing the light in a less detailed way .. somehow I see it better
like this because it's not wrapped in photo reality .. oddly, it was reality
(as we know it) that brought the elements of light and beings into this frame
so we have it to view ..



And, then, it all bounces back into what we know is a 2 dimensional image ..
an image of a place, event, a moment that somehow called to my attention ..
communicated to film to, in turn, possibly call to your attention .. and we still
don't really know why in full .. and i hope i don't find out any time soon ..


all pictures ©John Strazza
invited by ulf fågelhammar

woman & chair I
woman & chair II

this could be me
& it is