Florida tomatoe pickers

Tomato Pickers in Immokalee, Florida

Immokalee is Florida's largest farmworker community. Migrant workers (mostly mexican and guantemalan immigrants) pick tomatoes for below poverty level wages under extreme working and living conditions. Cases of slavery have occurred, and workers are often mistreated.

They workers are paid 45 cents for every 32-pound bucket of tomatoes collected. A worker has to pick nearly two-and-a-half tons of tomatoes - a near impossibility - in order to reach minimum wage.

The Coalition of Immokalle Worker (CIW) is a community-based worker organization that fights for better wages and worker's rights.

Photographer Chris Maluszynski /MOMENT
January 2008

Un-iverse

photo: Tatiana Bitir

Lennart Nilsson: Somewhere in Stockholm (Någonstans i Stockholm)

Lennart Nilsson is along with Christer Strömholm perhaps the internationally most celebrated and well known Swedish photographer. In this exhibition opening on 31 May in Kulturhuset, Stockholm we will be presented to some of Lennart Nilsson´s earlier work from the 1940 -1960´s when he worked on assignments for some Swedish magazines. There will be around 40 photographs by the master photographer in this exhibition, none of them previously exhibited. Something to look forward to. The exhibition will be on until 7 September. You should also have a look at www.lennartnilsson.com
All photos ©Lennart Nilsson

F-Moments

I had a discussion recently with a local artist about the decisive moment. This artist is a huge fan of Bresson and in his opinion my photos were lacking because they did not contain what Bresson’s photographs contained. To him that meant some specific event occurring spontaneously and the camera freezing time and motion to capture the observed event. Photographs without an event that depict only still objects could never portray the ‘moment.’ I argued that possibly my pictures of things and places could encapsulate a moment because of the feeling created by light, shadow, textures, composition and expectancy of what might occur just before or just after the shutter release.

After thinking and reading about this subject I’ve decided I agree with my friend. I believe there needs to be an event captured by the camera at a precise instant, however mundane, however simple to create a moment. Still pictures can display a feeling or mood or emotion but probably not a decisive moment except in the mind of the photographer because they know the story and circumstances and events surrounding the time of the exposure.

The photo above is an example of this…I was taking a picture of the fence because I liked the textures and light. But when I had the picture developed I noticed the woman’s head in the doorway, watching me, wondering why this crazy woman was perched outside her fence. This photo became a moment… Now that’s not to say I will no longer enjoy taking pictures of still objects and places, but like Beatriz, I think it is the unplanned, unexpected, lucky moments that present themselves unannounced that motivate me most as a photographer.

Spring

Gliwice House of Photography:"My world"-Part 1

“My world, my reality”

Authors of photos: Krzysztof Wyszyński, Krzysztof Piszczelok, Damian Cięciek, Marek Skrzypek, Jacek Krzemiński, Henryk Pawełczyk, Janusz Przyklenk, Robert Mioduszewski, Michał Hein, Antoni Klon, Adam Sadlak.












Read more about project here.

When I was young

Photo: Jan Bernhardtz

merry merry merry

New York moments

1. The hat seller. New York City 2004

2. Central Park. New York City 2004

3. Under the Brooklyn Bridge. New York City 2004

4. Tiger Woods. New York City 2004

5. Ground Zero. New York City 2004

6. On the corner of west 13th St. and 9th Av. New York City 2004

7. Laurie. New York City 2004

8. D-train. New York City 2004

New York City. Love it or hate it. Either way, everybody has an opinion.
I think Frank Sinatra sums it up nicely:

I wanna wake up in a city
That doesn't sleep
And find I'm king of the hill
Top of the heap
These little town blues
Are melting a way
I'll make a brand-new start of it
In old New York
If I can make it there
I'll make it anywhere
It's up to you New York, New York

Photos by © Tommi Pirnes
Tommi is one of our invited photographers. I am very glad to see you here again/ulf

Trees (86)

Another oldie...

extenuating circumstances

Father

Photo: Alf Johansson

F Blog moments

Lately I have been thinking about what the "moment", or even the "descisive moment" is in a photograph. "Only the moment lives - and the moment is eternity" is the title of a film about the Swedish photographer Georg Oddner. It is a beautiful title.

I could make it easy and start to refer to the masters of photography and their interpretation of the moment. But the question is still there. What is the moment in photography?

The older I get, the harder I find it to answer such a question. So, what is your interpretation of the "moment", dear readers and authors of the F Blog. Let us try to find out more about it, exploring the wonders of photography without any ambition to find the "correct "answer to what the elusive moment is all about. You are welcome to send your contributions to Gruppo F Inbox. This project will be labelled "F blog moments.".

Stay tuned.

/ulf

Trees (85)

carousel

Photo: Jan Bernhardtz

Docu 08: Liseberg, opening today

Liseberg amusement park, Gothenburg, Sweden
Date: 26 April, 2008
Photos: Jan Buse

Face to face (125)

Waiting for Andy Warhol
Photo: Owen O´Meara

DOCU 08: Dhaka struggling to tackle worsening diarrhea

The diarrhea situation in Bangladesh has worsened day by day with the temperature increases. The national Center for Diarrhea Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR, B), a special research center and hospital for diarrhea patients in the capital Dhaka, has received hundreds of diarrhea patients over the last week. According to the (ICDDR, B), on an average 300 patients came from different parts of the city fortreatment every day. With increasing temperature and humidity, the ICDBR sees a sharprise in the number of patients. In the beginning ofthe summer, city people especially day laboures, rickshaw pullers, street vendors and slum dwellers get diarrhea drinking contaminated water and having unhygienic food.

photos and text: G.M.B. Akash

invited guest: Anni Leppälä

Last autumn, 2008.

"My interest towards photography is closely related to time in the past tense, to the possibility of being able to make a moment motionless, to make something stand still. That something has existed, and has now been set in static state. There is a certain aspect of lost moments and a feeling of letting go when looking at photographs. They exist at the intersection of the momentary and the constant, between the fleeting feeling of being alive and consciousness of the moments passing by.

Living room, 2008.

Feeding, 2007.

Autumn, 2007

In my pictures, attempts in recognising and lighting of obscure and vague movements, are made visible. I want to approach the momentariness of living through constancy. The paradox is that when you try to conserve or protect a moment by stopping it, by photographing it, you inevitably lose it at the same time. I am interested in exploring these contradictions and borderlines between things, how distance relates to closeness.

Being there, 2007.

Rooms: girl in a museum, 2007.

Symbolic meanings are essential in my works. I am interested in how the concrete surface of reality and photographs relate to metaphorical things that can be found underneath. I try to trace those kinds of occasions of seeing when words dissolve and scatter apart, objects and incidents intensify into symbolic language, silent information and intuitive interpretation. What fills the room behind the picture, allows one to step closer. Thoughts of incompleteness and insecurity are also important to my works.

Museum curtains, 2007.

With Flora (portrait of an ancestor), 2008.

Dollhouse, 2005

Objects and spaces can occur to be like transparent routes between the inside and the outside, between the seen surface and unconscious content. Museums and miniature rooms become entrances to each other. Balance and its fragility, delicacy are present simultaneously. How to stop a feeling, a memory? By binding it to visible objects, facades of material things, attaching it to a room’s walls, the surface of photographs. Like translucent skin with unforeseen memories beneath." - Anni Leppälä

Garden, 2007.

Anni Emilia Leppälä, born in Helsinki 1981 and student of the University of Art and Design Helsinki has exhibited her work in several countries since 2001 including Sweden, France and Germany. This year her work is seen in Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova, Turku Finland and Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France among other places. Her work can also bee seen in collections at the Helsinki City Art Museum, the Finnish Institute in London, the Teutloff Collection, Germany etc.

See more of Annis work at Helsinki School/Artists.
invited by ulf fågelhammar