invited guest: Anna Onopiuk "Molly" (part 2)

more of Molly's works you may see in our former post

invited by Marcin Górski

F is for Family

This is my grandfather Carl S. Buchanan. Jaunty hat, enigmatic grin…external details that belie his true character. I met him once at a family reunion when I was a child and he never spoke. Just a perfunctory pat on the head as he turned back to his cigarette. Over the years I have heard stories about his life in Tennessee. He lived with my grandmother and their seven children in a small, rural town, sharing a tiny two-room shack. He was a moonshiner and a gambler…evading the law…a picturesque character… But then the other stories have surfaced, acts of cruelty too horrific to mention here. Sometimes we look back at family albums to understand where we came from. But we also look back to see what we have escaped…

(I'm not sure who took this picture but it appears to be a studio picture taken in the 40's or 50's)

silent lamb

photographer: Jan Bernhardtz

Einstein school

Photographer © Henrik Müller

From family archives

I received these lines from Emese Altnöder, Hungary; "the photographer unknown, on the picture my grandfather visible diving, a picture from the family archive."

On the F Blog we are open to all possible directions or categories of photography, helping us to explain what the magic of photography is about. We will continue to show photojournalism, realism, surrealism, modernism or any other "ism" related to photography you may think of or invent...yes even pictorialism! When it comes to technique we have pinhole photos, pictures made with large format cameras, digital, film etc. To us it is the image that matters, not the "category" or "technique" or the name of the photographer.

I think it is by time that we have a look into the family albums to see what they hold. Welcome to send pictures to our inbox. Please only send pictures that are in your possesion, it doesn´t matter if it is your old grandfather's album or some photo found in a shoebox etc. If you know about the photographer, give him or her credit. If not, you just name it "photographer unknown". Come to think of it (F)amily begins with F too! Stay tuned to the coolest photoblog around! There for Photography.

three photographs

Photographer © Alf Johansson

invited guest: Francisco Mata Rosas

México Tenochtitlán
Throughout the years, I’ve often discovered existing parallels between traditional festivals and daily life in Mexico City, I’ve noticed the relation between political acts and religious expressions. I’ve linked urban landscapes with feelings, have found explanations for what is collective within the individual and I tried to understand the internal mechanism that allows for co-existence in this city, and I claimed something that already belonged to me, a sense of humor and irony that are part of our reality.

In these neighborhoods, in these festivities, in these streets, I often ran into what I had already seen; and within the visual disorder and chaos I recognized pre-hispanic, colonial, and contemporary art, one only has to separate them. I almost always felt limited by the medium that I had chosen, photography, but on the other hand I recognized its qualities of synthesis, dramatization and, above all, metaphor.













Additionally, I understood that the city is too vast to be contained or photographed in its totality. When this certainty became part of my work, my angst and aspirations diminished, I no longer wanted to document extensively the traditions, I was no longer concerned with offering a definitive testament about Mexico City at the very end of the 20^th Century, and I only wanted to be there, be part of the cycles, to confirm my pleasure in chaos and order that are created during the festival days, of the truces agreed on between tough neighborhoods and, above all, I only wanted to do my job well, take photographs for me, for my wife, my family and my friends


All text and photos © 2008 Francisco Mata Rosas.

Francisco Mata Rosas, is one of Mexico’s most prestigious photographers and has gained broad international recognition for his images, which are tough, sensitive, and thought-provoking.

Recently, as an invited guest, Francisco’s outstanding work done in Cuba was presented on the F Blog. It is a pleasure to invite Francisco for a return visit in order to present his images taken in Mexico City. The images depict the simultaneity of ancient cultural practices and the post-industrial reality of daily life.

You can see FMR’s Cuban images and his resume/exhibition history here. And to see more images from México Tenochtitlán:

Invited by Bea Rowland