new postcards from Fundao

miedieval part of small town - Fundao, located in Portuguese mountains; inhabited now by community of Gypsies

torticollis

Only in Gothenburg folks, only in Gothenburg...

Claudio Edinger: From Jesus to Miracle

From Jesus to Miracles, 
-The Hinterland of Bahia-

Bahia is located right in the heart of Brazil. This is not accident. The region carries the emotion and intensity to match the geographical location. Bahia has generated the music of Gaetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil and the literature of Jorge Amado. There one also finds “Literatura de Cordel”, popular stories all written in verse as well as Candomble, Brazil’s own version of the fascinating African religion which, here, mixes African gods with Catholic saints.

The Sertao of Bahia – its hinterland – has been the stage of several conflicts and is plagued by perennial, severe drought. This has created a very industrious and sturdy people who are survivors. Claudio Edinger has photographed this region between the two cities of Bom Jesus da Lapa and Milagres, for two years (2005-2007) and has created an unique body of work, all shot in colour, with 4x5” camera.

Brazilian born Claudio Edinger is the author of several award winning books, including „Chelsea Hotel”, „Venice Beach”, „Carnaval”, „Madness” and „Old Havana”. His photographs have appeared in all major magazines around the world. His works has been exhibited at The International Center of Photography (NY), Centre Gorges Pompidou (France), Photographer’s Gallery (UK), Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo and Museu de Arte Moderna (Brazil) among others. He has been awarded The Leica Medal of Excellence twice (1983 and 1986), The Ernst Haas Award (1990), The Pictures of the Year Award (1996), The Porto Seguro Award (Brazil, 2007) and Higashika Award (Japan, 1999), for Best Foreign Photographer of the Year.

More of Claudio's works you may see on his web site ->

invited by Marcin Górski

onions

"
the last white slabs of snow
melted off seven weeks ago.
and the geese are headed north again
through the tightening sky,
and i can feel my heart in my throat again
new onions growing in the ground.


the cows come gingerly out of the barn,
and when they see that the ground is warm,
they pick up a little speed,
it makes me feel so good,
and i feel it rushing down my throat -- fresh blood,
i head out onto the earth,
its cold heart is melting,
i don't know if i can stand it.
springtime's coming, that means you'll be coming back around.
new onions growing underground, underground.

"
Lyrics from the song Onions by the Mountain Goats. The song can be found on their CD "The coroners gambit". Probably one of the five best records ever made.

Invited guest: Tate Foley

www.tatemillerton.com

-invited by Lina Nääs

Hurried

Air - an exihibition at Frölunda kulturhus, Gothenburg

Anna Edlund

Anna Edlund, a previous invited guest of the F Blog, and Michael Björck sent us a mail about their exhibition at Frölunda kulturhus in Gothenburg.

They write:
"Out there in the air, the sky is high. It's easy to breathe and our thoughts find new trails. We are showing pictures from our walks. Pictures that we've met, that we've captured and that have captured us. Outside we are free from whirling thoughts and demands. Tranquility is in the air."

The Opening will be held Saturday 18/4 at 12-16 and the exihibition will then hang until 10/5

Michael Björck

Spring nap

Photographer: Luc Rabaey

Another bird

meeting photographers: Alex Majoli

Alex Majoli, from the exhibition Un monde en partage, 2008, photo courtesy of The Foundation Group TP.

Fblog /joanna/: let me first introduce myself. I work in the gallery of fine arts, I deal with photography mainly in the education goals. I represent the Fblog, which is international group of people. It is a blog “about photography, with photographs by photographers”.We’ve been lately talking with Alec Soth or Martin Parr.
Mr Majoli, how would you describe your work? You are photographer, photojournalist, war-photographer, or documentary photographer…?

Alex Majoli: No, that is up to you to describe, not me.

Fblog: So how would you describe yourself?

Alex Majoli: I don’t. I’m just making picture. I’m a photojournalist, but also… it’s not easy to categorise, if you look at my war picture then i’m a war photograper, if you look on my “isolation” pictures then i’m art photographer, if you look my portrait, then i’m an editorial portrait photographer. Sometimes i do advertisement photography, so i’m an advertisement photographer. How can you describe this?

Fblog: We call it in Poland “an interesting person”. Afterall you cover all these topics.

Alex Majoli: Yeah, the country I come from is famous of it’s handicrafts, in everything. They’re able to riddle the things out of everything! But now it’s all going to merge.

Fblog: As we’re in Italy now, who is your favourite Italian writer? You’ve mentioned Luigi Pirandello in your “Libera Me” project…

Alex Majoli: One of my most favourite is definitely Pirandello, but there are many others. Calvino, Tabucchi, they are many… but favourite is Pirandello.

Fblog: And your favourite, the best photographer from Italy?

Alex Majoli: Can I name two? Luigi Ghirri and Mario Giacomelli.
Fblog: What was the hardest assignement you’ve get?

Alex Majoli: There were many different difficulties on an assignement. We say the hardest could be the last one, always. One was in Ghaza… because it was difficult to get access. And the other one was doing an documentary about jamaican diaspora in London. It was extremely difficult to photograph, and filming (because there was also documentary film), to make an access and do something that made sense. I had never as much difficulties in my life to get access to it.

Fblog: You’ve wrote on your Magnum site that once you had a big problem with power supply, you couldn’t charged your batteries, that was suprising and you weren’t ready for these circumstancves… do you remember in which project it was?

Alex Majoli: Maybe it was in Afghanistan, or it was one of the latest in Iraq, but no, in Iraq we always had some military power supply, I think it was Afghanistan.

Fblog: How does ideas for your personal projects emerge?

Alex Majoli: I believe in encounters. Like meet people and their stories, definitely. And I like to make a mathematic combination of things between who you are and what is your experience. Most of my projects, for example, my personal project come from a single fact that I work a lot in a place and then I found that something about this place that haven’t been told or I’m really interested on it.
I always have a list of things to do, of big projects. You’re never going through, you forget, and never do that. Sometimes you forget. At the moment I’m doing something about Brasil and I want to keep on working on this “Libera Me” project, which is completely different.

Fblog: So you’re saying you work sometimes with a mathematical approach…

Alex Majoli: Mathematical, cause it’s about simple things. It goes like this: I like to photograph that city. And then, in that city: I like to photograph this and that, and then I’m coming from this culture and I assume my life to photograph the things.

Fblog: I’m not surprised by your “mathematical” approach, cause I believe “one vote” is a very conceptulised project.

Alex Majoli: It is!

Fblog: It’s your first and only ver conceptulised one…

Alex Majoli: But there is much more things to say, that you don’t know about, and maybe someday as my website – as I got one done, and show something much more conceptual than that! There are a lot of things I’ve done much more conceptual. For example photographed two chairs in my studio.

Fblog: You mean something like Joseph Kossuth?

Alex Majoli: With the 4x5. They look at each other, then they go against, an then they make love at the end. And that is really conceptual.

Alex Majoli, from the exhibition Un monde en partage, 2008, photo courtesy of The Foundation Group TP.

Fblog: Why these conceptual ideas are in your work?

Alex Majoli: I’ve studied art! You know, there is always something. I can’t define myself. I like to be a photojournalist, to photograph events, but then sometimes there is something that can lock me up, lock me inside in some situations and I need to express myself much more freely. And concept, I like when a concept comes from a real life, is not much thinking.

And about these chairs, I just had a big fight with my girlfriend. I would never do it, cause I wanted to do something for this or that museum. It was like this, we had a big fight, then I was alone. There were two chairs, supposed to be us, like selfportrait, and we fight, and I was left alone with the camera and these two chairs. So I started to make a love story of these chairs. The playground of love, this is a very little stupid series of two chairs.

I tell you one thing, about concepts. Once some people asked me to do a photography for an auction. It was some group for charity for refugee children and the money was supposed to go to the children who needs money, clothing, whatever refugee needs. So they’ve asked me for a picture made for children.So I’ve said, yes of course I can deliver a picture to make some money for children.

Then I was going through divorce. And there arrived a letter. I received one from a lawyers it was an agreement about my daughter. So it was something like this: the daughter can go out, the daugfhter can do this and can’t do that, la la, and I found myself so pathetic in this situation. I decided to take picture of this letter from the lawyer and I’ve sent this letter, a picture of this letter to the group. And they said “well we expected a picture.”

And I said: “yes, it’s a picture”, and you can’t accept this concept of the picture. Because it tells a lot of things. I also wrote some text to explain what is it about and it was sold for a highest bid, anyway!

PART1 / Alex Majoli / interview / 4.03.09 in French Insitute in Warsaw /

PART 2 --> here

thanks to Foundation of the Group TP / co-organized by Yours Gallery /

intervied by joanna kinowska / help by Sebastian Nowakowski

Springtime

Fat fringes on the F blog

DANIEL SAHLBERG PHOTOGRAPHY© 2009

So exotic and American aesthetically pretty.

I really love this, the people, the conversations, the atmosphere, the music. The smell of summer and a cool breeze from the side window in my car, “this Charming Man” in the air.

When I started this project I became almost obsessed by the culture. Any event or happening, I had to attend. It was simply like therapy, not at all related to my everyday life. My ambition was to portray the orthodox people, their commitment, but above all the strong fellowship it brings. I was not interested in cars then, nor the music. All that later grew on me, big time.

This is not a culture without membership, and to the people not engaged. I respectfully say, “I have always been on a tourist visa, not permanent”. But however, it took me for a nice ride. /.../

Project History:

2002. Pictures where shown in the documentary, “Brylcreme & Blysläde” at Swedish television. From Daniel Sahlberg’s initial venture into the Rockabilly scene. Additional to this was a portrait on front cover of, “Dagens Nyheter” the biggest newspaper of Sweden.

2003. An editorial reportage with 12 pages in the European magazine, “Bon” pictures from Hemsby in England.

2004. The first exhibition, “Rebels One” at the Advertising Agency Otto Proximity Sthlm. Presented in 8 b&w portraits. Some pictures were also printed this year in the Norwegian magazine “Carls Cars”.

2005. The final exhibition, “Rockabilly Rebels” at House of Culture Sthlm. Presented in 16 portraits and additional still-picture movie named, c8h18.

2006. Reportage in the American/Scandinavian magazine, “Nordic Reach”. This year was also the release, “Rockabilly - the last romantics” a journalistic book about the subculture and Daniel Sahlberg’s photographs on the front and back (Atlas Publishing).

2007. Art Show, “the shape of things to come” at Galleri Jonas Kleerup in Stockholm. Two pictures of cars where presented in this exhibition of various photographers.

____________________________________

Links: Daniel Sahlberg Photography, the still-picture movie c8h18.

Invited by Anders Blomqvist