Invited guest: Oliver Heissner

CITY NORD

In the late 1950s the town planners of Hamburg (Germany) were looking for alternative locations for the new headquarter-buildings of the expanding oil- and insurance companies.

The northern part of the "Stadtpark", a huge common green park, was chosen to build this new business district as a "Bürostadt im Grünen".

In the respect of its monofunctionality, the spread-out solitary office-blocks and the consequent separation of streets for cars and pedestrian areas it got a nearly perfect example for the leading discussion theme on townplanning in these times: the so called "Charter of Athens" proclaimed by Le Corbusier 1933.

International architects took part in the contest for the planning and in 1964 the realisation of the first buildings started. It took over ten years until the whole "City Nord", the programmatic title of this new modernist "Gesamtkunstwerk", was finished.

Little more than 30 years old, the "City Nord" is already plagued by self-doubts and existential questions resulting from fast changing role models of urban development and the departure of many firms. Already some of the buildings stand empty or have even broken down. So it started a new discussion about demolition or extended and modified use.

At this point Oliver Heissner began a series of pictures in this area, following the visual themes of architectural style and design of the sixties and seventies but also having in mind the unknown future of this monumental "ideal city".










All pictures from 1999.
Color Prints, Diasec-Face-Sandwich, 110x144 cm, edition 3 (+ 1 ).

Shown in the exhibitions:
-- "City Nord: Denkmal, Lebensraum, Zukunft?", Galerie Cato Jans, Hamburg, 2000
-- at "senko" gallery (www.senko.dk), Viborg, Denmark, 2002 (solo-exhibition)
-- and "Stadt Natur" at Museum der Arbeit, Hamburg, 2005

Published in the "Jahrbuch 1999-Architektur in Hamburg", Junius-Verlag and the catalogue "Stadt Natur" Museum der Arbeit, Hamburg.


LVA

"LVA" short form of "Landesversicherungsanstalt" is the German public law insurance corporation. One of their buildings used to be located in the "City Nord" of Hamburg, described above. Some days before the building was knocked down, I had the opportunity of taking some pictures in the rooms. The employees left all the furniture and the plants behind. The whole scenery was quite astonishing. It seemed to be a perfect installation of an artist. Where could you find this typical furniture of the seventies and all these plants?

The empty shelves and tables tell their own story of bureaucracy and monotony.












All pictures from 2002.
Color Prints, wooden frame, 80 x 100 cm, edition 5 (+1).

Shown in exhibitions:
-- "remember this place", Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof, 2004
-- "index 05", Kunsthaus, Hamburg, 2005


My interest in both series is equivalent in form and in content. The aesthetical beauty of the buildings and the interiors come together with a subtle sadness and the reflexion about the way of giving up buildings and leaving them empty, because nobody can use them anymore.


Words and images © Oliver Heissner.
Invited to the F blog by Joakim Sebring.

just east of eden...

According to some
sometime in the beginning
man was expelled from paradise
tasting the forbidden fruit. And Adam
blamed it all on Eve. And Eve blamed the snake.

According to others
the genes rule our life,
decide how we act, how we live
and how we die.
Changing the genes will cure deceases,
make us live longer.
And above all be happier.
They blame it all on our messy DNA.

Then we have those that blame the constellation of stars,
The ones that blame the west, the east, the white, the black, the red, the yellow, the green ones from mars, the weather, the companies, the parents, the kids, the government, the media….

We humans seems to be very good at that,
pointing fingers.
Blaming someone else.

According to the evolution theories,
the human hand was an adaption to the extensive use of tools.
And the benefits those tools provided in the natural selection process.

I rather suspect
our hands and fingers is a natural consequence
of all that blaming-by-pointing.


photos and thoughts: christofer grandin

Emotional photography (2)

Diminished

Blessed work

Well, here are a few more, a continuation of my previous posting here.

-C

The flute player

This is not a new portrait...but i went through some negatives lately. This guy is a "crazy" violin player...anyone guessed? It was really fun to work with him.

Miss Melancholy's Collard

I don't know what's to be done with people like this. Maybe send her off on a holiday, or a cruise, or a trip on a space shuttle, or a spin around a skating rink, or to the doctor, some doctor, anyone but Tarkini, anyone . . .

I saw an angel

Image Caption:Pola Negri.
[Cigarette cards] >
Cinema stars (circular cards).
Library Division:
Humanities and Social Sciences Library
/ George Arents Collection
Specific Material Type:
Photomechanical prints
from NYPL

Let there be light

lost and found (5)

negatives found in forgotten darkroom in my job, continuation

uknown author, uknown person portrayed, uknown place and date (somewhere in Upper Silesia, perhaps in Gliwice, early 1970s?), uknown material (maybe Orwo?), pentacon six

Monuments - an exploration of modern Stockholm

Exhibition in Stockholm
Vernissage Thursday 1 February, 17.00-20.00
Introduction of the exhibition by Ingela Lind 18.00

Photographer Misha Pedan and writer Ingela Lind in a dialogue about
contemporary monuments

Gallery open Wednesday-Friday 12-18, Saturday-Sunday: 12-16
Centrum för fotografi, Tjärhovsgatan 44, Stockholm
http://www.centrumforfotografi.se/

Invited guest: Stefano Bernardoni

photographs from the series: Visual tresholds / Soglie visive, 2000-2006 © Stefano Bernardoni

Stefano Bernardoni (1968; Italy) is interested in photography since the early 90's. Works in b&w. Stefano says: "this method, as far as I'm concerned, is the fundamental way of the message's construction in photography. Every part of the photographic process should be controlled by the author, as I do in my own, only this way could make the final message true". Stefano Bernardoni with Massimo Bersani are founders of Terzoocchio in 2004 - multinational photogroup (the third eye). He has several individual exhibitions and dozens of group exhibitions, mainly in Italy, but also in Finland, Russia and Japan. Take a look at his portfolio here. And stay tuned for the next Terzoocchio events...

invited by Joanna Kinowska

my meetings with Ryszard Kapuściński…Sweden

those meetings were multidimensional, sometimes I wasn’t even aware I was meeting him in a way. Somehow I was following his way, also in geographical aspect. During a week in March 2006 while Gruppo F organized F12 exhibition in Stockholm – Mr. Kapuściński was just there. You may find some marks of his visit in Swedish papers from this time ie in SvD and in DN.Kultur

 

people at work, Gruvön

Anneli Lundberg sent me some excellent pictures that I am happy
to share with you. She was our invited guest 3 October 2006.
It´s good to see you again at the F blog Anneli! -urbano

"These pictures were published in a book printed in 2006, celebrating
the 75th anniversary of a branch (Gruvön) of the Swedish Paper
Workers Union. I was asked to contribute with ten pages of photos
presenting my view of Gruvön. It turned out that I was finally asked
to illustrate the entire book. It was a very stimulating project since I
was free to chose my way of creating the pictures. I was glad that
I didn´t have to do a documentary because it´s not quite my way
of photographing"













photographer©Anneli Lundberg

viktor ( the fleeting moment)

Anchored by the slim trunk, sandwiched between the spaces...there is
a tentative intimacy to this image, for me. A feeling not so different
from coming across a fawn in the forest. Almost a chance encounter.
A sudden movement and he scampers into the brush.

I love this photo for the silent communion between photographer and
small creature. The blanket of ground cover...the depth of the woods
...a still silence in the Fleeting Moment...the Right Moment to depress
a shutter.

I feel the urge to brush aside the blurred leaves of the foreground.
Close enough to touch...just extend the arm and shove to the right
...step forward with the left foot...and the image vanishes...nothing
but a handful of leaves and the illusion of having shared something
a moment ago.
The Fleeting Moment.
(Matthew T. Joyce)

the stereotypes?

some streetshots from palermo&catania. i'm trying these because of the faces. what are your associates with sicily, what are the stereotypes? do people live there like in my pics?

i often ask this question while making photos "at home". i know it, i feel it, and i can tell a story. although i know sicily quite qell, i'm not native, i'd never understand some things.

which is easier: to tell a story you know pretty good or the one you can't know but you just feel excited?

Snow in Oslo

Hi F. The snow came falling down this weekend in Oslo, it awoke something
in me, emotions and wondering, so now I'm making photos of snow,
and maybe some twig or a piece of a fence too, but most important is the
bright and vague snow.

Espen Aasheim








photographer©Espen Aasheim

Marion in the year of 1939

Wolcott, Marion Post , 1910- -- Photographer

African American schoolgirls in the fourth and fifth grades
demonstrating a health movingpicture that they had
made, Flint River Farms, Georgia,
May 1939.

I am trying to catch up with Marion, It seems she had a very busy

year in 1939. She was 29 years old and was travelling around the
southern states of the US.Was she aware of what was going to happen
the coming years? Did she know anything about the escalating horrors
of the third reich? There was no CNN or Al Jazeera, no television, no
Internet. And the people she photographed? Did they realize that
a world war was just beginning. I don´t think so. And still...there is
something about the people she met that makes me wonder.

Wolcott, Marion Post , 1910- -- Photographer

Three African American women waiting for street car on their way
to work as domestics, early morning, Mitchell Street, Atlanta, Georgia,
May 1939.

Wolcott, Marion Post , 1910- -- Photographer

African American men, both tenants and neighbors, eating dinner after the
white men have finished on day of corn-shucking at Mrs. Fred Wilkins'
home, Tally Ho, near Stem, Granville County, North Carolina,
November 1939.

So many years have passed, and 1939 is history. But tonight, with so many
thoughts running through my head after seeing Marion´s pictures from that
year, it seems like only yesterday.

Warsaw, September 1939. First aid being given after a German air-raid.

Poland in photographs, 1939-1944.
Created Date:
1939

I am also thinking about Poland and September 1 and I found a picture
from that city as well. It breaks my heart to think about what the people
of Warsaw had to face the coming years. And yes...it was only yesterday.

-urbano

Pictures found at NYPL and FSA.

1939

focus on Africa

all photos are from Africa taken by Ryszard Kapuściński comes from his exhibition in Green Gallery in Warsaw
© by Ryszard Kapuscinski

my meetings with Ryszard Kapuściński

I have been meeting Ryszard Kapuściński since I discovered the "Emperor" when I was teen. Since that time we have been meeting regulary, with his new an older books which I hunted in the bookstore in library. I was with him in China, in Angola, Ethiopia, Latin America, Siberia, then on his beloved villages in Polish Poldlesie. Normally I assisted him during his dangerous trips to places where people decided to start to kill each other, sometimes because of surreal reasons like lost football game. Recently I was following him on his intellectual trips with Herodotus. He guided me by Lapidaries of humanity.
We have never met in real life, or better perhaps we have never met in real life. Our meetings, or better my meetings with him were taking places on the pages of his books. This author, thinker, historian, poet, journalist and photographer determined as no other perhaps my way of watching the world, my will of traveling and finally my way of photographing.
I said that we have never met in real life – perhaps never… Two years ago, while walking thru Lisbonian old town, at the small café I have noticed a man looking exactly like Ryszard Kapuściński, the same face, same glasses, same smile…When I returned to Poland I learnt Kapuściński was in Lisbon more or less in the same time.
This is very small probability, that I met him in person, that time in Lisbon, but somehow I like to think it’s true…
Although he passed away yesterday night, I am sure I’ll be meeting him again and again, thanks to books he left, thanks to his poems and thanks to this picture…

photo by Marcin Górski

Ryszard Kapuściński (March 4, 1932 in Pińsk - January 23, 2007) was a popular Polish journalist, both at home and abroad.

Born in Pińsk, a city that was formerly located in the Kresy Wschodnie (Eastern Borderlands) of the Second Polish Republic and now belongs to Belarus, Kapuściński is generally thought of as Poland's leading journalist. In 1964, after honing his skills on domestic stories, he "was appointed by the Polish Press Agency as its only foreign correspondent, and for the next ten years he was 'responsible' for fifty countries." [1] Throughout this period, Kapuściński traveled around the developing world and reported on wars, coups and revolutions in the Americas, Asia and Europe. When he finally returned to Poland, he had lived through twenty-seven revolutions and coups. In the English speaking world, Kapuściński is best known for his reporting from Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, when he witnessed first-hand the continent's liberation from colonialism.

Starting in the early 1960s, Kapuściński has published books of increasing literary craftsmanship characterized by sophisticated narrative technique, psychological portraits of characters, a wealth of stylization and metaphor and unusual imagery that serves as means of interpreting the perceived world. Kapuściński's best-known book, The Emperor, concerns itself with the decline of Haile Selassie's anachronistic regime in Ethiopia. Shah of Shahs, on the fall of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, and Imperium, about the last days of the Soviet Union, have enjoyed similar success.

Kapuściński is fascinated not only by exotic worlds and people, but also by books: he approaches foreign countries first through literature, spending months reading before each trip. He knows how to listen to the people he meets, but he is also capable of "reading" the hidden sense of the scenes he encounters: the way that the Europeans move out of Angola, a discussion regarding alimony in the Tanganyikan parliament, the reconstruction of frescoes in the new Russia - he turns each of these vignettes into a metaphor of historical transformation. This tendency to process private adventures into a greater social synthesis has made Kapuściński an eminent thinker, and the volumes of his ongoing Lapidarium series are a fascinating record of the shaping of a reporter's observations into philosophical reflections on the world and people.

by Wikipedia

Dear Marion

We have shown Marion Post Wolcott's FSA work here more than once. Most recently, this post by Ulf. Which got me thinking about Wolcott's work, and my own efforts to try and convey the life of a place not my own.





For me, the Mississippi Delta is a haunted, barren wasteland. It is, like so many of the subjects I love, cast off, worn out, done with. And yet it is a beautiful place -- one of the most beautiful and moving places I've ever seen --





As I sifted through images to try to find a fitting tribute to Wolcott's Delta work, I had many conversations with her in my head. What it is to be a Northern woman traveling in the American South, then and now; what it is to try to photograph tragedy and shame so tightly woven with dignity and faith that the air itself seems soaked with it.




Dear Marion, whose feet, whose hands, gone now? So easy to show what's there -- but how to show what isn't?



all images © Jeanne Wells