Kallocain
20 October 2007
19 October 2007
16 October 2007
15 October 2007
go ahead
Indiana Harbor Belt RR, switchman demonstrating signalwith a "fusee"-
used at twilight and dawn - when visibility is poor. This signal means
"go ahead." Calumet City, Ill.
Delano, Jack, 1914- photographer.
CREATED/PUBLISHED
1943 Jan.
In the roundhouse at a Chicago and Northwestern Railroad yard, Chicago, Ill.
Delano, Jack, 1914- photographer.
CREATED/PUBLISHED
1942 Dec.
Have a look at more of Jack Delano´s colour photos at the FSA site
(see F links) A true pleasure.
invited guest: Howard W. French - Disappearing Shanghai
les bouteillesThe photographer is an inescapable romantic, a connoisseur of mortality; someone who hopes or dreams that he can stave off oblivion by trapping light through the judicious use of a dark chamber, access to which is controlled by something whose Chinese name I adore — the kuai men, the fast gate — or shutter.
It's fleeting moments we're after, and when one stops to think about it, what else is our world constructed of?
I came to this appreciation of things right here in Shanghai, where I moved nearly four years ago. The discovery was gradual, the product of short walks, and then longer walks, and finally walks that one wished wouldn't end, but alas always did, with the failure of the light at day's end.
What I discovered here was a secret world, accessible through discreet little alleys and back streets that look deceptively drab at first glance. You set out down these paths, though, and on lucky days what opens up for you is a world of magical illusions; places that appear and reappear, on subsequent visits, as if they had been served up from another age, suspended in amber, frozen and preserved for all time.
But of course it is not frozen, much less preserved. It is a world that is fast disappearing, a place of unavoidably brief and tragic loves. No sooner than you think you've learned and memorized every single face, and worked out every nook and cranny, these places are steamrolled, demolished — gone and lost forever. And in Shanghai, the process of which I speak is happening like a train of cascading dominoes — hence the title of this modest attempt at a tribute, Disappearing Shanghai.
The rhythms of life in the little worlds I've documented here, the songbirds and the crickets lovingly raised in their cages, the street markets and the foods, with their smells and colors that change so suddenly and so crisply according to the season, the eternal tending of laundry from long bamboo poles, the wildly screeching bicycle brakes, the lusty throat clearing, the world weary lounging about on beach chairs and in pajamas, the very appearance of the people's faces, weathered by a century of immense and often brutal change, like the old man in the faded Mao suit I saw on a street corner this afternoon looking for the life of him like an apparition lost amid the onrush of the new — It is all on its way out. It is all being swept away.
I sometimes feel it is wrong to mourn this fact, for after all, what is history? What are cities — that most fantastic achievement of mankind — if not engines of ceaseless change? Another Shanghai is rising up fast and one day it will disappear too, won't it? Not, of course, before throwing up its own portraitists, its own poets, its own bards.
Yes, I know all this in a bookish sense. But I can also look around me, and my eyes tell me it is not true. There is no way the world in creation will have anything like the texture of the one it is replacing. Go ahead, call me a sentimentalist, but I know what the camera knows, and more.
The old Shanghai, the disappearing one that seems so scarcely cherished by its own nostalgia-free denizens, is the product of a wave of globalization that preceded the word. It is a world of taxi dancers and sing-song girls, of pedicabs and "coolies," of financiers and speculators of every stripe, from every shore. Of big capital and cheap labor. Of gangs and guns runners and drugs; a place of intrigue of every kind.
Most of all, though, it was a world of industry and of big time shipping that drew people here by the millions with the hope, if not exactly the promise of their first salaried job.
That is the kind of enterprise and bustle that created the neighborhoods that populate my images, and now they are making way for something new and altogether different.
The loss is incalculable, and yet it cannot be avoided. Pause, please. Take stock. Breathe it in. It won't be here for long, and you will never see it again.
It's fleeting moments we're after, and when one stops to think about it, what else is our world constructed of?
I came to this appreciation of things right here in Shanghai, where I moved nearly four years ago. The discovery was gradual, the product of short walks, and then longer walks, and finally walks that one wished wouldn't end, but alas always did, with the failure of the light at day's end.
What I discovered here was a secret world, accessible through discreet little alleys and back streets that look deceptively drab at first glance. You set out down these paths, though, and on lucky days what opens up for you is a world of magical illusions; places that appear and reappear, on subsequent visits, as if they had been served up from another age, suspended in amber, frozen and preserved for all time.
But of course it is not frozen, much less preserved. It is a world that is fast disappearing, a place of unavoidably brief and tragic loves. No sooner than you think you've learned and memorized every single face, and worked out every nook and cranny, these places are steamrolled, demolished — gone and lost forever. And in Shanghai, the process of which I speak is happening like a train of cascading dominoes — hence the title of this modest attempt at a tribute, Disappearing Shanghai.
The rhythms of life in the little worlds I've documented here, the songbirds and the crickets lovingly raised in their cages, the street markets and the foods, with their smells and colors that change so suddenly and so crisply according to the season, the eternal tending of laundry from long bamboo poles, the wildly screeching bicycle brakes, the lusty throat clearing, the world weary lounging about on beach chairs and in pajamas, the very appearance of the people's faces, weathered by a century of immense and often brutal change, like the old man in the faded Mao suit I saw on a street corner this afternoon looking for the life of him like an apparition lost amid the onrush of the new — It is all on its way out. It is all being swept away.
I sometimes feel it is wrong to mourn this fact, for after all, what is history? What are cities — that most fantastic achievement of mankind — if not engines of ceaseless change? Another Shanghai is rising up fast and one day it will disappear too, won't it? Not, of course, before throwing up its own portraitists, its own poets, its own bards.
Yes, I know all this in a bookish sense. But I can also look around me, and my eyes tell me it is not true. There is no way the world in creation will have anything like the texture of the one it is replacing. Go ahead, call me a sentimentalist, but I know what the camera knows, and more.
The old Shanghai, the disappearing one that seems so scarcely cherished by its own nostalgia-free denizens, is the product of a wave of globalization that preceded the word. It is a world of taxi dancers and sing-song girls, of pedicabs and "coolies," of financiers and speculators of every stripe, from every shore. Of big capital and cheap labor. Of gangs and guns runners and drugs; a place of intrigue of every kind.
Most of all, though, it was a world of industry and of big time shipping that drew people here by the millions with the hope, if not exactly the promise of their first salaried job.
That is the kind of enterprise and bustle that created the neighborhoods that populate my images, and now they are making way for something new and altogether different.
The loss is incalculable, and yet it cannot be avoided. Pause, please. Take stock. Breathe it in. It won't be here for long, and you will never see it again.
the reader 
strung out
moving out
five golds
favela
eye of the storm
dozing
crepuscle in pjs 
beachedHoward W. French is a Senior Writer for The New York Times, who has spent most of his career in journalism as a foreign correspondent, working in and traveling to over 100 countries on five continents.
He is currently the chief of the newspaper’s Shanghai bureau. Prior to this assignment, which began in March 2004, he headed bureaus in Japan, West and Central Africa, Central America and the Caribbean.
Howard is the author of A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa, which was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2004 and cited as a non-fiction book of the year by several newspapers.
Howard has had a lifelong interest in photography, first taught to him by his father, who built him his first darkroom somewhere around fifth or sixth grade.
Since then, as a journalist, he has had the pleasure of working alongside a great many highly skilled and generous professional photographers, eagerly learning from them as he has gradually, steadily honed his own art.
Howard’s work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in the United States, Europe and Asia.
He is currently the chief of the newspaper’s Shanghai bureau. Prior to this assignment, which began in March 2004, he headed bureaus in Japan, West and Central Africa, Central America and the Caribbean.
Howard is the author of A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa, which was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2004 and cited as a non-fiction book of the year by several newspapers.
Howard has had a lifelong interest in photography, first taught to him by his father, who built him his first darkroom somewhere around fifth or sixth grade.
Since then, as a journalist, he has had the pleasure of working alongside a great many highly skilled and generous professional photographers, eagerly learning from them as he has gradually, steadily honed his own art.
Howard’s work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in the United States, Europe and Asia.
More of Howard's work you may see at his website
invited by Marcin Górski
14 October 2007
Motiv #13 Public
Motiv #13 Public is published in February 2008. The editors want
contributions for the coming issue.Deadline is 1 December.
Read more about it.
"Motiv is a photo gallery in a magazine format, a meeting
place for photographers, artists, writers, viewers and readers.
The content ranges from documentary and journalistic photographs
to more conceptual work. Motiv is as light-hearted and
sensitive as it is analytical and topical. Founded in 2004,
Motiv is published three times a year. Each issue has a new
theme: a way of scrutinising what photographic
stories there are to tell. Since # 9, Motiv is bilingual:
Swedish and English."
place for photographers, artists, writers, viewers and readers.
The content ranges from documentary and journalistic photographs
to more conceptual work. Motiv is as light-hearted and
sensitive as it is analytical and topical. Founded in 2004,
Motiv is published three times a year. Each issue has a new
theme: a way of scrutinising what photographic
stories there are to tell. Since # 9, Motiv is bilingual:
Swedish and English."
13 October 2007
high school boys
Benjamin Franklin High School, New York, New York.
High school boys growing physically fit through exercise.
Perlitch, William, photographer.
CREATED/PUBLISHED
1942 Oct.
REPRODUCTION NUMBER
LC-USW3-024640-C DLC (b&w film neg.)
12 October 2007
10 October 2007
09 October 2007
invited guest: Alan Wilson
I’m an amateur in the true meaning of the word and when not at my ‘real’ job I can usually be found walking the streets of Edinburgh, where I’ve lived for this past 30 years ago (I’m originally from Londonderry in Northern Ireland).
What I do is not so much photography its more like escapology, an escape into a space of my own making where I can ‘stare, pry, listen’ as Walker Evans advised.
There are many photographers I admire, known and not so well known, street and non-street, and I often look at their work and think to myself, “that’s how I’d like to take photographs”, small, perfect little packages of meaning and thought. But then when I’m walking down the street the reality kicks in and I realise that I am what I am, a ‘straight photographer’, simply recording what unfolds before me.
And that’s how it was up to the beginning of 2007 when I’ve moved away from black & white film for various reasons and began to take a few tentative steps with colour and a whole new set of influences opened up before me. Photography just gets more complicated.
Pictures and text by photographer: Alan Wilson
check out the site www.streetphoto.fsnet.co.uk
/invited by Ulf Fågelhammar
invited guest: Fritz Fabert - candidates of politburo
I found the Candidates of Politburo on the loft of an old, hidden soviet theatre near my hometown brandenburg. The colored b/w pictures on wooden bords are exposed to sun and rain because the roof is already gone. Some are perforated by bullets.
Fritz about himself:
born in 1970 in eastern germany
longer journeys through eastern europe and asia
I study photography at Ostkreuzschule für Fotografie und Gestaltung in Berlin
photographic researches along the line of my own history
invited by Marcin Górski
08 October 2007
Only the moment lives - and the moment is eternity
Georg Oddner, a great Swedish photographer passed away yesterday at
the age of 83. He used to be a jazz musician, he worked with Avedon in
New York, he made films, he travelled the world and photographed it.
To me he was one of the best out there.
See some pictures here by Oddner
You, the Sleeping
Yesterday I saw Roy Andersson's wonderful new movie "You, the living". I was depely affected by it, and on my way home this image I shot last winter came to my mind. Alexandra Kollontai once wrote:
Alexandra Kollontai, portrait, 1888.
"The paths pursued by women workers and bourgeois suffragettes have long since separated. There is too great a difference between the objectives that life has put before them. There is too great a contradiction between the interests of the woman worker and the lady proprietress, between the servant and her mistress... There are not and cannot be any points of contact, conciliation or convergence between them. "
More about Kollontai
Related story on The F Blog
Virginia Woolf once wrote:
”Perhaps a mind that is purely masculine cannot create, any more than a
mind that is purely feminine… It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and
simple; one must be woman-manly or man-womanly.”
Although I find Woolf´s reflection on creativity and its conditions
interesting and even thought-provoking, I don´t agree with it. I simply
don´t understand what it means to be purely masculine or purely
feminine. More than anything else, Woolf´s statement just seems out of
date, locked in time, reflecting opinions of an era long gone (1920:s).
Still, when looking at art, I often think of it in terms of being
feminine or masculine. But every time I try to put my finger on what it
is that makes a piece of art feminine or masculine, it slips away.
Ideas of typical feminine and masculine expressions, are tricky subject
areas in our times. Yes, we often speak of such things as “gender”,
“feminism” and “male chauvinism”. But thoughts of a persistent gender
based way of being (a true male and female spirit), maybe just isn´t
possible in a time when identities such as "man" and "woman" sometimes
are seen as merely “social constructions”.
When Sally Mann visited Stockholm in February 2007, she asked if we, the
audience, believed that there was something like a female, and male way
of expression. Of course no one dared to formulate a view. I wanted to
shout, “Yes there are! And you are one of the finest artist of our time,
and your works are great examples of the female spirit!”. But luckily I
did not. How stupid to say such a thing, and then not be able to explain
my thoughts in any way?
signed Jan Buse
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