The F Blog

13 January 2008

looking for the roots of photography

“The treasure of images from the early years of the 21st century is in jeopardy, caused by heavy digital manipulation and Pictorialist trends. The classic photographic image is not dead but it is suffering badly. Digital illustration with photo-realistic 3D illustration and visualisation etc. is a direct threat to the photographic image.”

Well, these are harsh words from the founders of the group Dogma-07. They are Bengt Björkbom (you know him already from The F Blog) and Johan Ericson.

"Dogma-07", is looking for the roots of Photography. The focus is the image, not the technique. To upload pictures to this site (a section of the Swedish Fotosidan), there are some tough rules. For example:

-You may not use a flash, or any equipment that reflects the light. Only available light is permitted.
-No tripod
-Only one brand of film or one setting for digital cameras, Colour OR Black and White is allowed.
-Only basic settings in the digital camera and only one lens (for example 50mm) if it is a zoom lens you must use a single focal length. You may only use lenses with a maximum focal length of 90mm
-No cropping after exposure.
-No manipulation in Photoshop or hocus-pocus in the dark room. You may adjust contrast and colour balance but only in order to make the picture look like you remember it from the moment of exposure. Dust and dead pixels may also be removed.

You must declare what camera etc you will use for pictures to the Dogma-07 site. Here are some examples:

1. Ricoh GR-Digital II, image format 2:3
2. Equivalent to 28mm
3a. Colour (S-RGB)
3b. ISO 200
3c. Colour depth=normal, sharpness=0, contrast=normal

1. Nikon Fe
2 Nikkor 50/1.8
3. Kodak Tri-X film and D-76 developer

1.Pentax MZS
2.Pentax FA 35mm f/2 AL
3.Ilford HP5 film+ D-76 developer

So why not have a look at some Dogma-07 pictures? You will find them here. It´s a brave project and I will certainly keep an eye on their progress. /Ulf
Pictures by ©Bengt Björkbom

Trees (36)

photographer: Per-Arne Andersson

Trees (35)

photographer: Ulf Fågelhammar

Do You still live there..?

1976

12 January 2008

Trees (34)

Photographer: Tatiana Bitir

Face to face (24)

Photographer: Walter Neiger

11 January 2008

Trees (33)

There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence, in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song - but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny. Pablo Neruda (1904 - 1973)

photographer: Rhonda Prince

Trees (32)

"Tree on wall - Tommarp. Sweden 2007."
Photographer: Nils Bergqvist

Trees (31)

photographer: Łukasz Kuś

Face to Face (23) for Jeanne

Jeanne, nothing can stop you now!

with my private wishes to you Jeanne...

Face to Face (22)

Photographer: Mikaela Lundin

10 January 2008

nuevo

Could it be ...?

Invited guest: Nadia Baram (part two)

The second part by our guest Nadia Baram is in black and white. I like the entire collection a lot, but there are two pictures that have hypnotized me. Yes, the one above...and the third one in this post with a balloon on the floor. Fantastic. Thanks for being with us Nadia and we hope to hear from you again. /Ulf

All pictures © Nadia Baram

Face to Face (21)

Photographer: Łukasz Kuś

nova

Trees (30)

Photographer: Tiberio Fanti

09 January 2008

invited guest: Nadia Baram (part one)

Nadia Baram sent me an excellent collection of pictures for her guest appearance on the F Blog. In these pictures I am struck by the way this young woman portrays men of all ages. The photos are from China and Mexico and...yes, this is such refreshing work! Can´t wait for part two./Ulf

The Trouble with Being Two
My relationship with photography has always been somewhat of a contradiction. Photography has been for me, a means of escape and at the same time a confrontation with my solitude. I have taken refuge amongst the unknown to feel less visible in my condition as a 'stranger', thinking that by making it obvious, I would need less of an explanation.

These photographs are for me a collection of these attempts to escape, moments of silence in which i run into myself, sometimes frail and timid, other times, brave and shameless.
/Nadia Baram

Nadia Baram lives and works in Mexico City. She began studying photography when she was 9 years old at The Center for Contemporary Art in Mexico City. She later got a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Tisch School of the Arts at New York University on Photography and Imaging.

She has published her work in magazines and newspapers in Spain, China, Mexico, and the United States. Her work has been part of collective exhibitions in China, Mexico, Brazil and The United States. She is currently an independent photographer and picture editor at zonezero.com.

All photos ©Nadia Baram
invited by ulf fågelhammar

Politics, Power, and the FSA

The F Blog received the following article from Cecilia Strandroth, PhD, Uppsala University. It´s an interesting contribution to our ongoing discussion about documentary photography, "reality or fiction" and the importance of photography as an independent form of art. Thanks Cecilia! /Ulf

My dissertation In Search of the Pure Photograph investigates some of the lesser known Farm Security Administration photographs made in the United States of the 1930s. The FSA photographs are today regarded as documentary icons, as masterpieces of 20th century American art, and as a national treasure. But this status also implies limitations. A national treasure could only contain things to be proud of.

There are thus also FSA photographs which never have become part of the national monument: photographs which could be described as “propaganda”. The FSA agency which employed the photographers was a part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. The photographers’ job was to make images used to market the government’s politics. They produced photographs of the government’s programs meant to aid the poor rural population. Some examples made by Marion Post Wolcott in Alabama portray the interaction between the local FSA personnel and their clients. Here, one could see fieldworkers for instance conducting evening classes and meetings, delivering medicines and clean linen and inspecting the farms’ animals. These activities are adhering to a fixed pattern of gender and ethnicity. Female fieldworkers discuss sewing and cooking with female clients, male fieldworkers discuss economy and agricultural matters with male clients. Caucasian fieldworkers meet with Caucasian clients, African American fieldworkers with African American clients. Exceptions are qualified personnel with an education. Caucasian doctors and nurses treat the diseases of the African American population. Power relations appear to be inscribed in the very bodies of the subjects of these images. Behaviours, postures and identities are performed according to fixed New Deal roles of class, gender and ethnicity. The photographs make visible how power was exercised, capture the ideology behind the New Deal’s programs.

Such images therefore deserve to be rescued from their present historical oblivion. They could be as important as sources of historical research as the generally famous FSA photographs. Such a usage has been hindered by the traditional interpretation of how the documentary value of the photographic image functions. It looks upon the documentary photographer as an eyewitness who stands beside the flow of life and captures aesthetically pleasing slices for eternity. This eyewitness or observer has to be passive, the document is regarded as compromised if influenced by intruding intentions, staging and rhetorical arrangements. This naturally makes the documentary value of FSA’s “propagandistic” photographs dubious.

But to photograph is not to passively observe and record, but an activity which in itself creates meaning. Looked upon in this way, a photograph is always inherently rhetorical, never an authentic observation. The FSA’s “propagandistic” photographs rather make explicit the construction present in all images. They function as sources exactly through being rhetorical, staged and arranged; they are not windows to the world but windows to an ideology.

©Cecilia Strandroth, PhD, Department of Art History, Uppsala University
In Search of the Pure Photograph. A Historiographic Study of the Farm Security Administration, Walker Evans, and the Survey Histories of Photography is available from Fronton förlag,

Photos by: Marion Post Wolcott, Coffee County, Alabama, 1939.
For more photos see FSA/OWI Collection, Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington D.C.

Face to Face (20)

08 January 2008

Face to Face (19)

Trees (29)

Bamboo with love
Photographer: Ulla Larsson

Chiapas: diez parpadeos, una ráfaga - by Héctor Cortés Mandujano

Chiapas es un viejo que se tapa la cara para no ver la miseria, la injusticia, la selva en llamas. Un pueblo que rompe los cerros, interrumpe el paso de los jaguares, lastima la vida silvestre.

Chiapas es el pollero que arrastra una balsa llena de sueños que tal vez jamás se cumplan, es la mujer indígena que aprende a escribir, el Judas y la pistola.

Chiapas son los peces que quisieron volar y se quedaron en la red que va a matarlos, es el erotismo de una mujer que se echa el agua para que los pezones palpiten bajo su cárcel de trapo, un amasijo de caña que apunta a todos los puntos cardinales.

Chiapas es la ráfaga de fotos de Raúl Ortega, parpadeos donde lo mismo ocurre una matanza o el nacimiento de un niño que quizás traiga una esperanza bajo el brazo.

Este Chiapas en diez tiempos es un joven de manos amputadas y la bandera mexicana y el ruego por la paz, que nunca llega.

/I received this text about the recently published post with our invited guest Raúl Ortega. The words are by Chiapan author Héctor Cortés Mandujano. It is a beautiful and original piece, that I would not dare to translate, at least not for the moment. Many thanks to you Héctor! /Ulf - See the original post with the pictures here.