New York moments

1. The hat seller. New York City 2004

2. Central Park. New York City 2004

3. Under the Brooklyn Bridge. New York City 2004

4. Tiger Woods. New York City 2004

5. Ground Zero. New York City 2004

6. On the corner of west 13th St. and 9th Av. New York City 2004

7. Laurie. New York City 2004

8. D-train. New York City 2004

New York City. Love it or hate it. Either way, everybody has an opinion.
I think Frank Sinatra sums it up nicely:

I wanna wake up in a city
That doesn't sleep
And find I'm king of the hill
Top of the heap
These little town blues
Are melting a way
I'll make a brand-new start of it
In old New York
If I can make it there
I'll make it anywhere
It's up to you New York, New York

Photos by © Tommi Pirnes
Tommi is one of our invited photographers. I am very glad to see you here again/ulf

Trees (86)

Another oldie...

extenuating circumstances

Father

Photo: Alf Johansson

F Blog moments

Lately I have been thinking about what the "moment", or even the "descisive moment" is in a photograph. "Only the moment lives - and the moment is eternity" is the title of a film about the Swedish photographer Georg Oddner. It is a beautiful title.

I could make it easy and start to refer to the masters of photography and their interpretation of the moment. But the question is still there. What is the moment in photography?

The older I get, the harder I find it to answer such a question. So, what is your interpretation of the "moment", dear readers and authors of the F Blog. Let us try to find out more about it, exploring the wonders of photography without any ambition to find the "correct "answer to what the elusive moment is all about. You are welcome to send your contributions to Gruppo F Inbox. This project will be labelled "F blog moments.".

Stay tuned.

/ulf

Trees (85)

carousel

Photo: Jan Bernhardtz

Docu 08: Liseberg, opening today

Liseberg amusement park, Gothenburg, Sweden
Date: 26 April, 2008
Photos: Jan Buse

Face to face (125)

Waiting for Andy Warhol
Photo: Owen O´Meara

DOCU 08: Dhaka struggling to tackle worsening diarrhea

The diarrhea situation in Bangladesh has worsened day by day with the temperature increases. The national Center for Diarrhea Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR, B), a special research center and hospital for diarrhea patients in the capital Dhaka, has received hundreds of diarrhea patients over the last week. According to the (ICDDR, B), on an average 300 patients came from different parts of the city fortreatment every day. With increasing temperature and humidity, the ICDBR sees a sharprise in the number of patients. In the beginning ofthe summer, city people especially day laboures, rickshaw pullers, street vendors and slum dwellers get diarrhea drinking contaminated water and having unhygienic food.

photos and text: G.M.B. Akash

invited guest: Anni Leppälä

Last autumn, 2008.

"My interest towards photography is closely related to time in the past tense, to the possibility of being able to make a moment motionless, to make something stand still. That something has existed, and has now been set in static state. There is a certain aspect of lost moments and a feeling of letting go when looking at photographs. They exist at the intersection of the momentary and the constant, between the fleeting feeling of being alive and consciousness of the moments passing by.

Living room, 2008.

Feeding, 2007.

Autumn, 2007

In my pictures, attempts in recognising and lighting of obscure and vague movements, are made visible. I want to approach the momentariness of living through constancy. The paradox is that when you try to conserve or protect a moment by stopping it, by photographing it, you inevitably lose it at the same time. I am interested in exploring these contradictions and borderlines between things, how distance relates to closeness.

Being there, 2007.

Rooms: girl in a museum, 2007.

Symbolic meanings are essential in my works. I am interested in how the concrete surface of reality and photographs relate to metaphorical things that can be found underneath. I try to trace those kinds of occasions of seeing when words dissolve and scatter apart, objects and incidents intensify into symbolic language, silent information and intuitive interpretation. What fills the room behind the picture, allows one to step closer. Thoughts of incompleteness and insecurity are also important to my works.

Museum curtains, 2007.

With Flora (portrait of an ancestor), 2008.

Dollhouse, 2005

Objects and spaces can occur to be like transparent routes between the inside and the outside, between the seen surface and unconscious content. Museums and miniature rooms become entrances to each other. Balance and its fragility, delicacy are present simultaneously. How to stop a feeling, a memory? By binding it to visible objects, facades of material things, attaching it to a room’s walls, the surface of photographs. Like translucent skin with unforeseen memories beneath." - Anni Leppälä

Garden, 2007.

Anni Emilia Leppälä, born in Helsinki 1981 and student of the University of Art and Design Helsinki has exhibited her work in several countries since 2001 including Sweden, France and Germany. This year her work is seen in Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova, Turku Finland and Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France among other places. Her work can also bee seen in collections at the Helsinki City Art Museum, the Finnish Institute in London, the Teutloff Collection, Germany etc.

See more of Annis work at Helsinki School/Artists.
invited by ulf fågelhammar

Family man

Photo: Jan Bernhardtz

Fast food

Fast food in Iran
Kebab is one of the world's most popular fast foods. In Iran it's the most common dish served in restaurants and fast food places. The interior of these restaurants is a fascinating show of personal tastes and aesthetics.

Photos: © Chris Maluszynski/MOMENT

DOCU 08: Kirovograd

becoming urban? investigating the post-socialist landscape.
Kirovograd / 2008
photographer: Damien Brailly

Betania 1972, Photos by Peter de Ru

Bertha

Images from 1972
I took these Photographs when I was a student at Fotoskolan in Stockholm. The photos developed into a series as I visited two elder women who lived together at a house for the aged in Stockholm. The name of the house is Betania and it still exists.

I went to visit the women once in a while during some months at the end of their lives. The thing was that Bertha was my girlfriend’s grandmother so my visits became natural and the idea of making a reportage was not really the main thing. However the photos grew together in a natural way and became a story.







I developed the films Tri X in a 10-litre tank with D 76. This tank was a community tank used by the other students so that you never knew how fresh the developer was. The results were not too often accurate and some of the negatives turned into quite thin and soft ones. However this was not a disadvantage as I saw it afterwards. The photographs got a kind of lustre which strenghtenened the contents.

Svea

Bertha and Svea, as the other woman's name was, were very much depending on each other and when Bertha faded away, Svea followed her after some weeks. More or less these images have been in my company for years. In 1972 still at Fotoskolan I was rewarded by a Swedish Photo magazine and named as one of three young photographers. Last time they were shown was in Berlin 2003. ©Peter de Ru, April 2008

I was very glad to hear from Peter the other day and receive these excellent photographs. See more of Peter de Ru on the F Blog as one of our invited guests. You should also check out his site peterderu.se /ulf

Palm Tree (84)