invited guest: Kristoffer Albrecht

Kallerudd, Ingå, Finland, 2005

Bredan, Ingå, Finland, 1999

Aluksne, Latvia, 2004

Kraków, Poland, 2005

Aranda de Duero, Spain, 2006

Nagyatád, Hungary, 2004

On my travels in Europe I have chosen the route more or less haphazardly. I have applied a kind of a methodology of contigencies. Narrow roads have taken me to odd sequestered places, wide main roads to places well-known to every traveller. The scenery has sometimes been overwhelmingly magnificent, sometimes very modest. My impressons have risen a need to share something of them.

I have wished to tell something of what I have come across in remote places, in villages and towns, that are off the main tracks. It's easy to see that the edges of Europe are at least as interesting as its centre. Particularly the Eastern parts of our continent have interested me. In a near future these regions will, no doubt, increasingly resemble the rest of Europe. This means a considerable loss of visual diversity. Photography can preserve something of the appearance of the past. Some of the preserved impressions will perhaps seem peculiar and interesting in the future. I have, nevertheless, not been guided by an explicit aim to document phenomena about to disappear. My photographs are above all the result of a general visual curiosity distinctive to photographers.

Lviv, Ukraine, 2007

Ksar, Bulgaria, 2003

Lviv, Ukraine, 2007

If you wish to communicate something of the circumstances that you run across it's important to retain your visual appetite. Eyes that are unaccustomed to the surrounding visual reality are hungrier. When you get used to circumstances of a location the craving of the eyes becomes numb and it becomes impossible to apprehend details and nuances with the same accuracy and sensitivity. Curiosity drives you further. The vistas change. On my way through the landscapes I've been fascinated by a specific light, by the way the elements in front of me organise themselves in the frame, by people, trees, buildings, animals, clouds, by those things that under lucky circumstances constitute a good picture.

In the autumn of 2008 I 'm publishing a phoobook called Zigzag in Europe, in which these photographs will be included. - Kristoffer Albrecht

Istanbul, Turkey, 1996

Kristoffer Albrecht (b. 1961), works as a researcher at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki. His work has been widely exhibited in Finland and all around the world. These are just a few selected:

2008 Galleri Kronan, Norrköping, Sweden
2007 Candace Dwan Gallery, Katonah, New York, USA
2006 4+ Palais des Académies, Bryssel, Belgium
2000 Galleri Mazarin, Söderhamn, Sweden
1999 Gallery Candace Perich, Katonah, New York, USA
1997 Gallery Kay Kaminski, Lancing, Michigan, USA
1996 Fotogravure - proces - eksperiment, Copenhagen, Denmark
1992 Decennium, Finnish Photographic Art of the 1980's,
Bukarest, Scotland, Istanbul, Ankara, Barcelona, Madrid

Among Albrecht´s published books you will find
2004 Memorabilia
2001 Creative Reproduction (Doctoral Thesis)
1998 Metropol
1994 Fünfundneunzig (group)
1992 Armor
1990 En Avril

His work can be seen in collections at:
Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki
Moderna museet, Stockholm
Pushkin Museum, Moscow
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris
Metropolitain Museum of Art, New York
etc.

invited by ulf fågelhammar
pictures and text © Kristoffer Albrecht

"Don't you Robert Capa me, you son of a bitch!"

Firenze A/R - Paolo Saccheri

I took some snapshots during my travel. Not much care about meaningful subjects, just what attracted my eye. Can those picture be considered documentary? Would you call them a document of a travel to Florence? Probably not in common sense (I didn't shoot any picture of Florence!). Reportage photography can be done with the ability of telling a story with
several pictures, in some cases even with just one picture. The question is what can we consider a reportage or a documentary picture? Photojournalism (that I did for few years) have its own rules to be able to sell to newspapers or magazines. But talking only photographically, every story of any subject can be documentary, in my opinion, if that story tells something we know or we would like to know and if the story is taken with either intimate or shouting pictures that have the ability of giving us emotions and rational.






Photographer: Paolo Saccheri

Face to face (132)

mette

Mass-spotting

photo: m. michelson. republished from the F blog.

I found something in the basement

How NOT to take a picture

Apparently, I haven't learnt yet that the 12-24mm's petal lens hood is not compatible with built-in flash.

Photographer: Mirko Caserta

Trees (92)

Swedish blues on an electric slide balalaika!

This bloke almost rocked my ass off...

happy balloon

As instructed...

Photo: Skye

invited guest: JH Engström (Shelter, part II)

Earlier this week JH Engströms book Shelter (Härbärge in Swedish) was presented on the F blog. As a comment to the pictures Christofer, another F-blog author, said:

"So close and so very very strong! Photographs that really gets under your skin, and like a tattoo will stay there a lifetime."

I totally agree as I can't stop thinking about some of the pictures. Now I am happy to present eight other photographs from Engströms book Shelter, about homeless woman in Stockholm.









Please also look at the earlier posts about Engström and his work on the F blog (here or here) or visit his homepage.
Invited by Fredrik Skott

how to not x 2

Two how to-not-images. One is from my sister's 'studentexamen' (graduation from college) around 1974 and the other image is from yesterday - I made this on purpose. Does it count?
- Jan Bernhardtz

F Spotting: Lina Nääs

Photo: Scott Hardy

If Lynch had a pet

hanging an occasional hairdresser out

photo: Emese Altnöder

A beer in the forest by then (1918) And for everyone today..!

They went in a male way of the time; To a bench far (away/from ;) and into the forest. A fotball game was taking place. Picture taken then: with Ortochromatisk film 10 Din 13x18 cm Red blind and yellow unsensetive... but blue aware..! A clever method under the northerly late summer sky.
Photograph taken then by Åke Jonsson

invited guest: Wilma Hurskainen

On the deck

Family picture

GROWTH
Growth is a project in which I reconstructed and re-photographed pictures that my dad took of me and my three little sisters when we were children. I tried to make the new photograph look as similar as possible to the old one: the place and the composition are the same, and so are our positions and facial expressions.

Skansen

Birthday

Drottningholm

In the bathtub

I have always been very attracted by the photograph´s ability to cross time and create this kind of comparisons. There is something sad, almost tragic, about looking at old photographs compared to new ones and seeing how people and things have changed or grown up.

After all, it is said that time has been accepted as a common means of measuring life because people are not able nor willing to see the change in themselves. In the pictures it seems as if we were trying to go back to our childhood by adopting the same position towards each other and the photographer´s/spectator´s gaze but we unavoidably fail. We have to fail – there is no return in time.

On the way to school

Grandfather

I am interested in family photographs and the way they are taken, stored and (not so often) looked at. Anyone with any family history can tell that, although the family pictures are supposed to tell a story about a happy, unanimous family, growing up with other people is never simple. Family photographs can be a way of reflecting one´s past and identity, but the pictures conceal just as much as they reveal.

In the cabin

Castle Olavinlinna

In the comparisons time takes a strange form – it feels as if there was a dialogue between the past and the present moment, like there is in our minds as concerns our own memories A memory is never static, permanent, but changes as we change. By repeating a distant moment something weird is revealed about us as objects of the photograph in the first pictures: the way we play our artificial roles for the photograph. We might not be more than five years old, but we already know exactly how to be in/for a photograph.

The Royal Palace

Wilma Hurskainen, born 1979 lives and works in Helsinki. She has graduated as a Master of Arts from University of Industrial Arts and Design in Helsinki. Wilma works as a freelance photographer for newspapers, magazines and companies. Her work has been exhibited in Prague, Hamburg, Stockholm and Santago de Cuba to mention a few of her individual or group shows. You will find more of her work at wilmahurskainen.com or at the Helsinki School.

If I my add something; seeing Wilma´s work was indeed refreshing and a reminder of the importance of family albums and what they can tell. I am a big fan of them too./ulf
invited by ulf fågelhammar
Photos and text © Wilma Hurskainen

Docu 08: faith in the dailylife

once upon a time, when in churches common meetings had been held - the sacred space was even more holy than now. what have happened to the space of faith, the architecture of churches made for our amusement to god? it is constantly changing. tourism and consumerism have changed it forever. i'm still interested in showing what is happening in these boundaries of faith and dailylife.

made in various churches in kraków and warszawa, poland/08

(F)riday's Daily Print!

photo: jeanne wells

This Hand -- today's print. I put a bit of a black border around this one when I scanned it, to show off the rough edges of the handmade paper. I owe a great debt to all you F Blog readers who have been so supportive of this Daily Print project. Thank you!

Paulay

Photo: Gyula Fazakas

Postcard from: Norrtälje