Alone Together

And different in so many ways

Invited guest: Ewa Stackelberg

I want you to meet Ewa Stackelberg and get to know her
vision and photography. My first meeting with her was when
the book "Tale for the living" Berättelser för levande was
handed over to me by Peter Ragnarsson (I will tell you more
about that later)

I was spellbound by the story and the photograms that Ewa
had created.
It´s my intention to present parts of Ewa´s work during a
period of a couple of weeks, beginning with five photograms
from her exhibition in April this year at Fotografins hus.

She called the exhibition "Surrender" and the three series
of pictures were presented in different rooms. I begin with
showing five pictures from the series called "The Woman"

Photograms are pictures made without a camera. Read more
about it here.
-urbano


There may be a sheet that shields us like a skin.
A thin sheet around our love.
That bears the newborn.
Cools the one that sweats.
Surrounds the lovers.
The ones who loved long ago,
in love scenes that precede us.
And then the sheet around the young.
I want to wrap up their openness.
Raise a weave against the red strobe.
There may be a sheet for the power and fragility of the body.
That surrounds and lets fall.
A cloth to give to the warm darkness.

Ewa Stackelberg























all pictures ©Ewa Stackelberg
invited by ulf fågelhammar

Invited guest: John Strazza (2)

Tableautin Series

Called Tableautin, simply meaning small picture ..Taken with a
Minox LX, a tiny camera using film the size of 9mm. (tiny)

This series points to what I used to call emotional seeing ..
really meaning subconscious seeing i guess.. whatever the case,
it's the background seeing that we do all day but do not focus on ..
these images (for me) touch the part of our mind where we store
what we see and take a second look at that (the memory) in and
of itself .. (so to speak .. ) I hope this rings true in some way ..
I hope it touches the part of our seeing that is truly primitive ..



These images share what I feel so strongly about in photography..
It's not so much about how clear a picture is, certainly not about
pixels or resolution ..

After so many years of making images those issues are long gone ..
a completely different set of issues is with me when doing images now ..
it goes so much deeper and what I find in these images starts to touch
that place where an image finds its life.



These particular series more closely touch the film maker in me .. looking
like 8mm films we saw as children, sitting with family and reliving times
we enjoyed .. it touches a place i can feel within ..

I love seeing these elements enter into the frame - a place where we think
we know what we are seeing, a man, a woman, a bird .. photography is
funny that way - it's a sense of reality .. but here the reality is challenged
a bit with less detail .. so it seemingly taps into our subconscious .. what
I love is seeing the light in a less detailed way .. somehow I see it better
like this because it's not wrapped in photo reality .. oddly, it was reality
(as we know it) that brought the elements of light and beings into this frame
so we have it to view ..



And, then, it all bounces back into what we know is a 2 dimensional image ..
an image of a place, event, a moment that somehow called to my attention ..
communicated to film to, in turn, possibly call to your attention .. and we still
don't really know why in full .. and i hope i don't find out any time soon ..


all pictures ©John Strazza
invited by ulf fågelhammar

woman & chair I
woman & chair II

this could be me
& it is

Invited Guest: Bogdan Zwir

Quotation from Magazine Foto&Video No 2 2006:
"What emotions does the word "absurd" evoke? A pragmatic will get confused. An analyst annoyed. A snob will feel contempt. An optimist will burst into laughter.

Perhaps only one category of people will admire the absurd.

First of all these are children who can turn the absurd into a fairy tale and breake the rules of logic. Then thre are writers who materialize absurd to collections of fairy tales for children or to complicated plots of sci-fi thrillers that would be equally appealing also to pragmatics, analysts and snobs. There are also artists and photographers. But their special type makes spectators linger at their "absurd" pictures. That makes critics feel awkward questioning themselves with the eternal issue "What should be done"? Should the creation be called a philosophic masterpiece bringing it´s author to Olympus downhill and should they enjoy their sagacity? Or should this "nonsense" be laughed at, unfornate artist scathed, and they would leave their trace in history most objective and just? But what if it´s talent after all? What then? Fame of a boring concervative, numb conceptualist, geniuses persecutor and butcher?....."

I discovered Bogdan Zwir once on a photosite and his photoworks left traces in my mind and memory. Please visit his site here
Enjoy his work and read the entire article as well...

Invited by: Jeanette Hägglund

Gruppo F inbox: Christmas lights

A Christmas gift from John, that I like to share with you
Christmas lights ©John Strazza
-urbano

invited guest: Mohammad Reza Shahroki Nejad

I am honoured to present you Brick Kilns project – series made by talented and sensible photographer from Iran: Mohammad Reza Shahroki Nejad

The 3 years old Kurdish little girl is standing between her family members. In the future she will be counted as a labor force and deprived of attending school.

The young man has cut his toe with broken glass during crushing the clay underfoot. The workers have no rubber boots and work bare foot.

Hossein has put his arm on his brother's shoulder while smoking a water pipe. He works with his two wives and eight little sons at the brick works.

The one year old girl has fallen asleep while her mother is working. Women don't have much time during the day for taking care of their children.

During the day at the brickyard, the children have nothing else to do than helping their parents by molding and making the bricks

Samira, the Kurdish woman works alongside her husband. They return to their province which is 600 kilometers west of Tehran as the rainy season begins.

Workers who transport mud-bricks to the kiln, have found time for a break during the day. They move 240 kilograms brick, around 50 times with their handcarts to the kiln.

The truck driver is waiting by the kiln for his brick load. The kiln's temperature rises to 1000º C. During transferring the bricks it is still 50 º C warm.

At sunset, the young man is sitting on the bricks, made by his own family during that day. They have to wait one more day for the bricks to dry completely.

Abbas who comes from Kurdistan, is going to his room after the working day. He makes 8000 mud-bricks a day together with his wife, two daughters and three sons.

The young man is embracing his little daughter. He comes 1000 kilometers, from Birjand (a city in east of Iran) to Tehran, in order to work at the brickyard.

By the end of the working day, the woman has cleaned and watered the front of her house and is resting while smoking water pipe.

Mohammad says about himself:

I was born on 1978 in Tehran / Iran.
At the time, I'm photographing for Hamshahri Newspaper which has the largest circulation in the country.
I studied painting at the university and i think it was important for me as i learned newer aspects of my mind.
And as far as photography is concerned:
I really like black & white photography, because I think that I'm facing my subject without any intermediates.
I wish I could place the camera between people's skin and heart, to be under their skin, so close, so delicate and unexpected. I want to be able to record their real feelings.
Sometimes I have to chat or smoke a cigarette with them, during those moments lots pictures pass in front of my eyes, but I prefer to communicate with them at first before taking the photos. It is my will to get to know their reality but after all I like the viewers to face this reality directly, when they look at my photos. That means to forget its being a photo. This is all my effort in photography.

A photo being artistic is not so important for me, although I always try to fix the best framing.

And for me the whole pleasure of photography is in these two points:
1-The human.
2- The reality.

thank you Mohammad for sharing your work with us, I am personally looking forward to see results of your ongoing projects.

invited by Marcin Górski

where the eternity begins

Where does eternity begins,

I mean, we know that it never ends

but has it a beginning?

I think it has,

it is right here, right now

nomatter where you are the eternity begins

right here, right now.

So photography is a way to preserve startingpoints of eternity.

And you don't have to collect'em all

as it is stated on the toypackages...

Just some of them.

(Some might argue, that the eternity has no end or beginning.

but that's just philosophical late-night-to-much-wine-talking).

hick....

...hick.

photos and thoughts: christofer grandin

Invited guest: Niklas Ehlén

Niklas sent me some excellent pictures. I will publish more later on.
-urbano

100 000 Fleeing Kurds

food delivery

refugee valley

a girl suffering from disease

three women

Gruppo F inbox: My Knight in Shining Armour

©Helena Nilsson

Gruppo F Caravan Holidays - Christmas

©T(omten)

invited guest: Jörg M Colberg

I am very glad to have the possibility to present Jörg M Colberg on The F Blog. Since I discovered his homepage and blog I am amazed by his inspiring photographs. Jörg was born in Wilhelmshaven in West Germany in 1968 and has since lived in Bonn, Munich, Paris, Boston. He currently resides in Pittsburgh. He holds a doctorate in theoretical astrophysics and is working as a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University. I strongly recommend his homepage and blog Conscientious. Now I leave the word to Jörg and his serie Higher Education.

Higher Education
We live in a bit of a schizophrenic time. On the one hand, we realize how modern sciences have brought improvements that have greatly enhanced the quality (and actual durations) of our lives. On the other hand, we have become increasingly suspicious of science and, especially, academia - where it is not directly involved in the development of new weaponry. We
have seen deep cuts in funding, especially for sciences deemed not useful enough - in particular liberals arts or art itself. And we have come to call scientists 'eggheads' who are out of touch with reality, in particular if the results of their research clash with our political beliefs. But what does academia really look like? In what kind of environments do those people work who, it is assumed, are overly pampered 'liberals', out of touch with the common people? And if we do not want to dwell on the conditions of work of academics, let's not forget that those academics fulfill the role of educators. So by asking what the academic environment looks like we're also asking what the environment looks like that young students are subjected to when learning the skills that are supposed to help them in life. 'Higher Education' is an effort to portray academic environments. It is an ongoing project.

all pictures © Jörg M Colberg
Invited by Fredrik Skott

madeiro 2006

8.12. 2006, Proenca a Velha, Portugal 

Personal History

Cecilia and Diana