Mohammad Reza Shahroki Nejad - Shàr-Baafi

Mohammad Reza Shahroki Nejad is an Iranian journalist photographing for Hamshahri Newspaper which has the largest circulation in his country. Mohammad was our guest in December 2006 sharing with us series showing reality of Kurdish workers producing bricks.
This time Mohammed show us in premiere show his new series about a kind of cloth weaving called "Shàr-Baafi". Baafi means weaving and Shàr is a kind of fabric which is made of silk.
This kind of fabric weaving is carried out in Kashan, a city which is about 350 kilometers south of Tehran (capital city). In the past around 1000 workshops of "Sh àr-Baafi" were operating in Kashan and even A.Pope the orientalist had referred to them.
At the time the number of these workshops is even less than the fingers of a hand. In the past the wealth of a man was equal to the number of fabric bolts he had, as the warp of some fabrics were from gold.
This kind of textile industry doesn't almost exist now a days and just a few old men are still working on this job which is as a matter of fact, a very harsh job.
It took me a year to finish this collection and I had to go the whole way to get to these workshops. I named this collection "Dance of Fabric - Music of wood".

invited by Marcin Górski

Gruppo F inbox: Agnieszka Sym

June

Gruppo F inbox: Markus Jenemark

"June"

short break with perspectives

the end

finally, that day came...uff - the last day of regular classes, lectures and so on - formal end of the academic semester :) most expected day after hard 15 weeks of standing and talking in front of students. Since tomorrow we change the rules and places :D

little chain

© jeanne wells

Lung Liu's photographs of people in a strange city reminded me of my own love afffair with strange objects. How do we respectfully portrey them, make them our own while allowing them their own dignity and life? And is it ever possible to show another viewer the beauty we've witnessed?

invited guest: Lung Liu - Majico

Mexico was a whim. I bought a ticket days before the flight and made my decision over a microwaved TV dinner and a Mexico tourism commercial. Two of my three weeks were spent photographing - almost strictly confined to the areas outside Mexico City. Again, these portraits are about access and intimacy - they are about respect. These people are strangers I met off the streets and had conversations with, at least as much of a conversation as one can hope to have with a 20 word vocabulary and pantomiming. These photographs were taken as quickly as I can and with no direction from myself in order to capture as real an image as possible. Many of these scenes candidly unfolded in front of me while others I asked for permission when I could. In the end this trip was about meeting these people - wonder full as an exercise in magic surrealism. The photographs are incidental.

Biography
I am an emerging artist with an interest in documentary portraiture and landscape photography. In the past two years, I have exhibited in group and solo shows, published in magazines, and have placed in and won international competitions.

Motivation
I was born in Vietnam shortly after the war and grew up in the poverty that followed it. In the late 70’s, my
parents uprooted our family and escaped with others in a small wooden boat. We were the boat people, among the many waves of refugees that fled the shores of Vietnam.
After spending some time in a refugee camp, a Canadian church sponsored our family in 1979. The rest of my childhood was typical of that of an Asian family. I was to study hard and do well in school. I will graduate and go to university, then to medical school as was the natural course of things. Somewhere along the way, I rebelled against my chosen path and although I did obtain a Bachelors in Microbiology, I eventually veered towards a vocation as far from the sciences as I possibly could - namely photography.

more pictures by Lung Liu to see at his site

invited by Marcin Górski

invited guest: Agnieszka Sym

Agnieszka Sym, born in Warsaw, living and taking pictures there: in urban space, on the streets, without one-dimensional theme, with subjects that were interesting for her. She is an amateur (remember: from French – lover of) photographer, doesn’t have to make assignments, doesn’t take photos for anyone else then herself, can go her own way. Some of us find on that photos moments, which otherwise will be unnoticed, even if those moments are funny, irrational or from other point of view – just interesting and worth to be photographed.

invited by Marcin Górski

Gliwice House of Photography: Sylwia Biernacka talks of Sophie Calle

Sophie Calle is a French writer, photographer, installation artist, and conceptual artist. Calle’s work is distinguished by its use of arbitrary sets of constraints, and evokes the French literary movement of the 1960s known as Oulipo. Her work frequently depicts human vulnerability, and examines identity and intimacy. She is recognized for her detective-like ability to follow strangers and investigate their private lives. Her photographic work often includes panels of text of her own writing.
Calle began working as an artist in the 1970s, after traveling the world for seven years. When she returned to Paris, the city in which she was born, she recalls feeling isolated and lost; this isolation inspired her to investigate the lives of the people around her. Her first photographs were of graves marked simply mother and father.
Although much of her work employs voyeurism, Calle has allowed her own life to be put on display as well. She became so intrigued by following her unwitting subjects that she wanted to reverse the relationship, and become the subject herself. She asked her mother to hire a private detective to follow her, without the detective knowing that she had arranged it, with the hopes that his investigation would provide photographic evidence of her existence.

Sylwia Nikko Biernacka - absolvent of Social Sciences Department of Poznań University, photographer, creator of Machina Fotografika Foundation

never in the limelight

I like people for their weaknesses and faults. I get on well with ordinarypeople. We talk. We start with the weather, and little by little we get to
the important things.

When I photograph them it is not as if I were examining them with a
magnifying glass, like a cold and scientific observer. It's very brotherly.
And it's better, isn't it, to shed some light on those people who are never
in the limelight.
-Robert Doisneau

more photo quotes on www.photoquotes.com

Dude on the other side

who never crosses . . .
© Jeanne Wells

tale around midnight...

Nobuyoshi Araki preview

From Last Summer, 2004–05 by Nobuyoshi Araki

Two major exhibitions of photography will open in Kulturhuset, Stockholm
this autumn, both in September. The F Blog has already told you about
Martin Parr - pictures 1971-2000 opening 1 September. Nobuyoshi Araki
from Japan is like Martin Parr one of the most influential current
photographers. The exhibition ARAKI- Self.Life.Death will open
29 September. You will find more about these two exhibitions later
this summer on The F Blog.

Students from Kulturama Photography School exhibit their work

Picture by ©Felix Bridell

14 students from Kulturama Photography School are holding their vernissage at CFF - Centrum för fotografi on 14 June hrs 17 00 - 21 00. The Ukrainian born photographer Misha Pedan has been their teacher and mentor. The exhibition will be on show until 1 July.

In to the polish light

invited guest: Shannon Richardson

Texas is a Fine Place to Die
These photographs are from an ongoing project of documenting small
towns in the texas panhandle as they were years ago. Despite the
modernity that has been inevitable, these places still hold the essence
of a time gone by.















Pictures and text by ©Shannon Richardson
www.shannonrichardson.com
invited by ulf fågelhammar

Colourbox scenery (v)

Noordwijk Party Time

Almanac Magazine

Have a look at Almanac Magazine - a monthly online publication.
"Almanac Magazine upholds the value of photography as an
artistic and historical expression on countless subjects and
circumstances that surround all of us."
/Quoted from "About us"

June Issue is out now.
Go to www.almanacmagazine.com

Walking with Urbano

A more than memorable day!

Tiananmen

The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 were a series of demonstrations led by students, intellectuals, and labour activists in the People's Republic of China (PRC) between April 15, 1989 and June 5, 1989. While the protests lacked a unified cause or leadership, participants were generally critical of the ruling Chinese Communist Party and voiced complaints ranging from minor criticisms to calls for full-fledged democracy and the establishment of broader freedoms. The demonstrations centred on Tiananmen Square in Beijing, but large-scale protests also occurred in cities throughout China, including Shanghai, which stayed peaceful throughout the protests. In Beijing, the resulting military crackdown on the protesters by the PRC government left many civilians dead or injured. The toll ranges from 200–300 (PRC government figures), to 400–800 by The New York Times, and to 2,000–3,000 (Chinese student associations and Chinese Red Cross), although the PRC government asserts and most independent observers agree that the majority of these deaths were not in the square itself but rather in the streets leading to the square (by wikipedia).

After this tragedy PRC government kept the citizens in iron abrace and on every step demonstrated it's power.
Pictures shown below were made in June 1990 at Tiananmen

pictures © by Marcin Górski

invited guest: Tread

Photographs are a form of reference. Where you were, who was there,
what you were doing. But on occasion, as art, photographs transcend
mere reference and like a great song, can make that moment "something
more." That "something more" is the ongoing motivation within my work.



I am but a self-taught photographer and self-proclaimed smart-ass. When not
wasting film in musty, archaic, plastic toy cameras, long sleepless nights are
spent watching bad movies with titles like "The World’s Greatest Sinner" and
"Blood Feast." These bad movies and their zero budget cinematography, no
doubt, have influenced my work in some way, but so has fellow Kentuckian
Ralph Eugene Meatyard.



Black & White and Color photography, captured non-digitally, printed
traditionally using (gasp) silver and paper. Themes in obvious dichotomy.
Intimacy vs. Isolation. Love vs. Indifference. Here vs. There. I want to
convey a "southern-ness" in my work without using a sledgehammer.
I am preaching that "The South" isn't a cliche' ridden also-ran of a culture,
more than any other place on earth it is full of subtle beauty, wonderful
characters and strange wonder. I am the South, my children are,
we all are...or should be.



Tread was edumacated at the University of Kentucky. He can't find his
BS Degree in Computer Science from back when Fortran meant something...
or did it ever really? He barely eeks by as a graphic designer and marketing
dork in the healthcare world. No, I will not shoot your wedding.





web: www.gotreadgo.com
blog: http://gotreadgo.blogtog.com
email: tread[at]gotreadgo.com

Pictures and text by Tread
invited by ulf fågelhammar