The F Blog

18 April 2008

The warm and friendly Tokusegawa-san a big hearted Makushita takes time to pose with one of his Kiriyama-beya juniors

photo by Skorj

Raspberry Fields

As a kid,
I remember playing at my grandparents place.
The taste of life was sweet back then.
Sweet and red.
Like raspberries.

Well, it is all gone by now.
A small job for a caterpillar,
a giant leap for mankind.
A new highway.

Evolution has punched me.

This summer
I will plant raspberries in the garden.
For my kids. And for me.

That is my way to punch back.

Yola Monakhov exhibition in New York

F blog author Yola Monakhov invites you to the opening of her show at the Sasha Wolf Gallery on Thursday, May 1st, from 6-8pm. The address is 10 Leonard Street, in Tribeca. (Please check Sashawolf.com for more information.)

F Spotting: Nurse Rabbit and the White Man

This wonderful Ummavison is the start of our new and very unpredictable proyecto called "F-spotting". Your contributions are welcome - but don´t count on us to publish them, unless they meet the criterias of the F Doctors. Email your pictures to gruppof-inbox@googlegroups.com

It's (F)riday again

photo: Jeanne Wells

and time for the Daily Print.
As always, my gratitude to all my F Blog friends and readers, you're the best!

invited guest: Edward Yanowitz

On my visual odyssey, I photograph to remember the moments I’ve seen that had some special significance to me. Sometimes the serendipity of life presents you with a private scene, something special for your eyes to see. The photograph verifies to me that … yes, I was there… yes, I did see that and it was not something I imagined. I get great enjoyment from looking at the intimate details of life, a wandering eye that is never satiated, always looking for something….. in the hope that I will be aware enough to recognize the significance of a moment, before it is lost in time.

Interpreting the parallel view of my eye and the camera, has helped me expand my visual observation and awareness, letting me convert the things I’ve seen into symbols of sight. I photograph the simultaneous realities that coexist within my line of sight, the intersection of light and time, people and the space around them. From my perspective, life itself is the canvas and I am just a framer of its singular moments. - Edward Yanowitz

Edward Yanowitz was born May 25,1946 in Miami, Fl., raised in Nassau, Bahamas and Miami Beach, Fl. He has been a photographer since 1967, working in the Fine Art, Social Documentary and Commercial fields.

In 1972, he received a Masters of Fine Arts degree in Photography, from The San Francisco Art Institute. He has taught photography at the University of Miami, Coral Gables, Fl., Barry University, Miami Shores, Fl., Miami-Dade College, Kendall Campus, and The New World School of the Arts located in Miami Fl. He is presently coordinates the photography program at American InterContinental University, School of Design, South Florida.

Four of his photographs were selected by John Szarkowski for the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, in New York City in 1974. His photographs have been in numerous exhibitions and are held in corporate and private collections both nationally and internationally.

See more of Edward Yanowitz work at www.photobistro.com and www.luminous-lint.com.

All photos and text © Edward Yanowitz

invited by ulf fågelhammar

16 April 2008

Face to Face (120)

Gypsy boy in Mercado, Fundao, Pt

Face to Face (119): Staś

photo by Jacek Gąsiorowski (dr. Feelgood)

Where was I ?

photo: Jan Bernhardtz

invited guest: Elsa Dorfman (second part)

Elsa says: "I was feeling very isolated and discouraged in fall 1969 when a postcard arrived -- 'Can I stay at your house next week, sunday, monday, tuesday? Love, Bob.' Bob Creeley was the first friend from out of town to visit me. He and I can sit for hours and talk and drink coffee."

The photo is the front cover of:En Famille: Poetry by Robert Creeley & Photographs by Elsa Dorfman

Elsa Dorfman is a great storyteller. I have been on her website elsa.photo.net several times, discovering new stories and pictures all the time.

There is another good story involving Bob Creely to be found in The Canyon country Zephyr. John Depuy, the painter recalls when he and Edward Abbey met Creely in the "WIld West". (Interview by Jim Stiles) "Then one day in Santa Fe, reaching the bottom of the pit, we decided to go over to Claude’s Bar which was the only Bohemian bar in Santa Fe and have a few a drinks. We were sitting over there moping over our beer and boiler makers---I need HELP---and in walks Creely, Bob Creely, the poet. He took one look at us and after about ten minutes, he says, "I’ve got to get out of here, you two are depressing me. You’re the most morbid couple of people, I’ve ever met."

You should by the way have a look at the work of Jim Stiles and the people he refers to. There is a book called Brave New West - Morphing Moab at the Speed of Greed that definitely made me interested in this man´s work.

The picture is from a series by Elsa Dorfman depicting three woman with breast cancer. It´s called NoHairDay and a film was made about it. You will find a lot more about NoHairDay on Elsa´s site. In a review Jon Kabat-Zinn wrote: "Intimate, humorous, and ever so real, NoHairDay captures the full catastrophe of life for three women with breast cancer who bravely came together for this artful documentary of their inward and outward odyssey. Part of its power is its explicitness, and part the community of shared doubt, purpose and celebration that emerges. Extraordinary both in the text and the signature Dorfman photographs..."

Elsa says: There is something right about Eila Kokkinen being part of my photographic career -- helping me edit images, install shows -- Winter 1974, Eila came over on a cold Sunday to help pick pictures for the Househook. It is freezing in my house -- sixty degrees to keep the heating bill down. She huddles by the stove, which is blowing dry gassy heat into the room. Out of cigarettes, she wants to walk to Cahaly's three blocks away. In this cold'! For cigarettes? --- She can't concentrate on my images; all she's thinking about are her ciggies."

From: Portraits at the Big Apple Circus

Cambridge sisters

Elsa: I have two sisters, and so of course, I am fascinated by the sister relationship.

Elsa about her portraits of Allen Ginsburg: "Allen always had a sense of what makes a picture work. As a subject he instinctively helped photographers get what they wanted. He could concentrate and relax at the same time. he could be THERE in front of the lens. Loss of consciousness. No self-consciousness. No reticense. Vanity reined in by a sense of, yes, STYLE."

You met Harvey Silverglate in Elsa Dorfman (first part). This picture is a somewhat younger version of her husband. Elsa: "I love taking pictures of Harvey, partly because it's a switch on the usual combination -- male photographer, female lover. I take pictures of him at the typewriter in his office, with his friends, naked in hotel rooms, rushing into surf at Nantucket, with his relatives in Miami."

self portrait

You see that chord attached to the Polaroid camera? I like to think about it as our connection to Elsa Dorfman, a great person and photographer. We are right now working on an interview with Elsa to be published here on the F Blog. So, stay tuned to F!
All pictures ©Elsa Dorfman
Text quoted from Elsa Dorfman´s site elsa.photo.net
invited by ulf fågelhammar

15 April 2008

Jacek Gąsiorowski new exhibition - invitation

Our friend Jacek Gąsiorowski invites us to the vernissage of his exhibition "Portraits" at Melon Gallery (Inżynierska 3) on April 17th at 19.00h.

If you are in Warsaw this day, you shall not miss it (I know the works and I know the program :))/marcin

invited guest: Piotr Kasprzyk

I have been asking Piotr ages for allowing us to show his works in F blog. Over a year of efforts in vain. Piotr, our old friend from Cracow loves to disapear and hide himself as well as his works.

Yesterday he said: ok - the time has come, and he sent me few of his pictures, refusing to say a word about himself.

after a while he told me: hmm, maybe say that what I like most is to smoke cigarets standing on my balcony, just in shorts...

I am sure his pictures says more about him that he or me, or Joanna could say about.

As I know him, he will erase again all his pictures from all of the places, and then the F blog will be unique place where you will be able to meet him.

invited by marcin górski

14 April 2008

Postcard from Simrishamn

unreal

photo by Kamila Kulik

postcard from Warsaw

photo by Szymon Kochański

Docu 08 - Side scenes

Almost all of what´s left of the great shipyard at Eriksberg in Gothenburg, is the big old gantrycrane. The whole area where the shipyard once used to be, is undergoing a radical transformation: from heavy industry, too a kind of recreational-, and living area, with “City Golf”, health clubs, sushi bars, a “Science Park”, and designer apartments. About 70 000 people will live and work in this new community when all is done.

Here in “one of the most attractive residential areas in Gothenburg” there are some remains of older periods, picturesque monuments like a lighthouse, an anchor, an old boat, cranes, and that big old gantrycrane. These things that used to a have a real function are now merely decorations, or side scenes.

Text and photos: Jan Buse

13 April 2008

invited guest: Elsa Dorfman (first part)

Let me introduce you to a Polaroid Angel - photographer Elsa Dorfman. I hate to admit it, but I was not familiar with Elsa and her remarkable work until I came across her web site elsa.photo.net. To explore it was quite an adventure and pure joy. But before you go there, please stay for a while here at the F Blog. We will, with Mrs Dorfman´s kind permission, present some great and interesting pictures from her archives. All images are Copyright 1965-2008 Elsa Dorfman.

Elsa says: "My portraits are made with the Polaroid 20x24 camera. There are six of these cameras in the world; in Polaroid studios in New York City and Prague, in the Calument Photo Store, in Berkeley, CA, at the Rowland Foundation in Cambridge, MA., and my studio in Cambridge, MA. One camera rotates among several colleges as part of the Polaroid Corporation College Program. I love the camera and its history. I love the fact that so many people who worked camera are still devoted to it. I love the fact that it is quirky and unpredictable and seems to have its own soul. I use Polaroid Polacolor ER instant color film. ASA 80. There is another color film and black and white film, but I don't use either of them. I stick w/ the film I know!!!"

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg

The pictures of Dylan and Ginsberg, taken 1975 are called "the music lesson"

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 1973

On Elsa´s website you will find many wonderful stories. One of them is about her first meeting with Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Allen Ginsberg

Elsa says: "It was hard to take a bad photograph of Allen. Nobody did. Maybe it was because Allen was a photographer from way back. He loved to take pictures. Unrestrained, he could snap, snap and take rolls of film. His images of Kerouac, Cassidy, and Bourroughs are the ones we have in our memory of those days." ...

...Maybe Allen absorbed the essentials of photography from hanging around photographers and artists. He was proud of being a friend of Berenice Abbott, Robert Frank and Richard Avedon. He was proud that I picked up the camera, especially the Polaroid 20x24."