family album: view from a Fiat 600

My father, a passionate photographer, used to shoot with a second hand Agfa Silette (that has been my first camera when I was 10-12 years old). No light meter and focusing by guessing distances. It’s 1963 (one year before my birth). Two couples went for a trip in a winter day with my father’s second hand Fiat 600: my father Gian, his sister Anna Rosa, my mother Marilù and my uncle Franco.

During that trip he shoot two funny “portraits”. In the countryside downhill a big stone is put under the car wheel… an escaped danger for my mother, trustfully smiling looking outside the car-window. The picture of my aunt Anna Rosa strike me for her beauty almost like a movie star, but in that weird location looking at the wall (but… was her husband Franco hidden there?).

In both cases: one unattractive location, the car, a lonely woman inside looking out. It’s a scheme with quite a distance mood… but funny isn’t it? - Text: Paolo Saccheri, photos: Gian Saccheri

Ladies in the park

Photographer © Thomas Håkansson

untitled photograph

Photographer: © Rebeca Martell

lilla landet (the small country)

From a reflective photographic project. The photos depict current Sweden and will soon be released in a photobook called "Lilla landet".
photographer © Thomas H Johnsson
www.thomashjohnsson.se

Meeting two unknown, but well-known

photo: abeku

meeting photographers

The F Blog is continuosly working on strengthening the bonds between the "virtual" and the "physical" world. Well, sometimes it´s hard to keep them apart as our "real" lives seem to get more and more integrated to the virtual world. But the world is one..and why not have a look at some great photographers that we have met...in real life ( well...or interviewing via email)

Meeting: Graciela Iturbide
Selfportrait with fish © Graciela Iturbide

Micke Berg on Cafe Spuntino
Photo: Mikael Jansson

Meeting Elsa Dorfman
we actually met her via email, but it felt like for real!
self portrait

Meeting Markus Andersson
Photo: Ulla Larsson

Meeting Martin Parr
Photo: Joanna Kinowska

Meeting Angèle Etoundi Essamba
Photo: Mikael Jansson

Man and Plane
Photo Marcin Górski (from Meeting Marcin)

Manhattan story

When I am in Manhattan, I usually go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Saturday morning, then go to a good deli--Marche on Madison--and get some food to take to the park. Somehow, it seems, I always end up sitting on the same bench. A couple of years ago, as I was finishing lunch, I looked across Central Park and saw a tall building with two towers. "That is where Mia Farrow lives," I thought. I remembered that Woody Allen lived directly across the park and that the two of them would talk on the phone looking at one another through telescopes. "This must be Woody Allen's building that I am sitting in front of," I ruminated as I got up to throw away my trash. And as I stood, I bumped into a small fellow walking on the sidewalk. It was Woody Allen. I am a fan, of course, but I do not like to bother people, so I said simply, "Oh, sorry." He looked at me through those heavy glasses, mouth slightly ajar, moving away without speaking. He was with his daughter/wife, Soon-Yi.

The next day, Sunday afternoon, I was going back to the apartment in which I was staying on the Upper East Side. Manhattan is beautiful then, like a quiet museum, like a movie set without a crew, lonely, deserted. I had crossed Park Avenue and was heading east, and as I turned a corner, I ran into a lone couple. We three were the only people to be seen. It was Wood Allen and Soon-Yi. They remembered me, it seemed, and began moving away like crabs stranded on a beach. A stalker, no doubt. "No, no!" I wanted to shout out, but I only moved along.

I told that story for years. This weekend, it received an update. It was Sunday, and I had just finished a visit to the Met (not Saturday, I know, but this was a holiday weekend), and had just finished lunching in the park. And walking back to my subway stop, I once again ran into Woody and Soon-Yi. I had a Leica M7 slung over my shoulder, and I thought about the F Blog. Still, I do not like to bother people and am not enamored by simple fame. Suddenly, though, I turned and followed to snap some photos as they walked. I felt creepy, like Paparazzi, but it was only from behind, I told myself. As I walked along, however, I had the impulse to photograph them face to face. Just as I caught them at the corner, however, the batteries in my camera went dead. I thought of all the purist who buy only mechanical cameras like the Leica MP. - text and photo ©William Schmidt

family album

My father, born 1943, used to develop and print film when he was younger. He told me this self-portrait was printed using an adapted bellows camera (which is his way of saying he screwed a perfectly working bellows camera to make his own enlarger). Years later, he taught me about the darkroom process. I had my own semiprofessional Durst enlarger and everything but I never was able to get a print as amazing as this one. - Mirko Caserta

from the Family album

My mother was a wonderful photographer. She died very young, but made quite a chronicle of our lives. This is my eldest sister, Betty, with a lamb, who has obviously gone around the tree a few times . . .

invited guest: Anna Onopiuk "Molly" (part 2)

more of Molly's works you may see in our former post

invited by Marcin Górski

F is for Family

This is my grandfather Carl S. Buchanan. Jaunty hat, enigmatic grin…external details that belie his true character. I met him once at a family reunion when I was a child and he never spoke. Just a perfunctory pat on the head as he turned back to his cigarette. Over the years I have heard stories about his life in Tennessee. He lived with my grandmother and their seven children in a small, rural town, sharing a tiny two-room shack. He was a moonshiner and a gambler…evading the law…a picturesque character… But then the other stories have surfaced, acts of cruelty too horrific to mention here. Sometimes we look back at family albums to understand where we came from. But we also look back to see what we have escaped…

(I'm not sure who took this picture but it appears to be a studio picture taken in the 40's or 50's)

silent lamb

photographer: Jan Bernhardtz

Einstein school

Photographer © Henrik Müller

From family archives

I received these lines from Emese Altnöder, Hungary; "the photographer unknown, on the picture my grandfather visible diving, a picture from the family archive."

On the F Blog we are open to all possible directions or categories of photography, helping us to explain what the magic of photography is about. We will continue to show photojournalism, realism, surrealism, modernism or any other "ism" related to photography you may think of or invent...yes even pictorialism! When it comes to technique we have pinhole photos, pictures made with large format cameras, digital, film etc. To us it is the image that matters, not the "category" or "technique" or the name of the photographer.

I think it is by time that we have a look into the family albums to see what they hold. Welcome to send pictures to our inbox. Please only send pictures that are in your possesion, it doesn´t matter if it is your old grandfather's album or some photo found in a shoebox etc. If you know about the photographer, give him or her credit. If not, you just name it "photographer unknown". Come to think of it (F)amily begins with F too! Stay tuned to the coolest photoblog around! There for Photography.

three photographs

Photographer © Alf Johansson

invited guest: Francisco Mata Rosas

México Tenochtitlán
Throughout the years, I’ve often discovered existing parallels between traditional festivals and daily life in Mexico City, I’ve noticed the relation between political acts and religious expressions. I’ve linked urban landscapes with feelings, have found explanations for what is collective within the individual and I tried to understand the internal mechanism that allows for co-existence in this city, and I claimed something that already belonged to me, a sense of humor and irony that are part of our reality.

In these neighborhoods, in these festivities, in these streets, I often ran into what I had already seen; and within the visual disorder and chaos I recognized pre-hispanic, colonial, and contemporary art, one only has to separate them. I almost always felt limited by the medium that I had chosen, photography, but on the other hand I recognized its qualities of synthesis, dramatization and, above all, metaphor.













Additionally, I understood that the city is too vast to be contained or photographed in its totality. When this certainty became part of my work, my angst and aspirations diminished, I no longer wanted to document extensively the traditions, I was no longer concerned with offering a definitive testament about Mexico City at the very end of the 20^th Century, and I only wanted to be there, be part of the cycles, to confirm my pleasure in chaos and order that are created during the festival days, of the truces agreed on between tough neighborhoods and, above all, I only wanted to do my job well, take photographs for me, for my wife, my family and my friends


All text and photos © 2008 Francisco Mata Rosas.

Francisco Mata Rosas, is one of Mexico’s most prestigious photographers and has gained broad international recognition for his images, which are tough, sensitive, and thought-provoking.

Recently, as an invited guest, Francisco’s outstanding work done in Cuba was presented on the F Blog. It is a pleasure to invite Francisco for a return visit in order to present his images taken in Mexico City. The images depict the simultaneity of ancient cultural practices and the post-industrial reality of daily life.

You can see FMR’s Cuban images and his resume/exhibition history here. And to see more images from México Tenochtitlán:

Invited by Bea Rowland

I´m right here, in the children´s playhouse...

invited guest: Micke Berg

Once again I am very proud to present Micke Berg and some of his fascinating and inspiring photograph's. I strongly recommend all the F blog readers to check out his many photobooks – my personal favourite is Stockholm blues.

If you are in Stockholm during 6-8 June don't miss Micke Berg's exhibition "No Comments"- perhaps the most dark, beautiful and sensual exhibition in and about Stockholm ever. It's on Cafe Spuntino, Erstagatan 9. Vernissage: Friday 6 June, 13.00 – 17.00.

Please also search for Micke Berg's earlier posts on the F blog and visit his homepage. And if you can read Swedish – don't miss his blog!






All photograph's by Micke Berg. Invited by Fredrik Skott.

Lennart Nilsson: Somewhere in Stockholm - opening tomorrow

Riksbanken 1955 ©Lennart Nilsson.

Lennart Nilsson, born 1922 is widely known for his medical photography. In association with researchers and with specially designed equipment, he has documented the inside of man down to the level of a cell. Find out more on lennart.nilsson.com

However, the exhibition opening tomorrow in Kulturhuset is covering Lennart Nilsson´s work as a photojournalist in Stockholm during the 1940-1950's. It´s a remarkable exhibition depicting everyday life in Stockholm of that time. The picture above is from The Riksbank of Sweden where the officials are seen practising how to shoot with a pistol ( and the woman keeps on working, without even bothering to look at them)

It´s a great exhibition. I urge all of you who love the art of photography to go and see this exhibition opening tomorrow in Kulturhuset. The book "Någonstans in Stockholm" will also be released then. You will find it on Max Ströms förlag.

I had the great honour to interview this legendary photographer today, an interview that will be published later this summer on The F Blog. The exhibition is on until 7 September. Stay tuned.
/Ulf Fågelhammar

(F)riday's print

photo: Jeanne Wells

I'm uploading Thursday's Daily Print today, instead of Friday's Daily Print -- just because it's prettier!
Don't know what I'm talking about? I don't either, but someone here might know.

As always, my gratitude to the support of my fellow Fers & F Blog readers.