The ballad of someone

Face to Face

Postcard from Washington, D.C.

the missing element.

vilnius.08.

red

Kerim Aytac

Throughout my practice, I have been drawn to the idea of absence. My earliest projects were clearly influenced by the ‘decisive moment’ philosophy of street photography, but I had already developed a fascination with the traces of the urban landscape that reflect a human presence, rather than the presence itself. Photographs of the urban landscape, of the social, but in absentia. More recent projects have engaged with this concept from different angles. These approaches can be demarcated by different subjectivities, in that they attempt, through different conceptual frameworks, to encompass an individual’s perspective. ‘Pedestrian’, for example, foregrounds these preoccupations by attempting to convey the perspective of a city dweller searching for a form of human contact. Photographed traces suggest this contact is possible, but also emphasize the distance between presence and absence. In ‘Barber’, the subjectivity is gendered. Here, the public space of men’s toilets is explored through evidences juxtaposed with images that connote a very particular masculine identity. This suggests a presence in this absent, public space.






My subjects can be classified as either still lives or scenes, especially in reference to the established conventions of street photography, for which motion and time are fundamental. Beyond the subjects themselves, I am interested in how a clearly subjective approach interferes with the notions of objectivity such material might engender. My work also engages with discourses of “aftermath” or “late” photography, but through the study of the everyday and its melancholy poetry. Above all, I am keen to find the intersections between photography as a medium-specific form of communication and photography as the Artist’s instrument, a vehicle for the conceptual. I nurture notions of the photograph as an accessible and democratic medium, but often want to push up against its barriers. I believe this to be a fruitful conflict.



My images have been described as abstract and minimalist, mysterious and cinematic. Although these descriptions hold true, my work seeks to explore the tensions between these terms. The images are abstract in that they do not seek to describe or depict a tangible reality, but they do not seek to pictorialise either. I am drawn to the graphic in photography, especially through the work of Japanese photographers such as Daido Moriyama or Shomei Tomatsu, as well the great Italian photographer Mario Giacomelli. My images are paradoxical in that they use strong compositions to foreground the contradiction between the beauty of an image and the banality of its subject . The opposition between the abstract and the concrete can thus create mystery. Constructed with this in mind, the images both show and hide, inviting viewers to decode a series of fragments or details without necessarily knowing why, crime scenes where no crime has been committed.





The images are minimalist because information is absent. This imbues the details that are present with significance. The mundane signs of the everyday thus become the language of the images, flawed in its communication but expressive nonetheless. Read in series, the work takes on the mood of a film, during which the viewer engages with image sequences or montages secure in the knowledge that a meaning will present itself. Hopefully it does, but as a question rather than a resolution.



KERIM AYTAC was born in Istanbul in 1979, and grew up in London whilst studying in a French school. Film was an obsession of his from an early age, and was the subject of his degree studies. Aytac soon found that photography began to offer more creative outlets, which led him to pursue an MA in Photography at Goldsmiths University. Since then he has sought to develop and explore his practice whilst also teaching Film and Media Studies. Aytac has exhibited internationally and lives and works in London.

Piece of me - new exhibition by Sannah Kvist

Sannah Kvist was born in 1986. Apart from being a freelance photographer, she is also the photo editor of music magazine Novell as well as one of the collective owners of the Stockholm gallery 1*1.

I tried to take a picture of Sannah herself, but as always photographers are hard to catch.


Sannah has appeared as a guest on the F blog twice and her clean images have intrigued many of us. In her new series Piece of me she takes her imagery to an even stricter level of hushed down colours and stripped environments. There is only a soft hint of skin tone and the occassional blue that makes the milky whiteness of her images even whiter. This method makes every detail seem important and more than once I found myself staring at birthmarks, indentions in sheets or tiny holes in the background walls. To me, her work is uncanny. The motif, mostly the human body, is presented as something surreal. The human body should seem familiar and the settings homely and everydayish, but there is something about the way she approaches her motives that makes everything seem not homely; uncanny. None of the images show faces or even heads for that matter. We see arms and feet and a hand clutching its owner's back. In Sannah's images things out of daily life seem too real to not be unreal.


When talking about the image shown above, Sannah says that she is very ambivalent about how it turned out. When asked why, she says "I don't know, I guess it's because it looks so much like a typical girl photo" Still, she decided to show it in her exhibition along with a beautiful, intriguing and milky white set of images under the name of Pieces of me

The exhibition is only open for one week, so hurry up and go there!



For more information contact Sannah
www.sannahkvist.se

About Herreys and the infinite feeling of being wrong...

About 25 years ago tonight. I thought that Herreys tune was the best tune that ever was made...though I was a hardcore Beatles fan at the time...

Well, I fortunatly have changed alot since then... Evolved if you like. Dylan, Young, Zeppelin, Ebba Grön, Smiths, Pogues, the Cure put an end to all that.

But who really knows, maybe I in the future will evolve back to once again love the Diggilo Diggilej Alla tittar på mej...

Time is a great manipulator sometimes.

Wacky Wednesdays

Pictures shot on Wednesday afternoons.

Photographer: Jay Van Dam

Indoor Picnic

Try it, it's underrated!

Thinking spot: hot chair (cold feet)

gruppo F inbox: Rune Kongsro

Thinking spots: Tamara Reynolds

gruppo F Inbox/ Ken Richardson

© Ken Richardson

Good Lord, Ken, where you been?

About Dreams

These two photographs seems to be connected in some way. I took them with a few minutes timespan. So it maybe be that, but the more i look, the more convinced i get, that I never will show them separated from eachother.

It is a matter of state of mind I believe.

Brain Cat

© jeanne wells

Unisex

Face to face with Tomek Adamowicz

These are portraits of people who work in places, which are not seen at main streets in my city. You can find them on the backyards in the centre or in the suburbs. But these people and places where they work give the special atmosphere to Warsaw. The project is not finished, but I'd like to know what do you think about it.

photographer: Tomek Adamowicz

Invited Guest: Roelof Bakker, 365 Days

Invited Guest: Roelof Bakker, 365 Days

365 Days is symptomatic of my serendipitous approach to image making - a collection of 365 postcard images, one for each day of a year, which I exhibited online, in my home and in book form. The project started as a new year's resolution with the aim to create a visual diary of my life in London and beyond. I could photograph whatever I wanted to record on a particular day - the only requirement I needed to fulfill was to take at least one photograph before midnight each and every day of the year. All selected photographs are labelled with the date, time, place, location and postcode and these details are an intricate part of the project.

Sarah Kent writes in her introductory essay 'Close Encounters' in the book of 365 Days: 'Roelof Bakker is not attempting some kind of philosophical resume, yet no matter whether you believe that your encounters and your very life are gifts from God, or merely the result of happenstance, 365 Days encourages you to ponder those moments that you didn't record and didn't even bother to experience fully...365 Days presents life as a series of fortuitous happenings - as beautiful as the chance encounter of a photographer and a broken umbrella in a London square - images, that seen together acquire an almost surreal intensity.'

Out of the 365 images, I have picked one photograph from each month of the year.

26 January, 10.15. Mouse, door, Rosebery Gardens, N8 (image 1)
3 February, 10.44. Little Drummer Boy, Le Louvre, Paris, France (image 2)
12 March, 16.56. Strangers, bench, Hyde Park, W1 (image 3)
2 April, 17.21. Sign, The Perseverance, Pritchards Road, E2 (image 4)
28 May, 19.40. Johnny, men's ponds, Hampstead Heath, NW3 (image 5)
6 June, 18.24. Sticker, door, Hammersmith Road, W6 (image 6)
8 July, 08.03. Alive, bathroom, Rosebery Gardens, N8 (image 7)
2 August, 18.57. Icecream, Rosebery Gardens, N8 (image 8)
23 September, 11.31. Apple, footpath, Chapel Lane, Boxhill, Surrey (image 9)
19 October, 18.09. Bridge, Rembrandt Park, Amsterdam, Netherlands (image 10)
15 November, 15.29. Shoe, toilet, Griffin House, Hammersmith Road, W6 (image 11)
31 December, 11.19. Nick, life, Rijksmuseum, Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, Netherlands (image 12)

At the moment I am planning an exhibition of a night time diary style photography project as well as finalising a work exploring aspects of death.

For more information visit http://www.rbakker.com/

Photos and text by Roelof Bakker

Invited by Darren Hepburn

Polaroid inbox: Joseph Zorn