31 May 2008
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)
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.
invited guest: Francisco Mata Rosas
México Tenochtitlán
Throughout the years, I’ve often discovered existing parallels between traditional festivals and daily life inMexico City
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 20th 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
All text and photos © 2008 Francisco Mata Rosas.
Francisco Mata Rosas, is one ofMexico
Recently, as an invited guest, Francisco’s outstanding work done inCuba Mexico City
Throughout the years, I’ve often discovered existing parallels between traditional festivals and daily life in
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 20th 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
All text and photos © 2008 Francisco Mata Rosas.Francisco Mata Rosas, is one of
Recently, as an invited guest, Francisco’s outstanding work done in