silesian songs (in technicolor)

Yesterday I've met accidentaly in old part of the city friend of mine
- my former neighbour. After return home we've watched with Cristina
my pictures from our former flat placed in magic heart of Upper Silesia.
I decided to share our memories with you. With special dedication to
MoP. Here you meet an old friend of mine, my former neighbour Ania
with her friend.

Photo: Marcin Górski

The Family

Guest: Tatiana Bitir

A free mind at work. That is how I best can describe Tatiana and her work. She was born in Romania and now lives in Toronto, Canada. Ever since I first saw her pictures a couple of years ago it has been a delight to return and see what she is up to. In her own words: "Trying to catch the passing time...always too late... Trying to find myself….always blind…. My photography ...is about hunting phantoms...." See more pictures by Tatiana Bitir here
Invited by Ulf Fågelhammar

©Tatiana Bitir

Autumn in Paris

The everlasting Paris motive.

New adventures in color

Flamingo

The man from Szeged

Many things in the history of photography seem to lead back to the 291 gallery
in New York. I was planning to write something about Edward Steichen who
was Alfred Stieglitz associate and designer of the covers of the legendary
journal "Camera Work".

Then I stumbled upon this man born in Szeged, Hungary.

[Nickolas Muray at Riverview Park, Chicago], 1917 / unidentified photographer.
1 photographic print : b&w ; 14 x 08 cm. Nickolas Muray papers, 1911-1978.
Archives of American Art

His name was Nickolas Muray and for those of you who are not familiar with
him I´d like to share my findings. As you probably already have figured out,
I have not graduated from any academy of fine arts or something like that.
I am just a curious private investigator. Anyway Nickolas was a very handsome
man, but also a skilled photographer. Below is a picture of his studio in
New York where he settled down in 1913.

[Nickolas Muray's studio at 129 MacDugal Street], ca. 1920 / Nickolas Muray,
photographer. 1 photographic print : b&w ; 26 x 21 cm. Nickolas Muray papers,
1911-1978. Archives of American Art.

Muray became one of the most sought after portrait photographers and made
over 10 000 portraits, many of them were of celebrities. He worked for
magazines like Vanity Fair and Harper´s Bazaar.

I was delighted to find his color prints. The one with the shoes below is
breathtaking. I really love it.

TITLE ON OBJECT: McCall's Style & Beauty Cover:
Shoes 1942 color print, assembly (Carbro) process 37.9 x 31.7 cm. (visible)
Gift of Mrs. Nickolas Muray
GEH NEG: 29533 71:0034:0005

Among those pictures there is also the beautiful portrait of Frida Kahlo below.

Muray, Nickolas
American (b. Hungary, 1892-1965)
TITLE ON OBJECT: Frida Kahlo
1941
color print, assembly (Carbro) process
40.1 x 29.9 cm.
Gift of Mrs. Nickolas Muray
GEH NEG: 40130
71:0050:0016

Pictures of Kahlo and Shoes are from Photography collections online,
George Eastman House See more excellent pictures by Murat here

Nickolas had a love affair with Frida Kahlo for many years. In the last
picture you will find him in Frida´s and Diego Riveras home in Mexico.

[Gathering at the Riveras’ San Angel home], 1938 / unidentified photographer.
1 photographic print : b&w ; 20 x 25 cm. Nickolas Muray papers, 1911-1978.
Archives of American Art.

Right to left: Frida Kahlo, the Mexican painter and caricaturist Miguel Covarrubias (1904-1957), Diego Rivera, the Hungarian-born photographer Nickolas Muray (1892-1965), Rosa Covarrubias (former American dancer Rosa Rolando), and two Tehuanas who served Rivera as models.


It seems I have ended up in Mexico once more.

one for everything

Invited Guest: Olle Norling

Gävle



Håksberg



Slite



Furillen



E4, Uppland




Skövde


I´m glad that i now can present some works of Olle Norling, who recently showed photos in an exhibition in Uppsala. The prints he has done by him self.

Olle says: "My photography often includes buildings or landscapes. In this work from 1987 I was investigating the commonplace".

invited guest: Joakim Ahnfelt

I think that Joakim Ahnfelt’s serie Est Deus In Nobis is really fascinanting and is very happy to have the possibility to show it on The F Blog. About the serie Joakim says:

What if.
What if everyday objects suddenly got blessed with divine inspiration? Or
should we say possessed?
What would they do?
Where would they go?
What would whey do once they got there?

Est Deus In Nobis is a series trying to explore an act of defiance against
the laws of nature. The main part of the pictures was created during two
hectic spring months in 2001. Occasionally this project get revisited...







Tech note: No pixels where tweaked, rearranged or harmed in any way. It's
all done the hard way. See more at this adress: "www.flickr.com/photos/52539789@N00/". Invited by Fredrik Skott.

On the Street Where You Live

photo: Jeanne Wells
my idea of street photography.

Marcel Duchamp

[Joseph Stella and Marcel Duchamp], 1920 / Man Ray, photographer.
1 photographic print : b&w ; 26 x 21 cm. Rudi Blesh papers,
1909-1983. Archives of American Art.

If you read my post about "Francis Picabia and 391" you probably
also saw the name Marcel Duchamp on the cover of an issue of
that periodical. Here he is with painter Joseph Stella. Both men
are worth a special chapter, but for now I will just make a remark
about the photographer with birthname Emmanuel Radnitzky, but
known to the world as Man Ray.

"In New York, Ray met and worked with the French artist
Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia from Spain, forming the
core of the New York Dada movement whose centre was
Alfred Stieglitz's gallery '291'." read full article at
about: photography.com

Well, it seems like we are getting somewhere? Or what do
you think? I will definitely come back to Man Ray later on.
Among others.

Another friday

Manuel Álvarez Bravo

Manuel Alvarez Bravo
Frida Kahlo in Manuel Alvarez Bravo's Studio
1930s
courtesy of Masters of Photography

The Mexican photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo was in my view one of the true masters of the 20th Century. His portrait of Frida Kahlo is a classic, but his main contribution was the pictures of ordinary people in everyday life situations. Here are some samples from his rich production and at about photography you will find a biography of this great, fascinating man.

Invited guest: JP Zorn

Running around on the internet you stumble on lots and lots of photographs. Some of them you forget the same time you click on the next one but some gets stuck in your mind. These polaroids by JP Zorn I found on www.photoseen.com along time ago and I've revisited them several times. It's an honour to be able to invite JP as a guest here at the F Blog.
Invited by Markus Andersson

Garry Winogrand once said: "I photograph to find out what something looks like photographed."

Taking polaroids is an act very much in the spirit of that credo. These pictures were taken with a Polaroid SX-70 camera and a Polaroid 680 SLR using Polaroid Time-Zero and 600 film between the fall of 2003 and the winter of 2006. They are part of a series that recorded suburban scenes and spaces and things around where I live. They are concerned with light and shape and color as well as the lives of objects. They come out of the tradition of documentary photography but, in the end, are simply personal.

Polaroid discontinued the production of Time-Zero film in the first quarter of 2006. Since then I have been taking landscape pictures using a Holga camera.

/JP Zorn

Francis Picabia and 391

[Francis Picabia, unidentified man (possibly a chauffeur), and André Roosevelt, Paris, winter], between 1912-1913 / unidentified photographer. 1 photographic print : b&w ; 20 x 24 cm. Adelheid Lange Roosevelt papers, 1955-1959. Archives of American Art.

He was a remarkable man Francis Picabia. Read more about him here and here. Notice the relation to Camera Work and gallery 291 demonstrated on this cover from the Dada periodical 391.


391. Edited by Francis Picabia. Barcelona, New York, Zurich, Paris, 1917-1924. 19 Numbers.
scan courtesy of International Dada Archive

I eat cat´s for breakfast

Photo: Gordon Flash

every man must shout:

there is great destructive, negative work to be done. To sweep, to clean. The cleanliness of the individual materialises after we've gone through folly, the aggressive, complete folly of a world left in the hands of bandits who have demolished and destroyed the centuries. With neither aim nor plan, without organisation: uncontrollable folly, decomposition."
/from Dada manifesto, 1918


Cover from Der Dada no 1. Edited by Raoul Hausmann, John Heartfield, and George Grosz. 1919-1920. 3 Numbers. scan courtesy of International Dada Archive

Haha, the cats have taken over the keyboard!!

From now on, there will only be cat pictures on this BLOG. Muahahaha!

/Isis helped by Ramses

invited guest: Peter Burda

Peter Burda is perhaps most creative photographer I know. He bravely plays
with convencies and techniques, feeling well in classical B&W portrating
(circus people series), night photography (english nights) and picturesque,
surreal landscaping. His work doesn't allow to give him a stable lable and
put him into certain drawer. His photographic motto is: I photograph,what
I don't see. what I see, I don't photograph.

Peter has no formal photographic education, but he is fully devoted to
photography.He lives in a small village Mlynica in Slovak Tatra mountains.
He exhibited in Slovakia, Poland and France. Recently his work was
presented by major Polish magazine Fotografia

I am grateful Peter agreed to share his work with F blog.

english nights: 24#50

how an angel learns to fly: lesson 6

circus people/humberto: humberto #5

landscapes: about small boy in the big city

chat: chatroom2#1

More you will find here

Invited by Marcin Górski

Alfred Stieglitz and 291

[Alfred Stieglitz], ca. 1907 / Alvin Langdon Coburn, photographer.
1 photographic print : b&w ; 36 x 28 cm. Miscellaneous photograph
collection. Archives of American Art.

Alfred Stieglitz´s Photo-Secession gallery at 291 Fifth Avenue,
New York opened 1905 and existed until 1917 as a major force
to promote photography, painted art and sculpture to a sometimes
not too impressed audience. Here is what a critic wrote about
Pablo Picasso the Spanish painter who was introduced for the first
time in USA at "291":

"Any sane criticism is entirely out of the question; any serious
analysis would be vain. The results suggest the most violent wards
of an asylum for maniacs, the craziest emanations of a disordered
mind, the gibberings of a lunatic!”/Arthur Hoeber in the New York Globe

Other artists seen at "291" were Matisse, Cezanne and Rodin.
Stieglitz had good help from his associate Edward Steichen who
often travelled to Europe.

There is a lot of interesting stuff to be found on the net about 291
and Stieglitz. I recommend:
- Alfred Stieglitz and Gallery 291 A Modern Art Revolution Before the
Armory Show by Brooke Schieb
- Alfred Stieglitz and his New York Galleries From National Gallery of Art
- Alfred Stieglitz from Masters of Photography
- Documentary about Stieglitz made by PBS (American Masters)

Alfred Stieglitz
Winter on Fifth Avenue, New York
1893

scan courtesy of Masters of Photography

Adinkra symbolism

The Adinkra symbol language is found on ornamental cloths and textile, often worn as clothes by ordinary modern Africans. It was founded mainly within the Asanthe tribes in Ghana in West Africa.

This picture is from a poster I bought personally in Ghana, filled with the symbols. A bit dissappointed, a quick google on this turns up perfect dictionaries of the symbols. I prefer my poster.

Actually go read some of the symbols on the dictionary. It is quite interesting to find symbols for what we in Western society find as opposites, instead being married into one symbol - actually having a symbol and a language for the tension between different opposites. To me it shows a rather nuanced and complex society. Some examples are 'DWENNIMMEN', 'ESE NE TEKREMA', 'WO NSA DA MU A'. The culture really shows in the language. :)

I can really recommend travelling to Ghana, it is a most friendly and wonderful country!

the song remains the same

Not a visualisation of the Led Zeppelin song really, but this gone summer I have listen more to that then anything else, it has been in my blood for a while.Songs like: Going to California, Dazed and Confused, Ramble on and No Quarter...

Led Zeppelin has that effect on me, in periods I almost don't listen to anything else, then I get fed up. And I ramble on.

photo: Christofer Grandin