invited guest: Michał Łuczak - Nikisz

Works of Michał Łuczak create subjective description of Silesian reality. Michał made this pictures for himself as a record of the sentimental trip into the place where his great grandparents lived – to small miners settle called Nikisz, built on 1912 on the edge of Katowice. This trip took him two years.

Nikiszowiec was created at the land belonging to „Gieshe“ mine, close to shaft called „Nickisch“. It was design by German architects - Zillman brothers as perfect place for mine workers to live – the most modern urbanistic ideas were there implemented. There was created unique, aesthetically homogeneous settle.

As it was created to the miners, the atmosphere of the settle was determined by this what’s most important for them: labour ethos, order, religion. Life wasn’t easy, but people lived close to each other, making their life depending on neighbours presence and help. Settle was planned with green urban areas, so Nikisz was an island in the industrial Upper Silesia.
Miners families lived there in almost untouched way till 1970s.
1970s brought intensification of coal excavation and increase of miners status – old inhabitants of Nikisz moved to modern houses, and their place was taken by incoming workers from all over the country.
1989 ended the prosperity of mines and miners, ended also good life in Nikisz.
People stopped to share their life with neighbours, shutting down the doors to their safe castles. There is no common sport, music, taking care of children. With emerging process of shutting down the mines, people are loosing their jobs and they are not prepared to work anywhere else but in mines. Their children are inheriting their unemployment and in many cases their alcoholism.
Despite of the fact that inhabitants of Nikisz changed, not many are working in mining industry, life of Nikisz settle is shaped by the rhythm of it’s founder – mine (today called “Wieczorek”).
This grey life of Nikisz changes few times per year, mainly during Barbórka (St. Barbara day – holy day for all miners in Poland). Nikisz returns that day to its past, crowded by people in miners uniforms, surrounded by miners orchestras music…

Michał Łuczak (1983) - Silesian photographer, currently studying photography in Opava (Czech Republic)

invited by Marcin Górski

invited guest: Paul Hansen

The pictures of Paul Hansen shows us the world we know from the news
flashes. To me, he is one of the few photographers who manages to give
us the human perspective, to make us understand. Whether it is pictures
from the Tsunami, the war in Lebanon, people in Palestinian refugee camps
or of kids suffering from starvation, Paul Hansen gives us the human point
of view. Robert Frank once said something like " life for a photographer
cannot be a matter of indifference". Paul Hansen is not indifferent. He
has got important things to tell us. Many thanks for being here with us
at the F Blog. invited by ulf fågelhammar

















































All pictures by ©Paul Hansen, Age 43
Works for Dagens Nyheter, the largest daily morning paper in Sweden.
Six times Photographer of the year in Sweden. A gold medal in SNDS,
first prizes in NPPA and a few other international prizes. Author of the
book "Människa, människa."

staring at the sun...

summer stretching on the grass. summer dresses pass. in the shade of a willow tree creeps a crawling over me. over me and over you. stuck together with God's glue. it's going to get stickier too. it's been a long hot summer. let's get under cover. don't try too hard to think. don't think at all. i'm not the only one staring at the sun. afraid of what you'll find if you took a look inside. i'm not just deaf and dumb. staring at the sun not the only one who's happy to go blind... staring at the sun - u2

Gruppo F Inbox: Jos Jacobson

Thanks for sending these, Jos -- maybe you can tell us a bit about yourself?

Mohammad Reza Shahroki Nejad - Shàr-Baafi

Mohammad Reza Shahroki Nejad is an Iranian journalist photographing for Hamshahri Newspaper which has the largest circulation in his country. Mohammad was our guest in December 2006 sharing with us series showing reality of Kurdish workers producing bricks.
This time Mohammed show us in premiere show his new series about a kind of cloth weaving called "Shàr-Baafi". Baafi means weaving and Shàr is a kind of fabric which is made of silk.
This kind of fabric weaving is carried out in Kashan, a city which is about 350 kilometers south of Tehran (capital city). In the past around 1000 workshops of "Sh àr-Baafi" were operating in Kashan and even A.Pope the orientalist had referred to them.
At the time the number of these workshops is even less than the fingers of a hand. In the past the wealth of a man was equal to the number of fabric bolts he had, as the warp of some fabrics were from gold.
This kind of textile industry doesn't almost exist now a days and just a few old men are still working on this job which is as a matter of fact, a very harsh job.
It took me a year to finish this collection and I had to go the whole way to get to these workshops. I named this collection "Dance of Fabric - Music of wood".

invited by Marcin Górski

Gruppo F inbox: Agnieszka Sym

June

Gruppo F inbox: Markus Jenemark

"June"

short break with perspectives

the end

finally, that day came...uff - the last day of regular classes, lectures and so on - formal end of the academic semester :) most expected day after hard 15 weeks of standing and talking in front of students. Since tomorrow we change the rules and places :D

little chain

© jeanne wells

Lung Liu's photographs of people in a strange city reminded me of my own love afffair with strange objects. How do we respectfully portrey them, make them our own while allowing them their own dignity and life? And is it ever possible to show another viewer the beauty we've witnessed?

invited guest: Lung Liu - Majico

Mexico was a whim. I bought a ticket days before the flight and made my decision over a microwaved TV dinner and a Mexico tourism commercial. Two of my three weeks were spent photographing - almost strictly confined to the areas outside Mexico City. Again, these portraits are about access and intimacy - they are about respect. These people are strangers I met off the streets and had conversations with, at least as much of a conversation as one can hope to have with a 20 word vocabulary and pantomiming. These photographs were taken as quickly as I can and with no direction from myself in order to capture as real an image as possible. Many of these scenes candidly unfolded in front of me while others I asked for permission when I could. In the end this trip was about meeting these people - wonder full as an exercise in magic surrealism. The photographs are incidental.

Biography
I am an emerging artist with an interest in documentary portraiture and landscape photography. In the past two years, I have exhibited in group and solo shows, published in magazines, and have placed in and won international competitions.

Motivation
I was born in Vietnam shortly after the war and grew up in the poverty that followed it. In the late 70’s, my
parents uprooted our family and escaped with others in a small wooden boat. We were the boat people, among the many waves of refugees that fled the shores of Vietnam.
After spending some time in a refugee camp, a Canadian church sponsored our family in 1979. The rest of my childhood was typical of that of an Asian family. I was to study hard and do well in school. I will graduate and go to university, then to medical school as was the natural course of things. Somewhere along the way, I rebelled against my chosen path and although I did obtain a Bachelors in Microbiology, I eventually veered towards a vocation as far from the sciences as I possibly could - namely photography.

more pictures by Lung Liu to see at his site

invited by Marcin Górski

invited guest: Agnieszka Sym

Agnieszka Sym, born in Warsaw, living and taking pictures there: in urban space, on the streets, without one-dimensional theme, with subjects that were interesting for her. She is an amateur (remember: from French – lover of) photographer, doesn’t have to make assignments, doesn’t take photos for anyone else then herself, can go her own way. Some of us find on that photos moments, which otherwise will be unnoticed, even if those moments are funny, irrational or from other point of view – just interesting and worth to be photographed.

invited by Marcin Górski

Gliwice House of Photography: Sylwia Biernacka talks of Sophie Calle

Sophie Calle is a French writer, photographer, installation artist, and conceptual artist. Calle’s work is distinguished by its use of arbitrary sets of constraints, and evokes the French literary movement of the 1960s known as Oulipo. Her work frequently depicts human vulnerability, and examines identity and intimacy. She is recognized for her detective-like ability to follow strangers and investigate their private lives. Her photographic work often includes panels of text of her own writing.
Calle began working as an artist in the 1970s, after traveling the world for seven years. When she returned to Paris, the city in which she was born, she recalls feeling isolated and lost; this isolation inspired her to investigate the lives of the people around her. Her first photographs were of graves marked simply mother and father.
Although much of her work employs voyeurism, Calle has allowed her own life to be put on display as well. She became so intrigued by following her unwitting subjects that she wanted to reverse the relationship, and become the subject herself. She asked her mother to hire a private detective to follow her, without the detective knowing that she had arranged it, with the hopes that his investigation would provide photographic evidence of her existence.

Sylwia Nikko Biernacka - absolvent of Social Sciences Department of Poznań University, photographer, creator of Machina Fotografika Foundation

never in the limelight

I like people for their weaknesses and faults. I get on well with ordinarypeople. We talk. We start with the weather, and little by little we get to
the important things.

When I photograph them it is not as if I were examining them with a
magnifying glass, like a cold and scientific observer. It's very brotherly.
And it's better, isn't it, to shed some light on those people who are never
in the limelight.
-Robert Doisneau

more photo quotes on www.photoquotes.com