Fossil Records of the Twentieth Century

GC from Montreal, Canada was our first invited guest on 22 September, 2006
It´s good to have you around GC and thanks for this series celebrating one
year with da F Blog. Flying high! /urbano

Underwater Poetry

Picture by Ingvar Eliasson (Galapagos islands)
We will se more from Ingvar the coming week. Stay tuned.
/urbano

self portrait from Emese

picture by Emese Altnöder

from Owen

Owen O´Meara sends greetings to The F Blog One Year Anniversary with
this beaiutiful picture. Thanks! /urbano

Vauxhall Devoted Deluxe

photo: abeku

The F Blog - one year!

We are celebrating one year with da F blog and expecting cakes and
sweeties from our readers (and some awesome pictures!). The first
post was actually made on Sep 11, 2006 but how about celebrating
the 16th of September as our birthday? Calling all devoted, was
the title of the post.
-urbano

Bio elephant

Pictures by Emese Altnöder

me & thee

Jeanne Wells

Can you drive me home...?

"The Dark Planet" opening today

Woman with raven/Helena Blomqvist

The complete exhibition has only been shown once before. Helena Blomqvist
is one of Sweden´s most interesting current photographers. She was our
invited guest 27 November, 2006.
The exhibition "The Dark Planet" opens today at Kulturhuset, Stockholm and
will be on until 2 December 2007.
/urbano

invited guest: Mike Peuker - Istanbul

I met Mike's pictures accidentaly today, after not seing for months. His works from Istanbul simply charmed me. I am happy Mike agreed to present them here.

With all Istanbul pics I only show people I became acquaintent with first! So.. what I did was to linger in the streets of Istanbul with none or at least very few tourists. Always looking for a possibility to strike up a conversation. Due to the great hospitality of the Turks more often then not it wasn't that difficult. Some words some tea and the aloofness was broken on both sides. When I finally asked to take a picture from my chance acquaintanceship everyone felt honoured, nobody turned my wish down. Great people there!!

Street Photography, portrait and reportage in analog black and white , that's what I'm mainly interested in!I don't follow special rules I try to do it my way. At the end it is essential for me to be satisfied. Fortunately it's not a job rather a passion, that makes me free! Needless to say that I'm pleased if there is someone who likes my work!

more of Mike pictures you will find here

invited by Marcin Górski

Meeting Martin Parr (part 1)

We met Martin Parr for a short interview the day before the opening of his exhibition “Martin Parr Photographs 1971-2000”, Kulturhuset, Stockholm.

This is the first part of the summary of our conversation.

Joanna Kinowska (also picture of M. Parr), Ulf Fågelhammar

Photography

MP: it’s the most interesting, urgent, democratic, relevant art form we can possibly have. There are more and more people appreciating photography,there is a bigger market for photography, than never before. I’d talk about people on sites like Flickr, which have an enormous number of people contributing to it, and are extremely important to the way the whole discourse on photography is undertaken. (...) Clearly you’re one of the people making a contribution to the fact that there’s a dialogue on the internet about photography, an intelligent one.

Photographing people

MP: I photograph people without guilt and that’s the secret. Most photographers feel guilty approaching people. And if you feel guilty then people get tense and nervous. But I am doing it with much confidence. Of course, I’m always on the look out for problems.And there are problem people who can’t be photographed, and if that’s the case, you usually pick up on that and move on.
They may argue with me, they may choose to argue with me. One of the benefits of digital photography is that you can look at the picture and just delete it. Instead of sitting there for hours, as has happened occasionally, when the policeman and try to get the film out of you. Well that has happened only once – it was in the Middle East, where there is a problem in terms of photography, especially with women in the Middle East.

Martin Parr, Auchan hypermarket, Calais, France, 1988, from "One Day Trip"

Magnum

MP: I enjoy being in Magnum, because they are very good at finding different channels to show your work, so I’m very happy when I’m published in newspapers, magazines, but you know I don’t feel this sort of mission, to show my pictures to everybody, or even more I don’t think that they could have any effect on them. You’re creating in the end an entertainment, and photography is a part of the entertainment industry and I’m very happy that through this industry I can survive on my work. I have the ability to pursue the ideas I want to pursue.

In the terms of the way and type of photography, Magnum’s vocabulary has expanded; the range of photography has expanded a lot since I joined. And this is the aspect of Magnum’s open form. We have people like Alec Soth who has probably the most successful photoblog in the world. If you look at my Magnum in Motion (MiM) you’ll find it is without music. I don´t want music in my MiM, because I don´t want any Hollywood values, and I feel some of them have. So that’s a personal choice. I’m not opposed to a music accompanying photographs if it’s done well and intelligently and that can be achieved, but to do that takes a lot of time, …. So, therefore it’s not something I gave priority to, I wanted to make the point of not having music in my MiM when I was given the chance to do a MiM.

I do enormously lot of assignments for Magnum and for myself. It’s just change from what it was 30 years ago, but there’s no point living in the past, the whole industry and the whole face of photography is changing quickly and it is important to embrace change and not fight it.

Projects
MP: I think I am clear about my intentions. I work in projects. For each project I can explain to you what is contributing to the bigger picture. Within that project there will be individual pictures, which may or may not make much sense. It’s only when you take them and put the series together you see how successful they are in contributing to the statement of what the project could be.

So yes, I think every project has a very clear intension. An overall intension is there as I mentioned briefly earlier and I think it’s all very clear and logical if you choose to inspect it that way.

Any message to the F Blog readers?

MP: Yes, yes, take better pictures, don’t do cliches, be yourself, be passionate, and that’s all.

Have a look at http://www.magnumphotos.com/ www.martinparr.com alecsoth.com/blog Alec Soth is also one of our invited guests

Le Blurb - by Svend Videbak

Le Blurb
These pictures are just as much about drawing and painting as they are
about photography. In a couple of cases I have finished a photographic print
by hand, to "dress" it with colour and form in ways that I thought were needed.
In other cases I have started with a large sheet of watercolour paper, marking
out a square and filling it by drawing and painting with great speed and
spontaneity without fixating upon a subject -- I have tried to let my hand and
heart rule, keeping my brain out of it.

Then I have taken the result, taped it on a wall in a darkened room, and
photographed it by painting on it with a hand-held halogen spotlight, shaping
the light with my hands during a long exposure with total spontaneity.












The results are generally an impenetrable mess. A mess, however, that begins
to come alive when I look at it on the computer after scanning the negative.
Or not. Usually, not. These pictures, however, did come to life at least for me.
I hope they live for you as well in a continuing flash of recognition.




















Pictures and text: Svend Videbak
Titles from top:
Three
Anatomy of a breakdown (1)
Anatomy of a breakdown (2)
Angel of mercy
Golden Jade
Just married
Portrait of a shy girl
Sentinel

Citylights

Picture by Markus Jenemark

I Came to your party dressed as a shadow

T o m H o l m l u n d

shades

Partisan

Pictures by Guyla Fazakas

Umbrellas

Pictures by Jan Buse

blue pears

© Jeanne Wells

Before the summer sun left, I thought I'd do some cyanotypes.

New Nick Brandt photos

Release of new Nick Brandt Photos
The 22 new photographs are the first new work released since May 2006.
They were taken September 2006-May 2007 in Kenya and Tanzania.
You can see the photos in the CONTINUUM 2006-2007 folder
at www.nickbrandt.com.

Nick Brandt (USA) is one of our invited guests.
-urbano

December

photo: abeku

invited guest: Magdalena Wajda-Kacmajor

I was born 40 years ago, on the Polish seaside. I spent half of my life there and still long for the smells and sounds of the coast, which sometimes shows in my photos. For several years I’ve lived in Warsaw and frequently visited other large European cities, which made me fascinated with the urban life and urban “snapshots”.
I work as translator, spending many hours at the computer. Photography for me is an escape from the world of words. It is a way to show emotions and impressions without the need to speak or write. I taught myself everything I know in this area, in part from photography guides, in part from various books on photographers, and most importantly, from photos of others.

The series “Library” was shot entirely in the Staatsbibliothek Berlin, right in the center of the city. During the Cold War times, this building stood in West Berlin, very close to the Berlin Wall. It was chosen as the meeting place for angels which inhabited both parts of the torn city, watching over its residents as it was wonderfully shown by Wim Wenders is his movie, “Himmel Über Berlin” (“Wings of Desire”). This series is obviously inspired by this film, one of my all-time favorites.

invited by Marcin Górski