Face to Face (65)
photographer: Marcin Górski
14 February 2008
13 February 2008
William Schmidt on Kerouac's road: People in places
In 1975, after graduating from college, I set out to discover Kerouac's road. With only my camera as a companion, I travelled through America for three months. I hitchhiked and took Greyhound buses, camped, stayed in hostels and missions and with whomever invited me. It was a great adventure.
William Schimdt's self portrait in the bus.
When I ran out of money, I returned home and had to get a job. I continued to photograph for a while, but eventually put my camera away. The photographs and negatives were put into a box and stored at my mother's house. When she moved twenty-five years later, she threw the box away. All that remains are some fading proof sheets which I have scanned. Everything else is gone but the memories.
The photos fascinate me for a number of reasons. They seem ironic now, both intimate and distant. Though the quality of the images is marred, their subjects and subjectivity present what Maria Kroenenberg calls "a vision felt", an "illustration of mood." Life's great paradox is that one both becomes in and is destroyed by time. In time's twisted logic, gaining is losing. We are, by and large, who we remember ourselves to be, but memory is infamously unreliable.
My memory of what occurred when I made these pictures has been shaped by the events that have followed. I may only recall, not retreat into this past. Like these photographs, the memories of that time are veiled, mysterious, and, perhaps, even beginning to attain the semblance of myth. "I was there," I tell myself. There is evidence. The photos represent a time of innocence and exist now only in cyberspace, a series of zeros and ones, intangible but sensible, an X-Ray of a spirit.
Bachelard says that we remember people in places. When we see faces we can't recall, we say that we can't place them. Here are some portraits I made on that trip. People in places.
F blog was honoured by William and offered possibility of showing his unique, personal, historical already pictures. Thank you William, this is very special for us.
Bachelard says that we remember people in places. When we see faces we can't recall, we say that we can't place them. Here are some portraits I made on that trip. People in places.F blog was honoured by William and offered possibility of showing his unique, personal, historical already pictures. Thank you William, this is very special for us.
We will show William Schmidt's works in several posts.
Stay tune/Marcin
More of William's works you may find on his blog.
More of William's works you may find on his blog.
Kitchen - a mini project
Photographer: Malin Michelsen
Unidentified shelf of kitchen utensils and jars of spicesCREATED/PUBLISHED [between 1941 and 1945]
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division,
FSA-OWI Collection, [reproduction number, LC-USW361-953]
Photographer: Markus JenemarkThis mini project is dedicated to la cocina, köket, the kitchen. A kitchen is according to wiki: "a room or part of a room used for food preparation including cooking, and sometimes also for eating and entertaining guests, if the kitchen is large enough and designed to be used that way."
We want your interpretation of every aspect of this subject: details, people having breakfast or cooking dinner, mobile kitchens, restaurant kitchens, Japanese kitchens, Chiapas kitchens, Polish kitchens...you name it! As usual, we rely on your imagination dear reader of the F blog. Please send your contributions to the gruppo F inbox address.
Three projects will be featured all of 2008: Face to face, Trees and DOCU-08. We hope to be able to make an online exhibition (or even a real life exhibition) with photos from these projects in the beginning of 2009.
So, stay tuned to F - the Photogenic channel.
12 February 2008
People of Praga
Portraits of the homeless who live in shelters built by themselves on the Warsaw's right bank of the Vistula river.
11 February 2008
invited guest: Francisco Mata Rosas
CENTRO HABANA
The economic embargo imposed by the United States, the erosion of the political system, the period of economic hardship in which Cubans have been living in for over 10 years, and recently the presence of tourists, particularly those looking to find cheap sex, defines the context in which Cuban people are growing up; the third post-revolution generation is growing up in the period of economic hardship, without understanding the reasons behind their predicament, as the world looks on, as if observing a vast social experiment to see how long Fidel's system can survive, without caring that human beings are spending their youth and childhood in these difficult conditions.
The lack of available goods, disenchantment, tradition, hopes, distortion of the concept of work due to the easy money that tourism represents, confused ideas about information, music, baseball, the sea as an unbreakable border, sex as a means of finding an economic future, are all part of this large universe where Cubans are growing up today. On the other hand, independently of these political, social and economic conditions, the Cuban culture is alive, preserving its traditions particularly in sports, music, and the arts which express themselves vividly.
I try to understand this context and to photograph these Cubans and their daily lives, these children who will become the political leaders, baseball players, doctors, musicians, athletes, prostitutes and artists of the next Cuban century - these children who are in fact the unknown dimension of this island, of this system, this third and fourth generation of hopes. 
Francisco Mata Rosas
Born in Mexico City in 1958, he has lived there ever since. He has a B.A. in Communications Science from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Xochimilco campus. He was a photojournalist for La Jornada newspaper for six years after its creation. His photographic works have been published in some of the main newspapers and magazines in the United States, Spain, Canada, Italy, England, and Mexico. There have recently been exhibits of his photographs in Mexico, Holland, Germany, Italy, Spain, France, England, the United States, Scotland, Japan, Argentina, Brazil, Panama, Uruguay, Ecuador, Peru, Honduras, Cuba, Ukraine, Bratislava, South Africa, China and Costa Rica, to mention just a few.
Mata has also received the following awards, among others:
•Acquisition award of the Mexican Photography Biennal, 1988
•Honors at the Bicentennial of the French Revolution Con-test, 1989
•Young Creators' Grant from the National Fund for Culture and the Arts (FONCA), 1989
•Third Annual Mother Jones, USA, 1993
•FONCA Coinvestment Award, 1994
•First International Award for Internet in Japan, 1997
•FONCA Promotional Award, 1999
•He has been a member of the National System of Art Creators in México since 2000
In the editorial field, his pictures can be found in over twenty books and he is the individual author of Sábado de Gloria (Easter Saturday), 1994, América profunda (Deep America), 1999, and Litorales (Coasts), 2000, Mexico Tenochtitlan, 2005 and Tepito ¡bravo el barrio!, 2007. He has also participated as lecturer in most of the photographic events in Mexico, has been a judge of several national and international contests, and has given talks and courses over the past ten years in various universities and cultural centres in the country and abroad.
His official website is: www.franciscomata.com.mx
invited by ulf fågelhammar
all pictures and text ©Francisco Mata Rosas
10 February 2008
Visiting Kodak Hill
Tomas tells us about his visit to the old Kodak Factory in the north-western part of Stockholm. The place is abandoned since around 2000-2001, and it is a real mess. Everything is destroyed and the buildings are covered with graffitti. Over 400 people used to work at this factory that made photo chemicals, developed film etc. The pictures were taken on 9 February 2008. Visit Tomas blog for more pictures and the full story (in Swedish) /Ulf
Photos by © Tomas Zackarias Westberg
09 February 2008
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