Invited Guest: Roelof Bakker, 365 Days

Invited Guest: Roelof Bakker, 365 Days

365 Days is symptomatic of my serendipitous approach to image making - a collection of 365 postcard images, one for each day of a year, which I exhibited online, in my home and in book form. The project started as a new year's resolution with the aim to create a visual diary of my life in London and beyond. I could photograph whatever I wanted to record on a particular day - the only requirement I needed to fulfill was to take at least one photograph before midnight each and every day of the year. All selected photographs are labelled with the date, time, place, location and postcode and these details are an intricate part of the project.

Sarah Kent writes in her introductory essay 'Close Encounters' in the book of 365 Days: 'Roelof Bakker is not attempting some kind of philosophical resume, yet no matter whether you believe that your encounters and your very life are gifts from God, or merely the result of happenstance, 365 Days encourages you to ponder those moments that you didn't record and didn't even bother to experience fully...365 Days presents life as a series of fortuitous happenings - as beautiful as the chance encounter of a photographer and a broken umbrella in a London square - images, that seen together acquire an almost surreal intensity.'

Out of the 365 images, I have picked one photograph from each month of the year.

26 January, 10.15. Mouse, door, Rosebery Gardens, N8 (image 1)
3 February, 10.44. Little Drummer Boy, Le Louvre, Paris, France (image 2)
12 March, 16.56. Strangers, bench, Hyde Park, W1 (image 3)
2 April, 17.21. Sign, The Perseverance, Pritchards Road, E2 (image 4)
28 May, 19.40. Johnny, men's ponds, Hampstead Heath, NW3 (image 5)
6 June, 18.24. Sticker, door, Hammersmith Road, W6 (image 6)
8 July, 08.03. Alive, bathroom, Rosebery Gardens, N8 (image 7)
2 August, 18.57. Icecream, Rosebery Gardens, N8 (image 8)
23 September, 11.31. Apple, footpath, Chapel Lane, Boxhill, Surrey (image 9)
19 October, 18.09. Bridge, Rembrandt Park, Amsterdam, Netherlands (image 10)
15 November, 15.29. Shoe, toilet, Griffin House, Hammersmith Road, W6 (image 11)
31 December, 11.19. Nick, life, Rijksmuseum, Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, Netherlands (image 12)

At the moment I am planning an exhibition of a night time diary style photography project as well as finalising a work exploring aspects of death.

For more information visit http://www.rbakker.com/

Photos and text by Roelof Bakker

Invited by Darren Hepburn

Polaroid inbox: Joseph Zorn

Invited guest: Mette Muhli

I love silent photography, pictures that doesn’t shout for your attention but humbly invites you to explore them for yourself. The works of Gothenburg-based photographer Mette Muhli is exactly that kind of photography. I’ve had a look in her wonderful artist’s book “nära hem-netoli namu", (wich translates to Close to home in English) and would like to share the experience with you. /markus


Mette writes:

"alone and cold little town. sweet sweet melodies in my ears snow falling.

"nära hem-netoli namu" is a series of 54 photographs and an artists' book shot in the coastal town of Palanga, Lithuania, during the off-season period in 2006 when the photographer fell in love with the silent surroundings."

www.mettemuhli.se

invited by Markus Andersson

summer-globe...

from Globen with love :*
--> summertime from Grona Lund '69.

Polaroid inbox: Warren Harold pt 2

Polaroid inbox: Peter Eriksson pt 2

Polaroid inbox: Warren Harold

Polaroid inbox: Peter Eriksson pt 1

Polaroid inbox: Madeleine Enberg

Phedre's Hand

Photographer: Owen O'Meara

Junk food

Dress

invited guest & e-talk with Jason Lazarus

Jason Lazarus: "Greg's Geronimo portrait for the road" from the living with a portrait series.

Joanna: I've noticed pictures from "Living with a portrait" series from Jason Lazarus somewhere in the internet. They suddenly became very familiar and important to me. This series started some new ideas and questions. I've found Jason and asked him to answer some of these concerning documentary photography.

Fblog: For me “Living with a portrait" is a double attempt: artistic one and documentary one. Do you agree? What "documentary photography and "artist photography" means to you?

Jason Lazarus: The distinction is not important to me...documentary work leverages the idea of truth without being truthful...good art is truthful to the artist's intentions.

Fblog: As far as i know - you also teach photography. It's more about practice or about theory?

Jason Lazarus: It's about practice practice practice as an artist. For me, the word 'practice' includes elements of a work ethic, theory, art historical knowledge, life experience, sense of curiosity and intellectual vigor.

Jason Lazarus "The top of the chestnut tre7e gazed upon by Anne Frank while in hiding (Amsterdam, 2008)"

Fblog: What have you used during your practice: which theory have made a big impact on your work? What special events can define it?

Jason Lazarus: There is no theory that made a big impact on this project. “The living with a portrait” series started off with the picture of JFK on the pink walls… I made that image and it was 'an orphan' -- it didn't belong to a project. I thought the image was evocative -- Who in the world had pink walls and a JFK portrait in their bedroom? I know the answer, but I thought the lack of an answer was more interesting and opened up a dialogue that could be continued in other pictures. It seemed ripe as a serial project...

Jason Lazarus: "Lindsey's bedroom" from the living with a portrait series 2007

Fblog: What gives you the inspiration to work?

Jason Lazarus: A great and complicated question... My undergraduate degree was in marketing. I grew tired of marketing/consumerism/selling/advertising/etc... I went to graduate school for photography, because I wanted to make things not from a sales objective standpoint but from a very personal, idiosyncratic place. The satisfcation from making a piece within this framework is the ultimate in human nourishment for me.

Fblog: Interesting answer and story! But currently? For example what have given you the inspiration - why choosing this or that theme to work with?

Jason Lazarus: To be more specific, I am interested in 'charged spaces'... Places that have public or private resonance or significance. The LWP series is an example of these quiet, privately charged spaces. I want them to feel intimate and as real as they are...

Jason Lazarus "The back of an Ad Reinhardt" wright commission series 2007

Fblog: Is there any photographer/artist who made a great influence of your work?

Jason Lazarus: ...Gerhard Richter, Wolfgang Tillmans, The Dusseldorf School, Hirst, Whiteread, Maurizio Cattelan, Baldessari, Ruscha. In terms of younger artists I am thinking about: Amanda Rossho, Erik Kessels, Joachim Schmid, Harrell Fletcher, Greg Stimac, Walead Beshty, Claudia Angelmaier... These guys I think about a lot. They all have very strong voices--they all seem to work with a burning inner logic.

Fblog: I see little photography here. And it's a question of impossibility of dividing art now from photography?

Jason Lazarus: Yes. As much, if not more inspiration comes from non-photographers...

Fblog: And a tricky question - have you seen all these pieces of art - I mean have you seen these artists' works by yourself in the museums, galleries, or in the magazine, book, internet? Which medium you prefer? It’s the matter of reproduction-age.

Jason Lazarus: Half I've seen in person, half either online, in books, or in journals. It's all about consuming work whenever I can...going to see something in person, if I like it, tends to affect me for years, so obviously that is preferred!

Jason Lazarus: "Spencer Elden in his last year of high school (Jan '08)" Spencer originally appeared as a naked baby on the cover of Nirvana's Nevermind record.

Fblog: I would like to ask for details on "living with a portrait". Please explain what's going on there?(apart from statement) how many pictures were made to have this series? is it already finished? would you try to extend this?

Jason Lazarus: The project explores, for me, the charged relationship people have with images that they live with...usually framed images or ones given some kind of objecthood and placement that gives them physical/emotional visibility. If someone is attached to an image, I am interested in this immensely. I think of it as creating a self-portrait of the owner of the portrait by only showing the portrait. Further, I try not to show too much else...I don't aim to make environmental portraits of portraits...the less info the better... It seems to focus the viewer more on the inexplicable and committed aspects of the portrait/portrait-owner relationship. This series is ongoing...I am working on it slowly and am currently prioritizing other projects...

Fblog(joanna): thank you Jason for the e-talk.

Jason Lazarus "Jenny Holzer, over and over again (long exposure)" wright commission series 2007

Thoughts on me, and photography #1
Photography is for me a tool that allows different kinds of exploration, stuff like various modes, things, places, emotions…

I think of the camera as sort of exploration machine, a vehicle with which I can travel to locations I have never been before. All too often it just takes me to the same old places that I already have seen a thousand times. I don´t like it when it is like that. But the thing is that the camera has the potential to go anywhere. That thought is a great motivator for me.

paparazzing myself traveling around

For me photography, and image making in general, is mainly an intuitive process. It´s not an intellectual activity at all, and I´m not concerned with aspects like that of a pictures “real meaning”. Actually, I do not believe in a meaning outside the language of the specific work of art. The meaning of an image is in the image, or nowhere at all I think.For instance, what´s the meaning with Ravel's orchestral work Bolero? Surely, It´s a great piece of music. But can you hunt down it´s true meaning using words? Of course you can´t. Isn´t it the same thing with images?

What?

Photography is also a totally egoistic act for me. I don´t work for anyone, I don´t have any agenda, I hardly sell any images at all, and my only mission is to examine things that interest me for the moment. When I´m tired of taking photos, I do other things! I like to read, play the guitar, pick berries, drink wine, take walks, et cetera. The image isn´t everything for me. Sometimes I get enough of pictures. You really can get too much of a good thing, like friends that don´t know when it´s time to go home...Music is a more charming art form in that sense I think: it starts and then it stops and disappears, and it´s over! I like that.

Different Trains (Title from a music composition of Steve Reich)

Usually I´m not that interested in opinions what photography should be, what´s important, or correct, or urgent, or whatever. I don´t want to take part in that kind of discussions. For me the camera is like a brush or a pencil. I do what I want with it. You can paint what ever you want. Let me do the same. It´s my brush!

(f-) apple

I never try to reach objective stuff, like the “truth”, or “reality”. Reality is for me like a chunk of wood, or something you can´t catch with your hands, like reflections on a wall. You can´t touch it and you can´t do anything with it, you have to process it first, maybe purify it, and you have to have proper tools, like reflection catching gloves!

It´s same thing with reality I think. Art is one tool to process reality and to make something of it. And, photography is an art form.

Another way to put it:

Art is reality as seen through a temperament

(Corot & Buse)

A funny thing with the “truth”, by the way, is that as soon as you take a closer look at it, it often changes to something else, or disappears totally. For me, truth too is like reflections on a wall, and without proper gloves, you can just forget about it. Let the dogmatics chase the truth, they need to exercise anyway!

Thin line between...

Frankly, I´m more interested in the lying side of photography, than the truth. When I listened to an interview with Sally Mann a couple of years ago, one phrase really got my attention:

It´s all a big lie.

She was taking about her images! I don´t know for certain what she meant, but I connect it with one thing that Anatole France once wrote:

Without lies, humanity would perish of despair and boredom.

Text & Images: Jan Buse

This Beautiful Day

© Jeanne Wells

For so many people in the world, today is a great gift. Let's celebrate!