Archive for the ‘personal thoughts’ Category
Homage to Paul Graham
Paul Graham at the workshop in Fabrica in year 2000
While we had a workshop together he asked from us to go out and make pictures, that we wouldn’t otherwise, we were asked to make mistakes, rigorous technical and compositional mistakes. We went out and each of us shot a roll of film and I took it as a joke, throwing camera in the air and taking pictures with a timer on and of course nobody took an effort to look trough a viewfinder. And accordingly that’s how our pictures look like, a one big mess! Paul came along and start shuffling pictures and out of this mess of unsharp, blurry, over&under exposed pictures made a series that actually looked really cool! Then he was talking about possible connotations that this kind of aesthetic could be applied to. I was astonished! What a good workshop!
So when I read the book review that I’ve mentioned before I clicked through the book and as always it’s not on a first ball as we say it, but as all Graham’s projects it takes some time to get familiar with his new “invention” in photography. To be honest my belief was that diptychs, triptychs and other typtichs are for photographers who can not make a good picture, then they do some distracting maneuvers with juxtaposing several images together. In 99% it’s like that, if you ask me, or even more if the theme of the series is dealing with identity of a photographer (grow up!).
But, I’m also great fan of Duane Michals and his way of transcending an image with a sequence and Graham’s diptychs are sharing a some sort of rhythm that I like. Furthermore this is actually a street photography, a contemporary modern version street photography, that I adore. Robert Haagart wrote:
“But, inch by inch, I realized that the book’s locale is strictly allegorical. It could have been London, or Barcelona, or San Francisco, or almost any city on Earth. The title of the book is not “NYC,” it’s “The Present.” Mr. Graham is asking us to take him at his word, and look beyond the obvious.”
At the moment I was reading this I was at a vacation at the sea site in Nerezine, Croatia, so I wondered if it could have been NY, London, Barcelona, why not Nerezine as well? I took my camera and the very next day I’ve made a jackpot of an image that I’m publishing bellow. I’m continuing with the mining the concept…
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Family summer time in 6×6 format
Few days before with my family we left for summer vacation to a seaside I’ve bought a “new” camera Mamiya C330, so I was excited to try it out. I never liked the square format, as a student and as a young professional, but I guess it’s because square format was a trade mark of Hasselblad, that I couldn’t afford 
I looked at my bookshelf, thinking who is a master of square format photography. My first pick was Mary Ellen Mark and her book Indian Circus, then I checked The Hasselblad Masters awards. The Hasselblad awards didn’t inspire me (I can do better), but with Mary Ellen Mark I found some good clues how to deal with the square format.
I was thinking… Square is a stable, boring format and to make the image interesting I must brake this stableness with composition. My first rule was to fill the image with the subject all the way to the borders and even across the border. That was the idea for the picture published above and on the left side. OK, I admit, I didn’t discover America, but playing with concepts and aesthetics is inevitably leading us to new “discoveries” as I call personal micro revelations
Second inspiration was the book On Photography by Susan Sontag. I’ve read it twice, but that was some time ago, so why not follow the Atheism 2.0 commandment to repeat the lessons over and over again. It’s the basis of every religion so it must make sense. While reading Sontag’s words on how photography is surreal, the most appropriate medium for modernistic art, I understood everything. World make sense if viewed through a lens of a camera.
Last but not least, this adventure back to black and white analog photography is bringing good old memories from Prague’s Famu Academy where I earned my BA in photography. I know I’m repeating some lessons from history of photography, but I don’t do it because of the love towards the history, but I’m doing it for the love of photography and to the love to my family. More of my Family Album project you can see on my site www.borutpeterlin.com.This is not the end result it’s just warming up! I’m inspired as Apollo 11 rocket!
PS: Under comment leave a link to a site of a photographer who work in an inventive way with a square medium format camera. I want to grasp as much info as I can.
My love affair with middle format cameras (Mamiya, Bronica, Yashica, Fuji,…)
As followers of my blog might know, I got into large format photography. First only with Wet Plate Collodion technique, but then when I run out of chemicals, I started to shoot also film. I got into it right away! I mean I’ve shoot 26 film folders with about 100 films in each before I started digital, so it’s not like I discovered America, but I must admit, that in this digital revolution I left out many things, that I didn’t know I’m missing them. Like the smell of fixir on your fingertips
But seriously in this digital revolution suddenly all images are the same. The same optics, the same flashes, printers, the same images… And when I started to rediscover the analog cameras again, I felt a child-like joy and things started happening. Like the other day I was walking through storage room of a friend and noticed Zenza Bronica ETRS, format 6×4,5 and I borrowed the camera that nobody was using for a very long time. Then another friend borrowed me a Mamiya C220, a twin-lens camera format 6×6 and I loved it. I was publishing pics by this camera and a Facebook friend offered me a Mamiya C330 camera for 200 EUR. That offer you can not refuse so I’ve bought it. It’s in mint condition! The seller told me a lot about the former owner of this camera and I’m feeling kind of guilty that I’m dragging this camera constantly with me, whereas the former owner was taking it out only on special occasions.
On the end of the day I’m suspecting it’s middle age crisis kicking in. When I was studying photography in 90′s this cameras were really expensive. Like a camera like that was half the price of a car and now, thanks to digital revolution, nobody wants them anymore! Thank you, very much!
Here are few recent pictures. Square ones are with Mamiya C220, lens 80mm, f/2,8 and rectangular ones are with Zenza Bronica ETRS, lens 150mm, f/3,5.
The last image: Daughters are delighted by father’s new camera!
Slovenians are stealing again!
An anecdote: I was eating with my friends and one of them mentioned that his friend was making log for winter and when he returned few days after all log was gone. He got robbed. I knew what my an older friend will about to say, so I was faster in condemning: I bet they were Slovenians! (we are Slovenians) He looked at me with angry look and said: Gypsies, Gypsies are stealing again! Then the friend continues with the story: They stole all log, they cleansed behind them so not even a single log was left behind! They even took splinters!
I sum up righteously: You see, Slovenians* are stealing again! Damn they!
*A stereotype of Slovenian is that he/she is over concern with tidiness.
** More about the project Slovenians you can find on THIS link.
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Anekdota: Jedel sem s prijatelji in kolega začne govoriti, da je kolega 10 kubikov drv nasekal in pripravil v gozdu. Ko se je par dni kasneje vrnil, da jih odpelje, je ugotovil, da so ga okradli. Vsa drva je nekdo odpeljal. Vedel sem kaj bo starejši prijatelj rekel, tako sem ga prehiel z obsojanjem. Stavim, da so spet Slovenci kradli! Pogledal me je jezno in rekel, Cigani, spet Cigani kradejo! Potem kolega nadaljuje z zgodbo; ampak so čisto vse pobrali! Niti enea polena niso pustili, niti trsk, vse so počistili za sabo!
Pravičniško dodam; Vidiš, Slovenci spet kradejo, jebemjimmater!
* Več o projektu Slovenci lahko preberete na TEJ POVEZAVI.
hospitalized…
photo: Boštjan Pucelj
Last Monday I got a high fever and I was shivering like a wet dog. A doctor just told me it’s not a bacterial infection, so I should come back on Friday if I’ll not get better. And it didn’t. It got worse! After a proper blood test they just send me to an emergency. My blood was taken so many times, I felt like a junkie. Salted water that was infused directly into my vane got me back to life and soon I felt much better. After four days of therapy all my blood results are normal and fever is gone. All other tests were negative and I’m waiting for one more result. Basically they still don’t know what knocked me out, so I’m here for at least one more day.
As my mother is saying: A healthy person has many wishes, an ill person has only one. Looking forward of Fotopub festival of documentary photography next week!
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Prejšnji ponedeljek se me je lotila mrzlica in visoka vročina. Na višku vročinskega vala sem se tresel kot šiba na vodi. Doktor me je na hitro pregledal, mi rekel, da ni bakterijsko in me naročil naj pridem nazaj v petek, če ne bo bolje. In ni bilo bolje. Bilo je slabše. Po prvem pravem krvnem testu so me poslali na urgenco in me prešpikali tolikokrat, da sem se počutil kot švicarski sir. Infuzija slane vode me je spravila sebi in po štirih dnevih te infuzije, so vsi moji krvni rezultati normalni in povišana temperatura je izginila. Vse ostale preiskave so negativne. Čakam še na en rezultat. V bistvu še vedno ne vejo kaj me je zbilo, tako sem tu še vsaj en dan.
Kot pravi moja mama, zdrav človek ima veliko želja, bolan pa samo eno. Veselim se Fotopub festivala naslednji teden!
My daughter in carnival mask
I just want to share with you a picture I shot & develop today. My daughter before going to kindergarden in her carnival costume. I love the expression of her mirroring cold morning and you could tell she’s not satisfied with her costume.
Photographed on B/W film Linhof Technika 9×12cm. Reproduction was done on a bad, scratched plexi glass. Negative is clear & clean. I bought a fresh developer and it took me quite few rolls films to realize that developer is bad. It was developing, but in very weak way, producing very thin negatives. I will need to find an old book from student years: Darkroom cookbook and mix it myself!
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Hčerka preden je šla v vrtec v kostumu. Kako zanimiv izraz! Vidi se, da je bilo mrzlo in, da ni bila glih navdušena nad kostimom.
Fotografirano na klasičen film formata 9x12cm s kamero Linhof Technika. Reprodukcija je narejena na slaben, spraskanem pleksi steklu. Negativ je lep, čist. Kupil sem razvijalec za Č/B filme in po petih filmih zanesljivo vem, da ne delam nič narobe, da so mi prodali slabe kemikalije in sedaj imam tanke negative. Moram najti svojo knjigo z recepti za mešanje kemikalij Darkroom cookbook!
B5′s talk @Fabrica.it
An official description of my talk:
I was a student at Fabrica in year 2000/01, full of unrest, unsure of the path life was taking me, always questioning correct answers, a rebel pleading for a cause. Once I asked myself is there a life after Fabrica and after ten years of meditation in a cave called Slovenia, I’m coming back. This time it’s personal.
It was great to come back to Fabrica and give a talk on how my perspective on life and my work changed in past ten years. I shaped up the talk in a form that I, myself is listening at age of 26. I think it was a success and I look forward when the video of the talk would be published on Fabrica’s site.
My poster will be on the wall of fame, together with other lectures that gave a talk at Fabrica, from Paul Graham, Richard Billingham, Stephen Gill, William Klein, Martin Parr, Duane Michals, Sebastio Salgado,… if I highlight only photographers
After the talk I visited former colleagues from Fabrica Mr.PP, Renzo and Federico. They established their own agency Heads Collective that in four years grew to about 40 employees! They are huge. Perhaps we’ll do some work together.
Fabrica reunion
Added value in Photography
Yesterday I finished reading a book Sanjajo tisti, ki preveč spijo of Nejc Gazvoda. I loved it truly and I recommend. I loved very much also an afterword by Gašper Troha. In the afterword some side point caught my attention that grew into inspiration. Troha is briefly mentioning the role of writers in socialistic system that we had in Yugoslavia, then he’s mentioning writer’s generation in transition from socialism to capitalism and now highlighting Nejc as a post-transition writer.
This inspired me to think for how fascists, communists and other dictators were trying to bend art to be part of their educational / propaganda system and that expectation of artists (people on general) were really high when transition into democracy and capitalism happen. But nowadays 20 years after, we got to know very well capitalism and democracy and I’m noticing art is again grinding under the wheel of free market. Basically the goal is the same, even more it’s identical, arts as a part of propaganda machine. Artist who are worthy, they add value into lives of people (Paris Hilton?) and those who do not, they should perish (Van Gogh?).
In capitalism the mantra is ADDED VALUE and myself as a humble servant of capitalism I’ve made this series of pictures. If you want to buy it, the price for all this pictures is 670 EUR + VAT + printing and shipping expenses. It will be only one edition, so who comes first, remains first! Contact is here. Why 670 EUR? That’s how much I payed for 12 cubic meters of log with transportation and I’m lingering if I should became a lumberjack or should I remain an artist. In which field can I add more value into peoples lives?
For you who aren’t interested in buying this picture series, please rate this post and let me know where do you need me. One star is a vote for “definitely a logger”, five stars is “definitely a photographer” and other stars are levels in between. THX!!!
Tour de Dayton / part two
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Thx for all the feedback on my last video podcast, so here is a new one. I’m going to cycle about a 1000 km in Bosnia and Herzegovina on a ethnic border between Republic Srbska and Federation side (Muslims and Croatians). This project is on my chest for a very long time and few days ago I decided to start my tour on Thursday, that’s day after tomorrow. I mean if I don’t do personal projects then what’s the point anyhow. At the moment we’re making a facade on our house and you can imagine that my budget is very tight, so I decided I’ll use all the muscles that I gained with Muay Thai sit on a bike and peddle the project through.
Jazz Slovenia 2011 with my portrait of Igor Lumpert
Last week I received a CD of Jazz Slovenia 2011 compilation and in a booklet is my portrait of my friend Igor Lumpert. It’s great to see a portrait with a time distance of four years (link), that I even forgot that I’ve made it and judge it again. I’m pleased with it, it’s great, I love it! I’m overwhelmed when I meet pictures that I deliver them, but now they are grown ups, living their own lives
