Notes on my first Elephant portfolio

After seven years of wearing two pairs of trousers, a rabbit-skin hat and the rest of the woolly paraphernalia associated with Lithuanian winter fashion, Greece in the middle of January is a pleasure to fart around in. Today dressed in little more than a t-shirt I was driven up a wiggly, perilous road way above the so-called Olive Line for what seemed like forever by my friend Rachel to have lunch with two middle-aged German lesbians. During a meal that took us from pumpkin soup to gingerbread the conversation followed an equally disparate journey, covering such topics as the life of the modern Western European exile to AIDS sanatoria in Cuba. The latter topic I knew a little about, as it was whilst trying to get inside one in 1998 that I was held at gunpoint for the second time in my life. I’ll be returning to Cuba again as this blog progresses, as I’m both eager to see how I can turn raw video footage into series of still images and am also keen to return to Havana to shoot material to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution on January 1, 2009.

None of this however is why I’m sitting here writing this. I simply wanted to explain a little more about my portfolio as it stands on the Elephant website, or rather the initial five Lightboxes I’ve set up on the site.

In alphabetical order…

Athens

Eight pictures taken in fairly quick succession (not including the woman in the kiosk) on my mobile phone as part of the beginnings of a more thorough exploration of both the techniques of using a mobile phone to shoot documentary photography and the philosophy behind capturing images of people without their knowledge of the fact. What I enjoyed and thought was interesting about taking these pictures was that not only did I know nothing about the street I took them in, I also knew nothing about Athens or Greece. Susan Sontag I seem to remember has delved into this area (the relationship(s) between the person taking the photograph and the person being photographed), and it’s one of the subjects that I want to look into in much more detail. The other striking thing about taking these pictures was that it almost felt like an event. A sporting event. A dance even. Read more about my mobile phone techniques anon.

Nokia E61i Sketchbook

Eleven photographs taken England, Lithuania and Poland, all of them representing different ways I’ve been approaching the way of taking photographs of people using my mobile phone. All of these pictures have been included in a game I play on Flickr with a bunch of diverse low resolution photography lovers from all over the world.

B&W

Featuring just two pictures, including a very uncharacteristic photograph of a KFOR soldier caught through a bus window in Kosovo, a part of the world I’m now living close to, and one that fascinates me immensely. My interest in Kosovo and the ideas I have of return to take pictures there comes as close as I can ever see myself getting to the traditional style of war-related documentary photography. The other picture here, of a drunk Lithuanian lady sat on a bench with a beer in her hand, is the only picture I’ve ever had any problems with showing to other people. I still feel strange about invading this lady’s privacy, and would like to look into this further.

Visaginas portraits

The pictures that raised the most interest during my first online tutorial, this short series of almost intimate albeit extremely informal portraits were taken way back in the summer of 2004 when I was first discovering the things I could do with a camera. Taken on a point and shoot Nikon Coolpix 2100, the Russian residents of the Lithuanian city of Visaginas, where I lived from March 2006 until December 2007, are currently undergoing immense changes in their lives as the nuclear power plant that supports the entire community is closed as part of Lithuania’s entry into the EU in 2004. The power plant closes completely in 2009, the same year that Lithuania celebrates the 1,000th anniversary of the founding of the Lithuanian state. Not even slightly integrated into Lithuanian society, the residents of Visaginas offer a fascinating chance to document the changes to their lives. Likewise, more of Visaginas later.

Fire!

Six dark and blurred images of a wooden house on fire in the Lithuanian city of Kaunas, these photographs mark an interesting point in my development as a photographer. I arrived on the scene just as the fire was taking hold and was carrying both my fancy dSLR and my mobile phone. I instinctively reached for the latter. Some of these pictures almost resemble Impressionist paintings, but are really news pictures. I’m simply intrigued by this and would like to develop the ideas behind it.