Borders
Have abandoned the history of Vilnius idea because I can’t see it fitting with the Nokumentary postcard approach. Instead, firstly for aesthetic reasons I took the borders idea literally and have started putting white borders on my mobile phone street pictures. On a black background they look superb. Second, I’m churning this new material out at a ridiculously low size. As the global economy crumbles around our ears I think it’s time to think small. Paul Klee took a line for a walk and created small masterpieces. I take my phone for a walk and try to do the same. About the pictures I take with my phone on the street, I’m trying to capture the essence of what I see in front of me. Unlike the current trend in street photography (no time to quote anyone) that’s more about showing how clever the photographer is (people going up ladders into the sky, people who look like people in posters behind them etc), I’m really charmed with the idea of truly documenting the briefest of moments that somehow show more. I try hard to make my pictures look good of course, but not clever. Never clever. I’m going to keep moving forwards with this and see where it takes me. No plans as yet to abandon the idea as the Borders project. I’m treading the borders of acceptable documentary photography already, so that’s ok with me. Sometimes I despair at this work, but general I see an interesting and worthwhile body of work coming together.
Mobile Nation
As I start to write this sitting in a temporary office I realise Dainius’ new photographs are on my laptop back at the flat. Never mind. Dainius has just split with his girlfriend, and is trying to get his client, Daniel, the guy in the wheelchair, a girlfriend. He’s been photographing some of it. The project remains chaotic because as far as I know there’s no precedent plus until Dainius finishes and sends back the questionnaire I sent him I can’t really start putting ideas together. I’m still young, and this is such a great idea, that I’m in no hurry. To up the ante a little, I’m working on adding my second person to the project, my friend Douglas in Greece. Douglas had a massive stroke four years ago, which has severely affected the left side of his body (his arm is totally useless and his leg is so bad he has to go everywhere with a stick) and his mind, which has gone from an arrogant, outspoken, sharp tool into something that would belong better inside the head of a shy four-year-old girl. For a few months earlier this year I started a photographic project with Douglas, filming his life on my dSLR. My lifestyle means I find this difficult to keep up with, so have thought about getting Douglas to start taking photographs with his phone and to work on a project with me. He’s already started writing his life story. Damn this job thing gets in the way of the things I really should be doing!
DJ portraits
A co-project with an English designer living here in Vilnius. He wants a series of portraits of the best DJs in Vilnius and wants me to photograph it. The project will be shot on dSLR and co-edited. I want and need to do more portraits.
The Karaite
Tomorrow I go to Trakai for the weekend for work. Trakai, 28km west of here, was the ancient capital of Lithuania. In the 14th century the Lithuanian Grand Duke Vytautas brought members of the Karaite community back to work as his personal bodyguards as well as the guards of Trakai itself. Vytautas (Polish, Witold) brought them from the Crimea where he’d been fighting the Golden Horde, but Karaite history goes back further than that. They originate from Mesopotamia, were originally Jews (some say the lost tribe) and they split in two several hundred years ago. What little there remains of the Karaite community in the world still adhere to their Old Testament beliefs. The Lithuanian Karaite on the other hand (of which there are around only 300 left) acknowledge both Jesus and Mohamed and are a strange bunch indeed. I recently met one of them, a restaurant owner, and he’s agreed to be photographed. Wouldn’t it be great to make a record of the entire community? I can follow this up next week when I return.
In short then, plenty of ideas but not much photography. I feel ashamed. There’s only about 10 minutes of fucking daylight here in the winter anyway. It’s going to snow all weekend. I’ll be taking lots of photographs.
Oh, and I got the page proofs back from the book we’re doing about Albania, complete with my photographs. They look good.
2 comments:
a long old thing to scroll down... but i like the idea of small prints as objects and something you realy have to be close to look at. the first two on this post reminded me of boris mikhailov's pictures although not as cruel. didn't he do something with gallery prints along the bottom of the wall so you had to get down low to look at them?
i am so over taking pictures at the moment (that i have even resorted to saying it in american)
Thanks. Basically I've just turned my photography on its head and am now chasing a project (the Karaite) on my dSLR and am doing the mobile stuff in the background. It seems to make sense to me, at least it does this week. Boris' work is interesting, but I don't know much about it. I'm not so sure about his vision of these people as something that's come out of the collapse of the Soviet Union. I'm fascinated by these same people here in Lithuania, and have learnt that they've always existed. Maybe there are more now. I dunno. There's something intimate about small pictures that I like, and I like that, especially when the way I work with the phone is so distanced from its subjects. I'm looking forward to the Karaite project. I want to photograph them all, and hopefully take some other pictures around their (traditional) cultural lives. It's going to be hard work I'm sure. Shame you're not tickerty-boo with your pictures at the moment. Do you know why?
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