Quick update

Greetings from England, where I’ve been more or less stuck in bed since I arrived with the most horrid attack of a virus that’s rendered me full of pain and coughs. Accordingly I haven’t felt like doing anything, including keeping this blog up to date. And so, as much as I’m not in the mood for doing it, I really do need to get some stuff on paper, metaphorically speaking. The Karaite project is going nowhere. The community aren’t interested in working with me, and having played with the idea of a photographic project about the places and people around them but that doesn’t include them (which works nicely in my head, and that if done could serve as a wake-up call in the sense that what I really wanted to convey was to see the world without the Lithuanian Karaite in it) to the point of actually making another trip to Trakai to explore how I might go about this, I don’t feel particularly inspired to pursue it. I do however believe that there are things about the Lithuanian Karaite that are truly extraordinary (they are after all both Jewish and Muslim), and will keep them on the backburner. What I really need to do is physically meet the woman who makes the decisions, but as I think I’ve already mentioned, she’s away working in Western Europe. So, that leaves me with Mindaugas Rutkauskas, who unlike the Lithuanian Karaite is wildly enthusiastic about what I’m doing and very relaxed about me working with him. A quick technical point I should make is that I was right originally to do the project in black and white. Having shot him again, it was clear that the light in Lithuania in winter is simply too bad for colour (I’d actually read something to that affect written by a Lithuanian photographer a few days before I made the decision), and thinking about the documentary photography I like… most of it is black and white. Maybe it’s something to do with my age? Who cares? I love the magic simplicity of the black and white image. At this moment in time, I’d have to say the work that strikes the most chords inside me and that I can identify with is the work of Cartier-Bresson (God I hate saying this, but it’s true), Bert Hardy and O Winston Link. Anyway, during my first quick shoot with Mindaugas in his workshop I was intrigued to find out how he got to work. It turns out he walks, so there was my second shoot. Just before I left for the UK last week I met him on a bridge as planned and walked into work with him, getting to know him more and taking a few pictures. A crude edit of the two shoots can be seen here. To add a little more information before I crawl back under the duvet, Mindaugas is married with three children and studied history at Vilnius University. His story is like that of any other person, which is sort of what attracts me to it, and his reason for becoming a ceramic artist was that he didn’t want to work in an office. When I met him on the bridge he’d just been to one of Vilnius’ most popular folk restaurants for whom he’s just made new salt and pepper pots. I want to go them are take pictures of people eating and using his pots. This is exactly the kind of ordinary magic that inspires me. Anyway, back to bed.