Daily Life Revisited

Daily Life Revisited

Draft project outline

From the time he started taking serious photographs in 1959 until the last Soviet troops left Lithuania in 1993, the Lithuanian photographer Antanas Sutkus (b.1939) worked intermittently on a large project recording daily life in his native land. The project culminated in the extraordinary book, Daily Life Archives (Kasdienybės Archyvai), published in 2003 by the Union of Lithuanian Photographers of which Sutkus was a founder member in 1969. In the book’s introduction, the photographer notes (with the help of a not particularly competent translator) that:

• All have equal rights to daily life; there is no need for a Daily Life Defense Committee! Persistently trying to keep pace with the present day we have learned to contemplate, to meditate and many other splendid things. And maybe observation of daily life is a form of meditation open to all of us? Meditation, which does not need schools or guru. Daily Life has got lost among phone calls, important meetings, electronic information, and political scandals. Do I need it?

I personally believe the answer to this question is quite definitely Yes. I think we all need it.

My own Daily Life Revisited project utilises infinitely different technologies and techniques to that of the original, whilst staying true to Mr Sutkus’ fundamental observations and beliefs. Timed to coincide with this year’s 1,00th anniversary of the first use of the word Lithuania in written texts, Daily Life Revisited marks the end of two years photographing ordinary Lithuanians with the aid of a simple, two-megapixel Nokia mobile phone.

The 60 images that accompany this short piece of writing show where the project is at. Daily Life Revisited could (and might) go on for years. However, with a deadline of December 2 to turn in a completed project, it’s time to start putting everything together into a coherent collection.

Interestingly, despite my choice of technology, Daily Life Revisited will be presented as a classic exhibition of (albeit rather small) prints.

Sco

Vilnius. October 19, 2009

Mark Chilvers

Eastbourne

UK1 transparencies

More of this to follow after a really productive five-day trip to the UK, but before I do... shopping in Eastbourne yesterday I bought some inkjet printer-friendly A4 transparencies. I just made my first print. Not only is the effect unbelievably beautiful for possible exhibition presentation ideas, it may well also solve the problem of stopping prints from getting damaged. Next week I'll print a couple more as negatives and get them printed onto photographic paper.

Dean Cox

Major project summary

Observing the Unobserved

After a short period investigating mobile phones that stemmed for a peculiar desire to possess one that took photographs, in July 2007 I bought a Nokia E61i. Although at the time it wasn’t the best of its kind for photography, it suited my wishes, which were, I seem to remember, a mixture of pure interest in how to approach taking serious photographs with a ‘toy’ and a need to free myself from the cumbersome equipment associated with the majority of photographs I was taking with my dSLR. During the intervening two-and-a-bit years, I’ve done quite a lot with my Nokia, including taking formal portraits, shooting the independence celebrations in Kosovo in February 2008, pure experimentation and, the area that I believe to be the Nokia’s strongest quality as well as being what I seem to enjoy doing the most, which is street photography.

The particular kind of street photography I’ve developed has been a secret observation of people in their most natural (unobserved) state. Much of this work has been done in Lithuania. My major project follows this path, and will culminate in a series of black and white prints of ‘ordinary’ Lithuanians (or, to be more exact, residents of Lithuania) that exploits some of my techniques (shooting entirely blind for example) and that aims to show several things including the aforementioned natural state of people when they’re not aware of being observed (thus Observing the Unobserved), the question of photographic composition (an increasingly large amount of my photographs are taken without looking at what I’m doing, which challenges just about every theory of composition), the belief that it’s the photographer who takes the photograph, not the camera (with more than a passing nod to Bert Hardy), and, topically, the fact that 2009 is the thousandth anniversary of the Lithuanian state.

Interestingly, considering I’m using a tool that embraces everything about the ‘new’ journalism this course covers, I’ve moved almost entirely away from new technology and, as already mentioned, am now working in print thanks to the purchase of a cheap Canon inkjet printer earlier this year which I bought as an experiment and which has produced absolutely stunning results.

The finished body of work will be exhibited inside a small ‘pod-like’ hanging café inside a modern shopping centre in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius. I was originally offered an exhibition (that I may follow up early next year) at the major photographic gallery in the country, but due to my own belief that galleries are the enemy of the people and a recent visit to the World Press Photo exhibition inside a shopping centre in Warsaw I’m going with the popular vote. The exhibition will be just as important as the photography itself, and will present enormous challenges concerning how to present the work (see earlier blog entries for more on the subject). I believe that one of the more interesting qualities of the work relates to where it’ll be seen. A photograph is nothing until its judged, and to have it judged by as bigger cross-section of society as possible is surely a good thing.

All of these ideas are still very much imperfect. There’s still a long way to go.

Finally, the project for me is about closure, namely the ending of over two years of experiments my with Nokia. My next project, which will without a doubt still be all about people, will be a very different thing indeed.

Having said all that... how about this?

Keep milking the sheep

Well I went to Kaunas yesterday and couldn't get into the swing of things at all. Head occupied with other things. Funnily, the only interesting picture I took all day was on the train station in Vilnius when I got back.

Discontinued

Here

Exhibition space confirmed

Having decided the Europa shopping centre is the ideal place to hold an exhibition thanks to the irresistible combination of its glass roof and a good mix of visitors from all social backgrounds, yesterday I went back to case the joint. Realising from my earlier visit that almost every space in the building is wrong for exhibiting photographs, I got the idea that doing an exhibition/installation inside one of the centre’s two hanging pod-cafés was the way forward, so I cycled down there with a bag full of prints to take some photographs and to look at some of my work on site. The two pods themselves are identical, both being about five metres by three metres and shaped a bit like a coffee bean. The best one to use is the one nearer the main entrance, so I photographed it from a few angles then went there for an espresso. The curvy skeletal form of the pods is hardly what you need as exhibition space, so just how to build the pictures into the place is a challenge in itself (and thankfully not my challenge as somebody else is going to do that part of the job for me). I also noticed that four of the six round, glass-topped tables have got spaces inside them for exhibiting things. So, two options, plus the rather eccentric idea I had the other day of turning menus (or at least one side of a menu) into a photographic exhibition. Where was I? Ah yes, so I paid and asked the waitress if she had the contact details of her boss. Thankfully not only did she have details but the boss in question was in the building, so I ran upstairs to introduce myself. I’ve now got full permission to hold an exhibition in the Ore (In the Air) pod in the Vilnius’ Europa shopping centre towards the end of the year. Now all I’ve got to do is find the money to pay for it and take some more photographs. It’s pissing with rain today, but I’ve decided already to take the train 100km west to Lithuania’s second city Kaunas and see if I can find some characters there to photograph.

See the pod pictures below.

Observing the Unobserved

A page of assorted images in the style of my final project but not necessarily the actual photographs is here.

More to follow.

Hanging pod cafe exhibition space

Text to follow.

Alive at Night II

Two things.

ONE Keep returning to your old pictures.

TWO No matter how bad things get, you'll never be as bad as David Bailey.

Alive at Night

A few weeks ago Rhian sent me a link to Alive at Night, a pointless (in the artistic sense) PR stunt in which the equally pointless David Bailey ran around London after dark with a Nokia N86 eight-megapixel cameraphone taking a lot of crap photographs. The results, which for some reason are restricted to people who register, can be seen, if my secure link works for others, here.

There's not much more to say about the pictures really. My mobile phone photography, despite the fact that it's shot on an appalling cameraphone, craps all over Bailey's rubbish. Sure Nokia are a business and they have to make money and hiring a household name to endorse their products is a smart move. But shouldn't they also be showing that mobile phones are capable of producing serious work?

More exhibtion thoughts etc

After a painfully long period of silence from Rima, wife of Antanas Sutkus, I sent a gentle reminder yesterday and was rewarded with a reply this morning with words to the effect that they’re not available at all for an interview in September. Bollocks. I hate and despise email interviews but it’s really looking like I haven’t got a lot of choice, plus of course the Lithuanians are crap at answering emails, let alone long emails full of personal questions. On a lighter note I’ve been thinking more about exhibitions, namely the group show in London. I’m not sure how this is progressing but I do realise that if we go with the one Paul was recommended then we’re destined to get our work mounted by them. This is not only entirely impractical if we choose to have a show at home first (I’m buggered if I’m paying twice to have my work mounted, plus, as such a internet-heavy course it seems just a little odd to me to be ending it all with a traditional print show. I’m thinking about filming my exhibition in the shopping centre, maybe interviewing some people, including a comments book and turning the whole lot into a bigger piece of work. Anyway, just getting my thoughts down on paper. I’m trying to break away from the urban theme again this weekend with a trip to Kėdainiai in the middle of the most fertile part of the country to experiment with furtive photography in fields. Now that’s going to be interesting.

Making an exhibition of myself

Not in the mood for sneaking around taking photographs of unsuspecting characters today I thought I’d go an have a look at the prospective gallery spaces in the two shopping centres that appeal to me the most. First was Europa (www.europa.lt), which having looked at it in a new light (no pun intended) is by far the best shopping centre in Vilnius. Banana-shaped and on three floors, it’s mostly fashion outlets plus a few restaurants and cafés and it’s in the new swanky business district. Best of all it’s got a glass roof, and the light during the day is perfect. I’d been told yesterday that there was a space inside for exhibitions, but this wasn’t exactly true. There were six appalling photographs hanging on bits of string and in crappy frames, but they were just against a wall on the top floor. What was interesting was that a lot of people were looking at them. If I decide to pursue exhibiting here I’ll need to design the whole thing (or rather I’ll need to get somebody to design it for me). The two spaces I like are the bridge on the top floor that joins the two rows of shops on either side and one of the two hanging pods that belong to a café. Next up was Akropolis (www.akropolis.lt), the most popular of all the shopping centres in the city and always packed. The exhibition space here I already knew about, and it runs down a corridor where the toilets are. It’s dark and depressing and nobody was looking at the (dreadful) photography on display. So, Europa it almost certainly is… unless things happen at the Prospekto Gallery or I decide to exhibit in the café-bar I mentioned before (or at least I think I mentioned before). In Akropolis I also couldn’t resist buying a camcorder, the cheapest one they had, which is an old MiniDV camera that I bought because of another project I’m working on here (www.freevilnius.com) and also because the 20 hours or so of footage I shot in Cuba a decade ago is all on MiniDV and I want to digitise it all before the tapes degrade too much. As for the actual content of the photographic exhibition, I’m almost certain now that it’s going to be a black and white Nokia retrospective with ongoing work as well, all shot blind and all printed on an inkjet printer. I need to put some of the pictures I’ve been working on for this online soon. Work is mental at the moment and once again I find myself with no time to get completely stuck into this.

Lithuania

And because it's Lithuania, three of the six email addresses don't work.

Exhibition

I've just sent an email to six major shopping malls in Vilnius enquiring about exhibition space. Should be interesting to see what kind of replies I get. Some of them I know for sure have exhibition space.

I'm invisible

This is interesting. An experiment with software for stitching pictures together I was messing around with last year, and that I just came across. This is three pictures together, taken in broad daylight inside a supermarket in the UK. I'm 6'3" and I don't blend in easily. Look how there's no recognition of the fact that I'm photographing. Would this picture be possible if taken using anything than a mobile phone? Just a thought to add to the rest.

Daily Lives Revisited

Wiki

After finally getting access again to the MAPJ wiki I managed to get my citizen journalism stuff up. However, not unlike the back end of Wikipedia, this particular wiki was (and I suppose thinking about it all wikis are the same) the most unfriendly, unintuitive piece of programing I've come across in a long time. Does anybody reading this understand it? This is an important point I believe, that technology on many occasions holds back creativity. I'd like to read everybody's citizen journalism pieces but I'm buggered if I can find them. What a piece of crap.

More of the same

I honestly don’t think you can beat printing on an inkjet printer, at least not if you’re doing what I’m trying to do at the moment. Not only did the chirpy anorak at the Kodak Pro shop not get the idea that I wanted to print pictures complete with their original aberrations and colour indiscretions, the finished prints (which cost an arm and a leg and a bit more) were lifeless and, in a word, crappy. Having also had my Nokia work published in a full colour separation magazine before and seen equally dull results, I’m more and more excited by an inkjet printer’s extraordinary ability to squirt vast amounts of delicious ink onto shiny paper and produce the most stunning photographs. Since starting printing a few weeks back (why did it take me so long to do this?) I’ve tried just about every kind of paper available and, interestingly, I’ve found I get by far the best results from the cheap generic stuff (acme®) from the local supermarket. The black and white prints I’m working on now, which may or may not end up as the Daily Lives Revisited project, end up with a slight brownish tint, which really make the images absolutely perfect. What’s also extremely interesting is that having printed out a range of prints over the last day on A4 paper with the images considerably smaller in the middle I’ve noticed that they’re all photographs I shot blind. Zen archery again? Anyhow, ordinary people in ordinary situations captured sneakily and presented using the most basic and amateur of equipment seems to be where I’m heading for the final term. This is a glorious path of discovery, and I really feel like I’m producing work in a style that’s really me. It’s a crazy project, especially with such a crap camera (I could of course go out and buy an 8Mp cameraphone and take the same pictures only in ‘much better quality’… but I won’t), but it’s unique, and of course the pictures are good. Now on with the project and work out where to exhibit the final stuff at the end of the year. I think a quick trip to the UK is in order too, to show some of these pictures I keep going on about.

In a nutshell

These weekend trips aren't bearing fruit.

So, stick to Vilnius and decide whether to do a Vilnius-only final project or a Portable Portfolio. Methinks the former.

Printed up two test pictures today larger than the rest. All of a sudden my Nokia pictures look like gallery work. Extraordinary. So moved I was by the event that I'm finally going to get off my backside and take the same files I printed to the Kodak Pro shop and see what they can do with them.

Post-Panevėžys post

I like what Henri Cartier-Bresson once said, something along the lines of ‘If you want to make a little bit of cheese you have to milk a lot of goats’. Put that together with his musings of Zen archery (Google it) and you’ve pretty much got good street photography in a nutshell. An idea that keeps going around in my head that sounds more like an excuse than anything else when I stop to think about it is that, as those brilliant old films of Edwardian street scenes show, the streets just aren’t as busy as they used to be. Not that I’m advocate of shooting fish in a barrel, but it can get a bit depressing sometimes. This weekend I took the bus 150km north to the Lithuanian city of Panevėžys, first mentioned 500 years ago and now boasting a population of around 115,000 people. It all sounds rather promising until you go out with a camera and try to find anybody. Some days Lithuania feels like and collection of ghost towns, making my job exasperating to say the least. The way things are going, I feel pretty pleased with myself if I come home from such a trip with one decent photograph. Heading back to my hotel yesterday at around 6pm after a dismal day of seeing almost nobody I was suddenly struck by the amusing situation of trying to cross the road and having to wait what seemed like forever to get across thanks to an endless procession of cars in both directions. It’s been mentioned a million times before, but it’s still amazing to think how people have become so completely addicted to their cars. Still, I like a challenge, and if ever there was a challenge, trying to produce quality street photography with a two-megapixel Nokia in an empty country is a challenge to be sure. Anyway, I got home this afternoon and sat on the sofa with my new Antanas Sutkus book in order to read what was written inside. Not only was it uninformed arty claptrap but the quality of the English was some of the worst I’ve seen in a long time. If there’s a reason why Sutkus doesn’t get the recognition he deserves in the West, this is surely a large part of the reason. Reading between the painful lines it’s clear that Antanas Sutkus has had an extraordinary life, one that deserves a better telling than it gets now. At least that’s one contribution I can make when I finally get to meet and interview him. An intelligent book on Sutkus by the right publisher would do a lot to help promote arguably the most influential and unique photographers of the post-war Soviet Union. More of this later. I did a little more printing today, still working on the small 10cm x 15cm prints, and today actually dodging and burning parts of the images, something that is much more necessary when working with prints that if just posting photographs online. I’ve got a nice fat wad of Nokia pictures now, and will soon need to make the decision as to whether my final project will stay with the Lithuanian theme or will embrace more publishing and turn out to be a sort of retrospective, or Portable Portfolio. I still haven’t found the time to get some pictures printed at the Kodak Pro shop, neither have I made any advances towards doing some test colour separation prints. I keep getting distracted and worrying that my pictures aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on, but then remember that the most important thing is to follow my own instincts and to produce a body of work that represents who I really am, not who I sometimes think I should be. When I get a minute I’ll do some rough scans of everything I’ve printed so far and put everything on line so that what I keep going on about hopefully makes more sense than it does just in words. I also want to try and find some more time to develop my snapshot projects, especially the Snapshot Citizens project I really badly want to do. I don’t think I’ve written about that yet. Will have to do that another time.

Panevėžys

How ironic that the longer I spend on this internet-focused (no pun intended) course the more I move away from the internet, or rather the more I move away from concentrating on presenting photographs on a screen. I think I’ve also pretty much established the fact that I’m not in the least interested in where the future of photojournalism and documentary photography lies (it’s a valid debate certainly, but why get caught up in it when what I really want to do has little to do with it?), so here I am, spending what little spare time I have travelling somewhere for a day or two to continue my Nokia experiments and printing new and old Nokia pictures and generally getting more and more excited by print photography by the minute. Maybe living in the past isn’t the best way of moving forwards, but I have to follow my instincts and do what I like doing best after all. Although I feel worryingly distanced from the course at the moment (although maybe I shouldn’t be worried, it is distance learning isn’t it?) I’m far from slacking from the job at hand. Much is afoot at the moment, with an imminent interview with Antanas Sutkus on the horizon and the idea of developing what I write from it into something much bigger, ambitious plans for future photographic projects that having nothing to do with me taking photographs and everything to do with my fascination with print publishing, photography and 20th-century Eastern European history (more of that in a later post) and the early planning stage of exhibiting my Nokia portfolio in a Lithuanian supermarket. Of the Sutkus project I was touched by the girls at work who turned up at my apartment last night to eat my food and get drunk with the large new book of Sutkus’ photography for me as a present. As I mentioned before, Sutkus needs more exposure in the West, something I think I can help achieve, plus if I do end up presenting my Lithuanian project as my final degree piece then it’ll be with more than a passing nod to Sutkus’ work (I think I’ve written here about Daily Lives Revisited already). So, babbling aside, all in all I’m more than busy developing work, albeit slightly out of the university loop. One thing I do know for sure is that you can’t work seriously with photography if you’ve got a day job. Not a lot I can do about that at the moment, but something that needs to be remedied sooner or later. What I really want to do is mess about with tutors and prints, something you can’t do with a website. What I really really want to do is produce a box set of my Nokia portfolio and throw the bloody thing away and get on with the next project. I feel I’ve invested a lot with my Nokia and would like to see it through to completion. It’s interesting that despite the proliferation of mobile phone photography in the world (see my previous post), I get the impression I’m one of a very small collection of photographers (who you could probably count on one hand) with a solid portfolio of serious mobile phone documentary photography work. I wanted to write here something about my reasons behind my choice of camera but the subject has once again escaped me. As the portfolio goes together, this will become easier to do. In a nutshell, I’ve yet to discover anything else that gives a photographer the freedom to work in the streets and produce portraits that go to the very soul of the subjects. Claptrap perhaps, but I really do see this with my pictures, and I really do feel it when I’ve got the space and am without the distractions. Tomorrow I take a two-hour bus trip to Panevėžys, Lithuania’s fifth city, to continue with the Daily Lives Revisited project. If you still haven’t had a look at the work of Antanas Sutkus, I really recommend that you do. I also hope that as of 2010, the course dedicates at least half a lesson during the first term of the new intake of students on the subject of documentary photography behind the Iron Curtain. I still can’t quite believe that such a hugely important social experiment is completely overlooked. Right then, back to the printing.

Ha

http://photojojo.com/uncut/2009/07/04/most-popular-camera-online/

Speechless

Funny

But the project is turning into what I originally envisaged.

Where do I go from here?

It’s quite a serious question. It’s a very serious question in fact. Never before did I need or realise the importance of some guidance. One thing I know for certain is that the photography (and the method in which it’s presented) that goes to making up my final project has to represent me 100%. This is why I have to keep pushing with the mobile phone work, despite it not being fully understood by either myself or anybody else. I’m also fully aware that I’m not in the least bit interested in contemporary ways of showing my work. Publishing, print, is where it’s at. I’m continuing to print up my work, which not only confirms my belief in traditional print publishing but that also serves as an extremely effective way of showing myself what it is I’m doing. You simply can’t measure your work when it’s online. So, move forwards with the mobile phone work and present it in print form. I’m still fascinated with the postcard format and want to produce my work in that format. I also need to decide whether to work on an entirely new project or whether to present the best of my mobile phone work since I started messing around with it two years ago. The day before yesterday I took a train to the Lithuanian coast with the idea of taking pictures that might contribute to a project representing what interests me about Lithuania. After checking out of my hotel yesterday I took my bag to the train station, left it in a locker and decide to get the first bus that came along, ride it to the end of the line and walk back into the city centre taking pictures as I went. Mildly successful, the experiment also confirmed something I think I’ve touched on here before, namely that the streets of Lithuania are as good as empty. It’s not a great place to drown in street photography. Partly because of this I’m more and more convinced that a retrospective of my mobile phone work, both in black and white and colour, is the way forwards. I’ve been collecting books of postcards and other ways of presenting groups of postcards and am now looking at doing a series of postcards taken in Lithuania, Poland, the UK, Albania, Greece and other places I’ve visited over the last two years and packed in an envelope-like contraption. I want to do this as manually as possible, and have been taking these presentation cardboard envelope packages apart to make some templates for creating my own packaging. I’ve also been thinking a lot about printing. A designer friend has been showing me the different ways printing acts on a photograph and I’m enjoying experimenting with this. I’m even thinking about getting some of my mobile phone pictures made into negatives to see how they print up. Slightly mad for sure, but I’m intrigued to see how they turn out. A carefully printed, hand-made pack of postcards representing the best of my work seems to me to be the way forward. I never asked to get so involved in these mobile phone pictures, but for some reason I’m addicted to playing with them. As always I just wish I had more time. It’s Sunday morning and not only is the light completely shit for taking pictures but I’ve got a whole load of other work to be getting on with. Oh to be rich and to have lots of time. This blog remains incoherent. I need to start talking to tutors and to keep moving forwards with my presentation and print experiments.

What next?

My small 10cm x 15cm laser jet black and white test prints are wonderful (the irony being that you can't see them to decide whether I'm right or not...), although I'm still not sure how exactly to present them. I love backlighting, but backlighting requires a different, darker image than prints hung for viewing in reflected light which takes ages to get right. I've been thinking about the fotoplastikon I saw in Poland (I saw several actually, but that's another story) and am excited about mixing up technologies. I've even been thinking about building lots of individual lightboxes that hold one picture, that run on batteries and that switch on when you pick them up. Truly interactive. I'm also going to have to explore the exhibition ideas here, namely the one offer I've had in the best gallery in the country and the idea of doing a show in a bookshop (mildly inspired by my trip to Warsaw last week). Blah blah waffle. As to the subject matter of the photographs I'm going to be taking in Vilnius, this is were I need to solid support and advice from the course. Ultimately it has to be my decision, but for once I'm feeling like I really need to bounce some ideas around. I made some notes about comments made about a photograph of Marilyn Monroe. The photograph, taking when she wasn't aware, captures the essence in the face that I'm trying to really capture with my. Not only am I invisible when I'm out with my phone, but more and more I'm taking pictures without even looking. You can get pretty good at this the more you do it, plus some of the disasters do at least provide interesting angles and ways of framing a picture that the eye and conscious mind could never do. It's like playing jazz. Or something. I need to do more printing and start filling the flat with pictures. I don't know how I've managed to survive so long without doing this before. So, what next? Daily Lives Revisited I suppose.

Polish Women Photographers of the 20th Century

I picked up a superb book when I was in Warsaw last week, Polish Women Photographers of the 20th Century. Published alongside an exhibition of the same name last year that I knew nothing about unfortunately, read more about it here. Heaven knows how to get hold of a copy outside of the country, the ISBN for anybody interested is ISBN 978-83-7576-019-4

Post before a major project releases the handbrake

Yesterday I went out and bought a new printer and some high quality photographic paper to put in it. With the exception of a magazine spread that featured some of my early mobile phone pictures a couple of years ago this is the first time I’ve really seen the possibilities of my work in print. I’ve thought long and hard about some way of presenting my current photography online, have dived deep into researching the subject, and after a brief spell thinking my work had no merit to speak of suddenly realised that print remains the ultimate photographic medium and beyond a shadow of a doubt the way to present my work. In front of me are a few small, high quality colour and B&W prints of my Vilnius street photographs which are screaming out to be turned into a publication. My major project is now more or less worked out and I intend to go back to my original postcard book idea and to publish a book of postcards with a designer friend, timed rather nicely to coincide with both the thousandth anniversary of the first mention of the name Lithuania in written text and Vilnius’ current status as one of the two European Capitals of Culture. The only thing that remains unknown is how to present the work (and therefore what pictures I should be taking) coherently. Going out into the street and taking pictures can be a frightening thing to so when there are so many random elements. Especially after recently returning from Warsaw, a city with a massive pulse that positively explodes with humanity as compared to the quiet and worryingly provincial empty streets of Vilnius. Now that my recent period of intense work is more or less out the way, I’m ready to get back into the course and to use my time with the tutors to polish my ideas. The other great thing about the project is that the timeframe for finishing the work falls over the summer, which gives me plenty of light (and good quality light at that) to do the job well. Photographing here during the winter is a nightmare I don’t want to repeat in a hurry. Whether I continue with the City of Strangers project or change the theme slightly remains to be seen. Ironically I’ve been thinking about the work of Antanas Sutkus, who it turns out was 70 yesterday. His Soviet-era masterpiece Daily Life Archive echoes in many ways the work that I’m doing, albeit in a slightly different style. As strange as some of my photographs are, they’re ultimately a celebration of daily life, of ordinary people going about their lives. So, City of Strangers may or may not become Daily Life Revisited, a respectful nod to the great Lithuanian master that updates his work after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Whatever the exact nature of the project turns out to be, the finished result will be a book, albeit a book of postcards. There’ve been times on this course when I’ve felt intimidated and bullied even as others fail to get why I’m using a mobile phone to take photographs. I have tried to explain this as best as I can and I do I admit need to explain it further. Ultimately though I don’t see any reason why just because I use strange modern technology to produce my photography I have to use strange modern technology to show it. I only wish I had more time and energy to completely submerge myself in my ideas and work.

Hats off to the Poles

Strange that last year I was in Tirana and stumbled upon the World Press Photo road show and that again this week whilst in Poland I should do the same again. Initially I found the latter a bit of a lacklustre affair, more reminiscent of a local photography exhibition than what one would expect from such a high profile event. Whilst the show in Tirana was a high profile affair in a specialised gallery, the Warsaw exhibition has been put up on wobbly display boards inside a shopping centre, but having seen the response I soon changed my mind. This is really what it’s all about, bringing in an audience who wouldn’t ordinarily visit a serious photographic exhibition (or any photographic exhibition at all for that matter), and I have to take my hat off to the Poles for their inspired choice of location.

Text to follow

Slowly winding down after the most intense six months of work I ever experienced. Almost ready to start writing this blog again. Final project coming together nicely. Watch this space.

And this one

Ignore this post

Countdown

Major project, start thinking

Text to follow.