Go somewhere you haven't

Another week, another challenge...

In response to the 28th week of the Street Photography Challenge, set by Paul Russell, I ventured in new directions throughout Belfast. The brief stated: "Go somewhere you haven't been before - a dog show, a polo match, a monster truck rally - and remember, the interesting things often happen at the fringes away from the main 'action'". Initially I look this more literally, like a few others undertaking the challenge, and deviated from my regular walking routes to find fresh scenes. Russell, posting later on Flickr, clarified that it was the events or occasions that should be attended - not just anywhere new.

My entry for this week was found at a fashion fair. I found a man who had had his fill with the event and was seeking refuge on a bench. When researching what to photograph this week I found that Belfast's next dog show is not on until the 28th, which I may go along to with this brief in mind. I'm sure it will be full of characters, some of whom I could coerce into taking part in the '100 Portraits' project.

Whilst exploring the city, before the brief was expanded, I did find some fantastic sights. I think I will return to those areas with the intention of looking for moments, in true Paul Graham style. The atmosphere is never different when you leave the well worn paths, and venture closer to Black Mountain where graffiti becomes very mixed [see above] and murals appear at every turn. From this walk through less populated areas I was able to find a fantastic subject to include in my 100 Portraits project - Sister Marie.

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Ongoing projects, and other things.

Things are trundling along: the 100 Portraits project is almost a month old; the Street Photography Now challenge is half over; and I am still holding out for information on what my next step in life will be [off to Japan as a JET, further study or Irish island life on Rathlin].

Day 25 of 100: Betty, and her dog Bambi. Betty was a lovely and obliging subject to photograph. Her hands were dry, and her nails were long. She has lived in Belfast all her life, and walks the Lisburn road daily. Her dog, Bambi, had been abused as a pup and is now wary of men.

Week 27 of the SPN challenge:

"Bend the rules and play tricks with the mind; make documents of moments that have never existed." - Peter Funch

Again, I was not a huge fan of the week's challenge. However, I do enjoy weaving worlds together with reflections so it wasn't all bad. It allowed me to set up this scene in which the mannequin was voyeurising a couple. It was his 'gaze', which seems so severe, that forced me to frame it as such.

Outside of my photography I continue to keep busy. For example, Ireland will soon have it's first camera obscura and I am functioning as the online media facilitator, by maintaining the blog and digital archive. Construction is due to start soon, and that will mean plenty more updates. Until then I will be creating and uploading information sheets on the Camera Obscura, borders, surveillance, optics and more.

Visit: http://gulliverscamera.wordpress.com/

Also, I had to submit a portrait and bio for the website of Mute. For more information on the film, as well as my very stern Director of Photography portrait, please see the Mute film website.

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Week 26... fail.

I cannot believe that I missed the upload deadline! Oh the shame of it.

"If you're not sure it's a picture, shoot it anyway" - Carolyn Drake

This is the twenty-sixth Instruction for the Street Photography Now Project, written to inspire fresh ways of looking at and documenting the world we all live in.

To be honest, I was not the biggest fan of this brief. Roll on next week!

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Week 25

"Talk to strangers, let them take you to places." - Mark Alor Powell

This is Ronnie. He showed me where he was working, and had no objection to be photographed.

This also functioned as my 7th portrait in the 100 Portraits in 100 Days Project.

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March/April... Life Update!

Again, I'm typing up these updates to keep myself right. The formality of the Street Photography Now weekly challenges, combined with the monotony of cinema work, has given my weeks a sense of structure (incidentally both of those commence on Fridays, strange eh?). Outside of those parameters life is very much sitting on hold until I find out if I will be sent to Japan or not, as part of the 2011 JET programme - but this will not be until early April. So, all I can do is stay busy and keep attending my Japanese classes!

Shelf Sample 6/3/11

What else has been going on? I live in the cinema if and when I can, or I continue my research work on the camera obscura (more on this later!). Sadly, my Flickr page has been taken over with SPN posts but I do still continue to photograph and live outside of the weekly briefs. Of course I do! Well, this is some of it:

Print Swapping - At long last it has started... Rakel (see her photography here!) sent me a print in the post, and it is beautiful! I intend to have a return print sent off as soon as possible - as soon as I choose one. This is something I would love to do more of! The fact that we can exchange photographs, thoughts, opinions and ideas via the Internet (and namely Flickr) is great, but receiving physical copies of images is beyond compare. No longer is the photograph a collection of high definition pixels on a screen but a tenderly hand-printed, and carefully sealed present.

Rakel Erna Skarphéðinsdóttir - Untitled

Darkest Era - At long last Darkest Era have launched their first album, entitled The Last Caress of Light. I have already posted about how it has been a such a great journey to photograph this band as we all developed and progressed as artists. I think that is why seeing my photos in the inlay (see below) and booklet struck such a chord, this was a collective culmination of our progress in some way. Also, the album is sublime (to echo all of the reviews) so please go buy a copy! ;]

Darkest Era - The Last Caress of Light

All Ears: Another project that I am lending a somewhat creative/helping hand to is a music documentary, All Ears (dir. Gus Sutherland, 2011). I am helping out by designing the credits and inter-titles, which is really fun as I have been looking for an excuse to relearn aspects of Final Cut Pro. Also, it provides time to hang out with Gus and learn about a bustling realm of music that I had only the faintest inkling about. All Ears: A Glimpse into the Los Angeles Beat Community will be screened (or premiered, if you prefer) at the Beat Generation Festival held in the QFT, on Sunday 20th March at 4pm. See here!

Ongoing: I think I will start a 100 Portraits in 100 Days challenge soon, I miss being involved and interacting with people. The portraiture of Albrecht Tübke and Alec Soth has played a major role in the formation of this novel notion. I am aiming for something more than passing snapshots and mugshots. Through the location, the clothes, or the other elements of the portrait I want to be able to tell something of that person to an audience or viewer, I suppose that is where the documentary aspect of 'documentary portraiture' comes in. 100 Days should be enough, I hope.

Enough for now,

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An hour can seem like a long time...

Week 22 of the Street Photography Now challenge:

"Pick a spot, stay there for an hour and see what unfolds" - Polly Braden

This was a tough challenge for all the wrong reasons. The problems were basic: firstly, finding a full hour to sit and soak up the world (when did life get so busy?); secondly, finding a space in Belfast where something could unfold; and lastly, maintaining some pretence of subterfuge or inconspicuousness... Oh, and a bag of patience! I may reattempt this when my weeks are less busy as I liked the challenges surrounding it, but would prefer to photograph in a new town or city where exploring recreation and work is exciting.

I attempted this twice during the week, once in the street when the sun was setting and again in the park. Botanic Gardens worked better for letting scenes of relaxation and interaction unfold, but I would have preferred to have gotten over to Ormeau Park, where there is more space and less familiar faces.

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Face Nom

Street Photography Now Challenge - Week 21

"Be aware of the way the camera compresses a three dimensional world into a two dimensional plane and use that to your advantage" - Nick Turpin

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"Slow down..."

"Slow down, the next picture may be very quiet and close." - Bruno Quinquet

Businessman with a parking ticket, Belfast, 2011 (SPN Challenge 20)

Week 20 was a tough one. Bruno Quinquet's statement was a more open brief than most of the recent posts in the Street Photography Challenge. Plenty of of the early posts in the Instruction No.20 Flickr pool, and discussion boards, were aiming on a 'good' street photo because of the openness of the brief (or so I gather from reading the threads), and the results have been good.

Bruno Quinquet, Salaryman Project, 2009

I first came across Quinquet's work at this time last year when his series on Japanese salarymen, Obsession of a salaryman otaku, was published in the 1000words Photography Magazine (Spring 2010). I was instantly hooked. Here was a photographer who was exploring a breed of working man bound by cultural constraints, constraints imposed by a distinctly Japanese view of the working world. Quinquet's poetic portraits documented the salarymen but also embodied, through his choice of composition and colour, the fleeting and transient beauty that is magnificently celebrated within Japanese visual culture.

Bruno Quinquet, Salaryman Project, 2009

In his artist statement for the series Quinquet wrote: "On one hand, it explores the identity of the average Japanese male office worker, called salaryman, letting mystery and poetry blossom in the supposedly boring corporate world. On the other hand, by concealing the subjects’ identities, the project tries to adapt in a creative way to the increasing constraints of portraits rights on candid street photography."

Woman waiting on a bus, Belfast, 2011

So, with the Salaryman Project in mind, I began shooting this weeks brief with the intentions of ferreting out workers seeking quiet and peaceful moments during their working days. Since the salaryman phenomenon does not exist in Northern Ireland my challenge was harder, but not impossible. I also wanted to avoid the repetition of a previous SPN challenge that urged the photographers to find people who were lost in thought amidst the new urban environment. The woman above was photographed through a bus shelter window, hence the strange lightened area where light has been reflected, and I loved how her cap covered just enough of her face to conceal her identity.

My entered image for this week, found beneath the brief at the top of this post, had some of the mystery of Quinquet's salarymen with the man's face being obscured by shadow. The layers within the portrait come from the green mesh fence, which protects the car park, and the glistening reflections upon the car. The colour in the image comes across more as a barrage of turgid tones than the simple palettes found in the Salaryman Project; however, the red brick is a stalwart in Belfast, and the blue sky reflecting on the car only highlights the fresh weather we are experiencing at this time of year. The simple action of searching for and reading a parking ticket is probably something he does every single day... Again, this leaves me celebrating the transience of things. Mono no aware.

Another week bested... Only 32 to go!

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New Urban Disconnect

"Expose the banalities of the new urban landscape" - George Georgiou

This is the nineteenth Instruction for the Street Photography Now Project, written to inspire fresh ways of looking at and documenting the world we all live in.

This challenge was later expanded on the Flickr group thread by George Georgiou:

"Hello all, this is George Georgiou. The quote is not quite how I put it, I wouldn't have used the word Banal. What I am interested in is what the relationship is between a modern planned urban/suburban space and the individual. In other words, planned public space where people can feel comfortable or familiar with but allows people to move through this space without contact, we almost become invisible to each other. Often these are made to a blueprint, airports, housing estates, bus stations, shopping malls etc. If you watch people in these spaces you notice a disconnect, people in their own worlds/minds. It is this disconnect from what is around you that I find interesting. A simple example is how people talk on the mobile, as if they are at home, in private. Eggleston and Shore are good examples of this. What they look at is very 'commonplace'. The urban environment and peoples interaction with it. I hope that helps. George"

I feel that the above image ties in closer to what George said on the forum. The woman is completely lost in thought whilst typing a text. Her expression is fixed and stern, her walk was brisk. The other face in the image adds to the 'disconnection', the woman is oblivious to the man looking at her (and he is oblivious to me).

My 'B-side' this week focused on the banal. I always find that a stringent deadpan approach to photographing is ideal for capturing 'banality'. I love the word banal, and banality is verbalised best in Chris Marker's Sans Soleil (1983)... See the scene here!

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Bus Bricolage

The SPN Challenge for Week 18 stated: "Look for a window. Through a window, out a window or at the reflections on a window" - Arif Asci.

Phew, I made it this week! With the possibility of playing with reflections and refractions how could I really miss it? Natural superimposition? Yes please! Any excuse to use the word bricolage in a title...

Ok, so it was hard not to repeat one of my earlier entries this week by placing myself in the midst of the reflections. Of course, there are times when those images must be taken [see below].

This week I saw the challenge as a great way to explore the experimental and Modernist route. Looking in reflections and through glass allows several perspectives to overlap, or superimpose - to borrow a filmic term. Artists such as Andy Warhol and Stan Brakhage experimented with this process of natural collage to achieve fantastic results.

In this image there are seemingly an infinite amount of worlds converging: the bus, the people in the bus, the world seen through the bus (trees, houses), the numbers reflected off of a shop window behind me, iron mesh from the shop front, etc. The end result is a chaotic barrage of visual, and textual, information; yet, the people in the photo remain perfectly placid and only the viewer is subject to this amalgamated perspective.

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Waiting on the rain... in Ireland!

So, I missed another week of the Street Photography Now challenge - week 16. Last week Martin Parr set the challenge, "wait for the rain, it makes shooting in the street easier and more interesting". So, this was quite a funny one to receive whilst in Ireland, which is notorious for rain.

With no rain to work with I just burrowed on with other work - relating to research on Modernist Churches and camera obscuras - until Thursday. On the last day I made a point of finding something to work with that would fit the brief! Ironically enough attending a photography talk in Belfast Exposed led to me not getting home in time to upload the photo onto Flickr before the midnight deadline. Oh well, there are still plenty of weeks to come...

Aftermath...

Week 14: "Show us the aftermath." - Maciej Dakowicz

With limit time this week my photo opportunities were limited to what I could find whilst shopping or walking to and from work. Luckily my work is firmly based on the fleeting moments so I found something quite fitting for this week's brief.

This 'aftermath' scene is the result of a few things: one, bad parking by the guilty owner of the silver car; two, the placement of the car beside the freshly painted taxi mural; and finally, the 'Keep Right' sign pointing at the traffic warden who is upholding his position and booking the silver car.

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