One more Picture, Ramallah At Night

Pictures from Back Home

draft:
dear marina,
on behalf of the resist and flow class of 12/09, i would like to request the availability of the workshop as an expanded 10-week class. [everyone's names] have undergone a holistic rewiring compounded by rupturous illuminations that we look forward to reviving in spring 2010.

Sincerely,
[everyone's names] aka resist and flow class spring 2010

Another Amazing Doc That'll Change The Way You See...

I saw first saw "Visions of Light" about a year ago and it really changed the way I see...It's an A-M-A-Z-I-N-G doc about the history of cinematography but it's really about seeing and the evolution in film industry "seeing in B&W" and then "seeing in color". There are some amazing shots from some of the masters most of whom were originally photographers (of course, right?)

It's one of my favorites....I originally saw it on the Ovation network below...but I don't think they are still showing it.... I just found out Netflix has it so I think I am officially holding a screening for all those interested!!!

http://ovationtv.com/programs/192-visions-of-light

The Future of Food...

I just saw this doc and right now I am running around like the town crier....I think everyone should know about this.....watch "The Future of Food" at the link below...

http://www.hulu.com/search?query=The+Future+Of+Food&st=0

attempted portraits

stefania

Long Term Project

The Sochi Project

In 2014, the Olympic Games will take place in Sochi, Russia.

Photographer Rob Hornstra and writer/filmmaker Arnold van Bruggen plan to document the changes in the area around Sochi over the coming five years. The Sochi Project will be a dynamic mix of documentary photography, film and reportage about a world in flux; a world full of different realities within a small but extraordinary geographic area.

/flem

immanence, uncertainty

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=brain-wave-couch

my mother's childhood photo

This is the only photo my mother has of her childhood. Because her house burnt down when she was 13 years old all other photos of herself as a child were destroyed. Without any other documentary reference to her life as a child, I often wonder about whether or not she has forgotten or become isolated from her childhood self and the emotions connected to that time of her life. The memories of my own childhood are made clear to me through the seemingly endless collections of color photos I can easily access. Yet my mother has no choice but to base much of her childhood recollection on this one black and white image. I often wonder how the quality or meaning of our respective childhood memories compare based on this fact.      

 by ayumi

some photographs i dislike

portraits from bedstuy & bushwick

excerpts from a project looking at places where queer people of color have been attacked by the police

and how should i presume? and how should i begin?

The fact remains, in my mind, that to photograph something is to honor it--- to acknowledge its greatness, even if it is a great evil. But that is it, that is all. It is not a conquest; it is merely an acknowledgment. In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Sabina explains her paintings to Tereza by saying "On the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth." That is a photograph to me. That is so succinctly a photograph, or, a good one, at least. I don't know how to do that. I don't even know that if I did, I would recognize it?

I don't quote Prufrock only to have a coy title. I quote it because I feel as though those two lines embody the biggest struggle I have had at ICP this semester, especially the first. And how should I presume? I'm highly aware that often the biggest impediment to my work is myself. I edit before I even dare lift a camera to my eye. I'm constantly wondering what is too harsh, what is too common, and refuse to allow myself to organically make photographs as I once did.

I have this pact with myself that I'm not sure I follow as diligently as I ought to in places where it would be useful, but quite forcefully in instances where it would be self-sabotaging. The pact is that once I've become cognizant of a fault, I must work to rectify it.

This is getting entirely too quaint, formal and longwinded. I guess all I mean to say is that I don't workshop personal work. I don't take certain photographs because of what I perceive have been past perceptions of what certain photographs mean before making them or even going to where I might have made them. In doing so, I favor putting my odd perceptions of opinions of others in my work, over my own ideas and feelings. I guess I've run kicking and screaming from this last sentence for the last ten weeks, but a friend pointed it out to me, and I suppose it's time to own up to it in order to change it.

I don't workshop personal work because it fucking terrifies me. It fucking terrifies me that because you put up something bad or scary and it just so happens to relate to you and you're in the room, everyone will just be nice to you. I never want that to happen. And I never want any one person to really know that much about me. I'm constantly leaking all over the place; whining and wheedling and generally being an annoying mess, but it's come to my attention that part of the reason I do that is so it is more believable for another person to think that that is all there is of me, to me. Additionally, in making personal work, one would have to honor all their idiotic demons. I'm not ready to do that. I'm not ready to consider anything that's happened to me that big, or that scary, or even truly something that happened to me, something I can own.

I've been told by three people who hold so many pieces of myself and my past that it scares me, and changes the way I see them, that they are that big and that scary, and when I don't take that, they say they are that big and scary to me and that that's okay. I feel that most things that have happened to me are my responsibility, that I set them in motion. So many worse things have happened to so many other people, or even the same things in harsher situations, that it's hard to take any of the things that have happened to me seriously and seems ridiculous to "honor" them by photographing them. This is another thing people argue with and I'm aware of their arguments and why they argue them, but it's still how I feel. And I guess all of that was a huge rat tail in order to say, I am aware that I do not put a lot of myself in my work and I do it on purpose and I do it pretty well. Even what you can peg on me from my work, that I'm African-American or that I'm queer, I promise I'm a lot less comfy with those terms, in particular the former, than other people are with ascribing them to me. I also promise I have arguments against assigning those terms as the sole motivators for the work I make. There's a lot of other less fun ones too: guilt, privilege, etc.

Even though one of the first things I learned when I went to college was the enormity of what I didn't know, I strongly resent when someone assumes I don't know something I do know or assumes I don't think about making the work I make, and I think that that's put into place some badly used caution. I know that that's a paradox, but I guess it's the toolset I'm working with right now. I'd like to fix it. Want to help?

p.s. when i get nervous, i write using a really ridiculous volcabulary and for a really long time. i'm sorry.

p.p.s. in looking at other people's entries, i feel like i took the diary entry assignment entirely too seriously. again, i'm sorry.

I Thought I Was Alone by stefania

A link to a place I love:

www.ithoughtiwasalone.com

for you to peek in the lives and work of some of my friends (and strangers).

Pictures With Project In Mind by Amin

Links to Interesting Photographers

These are some photographers that I feel are capturing my imagination at the moment:

1. Roger Ballen, see www.rogerballen.com
2. Alec Soth, see www.alecsoth.com
3. Robert Doisneau, see www.robertdoisneau.com
4. Daido Moriyama, see.http://digitalmuseum.rekibun.or.jp/app/selected/syabi?no=200803
5. Graciela Iturbide, see http://www.edelmangallery.com/iturbide.htm

Fred Ritchin, Pixel Press

Pixel Press

"For us the digital revolution is a revolution in consciousness, not in commerce. "

Other photographers with an interesting take on documentary practice

JH Engstrom

Paul Graham

Matthew Monteith

Rob Hornstra

Books referenced in Saturday's class

Christopher Morris, 'My America'

W. Eugene Smith, 'Let the Truth be the Prejudice', 'Minamata'