Made whilst I was wandering around Hobart in 2012
Made whilst I was wandering around Hobart in 2012
This snap of a found still life was made along the coast between Petrel Cove and Kings Beach in Waitpinga whilst I was on an early morning poodlewalk:
I have been looking at an exhibition of the early 35mm work made by Joel Meyerowitz between 1963 and 1978. The exhibition is entitled "Joel Meyerowitz: Towards Colour 1962-1978", and it is at Beetles and Huxley, a photographic gallery in London. These Leica snapshots are from Meyerowitz's very early days shooting in black and white on the streets of New York to the year he published his first book, "Cape Light", the pictures of which were made with a large format camera.
Meyerowitz worked in advertising for four months of the year to support his family and devoted the rest of his time to photography. A number of the pictures in Mexico and Florida were made with a Guggenheim Scholarship to take pictures on the theme of 'leisure time'.
The pictures made with the film Leica are snapshots and, and as such, they belong to the tradition of the snapshot image culture. Traditionally, snapshot photography is one in which the images are almost always produced for and circulated within, the private realm, and its meaning and significance are imbedded in individual and rarely rational affective responses.
The snapshot tradition has been interpreted as a form of vernacular photography, and this culture is usually interpreted as pictures made by everyday folk about their everyday life; or more specifically, "the unself-conscious efforts of common people . . . to create satisfying patterns in the realities of everyday life.
This results in a gap between the unruly vernacular culture and the modernist, hermeticizing discourse of the art institution, with its emphasis on autonomy, authorship, uniqueness and universality.
This vernacular culture insists on lived experience, or a rhetoric of authenticity, works within specific social and cultural conventions, and emphasises personal narrative. For most of us, snapshots mean something because they preserve a memory, capture a moment, or depict a friend, family member or loved one. -These are the same themes that Kodak promoted for decades. From a personal point of view the significance of snapshot aesthetics often revolves around what we see and feel when viewing snapshots, rather than what they mean to art historians, curators, and collectors.
A picture of the past. A picture of life in a frontier mining world of Andamooka.
It's not much of a backyard or playground is it, at the foot of the opal mine tailings. My memory of Andamooka is that the dust from the mine tailings was everywhere, layered over everything. It was hot and the atmosphere was arid.
It's a remnant of the town's past --a different remnant to the traditional dugout style houses of old Andamooka that was pictured in the previous post.
This picture of an opal miners hut at Andamooka in South Australia, which is from my film archives --- an example of ordinariness or a deadpan aesthetic that was made whilst travelling on the margins of modernity.
Like the previous images the picture was made with a Leica M4-P, with a 50mm f.2 Summicron lens and Kodak 400ASA film. As previously mentioned in an earlier post I discovered a roll of film I'd exposed whilst I was visiting Andamooka circa 2004-5. My film work at the time--35mm and medium format--- was usually developed and scanned by a pro-lab, but for some reason this roll hadn't been scanned. This was several years prior to buying my first digital camera. I had no knowledge of digital cameras.
From the film archives.
This is another image that I came across when I was going through my film archives. A public sculpture at Andamooka in South Australia. The picture was made with a Leica M4-P, a 50mm f.2 Summicron lens and Kodak 400ASA film:
As I mentioned in an earlier post I discovered a roll of film I'd exposed whilst I was visiting Andamooka circa 2004-5 My film work at the time--35mm and medium format--- was usually developed and scanned by a pro-lab, but for some reason this roll hadn't been scanned. This was several years prior to buying my first digital camera.
This picture of roadside vegetation was made whilst I was walking along a back country road in Waitpinga, on the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia. It was in the late summer in 2016 and I was on an early morning poodlewalk with the standard poodles.
I was forcing myself to take photos of trees and the agricultural landscape around me so as to keep my photographic eye hand in. This was the area/locality in which I now live, so how can I photograph it? I recall that I didn't have the confidence to set things up to do tripod based photography.
Though film has quickly gone poof (poor Kodak) as the medium of choice for photographers, I am part of that 'bridge generation' between film and digital. Digital, including rangefinder digital, is simply easier, faster and immediate since the camera is really a portable computer (with a sets of options,) and a sensor and lens. My technique is far slower and more measured with film.
My doubts about 35mm film photography are beginning to ease. I can see that there is still some life in 35mm film photography, in that it has a different quality to the digital version. But it is only for some subject matter, as I'm beginning to discover. Unfortunately, I cannot predict which one.
That filmic quality is hard to pinpoint, but it has something along the lines of providing a more emotional response to what is photographed, as distinct from a technically perfect image that can be quite bland. Digital images are unfilm like and so perfect that camera software manufacturers are now adding adding "grain" enhancement plugins.
A rarely experienced moment during the summer months on the southern coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula near Waitpinga- dense sea fog:
It happened for a couple of days. It would roll in across the landscape in the late afternoon. Then it disappeared.
An abstract image from when Suzanne and myself were in Wellington in 2015 before we walked the Tongariro Alpine Crossing:
It is from the wharf precinct in Wellington. Suzanne and I spent a lovely Friday evening on the wharf. It was a warm, balmy evening and everyone was out and about enjoying themselves. Such evenings are few and far between in Wellington.
This is one of the pictures I made of the Clifton Car Park when I was in Wellington, New Zealand late last year after Suzanne and I had walked the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. We spend the day after we returned to Wellington, and before we flew back to Adelaide, checking out some of my old haunts (Island Bay) when I had lived (Evans Bay) and worked in the city as an economist.
I enjoy walking Wellington. On this occasion I was walking in the early in the morning before breakfast. I'd seen the Clifton Car Park late the previous afternoon and I'd walked around it. I found it a fascinating place to explore with a camera.