Hola. On a line of time, this is a bit of a jump. I haven’t been photographing immensely lately, and also I am short on getting film scanned and developed. However, in 2010 I was sucked into New York while I was living there, and I was very eager to photograph the world I saw back then. Most of these, I never published before, they’ve just been several years on a harddisk, and that feels a little wrong. I see these differently now, and I wish I had not done a few mis-estimations for other frames that did not make it. It is however – a set of practice needed to capture the spectrum of variations without a light meter.
To be honest, I just wish I was back there continuing this journey. Anyways I hope you experience these in your own way.
For you can always be drawn into the relationship of people, to observe, try to understand. Where are we going.
I’d like to think this was a very sweet girl and this was her dog. As you walk by and want to capture it, there is no way you can hide your wish to make a frame. This was probably shot on a 1600 film, for there were too many blends of night and day for each roll. Brooklyn, as you’d probably guess.
A very pleasant day in central park with a fellow New Yorker. I am curious of her photos.
Alexander talked to me across to narratives of Malcolm X and life in New York for good time back. He wouldn’t stop.
Some of the grandeur which one photograph would never do justice for Broadway Avenue.
Friends from Europe visiting. Hasselblad memories.
Another universe in the middle of the other one.
Hello Einstein. Love it.
In a cafe, taking notes and immersed in her duty.
Sometimes you don’t have the right film, but sometimes you get lucky.
The Olympus camera has now a firm place in the digital realm as I framed it as the object du reference in ‘Future of the Book‘ for Nelson and that is kind of special. It was the best tool I had in New York and it still is dear to me. Tribecca, early days.
Merry guy trying to bridge some romances for those who go short on words, or time, or something. This was right outside the restaurant in meatpackers.
The city where superheroes were born. Recurring enigmas.
Generally, I tried to avoid Times Square for it is a tsunami of branding. It may be the official canvas of technology for the curious but it is a lot of bullshit, and you’d rather study some of the people there.
If you are watching I think a lot of watchers would be drawn to the same and act quickly.
And again. With stark contrast. A lot came together in one frame.
Some fresh air, and one of the best views in the world. Sincerely. The Met is a must visit for anyone with appetite.
Bowery Street nearabouts. Night work. The night is yours to find.
I cannot recall location or day, but I keep getting drawn into expressions of the city and what is sensed.
Lower Manhattan. Patterns and sounds.
Do you ask or do you take it in as natural a state as you can? It all depends – I’ve lost too many moments by thinking I should ask. All changes.
The thing is with this, I bet you it could have been any day across several decades you wou;dn’t see a difference. In New York too, there is much sun and light to meet. As opposed to some other cities…
Kodak 160 NC.
Anders, fellow UID’er met me in Central park. I think he missed home.
Lindsay, Run DMC playing in the background, light for all.
If you could see that view… I had a week left and I felt time was flying out of my hands.
At last, a portrait of my friend Lucas who invited me to this event in Williamsburg.
Upon French Mastery / December 2012
Immersed in the time unseen Stonehenge / December 2012
The Residential Imaginary Author of the Street Kingsland Dalston / Winter 2012
* to be continued (feeding the fridge until its affordable to develop more film)
Hello. I wrote last blog with photos from New York. Less than a month after that we all know what happened, and it was all very peculiar and shocking. Overall there didn’t seem to be any news at all that was positive up until Obama won the election. I fell out of the blogosphere again. For much of that you feel like you want to contribute a public point of view, but I hold back sometimes. Those conversations are best on a personal level.
Also life has kept me busy. I moved home four times this year. At work there has been two projects of large scale, each split by half a year, one more intense than the other. This is all very exciting and I would go on about it but I want this post to be about photography, something of a documentation and a point of view on matters in mine and your life. By very little means does it possess any capactiy to represent the year that was, for it was just so many different things. It was a horizon of different colors. But for as far as I can manage sometimes I do try to be true to the medium and try to see better. I fail many times with some things. It’s always a learning experience. But I always want to keep trying. Experimenting.
So since I live in London I find it only fair to start sharing captures from here. I’ll try to fill in where it makes sense.
The above photo goes quite a while back, while I was living in Fulham. It was a small venture into Notting Hill and Portobello Market. At once this seemed like a lovely place, and I do believe it still is. The only thing is you discover there are so many more places that maintain the same character but with less of an overtaken layer to it. I hope you can appreciate the selective type that came out of the culturally produced backdrop there, with some hint to abstractions and two figures right next to each other but radically different. The way those visual elements also manifest themselves in the foreground is really interesting. I think this could become a series.
Early this spring, times I went around Holborn/Regent’s for strolls for light and air. This Church facades in the experience of meeting BBC headquarters and it is really a beautiful entrance and magnificent piece of work by John Nash. I love this church, and the way it elegantly embraces the corner. It’s very well achieved architecture, and I think it’s special that it neighbours where I work.
Fairly confident there has been hundreds of shoots here, it’s a very interesting alley for a film i believe.
Four keys. You don’t want to change too often.
The man maintained his comraderie quite well given that everyone wanted to take a photo of him from any angle, even inside the subway. But certainly not your everyday sight, a really nice sight really.
I’ll always ask myself the ‘what if I moved in to the next street’ as was a very tempting scenario this spring.
The Queen had a birthday. London had a booze of heights. Had some cider with Anastasia and her friends. Nice times but much horrible music.
Ying Yang on a trip north in England with a friend. My favourite color film, nc 160.
Tai arranged for his ‘holiday drinks’ with an alternate title. One out of very many ‘leaving drinks’. So now we should have starting drinks too. And maybe in between drinks. You see London changes your behavior.
50 1.4 neopan 1600. Now where can you find that film?
Excel Stadium – Wrestling Finals London Olympics. Lightweight. Midweight. Heavyweight. Americans in the front, Iranians in the back. The energy was something I haven’t seen before. These seats were great cause we could face the medal ceremony and get close to the athletes. It’s the first time I’ve seen someone from Kazakhstan and they came about in a fairly recognizable outfit from the misguided stereotype… how can that unskew it?
And then to the paralympics, which promised more availability and alternate point of views. The staff and volunteers put an amazing effort and suddenly you could be in the middle of something like this.
Hyde Park offered many screenings for the live events. I went with my friends rfom Umea. Lovely weather as expected 
Shoreditch Park Station. Torch arriving to London and I stumbled upon this very sweet girl after she had been instagrammed 50 times or something. It was so much better to wait and it was far more interesting with her than the actual torchbearer.
And just because you could see it twice cause you were meeting a friend in Hackney. The girl reminded me of King Kong’s scene over empire state.
Surprised of how much I’ve turned into photographing people in the context of pubs, but at the end of the day this is kind of what you have, it’s not always natural to photograph colleagues and friends at work (at least in our context) versus the times we meet outside, which very often coincide with the culture of London – pubs, drinking and escaping weather.
A place remniscent of Scandinavia with its wooden interior. When you are in a place like that you can really imagine yourself to be anywhere in the world. This might as well have been Tokyo, Vancouver, Portland or Geneva.
I moved into the 23rd floor of this building to the left, the Strata. I remember the saying it reminds of the devil’s advocate, and once I discovered how I would come to live with minds bent to the other side I wanted to get the hell out of there. And that’s just what I did.
But I made sure I captured a million timelapses. This I have not had time to put together in its deserved format.
The graduate show at RCA. Interaction Side. Experiments.
The profile of a friend I look up to in so many ways. Historical place for him and for so much more. I was only on the surface of all those stories I heard.
Dinner in soho with my friends and his family. Very nice people, whom I’ve learned to appreciate very much.
I think Iassen took this one. Sadly this lens no longer functions.
A night out in Broadway Market as I was searching for the next home. It was two nights before the Olympics kicked off. I had the Hasselblad from earlier when the torch was around.
The third home which was right in many senses but in most not. Also for them they can now have their full space.
More to come…
Coney Island – Rolleiflex with first color film at use – some Ektar 100 film. The accented woman ok’ ed some photos but warned me the little one would not approach anyone. So it was true. It conjured a vastly ‘to turn or not to turn’ reaction. Watching it accompany this character down the harbour and the interactions was really quite sweet. Think the little one was called Kali. But you need a license to walk a dog here? Peculiar.
They were on a sort of mission I am little aware of, but openly approaching the people around them. They asked me if I was Jewish, I politely took their card – the same one I had been given by some others midtown some days before.
There would probably be a more decisive moment near to this – however reacting always from where you are and how to frame it can be the constraint.
Boom! After the British – American cross culture, you could take this one for the captain. So some Brooklyn cruising – Williamsburg style.
There was a true magnum moment right there, 5 elderly women in a row each with their newspaper and each sitting proportionally to eachother – entirely focused a la requiem for a dream moment. (See 5:50 here) It was so astounding. Now I am in full regret that as the moment presented itself I asked for permission to get a frame in this moment, but given a explicit verbal about less of a wish so I kept walking. The even more striking juxtaposition claimed itself when the three Jewish men came from the back and it was too good not to even try a distant framing of such a moment. It remains the only sense of that moment in time, and yet with the incidental quick focus I somehow also managed to overlay this frame with the next one taken in a street with same perspective – one of those eureka moments I tell you. This was my second black & white film shot with the rolleiflex so it was still somewhat on experimental ground. Nevertheless there was such a moment and it was surreal. I probably overuse that word but this really was one of those moments. I’d wish to be invisible to see it with its interferencelessness. Coney Island, what an eclectic venue – if such may be said.
Situated mysteries of the city addicted to black. Just found this randomly across midtown. It looks so much like a mirror image of a camera looking back which is what makes it most interesting I believe though.
It’s a geometrical playground. The art that first met us at Moma had the same mathematical precision as this system.
When the moment is right but your shutter is at 125. Yupp
Reminded me so much of John Cleese. Don’t even tell me where they are heading to. They didn’t invite us.
Will someone please save the Kodak?
Christina was my closest colleague during my time in New York two years ago. All these images are much thanks to her letting me stay at her place and being able to return to the city. I am not jealous of her living in Manhattan. Not at all.
That’s right, you learn as you go how much light you need. Anyways I thought we had the same smile of a certain something we managed together two years ago which propelles its own life and helped shape some of the paths ahead. Life finds its own way. I am very thankful!
When there’s that interplay of light, parallel lineups and neighbordhood signatures. I think this was Sullivan Street- the sort of mirror to the also fascinating Elisabeth Street. All those streets remain charmful in different ways. Starting by the walk of that beautiful Lassie. It should be said though - a rather rare Manhattan example of someone not treating their dog as an accessory… That was two images before the Hasselblad took its adieu.
All the interesting people you meet in the city. She had a fascinating story and was very kind – willing to go with me to the ecclectic camera shop on 34th street. I felt sorry for her loss of some documents, the reason of which she was in the area. We went to the lost & found section, but with no fortune.
I really hope she was able to recover them.
A part of this Puzzle.
The sync meets the shadow. Walker street just down that full avenue.
Caught by the scale commentary and the very true serendiptity that few other places breathe.
You could say there goes a vast flow of extra grids from Empire State Building- with alternate projections of reality in each one of them.
Lower Manhattan ca 630. Timelapse experiment day.
The grandeur of concrete leading up to the rockefeller is intense. It was about to rain and with 12 frames to take, it always becomes a bit of a light hunt for the last frames of a pure 400 film.
It has to be said that the rolleiflex is a true delight for camouflage and performs subtly when you blend into the environment. You could never get away with this with a Hasselblad in the same way.
LES – private party with some uni kids. At an angle I’m stoked this did not get less sharp, I still wanted to give it a go. There’s something about New York and staircases and lifewatching which is really fascinating.
She was a woman vigorous to change her life.
La Esquina, run by some real nice Mexican folks. Somewhat of a tribute shot, but also because it is indeed a very cinematic spot.I always come back there, they are down to earth and their food really can make your day. Or Night.
As Alain de Botton would say : The challenge for a human now is to be more interesting to another than his or her smartphone.
New York – Perpetual Galaxy of Beauty & Sorrow. You really have to step out sometimes to realize its instinctive intensity.
++
NYC September 29th. Houston St with none other than Rickshaw Spiderman at somewhere around 4 in the morning.
You can see him in action here. Good guy, loved his initiative.
Thank you Ellen for sending the frame.
Over the next couple of days I will be posting some new work. I decided to spent most of my holidays in the metropolis, so I made sure I stayed in Manhattan for two weeks. Before having settled with film and some logistics and still working on the time difference I was doing a few experiments with timelapses around soho. The first thing that may strike you here is the intense shadow plays from the contrasting magnificence of architecture to the complete monstrous structures. It is so entirely dramatic that I always knew I wanted to play on that.
Once I got started with film it was time to leave the digital and dedicate time to old school street photography. Those photographs are being processed these days and I can’t wait to get them back. Anyways, this is more of a preview if you want. Hope time allows for some film to come out of this.
This creation is really onto something as to how to simply have fun with photography, music and visual exploration.
Rone – Parade from InFine Music on Vimeo.