Perhaps you thought that is only a part of New York City, but it is everywhere. You don´t believe me? I will show you. This is an exercise I did in art school, but I also did it not so long ago. Back then it was in b/w but now it is in color. I didn´t go far to get all the letters. It is great fun and you can do it in many different ways. Like every season. In sunny or cloudy weather.
I made it in English and stopped short of Å, Ä and Ö, but I found them too. A good exercise on your next stroll in the city. Wherever you are. This is Stockholm.
A good and eternal question. A very talented artist, Ernst Billgren, has written two books about it. A great, funny and interesting read. In one of the articles he writes “that many things can maybe be considered art, but perhaps not a wrench”. Note! He does NOT say that it isn´t art, and that is about the wrench itself. How, if you use a wrench in your art? Then perhaps the wrench becomes art. Or part of.
I realise that over the years I have photographed many wrenches in many different ways. Art or not, that was nothing that I have ever given a thought. Here is a small selection of images, and perhaps I can produce an exhibition with just wrenches in the near future.
My father had a garage and that was where I grew up around cars, tractors, lorries and lots of tools. I did not become a mechanics like my father and brother but I have always kept en interest in and love to, especially, old tools. I have also taken care of the tools after my father in law. They often becomes items in my photographed still lifes. I am sure my background has something to do with this.
More tool and wrench art is to come.
If it becomes an exhibition I will be happy to write to Ernst Billgren about it…😉 Pelle
From a calendar project in 2019
8×10 Polaroid transfer
Very early digital image with 4×5″ scanner backNow I have also started painting them. This is made with watercolors.From a calendar project in 2000. No. Vlll = 8
Recently I had the above image from Paris accepted by yourdailyphotograph.com. All very well and I feel really happy about it. However, I always do series. It is very rare that I just do one photograph of a subject or composition when I am walking the streets with a camera . Same thing here in Paris with The Eiffel Tower. Below I present the other photographs from the series. Photographed through a curtain while I had a cup of coffee with my friend and colleague Ilian. Now I like the other two images just as much. How about you? What is your opinion? Should I have sent one of the other images? It was a good day for photographing in Paris, and now I would just love to go there soon again for more photography and culture. Wine and coffee.
I promised to show more Polaroids, and here is another selection.
You could also lift the emulsion from the Polaroid and transfer that to another material. Like here. It was tricky, using warm water and soft brushes. You had to be VERY careful not to destroy the emulsion because it is so very thin.
I became a digital photographer very early. It was not planned, but circumstances had it that way. I never regret that, but I sometimes miss the analog days. Like when I see these images. These are all 8×10″ made with my Sinar camera and lots of patience.
Polaroid used to be a material photographers used to secure the exposure, but it also gave us an opportunity to use it more artistically.
It came in 3 1/4×4 1/4″, 4×5″ and 8×10″ size. But also in 20×24″ built for very special Polaroid cameras. I used Polaroids frequently and also made Polaroid transfers. The image was then transferred on to other papers, films etc. I held workshops at Photokina in Cologne and various other places to show how to do.
My images with the 20×24″ camera were made in Stockholm using one of the very few Polaroid cameras that were traveling the world. It never went anywhere without an assistant. To be prepared for the event I made my sketches in 8×10″ on my studio floor. However, the Polaroid camera was huge and I had to nail and glue all my still lifes on a board leaning it to a wall. I just couldn´t tilt it as much as my 8×10″ camera. When you see the camera you will understand. I think the transfers I made with this camera are rare.
That was many years ago, but I still remember it like it was yesterday. During a day I made a total of 4 images. The image above with a selection of postcards after my grandmother. Original image size 20×24″ is 52×62 cm!
I will be back to show some more Polaroid images in other formats and styles that I made.
Polaroid also produced the SX-70 camera, but that is another story.
😊 Pelle
The team from Polaroid and me in the middle.Me and the assistant working on a transfer. I am so sorry I don´t remember his name. Still life with old school books and film stars
I am afraid I will, and I am very sorry for that. If you live close enough you SHOULD go there. Paul Biddle is a very good friend of mine, and one of the best photographers that I know. And know of. He has the gift to always creating interesting and surprising images from his imagination.
Photography is also, among many other things, capturing dreams. Seeing the inner vision and to let that come out. Paul is one of the best. I am sure that he and his colleagues will create a wonderful exhibition that will open up your fantasy as well. Go see!
Labels: Cartography of Dreams, Dimbola Museum and Gallery, Fran Forman, Jonah Calinawan, Maxine Watts, Paul Biddle, Reclaim Photography Festival, Surrealist Photography, Tami Bone
Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky is best known for his large-scale images of landscapes altered by industry. An exhibition of his new work Salt Pans, a series photographed from the air above the Little Rann of Kutch in Gujarat, India, is on show in London.
😊 Pelle
Often from an aerial perspective Burtynsky’s pictures have a painterly, abstract quality. This shot, taken in 2012, shows the Thjorsa River in Southern Region, Iceland.
“Nature transformed through industry is a predominant theme in my work,” says Burtynsky. “We are drawn by desire – a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success.”
The project documents a disappearing landscape. The geometric patterns detail the network of wells and vehicle tracks made during the extraction of hundreds of tonnes of salt from the area.
Perhaps there will be a calender for the year of 2017. My friend Peter Schäublin, of Schaffhaussen, Switzerland and I have produced one every year since 1998. Missing only two years. Peter is an exceptional graphic designer, and a photographer himself. These are the first outlines.
This will be the year , unfortunately, when many of the most talented left this life. Read more and learn about Marc Riboud.
This is from The New York Times.
Mr. Riboud’s career of more than 60 years carried him routinely to turbulent places throughout Asia and Africa in the 1950s and ’60s, but he may be best remembered for two photographs taken in the developed world.
The first, from 1953, is of a workman poised like an angel in overalls between a lattice of girders while painting the Eiffel Tower — one hand raising a paintbrush, one leg bent in a seemingly Chaplinesque attitude.
The second, from 1967, is of a young woman presenting a flower to a phalanx of bayonet-wielding members of the National Guard during an anti-Vietnam War demonstration at the Pentagon.
Both images were published in Life magazine during what is often called the golden age of photojournalism, an era Mr. Riboud exemplified.
On a photographers mind 