Nothing to say about the damaged walls, the ubiquitous degradation of the habitat, I only need a look, someone to look me in the eye, and Florina is offering this to us.
But mind you, her subjects retain within them all the emotions, all fears, love or enthusiasm. They will be choosing when and to whom to open up. A photograph understates that there is much more happening than recorded … and all elements in the present picture, from the hazardous balance of the objects to the stoical gestures of the subjects, advocate that only the photographer has the full story. Had, to be more precise, because a photograph is not a memory, it is a commemoration (idealisation). More on Florina Luput
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CHAPTER 9 - MADNESS VS MEDIOCRITY
Again, what is Street Photography? Is it hyperrealism (extremely accurate reality), surrealism (contradiction between dream and reality), meta-realism (a comment on reality)? It is all the above and all the rest, but foremost it is choices. And when you are making a choice, this isn't only photographic; "it is a choice of life, which leads you to exclude dramatic conflicts, the knots of contradiction, the great tensions of will, passion, aversion. So you think you are saving yourselves from madness, but you are falling into mediocrity, into hebetude", as Calvino puts it! If madness is disturbing as an attribute for your work, then call it heroism, it won't change things very much, except the way your dissociative behaviour is perceived by an admiring public. Mediocrity on the other hand is very easy to achieve. Just let hypocrisy, egotism and conformism to invade you. So what will it be? Madness or mediocrity? And why all the above absolutism about choices? Do they provoke rage in you, a shock? Do they violate your usual way of seeing? Good! Furthermore, what once was considered contemplatively beautiful, it now inspires indignation. Moral decline or rise may in the future revive or annihilate your work. So stop worrying about something so futile and deceiving as the public taste of a consumer society. To be cont'd NB: The pictures featuring here won't be in the book. I only wish I could have been the author. Instead, they reflect quite well my thoughts and this makes them extraordinary in my eyes. I am grateful to all those who give me the opportunity to see also through theirs. Michail Moscholios - Photo by Corneliu Sarion CHAPTER 8 - GO VIRAL OR GO HOME
"Extra! extra! A viral iconic image's awarded a prestigious prize!" We all know what a viral image is, as for iconic Webster says: "widely known and acknowledged especially for distinctive excellence." But since when Viral is identical to Iconic? People are so untrained to the social media tsunami, taken by surprise, asked for instant reaction. All stages of thoughtful behaviour have been burnt down to a few finger slides and taps. Similarly, assessing and evaluating have been severely compromised by the push algorithms suggesting you that what is liked, shared and heavily commented, by definition, worths looking at! Should we now add a new semiotic category to photography? Indexical, iconic, symbolic ... viral? If the only criterion for one image to be consecrated is its viralability, then crutches in the form of captions/words are more than necessary. And so pictures become irreversibly mute, since words speak louder than images. Naturally there are powerful indexical images that become iconic through their resistance in time and under repetitive reading. Then the road to symbolic is brief. They usually represent ideas, without captions and without necessarily referring to a certain reality other than the one created by the perceptual anxieties of the viewer. To conclude, imagine Robert Capa's Spanish soldier iconic image needing words to obtain a permanent meaning. Words like "the captivating picture of the aftermath of a Turkish assassin's killing of Spain's iconic soldier in battle". To be cont'd NB: The pictures featuring here won't be in the book. I only wish I could have been the author. Instead, they reflect quite well my thoughts and this makes them extraordinary in my eyes. I am grateful to all those who give me the opportunity to see also through theirs. Michail Moscholios - Photo by Mihai Ciama CHAPTER 7 - THOU SHALT NOT COPY BUT STEAL
Originally quoted by T.S.ELIOT "Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal", then attributed to Picasso as "good artists copy, great artists steal", let's keep it short by saying that, whatever your work is, stand behind it! In any case, everything you read, watch, listen, dream, is channelled into your pictures and most of the time they are Déjà-vus. The only problem is to know and carefully select what to carry with you, your burden in this wonderful and scary trip. Sometimes (almost always nowadays) we run out of ideas. Then it's time to stimulate inspiration by stealing and appropriating some alien visions (rather remote than contemporary). Take for example the first ever window view of Nicéphore Niépce. How many window views (my favoured is Robert Frank's from The Americans, Butte, Montana, 1955) have you seen in almost 200 years of photography and how many will we see until the end of its days? What matters is, when working on your window view, to reflect on the powerful symbolism which is behind it (escape, isolation, sterile communication) and on your state of mind (melancholy, esoterism), the absolute creeps of making contact since we need not just one frame (the viewfinder) but two (the window) to approach the world. The second liberating thought that you should have is to consider photographs no closer to works of art than cardiograms. It is not within our lifetime span that photography will acquire the fine-art label, so why care if you work will ever enter a Museum or a personal collection! In any case, both destinies are so eclectic (in a sacred isolation) that the masses will not have access. And your happiness of taking photographs won't be shared more than it is today! To be cont'd NB: The pictures featuring here won't be in the book. I only wish I could have been the author. Instead, they reflect quite well my thoughts and this makes them extraordinary in my eyes. I am grateful to all those who give me the opportunity to see also through theirs. Michail Moscholios - Photo by Makis Makris CHAPTER 6 - ALL HAS BEEN SAID
What is there to say anymore? How can we continue to create rare from banal, new from the known, beat again and over again the conventional and the stereotyped? To illustrate this let's take the example of documentary. We are the right person at the right place and moment, we capture with realism and authenticity an iconic image carrying an amplified narrative impact. Most of the times we leave the scene after having intensively lived the rich interaction with the events, which moreover is conveniently documented in our camera. However the breakthrough is operated only after evacuating the obvious, and thus freeing the eye to continuously recycle the observation process. Revisiting obsessively the same subject, activating the peripheral angles, "watching the ballet from the wings", loosening the proportions and inviting poetic accidents. Turning relative into absolute (realistic image) and vice-versa, repeatedly, vacates the superfluous, shifts from morality to a revolutionary consensus, and allows for a meaningful transformation towards a symbolic image of an uncertain duration. To be cont'd NB: The pictures featuring here won't be in the book. I only wish I could have been the author. Instead, they reflect quite well my thoughts and this makes them extraordinary in my eyes. I am grateful to all those who give me the opportunity to see also through theirs. Michail Moscholios - Photos by Albert Adrian (above) and Rafael Ianos (below). |
This is the public curated Gallery of the STREET CORE PHOTOGRAPHY Group
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August 2018
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