I am surprised how many people (even in SCP) like a silhouette in front of an exotic beach under a special light (usually a sunset).
But why our aesthetics, our perception of beauty only surfaces in situations we do not feel concerned with? Why our liking goes only to "illusional windows" that we may hang in our living room but not hide under our bed for private reading? (mind you, this is not a puritan discourse) The beautiful and the ugly, the important and the trivial can have equal artistic value. Moreover, if there is something left to discover (blame the Greeks and their classic aesthetics for this), it may be found only in the dusty roads, the ravaged buildings and the turfed concrete. We should shift away from the aesthetic rightness and go into the truth of disorder, embrace the revealing and the compelling rather than the contemplative and the placid. Elena uses the buildings shadow to create a zagged crack, a fractured habitat, where the openings are not doors nor windows. They are not even post-war remains. Originally, "apocalyptic" meant revealing, and this picture is inviting us to scratch one by one the layers on the wall and make appear all the devotion to build, all the violence to destroy, all the humiliation to conceal. The passer-by was probably a witness of all this, and passing by in a hurry is his only hope to be able to forgive. More on Elena Raceala
0 Comments
It is difficult to talk about a picture, it is even more difficult to talk about a person.
Antonio is performing photography every day, he is one of the most obstinate members of Street Core Photography. He is also stubborn. He knows what he wants, where to find it and how to capture it. For many years in a row he is with us delivering constantly, almost daily, fine pictures, and I admit that, even if sometimes I stay very shortly on them, he has made a huge step ahead. He has a stamp! I think there are very few people that do not recognise his visual signature of B&W highly geometrical and graphical compositions. And then comes the day when he is deciding to match the pastel colours of Eggleston and Webb and of tens of great photographers who travelled the globe to find that special light (Mexico, Haiti, India, you name it). Only that he is doing it differently. He doesn't need exotic places and light. He just goes around the corner where he is measuring the shadows cast by anything under the sun, and where he is measuring himself against time. And boldly he is declaring: "You want colours, then have lots of them. Half a frame of them. The other half is for my own pleasure." You would have done it differently, wouldn't you? The lady's shadow before she enters the obscure part, some mutilated human parts in the foreground, a flash bouncing on everything that moves … Well, whenever your critique is on how you would have done it better, trust me, you are only lagging behind. Find your own good angle, slice your own slice of time, and from time to time be honest with your surroundings. Let them take you, because simply "the picture takes you, not you the picture" as Henri was saying. More on Antonio Ojeda |
This is the public curated Gallery of the STREET CORE PHOTOGRAPHY Group
Author
Michail Previous
August 2018
|