Editing

A friend of mine plans to publish an online PDF magazine next January and he has asked me to contribute some of my photos. Since some of the other contributors are names that I admire in their respective fields, I'm more than happy to oblige. :)

Anyway, so I looked into my image archives, trying to find the best images from the 2 years span I've spent in this field that hopefully can represent what I mostly shoot. When I finally edit them down to about 20 images it becomes clear that even though they are images that I'm pretty proud of (at least for now), there isn't any real connection between the images... It makes me realize that up to this point I only think of my photographs as individual frames. I never gave much thought to my photos as a collective works. I never worked on a project, be it personal or commissioned. I just, well, go out there and shoot whatever interests me. Sure, everytime I shoot, I know what I want to show and convey in each of my frame. I know how I want it to look like, through a particular angle of view and composition. Of course it doesn't always work like I want but there's always at least a quick and flowing thought in my head before I press the shutter release. I don't just randomly point my camera at everything and snap away. But now I'm starting to wonder to myself... what do I want to tell with my photography as a whole?

....Damn I'm getting all serious about this. :o

Anyway, for the feature in the magazine I don't need to be bothered by the image arrangements as my friend will layout the whole thing... but I'm thinking of arranging my own body of works. With only 2 years of shooting perhaps it's not going to be any good but I suppose nothing wrong with trying. What I find very interesting when I try to do that is the sequencing... what photo should be put before or after the other. What new context could appear when an old photo is put beside a newer one.

Yesterday I just purchased one of Stern's Fotografie Portofolio series, number 39: Elliott Erwitt. I was just looking around at the bookstore, not planning to buy anything.. But then I saw the book, I remember I almost jumped out of excitement. I tell you, it's really really rare to see any kind of photobook here in the small city of Jogja... the only photography books you can find is pretty much basic photography tutorials. And there it was, a book with 62 pictures from Erwitt. There were some others from the series, but the only names I could recognize were Andre Kertesz, Martin Parr, and Erwitt. So yeah it was a tough call. But in the end I went with the one with a dog on the cover. ;) And it's great, looking at a photograph in a computer monitor is nothing compared to looking at a 50x30cm photograph on your own hands. Anyway, I'm straying from my point here. Here's 2 pages from the books that show what I meant in the last paragraph:


The left one is made in 1976 while the right one is from 1955. They're made quite far apart in time. But they're interesting because, first of all, they're rather similar in composition, predominantly made up of vertical elements: one guy on the left, and a tall vertical element on his right side (statue on the left pic, guy with kid on the right pic). And the greatest kick is... The statue on the left pic looks as if it's staring at the guy with the cowboy hat, while he in turn looks as if he's watching the kid on the right pic! Two very different scenes brought together into a unity. These two picture wouldn't work together as good if the sequence was reversed.

Also reminds me of an interview of Joel Meyerowitz by Michael David Murphy, he also talks a bit about "using pictures as a kind of building block of a visual language", and not just a random order of things.

So anyway... that's all for today.

What? My own photos? Well here's some random ones.






















Hey, wait a minute, those are digitals! What about that fucked up CCD in the last entry? Well, uh, these are from a new *cough* D80.

Cheers. :)