Jul 18
0

special delivery mystery film

By | photography

When I was in Egypt, in 1989, towards the end of my 5 weeks journey I ran out of film. No problem, I thought, after all I was in Luxor which is a tourist center with a lot of shops. I went to a local photographer, who said that black and white was a long gone item in Egypt, no one had asked for it for years!  I noticed that he cast a quick glance at my Nikons too see if maybe they were antique too… To my surprise none of the photographing tourists I had spoken to that day used Tri-X, let alone had some spare stuff to sell to me. The friendly Egyptian saw my disappointment, and said he could phone a family member who took official photographs for passports, and was bound to have some black and white film left. The only problem was that he lived in another town, I forget which, but if I paid a little extra for the trip if he could deliver them before tomorrow. At first I thought this was a clever con trick, but since he did not ask for a prepayment of the amount of money he asked – which was indeed reasonable – I agreed.

As promised I was contacted late that night at my hotel by the good man who proudly produced 5 or 6 refilled plastic cartridges with black and white film of mysterious origin. I was both glad that he had gone through all the hassle for me (for the little extra money) and disappointed by the fact that it was not sealed and packaged film (and so little of it) with no proper name and a date on it. After thanking and paying the man I inspected the material closer. The cassettes had probably had a long and fulfilling life of endless refilling because the felt entrance looked as worn, flattened and dirty as the hotel entrance carpet. After all I did not dare put them in the one Nikon body that had survived the desert sand storm of a few days back. So I rationed the few remaining Tri-X’s I had left…

Jul 16
0

for Vali Myers

By | photography

It’s July 1988, Paris is hot, very hot and tourists have taken over the town. The Parisians have left for the coast or their country house and the wooden panels are fastened in front of the shop windows. I’m glad I have found a cheap room in the Hôtel d’Alsace Lorraine, 14 rue des Canettes that my friend Peter, the African Art dealer from Amsterdam has mentioned to me. It is situated in a very old building in one of the streets of the rive gauche that leads up to the monumental Place Saint Sulpice, where I like to sit in the shadow of the trees. Going up the stairs of the old hotel I noticed the framed newspaper clipping, telling that the concierge of this hotel used to be Madame Céleste Albaret, the gouvernante of Marcel Proust. The whole place breathes history; I already bumped my head very hard on one of its mediaeval oak beams which runs right through the middle of my small room, which is entresol, halfway two floors, the toilet is nondescript with a door made of planks with holes. In the sunny morning I wake up to the unfamiliar noises of a Paris street. I make a good start of the day and take a few pictures of my bed: the pushed-back blankets are the rolling waves of a restless sea and the old faded wallpaper has a repeating pattern of a sky with hovering seagulls…

Back in Holland I visit my friend Ed van der Elsken, who likes to hear about my trip to Paris. He inquires about my photography and asks where I stayed. He reacts very surprised when I tell him about the Hôtel d’Alsace Lorraine. He urges me to describe the room. “But that’s Vali’s room!” he exclaims, and his light blue eyes stare at me, “Tom, that’s incredible, that’s the room where she lived 30 years ago! She always had the curtains drawn and lived in a dream world, addicted to opium, only came out at night during that period… What a coincidence… and you never knew?…” When I tell him about the photograph I took in that room with the imaginary dreamtime seascape he seems almost moved, says he wants to see it soon, “bring it next time”. In his book “Elsken:PARIS 1950-1954” (Libroport Co. Ldt., Tokyo, 1985) Ed, the Dutch photographer, quotes Vali telling how madame Céleste watched over her like a mother during that vulnerable time. She proudly said to a visitor “You are going up to see the strange one, my favorite jewel.”

I titled the picture “Sea of dreams (for Vali Myers)”  You can have a look at some of my Paris photographs from that period at http://www.tomstappers.com . The photograph “Sea of dreams (for Vali Myers)” can be seen at http://www.photogalaxy.com/photo/tomstappers/2/?m=0.0.0.tomstappers.az

Ed promised to introduce me to Vali, but I only saw her at his funeral in the old church of Edam and standing at his grave afterwards, in thoughts. She was smaller than I had imagined her, fiery hair, tattoos, quiet, unapproachable, almost shy. It was such a sad day, I did not talk to her. One look – all. There’s a photograph of her on my wall that I often look at in passing.

Jul 13
0

hipshots, horizons, and eye levels of dwarfs and giants

By | street photography

In earlier posts I have argued that hipshooting is simply bad street photography. Now you probably know that your horizon is always at eye level, no matter how high or low you’re standing. This means that unless you’re a dwarf or a giant, and given the fact that you should look through the finder at the moment of exposure to do your framing, the horizon will just about go “through” the eyes of the people coming at you on a crowded pavement. This will give away many of the hipshot-type photographs, that is, if you had not already noticed the clunky or haphazardous framing!

I know that Garry Winogrand said on several occasions that he did not advocate shooting from the hip. He was very much in control of his framing, in spite of what some (obviously bad) observers of his work conclude. Nevertheless I used to be puzzled by a number of his better-known photographs that have very low horizons, shot from the hip? He certainly would not have been sitting on the curb!  And he was a tall guy… A friend of mine, who is a remarkable street photographer himself, has one such original Winogrand print on his wall, which I was studying. It was certainly taken from a low vantage point! Did Garry not practice what he preached… Then I noticed a vague dark line at the bottom. Problem solved: no hipshot, but one of his occasional “drive-by shootings”. This one was taken from a car window at a street corner. Perfect image, what incredible timing.

Jul 09
0

gotcha

By | photography

There it was after all – suddenly this afternoon the Google Street View car crossed my way, thoughtlessly adding my image to the world inventory on the internet. I was very close to home in Voorburg, Netherlands, but I will be almost unrecognizable, since (untypically) I had no camera with me… It was a strange moment being registered for the world to see by a traveling set of cameras on top of a car, without the conscious intervention of a human. (I noticed myself mentally checking what I would look like.) In fact its haphazard machine-generated definiteness and the prospect of a long-time unwilled worldwide visibility is quite a different experience from gracefully moving through the field of a surveillance camera which is by its nature more ephemeral. I’m not so much thinking of the privacy implications; a lot is already being said about it, both false and true. What really interests me – apart from the personal experience – is the suggestion of absolute objectivity, which is nonsense, come to think of it: you will see no traffic jam, because the Google car can’t get through, busy streets may be empty at certain hours or during the holidays, there will be no parades or demonstrations, no dirt roads or tracks, no twilight, no nights, no bad weather even! And most unreal, all these blurred texts and faces; it must be said: fascinating, but so unsatisfactory an image of an incomplete world. Keep taking those photographs yourself, put your soul in your images, it does take you to do it.

Jul 08
0

Szarkowski misquoted on Capa

By | photography

“Every picture tells a story, don’t it”, Rod Stewart sings… Well…no, not if it’s a photograph. Garry Winogrand says there isn’t a photograph in the world that tells a story, and consequently he doesn’t have any storytelling responsability. He should know, he has taken a few in his lifetime. A photograph shows what something looks like…to a camera. Szarkowski agrees; the great MoMA scholar was a personal friend of Winogrand (it was him who first recognized the photographer’s importance, and in fact genius), and must have discussed this subject with him.

In “Photography: a Critical Introduction” (third edition) edited by Liz Wells there is an almost Freudian misquotation of the text written by John Szarkowski from “The Photographer’s Eye”: “The great war photographer Robert Capa expressed both the narrative property [sic] and the symbolic power of photography when he said “If your pictures aren’t good, you’re not close enough.”  This should have read “narrative poverty” since this is the point Szarkowski is making! To a lot of people it really remains very hard to believe there is no story in the photograph, and we don’t find the clear cut truth most of us seem to find so comforting. “Your photograph is like a little story” is still considered a compliment, since people assume that’s what you are striving for; and it’s not nice to ask, “what story…”

Jul 04
0

the beauty trap

By | photography

The photographer exclusively focusing on beauty either has nothing to communicate, or wants to avoid the risk of not getting any applause…

Jul 03
0

dear Sir, this is not a good subject

By | photography

The very first time I ever asked for and got a comment on one of my photographs must have been in the early 1960’s. I had taken a picture of the pitch-black bow of a fishing boat at Scheveningen harbor, rising from a most amazing black mass of flotsam and undefined thingies and stuff, interspersed with blinding sparkles where the water reflected the summer sunlight. I soon got the enlargement back together with a small note that had the heading of the magazine and a one-liner note by one of the editors saying “Dear Sir, this is not a good subject!”.

Jun 19
0

a beautiful girl sure helps

By | photography

On one of the house parties a visitor came up to me with an “understanding” grin and shouted in my ear (because of the loud music): “I was watching you, and I see what you’re doing, you’re only photographing the beautiful girls!” He seemed to be rather proud of this observation, which in fact said more about him than about my photography; as usual the observer only sees what he expects. Of course I did not avoid the beautiful girls, I like to include them in my photographs whenever it is opportune. That certainly was no problem as there were so many, but what really kept me occupied was on a different level as I was trying to read the intricate patterns of behavior, trying to see the subtle signals, the symbolism, the body language. I was busy understanding these people and everything going on, trying to make sense of the shapes in the dark and the flashing lights, even sorting out my emotional reactions while exposing film after film, constantly checking my gear amidst the crowd. I realized I could never adequately explain, no use trying, so I gave him the thumbs up.

Jun 18
0

an important photograph

By | photography

In the 1970’s I made several trips to the south of France where I met a friend of mine who studied there. I also stayed there with French gypsies who I  had met. They were Sinti from Marseille, mostly musicians, amongst whom Joseph Reinhardt, the brother of the famous Django, was the best known. I also met some lesser known people like Kiri, a man of small posture, and his family. After I had returned from this trip, my friend from Marseille wrote me that Kiri had contacted him and he told the sad story: a tragic accident had happened when he had run over his little boy of some eight years old in backing up the car at the very moment the kid was behind him, where he could not see him. When his youngest son died, the father was in shock and the whole encampment panicked. After the funeral the father realized they did not even have one single photograph of the kid, unless the photographer who had visited them would have one. So the question was passed on for me to look at my photographs, and search for a glimpse of the little boy that was so tragically killed.

Amongst the many photographs of that period I found only one, that had the gypsy boy on the very right edge of the picture, running as he always was. I made an enlargement; it was a bit blurred, but I had no choice and the kid was recognizable. Later I heard that the father was happy but very emotional when my friend gave him the photograph that I had sent. He barely looked at it because he said “it hurt too much”, folded it twice and put it in his wallet “for later”. I have never met Kiri or his family since, but this has made me realize that there’s more than one meaning to the phrase I so often use: “an important photograph”. Photographs are part of our personal and collective memory.