Project Silhouettes

Today, Time Magazine Light Box featured a reflection on the calendar year with a series of 357 photographs of silhouettes. I felt particularly inspired myself by some of them and reviewed my street photography gallery to identify my silhouettes. Over the years, I've shot a considerable number of them but few really managed to stick transcending the moment and the location, whether it will be a mischiveous group of 20-year olds enjoying the late September sunshine at the lake, or the treasured autumnal sunshine of Berlin or the hot summer sun of Frankfurt refreshing from the fountain water, they all come together as a sharp cutout of their everyday reality.

Frankfurt in Monochrom

I admit this is cheating - because these weren't really taken with the new Leica Monochrom. But they are taken with an M8 (upgraded to M8.2) - with all of its high-IR sensitivity in the highly sunny Frankfurt: a city that many claim isn't pretty at all. Paired with the Summilux 50 ASPH, the field of view was quite different from what I've been enjoying for my street photography the most - 35 mm full-frame (but since I damanged by 35 mm lens, I haven't found a replacement yet). The cropped field enabled a bit more distance but sometimes lacked the contextualization (and in Frankfurt that is something to keep). But it also enabled me to look for contrasting shapes and graphical elements - hence the black-and-white series (I even had the time to visit the Leica Gallery in Frankfurt).

I liked Frankfurt (the part of it that I saw). Maybe I saw it only through the limited perspective of the dissonance from my missed connecting flight (hence anything that was remotely positive or even just "mah" was perceived extremely positively). Maybe I saw it only on a beautiful funny day when people were out (the tall glass-and-steel buildings must be intimidating in the gloomy days of Fall or Winter). Maybe I saw it only through the eyes of the envious guy with a camera stranded alone in a strangers' place (when things always get to be more interesting if one just smiles more to random people - like smiling at the guy with the Leica - don't you find that Leica photographers all belong to a club of their own?). Maybe it was the entertainment of observing an old pervert try to have a conversation with two high-schoolers at Starbucks (and I wish I had interfered politely like that other guy who had the guts to tell the old man that the young ladies preferred to be alone). Maybe it was the couples that were seen holding hands everywhere. Maybe it was the fashion that everyone was showing (and hence my pink chinos didn't seem so out of place in the fashionable area of the city). Maybe it was the graphical quality of the city with its contrasts between light and shadow, glass-and-steel and European architecture, cosmopolitanism and greenery around. 

Egoism, inspiration, and consumerism

Why do artists create?

- They want to change the world! (=inspiration)

How can they do that?

- By reaching the masses! (=consumerism)

Who do they want to change the world?

- Make it better! (=egoism)

For whom do they want to make the world better?

- For other?! For themselves?!

This was taking me into the territories of anthropology - because documentation of the human existence is rife with questions of fulfillment, of change, of inspiration and egoism, and of consumerism. From the early days of the human tribe, we have been exchanging goods, we have been looking for the things we need (and things we also want) and have given away things we had in excess, be it money, or food, or shelter, or one of the other Maslow layers. And all for the self-actualization, for finding peace with oneself. I look around and wonder why I want to get a deeper grasp of the systems we live in. Is it all just some misfiring (and mis-wiring) in my brain? What is the link between all of the beautiful things that one surrounds oneself with and the type of creative work one does? Isn't this where inspiration comes from? Isn't creativity like 5-grade physics: energy doesn't get lost, it just transforms?

Elizabeth Gilbert writes: "With all respect to the Buddha and to the early Christian celibates, I sometimes wonder if all this teaching about nonattachment and the spiritual importance of monastic solitude might be denying us something quite vital. Maybe all that renunciation of intimacy denies us the opportunity to ever experience that very earthbound, domesticated, dirt-under-the-fingernails gift of difficult, long-term, daily forgiveness." and this is the things about creativity - one has to lose all restraints from the wheel, and let the cart drive on its own. 

In photography, I often forget when I am taking pictures and when not. I do want to get my hands dirty, I want to be ignorant of what the person is saying and I want to be participating in what the person is telling me; I want to be there and yet to look from aside; I want to be one with the camera, and yet want to feel that it is a tool; I want to record intimacy; I want to record the moment that person sees only me and no one else in the conversation. And I want this for my own actualization - for my own satisfaction of fulfillment and peace. And I also know that I want them to feel satisfied and fulfilled from this exchange - of a service, really.

An exchange of a service - sounds..., what? "Cheap"? "Impersonal"? "Non-conversational"? It is all that perhaps. But that's the only way to get through, to learn to firgive, to learn to understand and to listen, to smile and frown, to tell the truth. 

Everyday Magic

I always try to look for the positive things on the street with my street photography and some time ago I asked my twitter and facebook followers for topics for a shooting challenge – Elena had one of the most inspirational topics: “Everyday Magic”. It took me more than a month to collect something for her. These six pictures to me capture those slivers of the daily routine of the people involved. The camera man becomes somewhat of a voyeur – staying away, and yet penetrating a most intimate moment. Photography for me is not merely a chance to immortalize a moment – it is the experience of that moment – none of these events would have been memorable to me if I had not taken a picture of them, if I had not seen them in a still frame through a small window, if I had not studied them afterwards, if I had simply continued my walk through the city, if all elements did not fall into place on their own: the woman with her hand on her forehead when she sees the gay couple, the two men staring at the kissing couple on the stairs, the ignorant isolated bliss of the kissing couple, the two dogs politely sniffing each other in the middle of the big square, the boy that wanted to take a picture of the couple but got distracted by the street photographer taking picture of him…