Greathead or the reinvention of 52 stories, 52 dreams and 52 moments, 52 surprises and 52 predictions

Year after year, new cameras get released to the market. Wait - what am I saying - week after week, new cameras are released on the market (whether the market needs them or not). And photographers sometimes shrug non-commitally and sometimes obsessed unjustifiably. And I am not the first to write about the pitfalls of gear addiction.

The first stage in any purification process is admitting that there is something wrong with you - well, I probably am not a typical example of a gear-acquisition-syndrom-patient compared to what others I've read about own (that Leica collection of William Eggleston?), I recently felt overwhelmed by the choice I had and needed to make each morning when going out of the door - a choice between digital and analogue, between focal length and size, between speed and contemplation.

In between the multitude of pocket cameras (I was browsing through the photo section of a local electronics store), there rarely appear to be any surprising models. Perhaps it is the simple consumer approach (commoditization) or the simple lack of R&D resources or simply the lack of focus (pun intended), but it strikes me as quite odd that putting most pocket cameras next to each other, one will hardly notice a difference in anything but their brand-name, and perhaps their external design. Granted design (i.e. ergonomics) is important but we are talking about operations which are in any case going through menus and drill-downs. Some people focus a lot on the operations aspect of a camera when they make the choice. I believe I don't put as much attention as that per se although it figures into my perception of how the camera feels. The Pro-grade cameras all feel powerful in the hand - heavy, solid, and most of them quite refined. They still may have tons of buttons and dials, of which I am not the biggest fan, but the M8 and M9 have really spoiled me in terms of expectations. The ease with which I can maneuver with the M system has become a breeze. 

Out of curiocity, I have been taking a look sideways to the M. I am familiar with the operations of the Canon Pro-level cameras, having used a 5D II, 1Ds, and 1Ds II and one easily transitions from one to the other. I imagine it is similar with the Nikon gear although I've never shot with a Nikon (now that the DF is out, I am contemplating having a run with it or perhaps with an older D700). But when one comes to the pocket cameras or the micro-four-thirds, one finds great variety of systems. Over the past 1 year, I've tried a bunch of them (Olympus E-P2, and OM-D5) and will probably be continuing with that experimentation. 

One of the cameras that grabbed my attention is the Ricoh GR Digital IV mostly because of the praise it received in the context of street photography (ironically, I didn't get to use it in the context of street photography). One of the major advantages it brings is speed in focusing (thanks to a dual-AF-focus system), small sensor (i.e. large depth of field), ruggid construction (metal housing), wide-angle without bells and whistles (28mm equivalent - oh, and fast at f1.9), and (probably not for street) macro mode (going down to a couple of cm from the front element). All of this added together, and this has been a good camera (no experience yet with the new Ricoh GR with the APS-C sensor which may have its advantages).

I spent few weeks with it trying to wrap my head around looking at a screen to compose and taking a picture with a shutter which felt decidedly different from my M9. And I couldn't. Menu functionality, again, felt much more complicated than the M9 but still not too complicated or unknowable. The image quality is what made me keep the camera for quite some time. Pocket cameras have rarely blown me away (with the exception of the iPhone camera which is miraculous being much much tinier). But it was not destined to be a long-lasting relationship and this little baby went to ebay. 

Then there was (still is) the film phase - going through old Leica Ms, exploring for the first time the nostalgia of the vintage film Nikon classics and even small point-and-shoots (like the Leica Minilux and Rollei 35). Venturing into medium-format too (Rolleiflex, Mamiya 645 and Pentax 67). 

It is not that I kept all of these options available at all times - it was not a hoarding, it was an exchange - a camera fund that gets rotated again and again (that's the beauty of buying second-hand - value doesn't depreciate that quickly). I doubt that this will stop. But I know that I want to be able to use this exercise as an opportunity to learn plasticity - to be able to shift between media and formats with the goal of retaining a signature that has nothing to do with the equipment or the tool but with the way it is being used. To this end, it doesn't matter if the camera is a fancy Leica M (typ 240) or if it is a cheap plastic point-and-shoot film camera. I am far from having accomplished this language fluency but I am glad that I ventured on this path - because every day is a more interesting day!

In 2014, I will be continuing my experimentations for sure. But I am also now a happy owner of the next M series camera - the Leica rangefinder has turned out to be the system that comes closest to home. And for 2014, I have decided to do one of those "regular interval" projects - a-photo-a-"period" and I've decided to do it on a weekly basis with a fixed kit: the Leica M (typ 240) equipped with Leica Summilux 50 ASPH. And weekly, a picture will be posted here with a short story. 52 pictures - 52 stories, 52 dreams and 52 moments, 52 surprises and 52 predictions.

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. 

Living alone and travelling in Amsterdam

Ever since I graduated from university, I've been living alone. It isn't so bad. You have all the time in the world to wake up in the morning, to roll out of bed, the re-imagine the cleaning routine, to make as much noise as you like when getting home, to scream "Bullshit" when you read some ridiculous email (or read the news). It is ok to forget to turn the heating on in the bathroom and it is freezing cold when you get in the shower, it is ok when you accidentally set off the alarm on Sunday morning because you had forgotten that it is a weekend. It is ok to not do the shopping and just order in. It is ok to go to bed at 8 pm, wake up at 3 am, and go jogging in the darkness. It is ok read in bed until you have finished that captivating book and it is ok to fall asleep three minutes after that movie had begun. It is ok to invite friends over for dinner whenever you feel like it. It is ok to leave the trash in even after the fruit flies had become unbearable. It is ok to let the empty jars pile on top of each other until you gather the will to carry them outside to the glass-dispensing container. It is ok to let the dust bunnies invade every corner of the house (they aren't all that difficult to get rid of). It is ok to forget to do the laundry (as long as you don't run out of clothes altogether) and it is ok to use the dry rack as a wardrobe.

Living alone for such a long time makes one incapable of imaging what it would be like even to go on vacation. One gets stripped down from all that defined oneself - because one is defined not by what one stands for but by what the others stand for. We are what distiguishes us from everyone else. But when one lives alone, when one's life revolves just around oneself, one loses self-identity and ends up feeling alone and not being able to coexist with anyone else. And that's why when one goes on vacation, one finds it odd.

So, to avoid such feelings of dream, one surrounds oneself with great people in the office, goes home just when one wants to be alone, and enjoys vacations only with friends and family. This time I went on vacation to meet one of my two best friends from university.

As I am sitting writing this from Amsterdam, I realize even more tangibly one's need of Another - on night 1, when I was alone, Amsterdam was just another city, but on night 2, when I walked around with my friend, we laughed (at Amstermdam's expense) on every corner. Amsterdam is a city of extremes: elegance and decadence, fashion and chic, crowds and loneliness (otherwise, why the promiscuity - no judgement implied), labyrinths and tall buildings (tall by the standards of the narrow streets they overshadow), no open spaces and small closed spaces, couples (and trisomes) everywhere. Here people rush when they walk alone and stall when they walk together. Here people ride on bikes only in couples (because it is just so much more dangerous to do that alone - you ride safer when you have to make sure the Other survives). Here magic happens from holding hands not to get lost in the crowd. Here magic lasts less than a second because there is another one in line. And yet magic stays with your forever like in a movie. Here the morning fog has a wholly different effect than the London morning fog, and that's a good thing. Here "creativity" is an euphemism and a rainbow is not.

And if one doesn't have the other or just another, one will lose oneself in the depths of the city canals, in the fog of its coffee shops, in the lusciousness of its red seductions, and their meanderings through the soul. One's got to be up for the game.

And maybe that's why people from Amsterdam are who they are - gamers - open, ready to smile at the street photographer, multi-lingual, provocative, creative, liberated and extrovert - they need the constant stimulation, the challenge, the extremes, the energy. They need to show proudly who they are and where they are going. Their honesty is admirable (even if unreal in its schizophrenia) and their schizophrenia is admirably honest.

Would I be able to live here among them and with them and alongside them and in them? The small streets, the noise, the danger on the streets (and I am talking about those crazy cyclist and the trams), the lack of private spaces, the old constructions (not to mention that they are all sinking), the potted energy, the suffocating crowd, the expectation...? Those questions naturally come. We talked about them with Nik but then he had a plane to catch and I was looking for someone to experience the city with.

And I found someone. You plan and plan: a small treasure hunt - because you really want to see her. You set up three time slots and, like in the movies, your entire world starts rotating around those time slots. First, you think of lunch but then you don't have time so you content yourself with just some peanuts (literally) - nothing bad in them but you wished for a salad (but she is worth waiting for). Walking a few blocks around - you don't want to seem too desperate (which you probably are if you are thinking in those terms). You arrive early, although your heart already knows that this isn't the time you'll meet her and that the treasure hunt shall continue. Despite this, you actually wait 15 more minutes (of course under the pretext that you can just observe the couples around and take street photographs). After this you give up. Until the next meeting - same place, two hours later. By that time, you know the routine already: walking around almost aimlessly ("almost" because you've got the aim to find a way for time to pass by faster), making a few pictures out of focus to "demonstrate the great patterns the bokeh your lens can do" (which loosely translates to "help time acquire meaning"), you find something else to snack on (this time you wish for something sweet to help offset the gloomy mood) and go for marzipan, and you try to go shopping (but you know perfectly well that nowadays few things are exclusive to that city and you give up to avoid logistics overload). It is in that moment that you realize how much this plays like a movie, perhaps a bit like "Before Sunset", not as much like an Woody Allen as you might wish (because things always end up funny and unexpected in those movies), far from a typical British romantic comedy (no matter how much you'd love to live through one). But it is exactly in the midst of this movie that you feel the optimism so you go for the third appointed time - that one's got to work, right? This time you arrive in time, not too early. And as faith has its way, there is a small temptation on the other side of the street - a street gang playing with the rainbow of soap balloons as big as three people and as colorful as thousands of CoffeeCompany shops with their rainbow menus. You go there and you seem to be more focused, the camera is out, all in manual settings, focusing is quick and determined, and you shoot and shoot and shoot; 5 pictures later, you know you've got it, and maybe she is already waiting. But your heart sinks - there are many people on that square but you don't recognize any of them. You realize that you have fallen for your own overenthusiasm with the hunt. Time seemed to have stopped and your departure tomorrow seems an eternity away. You don't know what else to do, so you walk slowly back to the hotel.

The night seems long, you wake up at 5, try to sleep a bit more, go to Starbucks for your drop of caffeine, go back to the hotel, go through with the teleconference for work and you almost flip when you get that message: "konstantin!!!! no!!! oh my god i was just in the middle of writing you a text message  i somehow thought you still had time to meet up today.... i didn't have internet access during the day yesterday at all  i am gonna send you the text message anyways, maybe i'm in luck...". And it is in that moment that you know that this is meant to be like this - an hour and a half is sometimes all that you need. And you don't know if that conversation was going to change your or her life (what a silly idea!) but you know that you needed it, you feel it through and through, you are engulfed in it. You look straight into her eyes and you know that you won't look away. The thought of missing the train on purpose does cross your mind but that would ruin the spontaneity. The thought of picking up the camera and taking a picture of her comes to you but you quickly dismiss it because now matter how unobtrusive, it is still an extra layer and you do want all your shields down. So, you don't. And you enjoy how she plays with the chocolate wrapping, and how she urges you to run so you don't miss that train and how she actually runs with you to the door. And you feel special because you are the only one who runs for that train with someone else by the side.

And so it is on the train that you think again about living alone, visiting the cities alone, and meeting people with open eyes. It is on the train (funnily enough, not earlier) that you manage to connect the dots and to realize that, yes, she did help you define the borders of who you are a little better, and so do you wonder if she sees with greater clarity as well. And you realize that it is not the "living alone" that makes you alone but the treasure hunt - just because you trick yourself into feeling alone when in fact, the world is always with you. And you smile at the sun, because you've finally figured it out.

Dreaming [an essay]

This essay first appeared on my blog in August 2010.

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

Like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore –

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over –

Like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

Like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Hamlet, Langston Hughes

“Do NOT dream of the illusory!” I would shout, did I have the power over mind. “Do NOT think of anything chimerical!” I would scream at the top of my lungs, did I have the power over thought. “Do NOT crave for the impossible!” I would roar with disgust, did I have the power over soul.

Did I have power over my thoughts, I would be … a pessimist. Did I have power over my soul, I would be … a realist. But if only I had power over my dreams, I would be a self-restrained realist and a self-disciplined pessimist. But that is not what I am. Because I do dream and imagine things, because I cannot control severely my illusions, because I do not want to be captured by pure rational thought. But people need to dream, to long for things, to love. They need to travel through mind, to experience the flawless perfection, to receive the love that dreams create.

However, what happens if a dream fails, if the expectations turn up to be sand castles? What remains after the wave is sand. And few are strong enough to rebuild the castle on the very same place – those who are in love with love know that the sea comes again every minute but this is no obstacle. This is the meaning of their life. To learn how to make the castle stronger is the sensual ravishment that makes people crave and come back to it every time a dream is deferred.

What differentiates people’s dreams is the longed-for results. But there are different people and very different dreams. And it is on these different dreams that the reaction to the deferral depends. The more modest the dream is, the less rottening and less drying-up it is. However, rarely do people dream of modest things because they want to have what they do not and usually it is in spheres very different from the appropriate for them.

There is a particular example of dreaming for the impossible, or even dreaming for too much of it, that I remember particularly well because of it close relation to one of my favorite books “Siddhartha” by Hermann Hesse. It is a film called “Samsara”. Hesse’s character is a boy who wants to learn cognition, to understand the world, to mingle with it, to achieve Nirvana. He goes through many obstacles which train him – he gets to know the life of Tibetan monks, the carnal sins. But then he achieves the salvation he has been dreaming of. The “Samsara” character goes the other way round. In the beginning of the film his story is told – he is a monk, who has achieved the Nirvana and has been meditating for 3 years, 3 months, 3 weeks and 3 days. But he then falls in love with a peasant girl. He marries her and starts leading normal life. But then comes a moment when his carnal desires are too strong for him to control and he decides to return to the monastery. Unfortunately for him, there is no way back. His dream of achieving more supreme Nirvana going all the way that Siddhartha goes fails because he cannot possible have everything he is dreaming of. He is forced to return to his life of a land-owner. His dream becomes a sore, his Nirvana – impossible to achieve again, his soul – restless. The price he pays is too high one – it becomes a burden. For him there is only one philosophy from there on: to prevent a drop from evaporating, drop it in the sea. He needs to return to his sea and to accept his weakness.

Unlike him, a few centuries back in time lived a romantic poet whose dreams of purifying the world predominate in his poetry – Percy Bysshe Shelley. Imagine Shelley in the depressing bleakness of the reality, tortured by misery and death, watching the sky and waiting for inspiration. This must have been the picture he saw – his escape from reality and cruelty, his dream. What a better relief than the mysterious catalyst “silver sphere”?

Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,

Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow,

The world should listen then

As I am listening now.

If he could have learn this and accept it unequivocally, be would have been able to recompose his ideas and accept the misery around him which was to be converted to human happiness and harmony. His dream would be his strongest weapon. If we search though the archives of Coca Cola, we will find literally thousands of advertisements appealing for the same – “we would like to instruct the world to sing and live in perfect harmony” This is a group of people, who popularize a utopian dream, based on the simple condition of drinking coke. Perhaps, Shelley’s skylark with her beautiful voice and immortal presence shows us a shorter way to harmony. Mary Shelley (Percy’s wife more famous for her creation of “Frankenstein”) claims that this is one of the most beautiful poems of her husband. But for Percy Shelley it is something more – it is the connection between idealism and radical thoughts. The message sent by the skylark has the power to provoke the change of which the poet dreams. The “unbodied joy” of that “silver sphere” consists of a centuries-old philosophic thought, inspired by Plato and all the other Greek philosophers developing the theme “Ideal Harmony”. Freedom. Shelley tries in his own way to be free: independent from the contempt of his contemporaries, free to express his observations through his poetic message. The gaudy moods of the lark echo resonantly in that idea even now – two hundred years after they were observed. This is a heritage for those of us who try to make/find our own niche of freedom.

While this dreams remains unachieved, there is another possible end – to achieve the dream and not be happy again. This is what happens to Patrick Suskind’s character Jean-Baptist Greneuille. Jean has the most delicate nose in whole France. He is enchanted with the beauty of the numerous scents that fill the streets of 18th-century Paris. His wanting to become perfumer becomes his obsession and he finds ways to fulfil his dreams. Faith meets him with a beautifully smelling girl. He is so obsessed that he wants to create a scent that has her enchanting aura. Unfortunately by the time he meets her he still does not know how to create scents. To become perfumer becomes his incantation through which he is bound to achieve his greatest dream of all. Like a real greneuille (fr. frog) he does become master. He knows already how to take a scent out of the source. And his sources become innocent victims of Nature, favoured by beauty. He kills them in order to get what he wants – the scent. He is accused of the murders and sentenced to death. But he anoints himself with a drop of the fragrance he has made – a mixture of the essential oils of different girls – and the moment he steps of the square where a mob has gathered to watch; everyone present is mesmerized with Greneuille. Even the father of one of the girls grabs Greneuille and forgives him everything. But this is not what Jean-Baptist dreams of. He is so disgusted with human nature that as soon as possible he leaves the town. When he reaches the next small village he anoints himself with the rest of the perfume and leaves himself being torn literally by knives, nails and stones – out of sheer love. Is that what a dream is? A false statement, a raisin drying in the sun?

A dream should be a magnificent opulent tremendous stupendous gargantuan bedazzlement. It should be earthy and controlled, and invigorating and exhilarating. It makes people travel, it makes them stable. It points out the right paths and the wrong paths. It is a heavy burden of sweetness and sheer joy. It is the Moon which makes people ware-wolves; it is the Sun which kills vampires. It is a harmoniously ravishing intoxication and a harsh pungency. It can be here, there and everywhere. But what is for sure – it will always be with people, because they love flying and falling.

At what point does a photograph become too intimate?

I think about photography as a most intimate form of communication. I do not refer to what we see in magazines or on billboards. Nor do I mean the street photographs that give the traveller tips about the world or its people. Nor do I mean the documentary photography which takes up a distant, detached angle on the intimacy of misery. And I do not mean the intimacy of love or nudity. What I mean is the intimacy of non-verbal, metaphoric, symbolic communication captured by the stillness of the shutter speed.

Who is saying more: the photographer who captures that moment (having first provoked it with a question, a word, a glass of wine, hours and hours of chatting...), the subject of the photograph (having become comfortable with that bright reflective black eye made out of layers of glass), or the people who would look at the photograph (seeing, through the eye of the photographer, trying to do a Theory-of-mind exercise penetrating the boundary between their own reality and that of the person with the camera: they become the true photographer themselves?).

I often feel frustrted seeing the pictures in fashion magazines, on facebook photography pages, and blogs: if you were an alien to visit us from the future and look at our portrayal of ourselves, you've got to conclude that we are miserable, depressed, and in need of affection. Growing up in Easter Europe post '89, I've seen this sadness engraved in each pore of people's faces. Now, with camera in hand, I find it difficult to push the button without the presence of a smile. You know those cameras that can take a picture once they detect a smile in the frame? I am that kind of camera. And I am lucky to have people in my life who have the glow. The ability of people to shine through the lights of the city, or the setting sun, or the candle is what inspires me every time to look them in the eyes and carry on with the ritual. 

In the process of putting a smile oneself, I take a picture of that shared moment - shared only between the two of us - that moment reveals who the person is, what she dreams of, where she travels, where she came from, what we talk about, what she thinks of me. In a sense, the process of taking such intimate portraits is a process of self-portraiture - gathering the pieces of the puzzle that make up the self: after all those people are part of my life for no casual reason. What is it that makes them a unique addition to my life? In these pictures, I no longer see the other person 'in that moment', nor do I see myself in that moment - I see a dynamic system that changes with every click of the mechanical clock, with every thunderbold and thunder, with every splash of the water. It is a system that minutes, hours, days, months, or years later will be stripping even more of its shields. And that's true intimacy.