One day … some night … any moment…no, always.

“Why can’t I create by force of words?” I sighed in a low cynically dejected voice. I could immediately feel someone’s presence; someone invisible, whose molecules had mingled with the atoms of the matter around. A presence that I had never felt before and that I never separated from ever since.

“Hello? Anyone there?” Of course, I realized as soon as I said it, that there could not possibly be anyone because I was the only creature at that time. But then I heard a voice coming from inside my head:

“Yes, it is I – Will. If you make me strong, you will be able to create whatever you wish. But beware, I require the greatest sacrifice ever.”

I was so happy that after so long a loneliness and down-heartedness I was going to be able to create, that I totally disregarded the warning.

The first thing I felt need of was TIME. “I want to measure the amount of Thought required to Inspire My Emotion!” And then, at that very moment, in my head, bangs echoed, striking the seconds precisely. I felt as though another pair of veins was placed along my old one – the pulses were following and overlapping each other. I was fascinated. And yet, I finally appreciated timelessness as my best friend. But I was happy – I had sacrificed my immortal nature for immortal emotion.

I knew that I was merely in the beginning. I needed two more things, the most abstract ones, before I started creating the material world as I had seen it in my dreams – BEAUTY and LOVE. I started with BEAUTY. “I want to be able to feel emotions for the Beastfully Euphoric and Assertive Understanding of the Tempting Yield!” As soon as I said it, I felt hot thoughts running down my spine, back to the brain, then along my nerves and on the road again. My legs became weak, my mind got vague, my brain worked frantically. And yet, I finally appreciated that my absolute power as a judge of beauty had been my best friend. But I was happy – I had sacrificed my innate power to judge for the innate power to admire.

Finally, came LOVE. “I want to have my heart stolen by Livid, Overwhelming, Viral Emotion!” And then, I felt pain, quick thumps of the heart, enlightenment. My heart was in agony and at the same time it was flying, my eyes were closed and my hands were moving graciously as if in a dance. And yet, I finally appreciated that my nonchalance had been by best friend. But I was happy – I had sacrificed my survival instinct for adoration.

Armed with TIME (so that I could measure infinity), with BEAUTY (so that I could be appreciative), with LOVE (so that I could like everything I create), I was ready to materialize a world of my fancy.

I realized I needed light so that I could see what I create. But out of sentimentality I wanted both light and darkness in balance. “Let there be light half the time and darkness the other half!” And so it was. And I liked it for its heavenly simplicity.

I needed some matter to start constructing on. But out of sentimentality I wanted the earth to have the shape of a sphere – so that I never stop walking, just like in Chaos. “Let there be a large ball of firmness and warmth!” And so it was. And I liked it for its geometric perfection.

I needed oceans too. But out of sentimentality I left some pieces of land so that I could walk and just think there. “Let there be oceans around the earth!” And so it was. And I liked it for its invigorating powers.

I needed mountains. But out of sentimentality I left some pieces of flat land, so that I could enjoy climbing up, going down. “Let there be mountains reaching up to the skies!” And so it was. And I liked it for their desperate desire to reach the skies.

I was happy with my creations. At that moment I did not see the need for more – it was beautiful and it was loved. But little by little I got accustomed to the view because it neither changed nor evolved. I went through my archives of dreams of a living world. It was easy to pick up the colors – green for TIME, red for LOVE, yellow for BEAUTY. But I found it difficult to choose a single shape and size – they were all wonderful. I thought that variety would be great so I made them all different.

“Let there be trees of all sizes: large trees, small trees, bushes, and shrubs of different shape – some elongated, others circular, some curved, some dense, some transparent; of different spread: some growing at one place only, others – spreading their seed all over with ease.” And so it was. And I liked it for its astounding variety.

I loved brooding in the green grass, hiking up the mountains, hiding in the forests and enjoying the sun. But I then needed to share Beauty. That was how the idea of creating creatures to understand me came to me – creatures with emotions and feelings, creatures completely independent and conscious, creatures able to create and appreciate.

“Let there be creatures flying in the air; creatures swimming in the sea, creatures prodding on the earth, and creatures living in the trees.” And so it was. And I liked it because, finally, I could share Beauty with creatures who could feel love.

I was filled with sensuous ravishment. But time went by and I could feel a pattern developing – the creatures bred, grew up, died and then it started all over again. However, I wanted to create creatures susceptible to spiritual perfection. And I decided that the only creature that could evolve was my own alike, and yet different – because alikes push each other apart. And I was looking for something to complete my spirit as if we were two parts of a puzzle.

I sat on the lavender grass near the ocean. Birds were singing, a small rabbit was tickling my feet, and a colony of ants – so absorbed in their work that I was the last thing that could ever stop them. And I saw in my mind the Human – an embodiment of TIME, BEAUTY and LOVE.

“Let there be a human.” And so it was. And I liked it for its lavender eyes, its rosewood hair, its violet lips, its jasmine skin… It was my masterpiece.

The human moved. I could feel the warmth in its face but also the questions in its eyes – questions about existence, about living, about breathing. But I sent my message with an appreciative smile: “You will have your answers – you will learn them through experience. You will recognize Beauty; you will learn to appreciate it, to love it because Love is the greatest thing you will ever learn. You will soon be ready to take my place and start creating because this is the greatest power you will master.”

“But Muse, are you leaving me?” asked the Human.

“Yes, my dear. I need to. I have done everything I ever dreamt of. I have fulfilled my obligations, I have accomplished my tasks and I have seen my dreams come true. I leave you in charge. I want you to continue creating Beauty and sharing it. I need you to go on in my path. Promise me that you will be my best creation and that you will not betray my principles.”

The Human nodded in appreciation. I could feel its love – it loved me with all its heart. I stretched my hands for it. I touched its heart. At that very moment something exploded in me. I was no longer a material body but a soul. I felt my hands reaching for the mountains, my legs reaching for the oceans, my hair reaching for the grass, my lungs reaching for the clouds, my liver reaching for the core of the earth. At that moment the whole world began breathing.

The Human stretched out its hands and reached for the rest of my spirit. The moment it touched my eyes, they rushed into its so that the Human could recognize and appreciate Beauty. The moment it touched my veins, they rushed into its so that the Human could measure Time by their racing pulse. The moment it touched my heart, it rushed into its so that the Human could feel Love.

When the two hearts touched I was gone. I was Nowhere. No! The very moment the two hearts started beating in the same beat I was Everywhere.

Jan. 2004

To me, true authentic photography is about the photographer more so than about the subject. When I take a picture of my best friend, I do not take their picture – I take a picture of their trust in me, of my pleasure being with them, of my desire to keep that moment and that particular feeling to last for as long as possible. I take a picture for the same of myself in that picture. Yes, it may appear self-centered, it may be ego-centric, but no, this doesn’t change the matters. And because of this, to my mind it is fascinating to be in the position when someone will tell me “I need to take your picture” – because in that moment, I know that they and I are really close! And this is to me, the essence of photography.

Self-portrait taken with Leica M8, Voigtlander 50mm/f1.1 shot at f8, at 1/250.

Photography Through Photography

There were two pictures that I took today that to my mind fit the challenge. Today N1 – “Water”. White water is argued to be the future petroleum in terms of scarcity and price, it is already a vital resource around the world. It’s scarcity in Africa and parts of Asia nowadays are, if nothing else, a scary prediction of what it may look like in the rest of the world in a couple of decades. (If you have not yet seen the movie HOME, watch it on YouTube and share it further.)

So, when I went to the city center today for my usual Saturday morning Starbucks coffee, I had my camera and walked about. I spotted this tourist asking a passer-by if this water was drinkable. When they said it was, she took her bottle out and filled it with water from this fountain. To me this was an immediate association with the scarcity of water – we have started drinking water from fountains (yes, perhaps it was built specifically with such a purpose in mind – but then again, how many people know that this fountain-looking … thing is actually providing drinkable tab water?).

Shot with Canon EOS 1Ds (very first version – from 2002) with a Canon EF 85mm/f1.8 lens.

Water - precious commodity

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.

Zeilenfest takes place on Wednesday, 11th August from 6 to 9 pm in Lesum.

Now i must make a small confession. When I launched the app, it looked as though the moon will rise from a similar place where the sun sets. It took me some time to realize that this is not possible when there is a full moon. I was waiting for the moon to arrive there where the sun sets and then it hit me – wait, this is second-grade wrong. And the panic that I had missed it swayed me over. I started pedaling vigorously in the opposite direction. And just around the corner I saw her – big, pink, sublime. Like in the movies, I squeezed the brakes and was on two feet (and tripod) in record time. Well, and the rest of the photoshoot is a series of lack of patience and breath-stopping moments between locations.

Just so that the empathy for my lack of patience becomes stronger, these pictures would not have been possible at another time of the year – the shorter the says, the stronger the contrast between the moon and the sky will be at moon rise which makes it impossible to have the right balance in the picture without tweaking them digitally. And since full moon doesn’t happen often, there are VERY few occasions to take such pictures.

See Fiction and chapters.

[just noticed the horrible dust on my Leica's sensor - must have it cleaned]

Then there is the certification: here I was surprised. Although at university, students seem to be rushed through the process like cattle, in the high school version they were given the chance to say their “thank you”-s and “sorry”-s. Granted, we are talking about 40 high school graduates as opposed to nearly 4 hundred university graduates. But then again – what do universities with 4 THOUSAND graduates does?

Now, when it comes to their hugs – they all hug with sincerity. And in the end, this is what matters – not the sheet of paper they’d been handed.

What was: It all started in 2004 when the pioneers completed their studies. That was the only class I never met as a student but I was fortunate to help their dedication as a Jacobs University career services officer in 2008 and early 2009, when we put some of them (e.g. Ankur Agrawal, Peter Dabrowski, and Ioan Hepes, to name a few) in touch with students.

What is: Since taking over the position Head of Career Services just over half a year ago, I have established the long-term objective for the department, transforming its purely administrative role into a placement center and employer hub. In this path, alumni are essential not solely as a resource to current students but as an integral part of the link that lets the Jacobs family communicate and develop. And this would not have been possible without the support of alumni like Julia Valchanova, Henrik Mädler, Anja Jüngermann and Audrius Masalskis (to name a few).

What will be: A plague of the Jacobs community (alumni included) is the reductionism – the multiple pre-defined boxes in which a group has to fit (alumni, admin, staff, directors, undergrads SHSS, undergrads SES, undergrads logistics, masters ISS, masters international relations, masters this, masters that … etc.). Separating each of the elements further and further, trying to tackle their individual needs and offer them exclusive services has taken us so far away from the big picture that we cannot put it back together. As a president of the Alumni Association my purest of tasks will be to abolish the reductionism: to show the big web that links each and every one to Jacobs – each and every one of the 1000+ alumni, 1200+ current students, 100+ faculty members, 300+ other staff, and many other volunteers and supporters.

Because the effect we all strive for (the recognition and continuation of the institution) is caused by what can be.

Vote online via email to alumni@jacobs-university.de 24 hours before the General Assembly: by Friday, June 04, 4pm.

All shots with Leica M8 and Voigtländer 50 mm/ f1.1

I saw the couple on the stairs and I sneaked behind them. It took me one picture which I call lucky – couples tend to be a lucky photographic subject – they are absorbed in each other so much that they don’t necessarily notice someone taking a picture of them. The graffiti picture was also lucky – I was passing by, I started preparing myself to take that picture when this guy passed by – after I took the shot he actually looked at the graffiti from a point of view of a graffiti artist – making fun of it of course for its rudimentary execution.

The picture of the elderly lady called for patience – I roamed for about 3 minutes around the lady who was talking to her friend while listening to street musicians. A couple of times she turned around but I didn’t have the chance to take the picture then. The third time, I snapped this shot. She doesn’t look happy, she doesn’t look like someone enjoying the street musicians – I am confused. The umbrella was just something I came across – nothing spectacular.

All shot with Leica M8 and Voigtländer 50mm f1.1 (and all shot at 1.1). A great article came up coincidentally today at Steve Huff’s website on the use of wide aperture for street pictures.

And this made me think about the different subject of a photographic experience. Albeit nature is going to be there and there will always be elements of curiosities in a tree, on the street, in still life, it is still cold, detached, un-conversational. And this is what I love about portraits – they are a conversation, a dialogue. They are an accidental reveal. And this reveal is what justifies the expressions “a window to the soul”.

Three years down the road, guys were allowed to take part and new monologues were written to satisfy this gap. And off I jumped and haven’t looked back. Third year in a row, tomorrow the adventure starts anew. The past few weeks I listened to each of the monologues over and over trying to decipher the code, to get to the bottom of it, to boil the message down to a minimum and to synthesize it – in a single frame on a digital sensor. This would not have been possible if the women who posed did not actually feel the monologues in their souls: they channelled their emotions, their channelled every woman’s emotion, they channelled every human beings emotion, they channelled the emotion of the human race. I bring them to you here – frame by frame, a gamut of passion, a frame of human history.

8th and 9th April, 2010, 20:00

All taken with a cron 50 at f2.0 at ISO 160. almost no adjustments were made apart from a very, very, very slight color intensification.

All of these pictures were possible thanks to Esther – if she hadn’t started chatting with me early in the morning (5), I wouldn’t have woken up to go jogging and take them! And even if I had woken up, I am not sure I would have been energized and inspired without talking to her (in semi-consciousness).