HELIOLATRY

Tokihiro Sato

2008-12-15T11:18:00.003Z

Tokihiro Sato uses a mirror or torch to create photographs 'Photo Respirations' that trace time through light, a counterpart to Hiroshi Sugimoto's concerns. Interesting for me, when I was researching initial ideas I was looking at signalling using mirrors and the sun, thinking 'this can't make a photograph', but from depth of exploration comes discovery....images from here

Judging a book by its cover

2008-12-10T13:10:00.004Z

This is perhaps how the front cover of the book will look, although, of course, I can't really envisage how the design will be as a physical object. Also still need to purge myself of over-ambitious expectations of both the book and the photographs it contains, thinking of it makes my stomach churn right now! Just had a hunt for, and can't currently find, a book that my grandfather made about a summer climbing trip to Skye. It is painstakingly handwritten with detailed pen and ink sketches of the routes on the mountains. A kind of Wainwright tribute, it is an intense and personal vanity project, presumably never intended for anything other than his own pride. Vanity publishing seems like a negative term but my grandfather's book is wonderful, despite or because of it its intended audience of one, or perhaps some of his climbing club friends. I've tried to bring this idea through in the way that I've presented my work in the book, and I suppose in the very notion of getting it hand-bound. The photographs are subjective experiences of light, and therefore I've presented them as a subjective book. I've also tried to bring in the relationship that printing had to the development of religion, and therefore the assimilation of ancient sun cults into Christian doctrine. Of course, most people will just think the cover is a nice colour and wonder why some of the pictures are blurry! And so they should...

Festival of Light

2008-12-08T17:29:00.004Z

At the Oldham Interfaith Festival of Light on Friday photographing for my day (or should that be night?) job. The evening was a celebration of light festivals in different religions, (from the top) Hindi dancers celebrating Diwali, the Christian Nativity, and Islamic Nasheed. Think I missed the Buddhist section of the programme but the pagans definitely weren't representing, despite all of the above arguably being sublimations of the solstice. Two things that I am thinking of here- firstly the different ways I could have developed my project. I've not really blogged about the book design and getting it printed and off to the binder, because, unlike childbirth there is no massive rush of hormones that instantly makes you forget the means to the end; all I can see of it at the moment is mistakes and tortured misjudgements. I could have done something very straight forward like the above; and let sequence and design ascribe meaning. I feel like I have far too much meaning with my book, like how they say a first novel always tries to bring in every experience of the writer's life to date massacring clarity in the process. Secondly, how much is easier is it to shoot digital? It takes a one hundredth of the time to get it to a point where it can be sent out into the world. I'm amongst millions having this dialogue still in my head, and there are fundamental reasons why I chose to shoot my project on film. Yet I can't help but think that I am a pretentious Luddite with this, thinking that shooting film makes me and the photograph more serious and worthy when ultimately the medium is not the message, the subject is. And to give a subject the value it deserves requires it to be disseminated as widely as possible, and to recognise that you can't control people's response to it once it is gone.

The Somnambulist

2008-11-26T22:44:00.002Z

Ralph Gibson, 'The Somnambulist'. I think the guitar stuff is kind of horrible though, like the photo equivalent of Paul McCartney's later career.

Light is like water

2008-11-26T22:36:00.002Z

I read this story years ago and often think about it in relation to photography, especially at the moment trying to find words for the book which enhance it:

Light Is Like Water
By Gabriel Garcia Marquez
as published in the collection of short stories 'Strange Pilgrims'

At Christmas the boys asked again for a rowboat.

"Okay," said their papa, "we'll buy it when we get back to Cartagena."

Toto, who was nine years old, and Joel, who was seven, were more determined than their parents believed.

"No," they said in chorus. "We need it here and now."

"To begin with," said their mother, "the only navigable water here is what comes out of the shower."

She and her husband were both right. Their house in Cartagena de Indias had a yard with a dock on the bay, and a shed that could hold two large yachts. Here in Madrid, on the other hand, they were crowded into a fifth-floor apartment at 47 Paseo de la Castellana. But in the end neither of them could refuse, because they had promised the children a rowboat complete with sextant and compass if they won their class prizes in elementary school, and they had. And so their papa bought everything and said nothing to his wife, who was more reluctant than he to pay gambling debts. It was a beautiful aluminum boat with a gold stripe at the water line.

"The boat's in the garage," their papa announced at lunch. "The problem is, there's no way to bring it up in the elevator or by the stairs, and there's no more space available in the garage."

On the following Saturday afternoon, however, the boys invited their classmates to help bring the boat p the stairs and they managed to carry it as far as the maid's room.

"Congratulations," said their papa. "Now what?"

"Now nothing," said the boys. "All we wanted was to have the boat in the room, and now it's here."

On Wednesday night, as they did every Wednesday, the parents went to the movies. The boys, lords and masters of the house, closed the doors and windows and broke the glowing bulb in one of the living room lamps. A jet of golden light as cool as water began to pour out of the broken bulb, and they let it run to a depth of almost three feet. Then they turned off the electricity, took out the rowboat, and navigated at will among the islands in the house.

This fabulous adventure was the result of a frivolous remark I made while taking part in a seminar on the poetry of household objects. Toto asked me why the light went on with just a touch of a switch, and I did not have the courage to think about it twice.

"Light is like water," I answered. "You turn the tap and out it comes."

And so they continued sailing every Wednesday night, learning how to use the sextant and the compass, until their parents came home from the movies and found them sleeping like angels on dry land. Months later, longing to go farther, they asked for complete skin-diving outfits: masks, fins, tanks, and compressed air rifles.

"It's bad enough you've put a rowboat you can't use in the maid's room," said their father. "To make it even worse, now you want diving equipment too."

"What if we win the Gold Gardenia Prize for the first semester?" said Joel.

"No," said their mother in alarm. "That's enough."

Their father reproached her for being intransigent.

"These kids don't win so much as a nail when it comes to doing what they're supposed to," she said, "but to get what they want they're capable of taking it all, even the teacher's chair."

In the end the parents did not say yes or no. But in July, Toto and Joel each won a Gold Gardenia and the public recognition of the headmaster. That same afternoon, without having to ask again, they found the diving outfits in their original packing in their bedroom. And so the following Wednesday, while their parents were at the movies seeing Last Tango in Paris, they filled the apartment to a depth of two fathoms, dove like tame sharks under furniture, including the beds and salvaged from the bottom of the light things that had been lost in darkness for years.

At the end-of-the-year awards ceremony, the brothers were acclaimed as examples for the entire school and received certificates of excellence. This time they did not have to ask for anything, because their parents asked them what they wanted. They were so reasonable that all they wanted was a party at home as a treat for their classmates.

Their papa, when he was alone with his wife, was radiant.

"It's a proof of their maturity, "he said.

"From your lips to God's ear," said their mother.

The following Wednesday, while their parents were watching The Battle of Algiers, people walking along the Paseo de la Castellana saw a cascade of light falling from an old building hidden among the trees. It spilled over the balconies, poured in torrents down the facade, and rushed along the great avenue in a golden flood that lit the city all the way to the Guadarrama.

In response to the emergency, firemen forced the door on the fifth floor and found the apartment brimming with light all the way to the ceiling. The sofa and easy chairs covered in leopard skin were floating at different levels in the living room, among the bottles from the bar and the grand piano with its Manila shawl that fluttered half submerged like a golden manta ray. Household objects, in the fullness of their poetry, flew with their own wings through the kitchen sky. The marching band instruments that the children used for dancing drifted among the bright-colored fish freed from their mother's aquarium, which were the only creatures alive and happy in the vast illuminated marsh. Everyone's toothbrush floated in the bathroom, along with Papa's condoms and Mama's jars of creams and her spare bridge, and the television set from the master bedroom floated on its side, still tuned to the final episode of the midnight movie for adults only.

At the end of the hall, moving with the current and clutching the oars, with his mask on and only enough air to reach port, Tonto sat in the stern of the boat searching for the lighthouse, and Joel, floating in the prow, still looked for the north star with the sextant, and floating through the entire house were their thirty-seven classmates, eternalized in the moment of peeing into the pot of geraniums, singing the schools song with the words changed to make fun of the headmaster, sneaking a glass of brandy from Papa's bottle. For they had turned on so many lights at the same time that the apartment had flooded, and two entire classes at the elementary school of Saint Julian the Hospitaler drowned on the fifth floor of 47 Paseo de la Castellana. In Madrid, Spain, a remote city of burning summers and icy winds, with no ocean or river, whose land-bound indigenous population had never mastered the science of navigating on light.

Suns from the Internet

2008-11-24T10:25:00.003Z

I had been looking and failing to find this for a while, but finally came across Penelope Umbrico's 'Suns from the Internet' project again:-

'This is a project I started when I found 2,303,087 pictures of sunsets searching the word “sunset on the Flickr site. I took just the suns from these pictures and made snapshot prints of them.

I find it particularly absurd that the sun, the quintessential life giver, constant in our lives, symbol of enlightenment, spirituality, eternity, all things unreachable and ephemeral, omnipotent provider of optimism and vitamin D… and so ubiquitously photographed, is subsumed to the Internet, the most virtual of spaces equally infinite but within a closed electrical circuit. Looking into this cool electronic space one finds a virtual window into the natural world'

Book Planning

2008-11-19T23:35:00.001Z

Its kind of like playing pairs with cards, only better....

Red Eye

2008-11-19T23:28:00.003Z

My optician told me that I had too many red blood cells in my eyes yesterday. Its difficult to explain the desire to stare at magnified dust on a computer screen solidly for a week even to myself at this stage. I'm longing for straight forward sensor dust right now.

The Nuremberg Chronicle

2008-11-12T21:22:00.003Z

The first photograph is from a copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle held at Chetham's Library, actually photographed at the window seat where Marx and Engels used to meet up, and that's the shadow of the window of the oldest medieval settlement in the North of England over it, that is! The Nuremberg Chronicle is one of the oldest printed books, an incunabulum. (I make no apologies for using wikipedia to reference to here, although I use to bollock my students for using it as their primary essay source, as it is like the giant index in the sky- a really good place to glean the general facts of something!) This copy of the chronicle is particularly interesting as it has been bound with a handwritten translation done in Warrington, in the North of England. I, like many in England, assumed that Warrington had been invented as a place at some point in the late eighties as its primary topographical feature are roundabouts and Ikea, and there used to be this advert trying to persuade people that it was a sensible place to house a business in (I think) with this guy with a Chinese accent going 'Warrrington- Runcorn, its the heart of the nation!

I digress, but it astonishing to learn that Warrington was an ancient seat of learning and almost had one of the first universities in the world. This early Renaissance period has become increasingly important to my understanding of the photographs I took at Saint-Sulpice on the day of the Equinox. The time was such a mash up of superstition colliding with organised religion, and the Catholic Church subsuming pagan beliefs. This is evident, for instance, in the very architecture of Saint-Sulpice, the second image (both of these quoted in 'Discovering the Vernacular Landscape' by John Brinckerhoff):-

'There is very little doubt that during the entire Middle Ages there existed the belief in a distinct relationship between stone and stars'

Peter Fingesten, The Eclipse of Symbolism

'Today when the original treatment of stone has disappeared, we are only occasionally aware of it, chiefly there where old stained glass windows still gleam and where their light transforms the stone. We should think of the Cathedral not only in terms of colour, but as being suffused with the atmosphere of light….the building should ‘shine’, ‘sparkle’, ‘glitter’, ‘dazzle’…it would however be false to say that the Cathedral denies its stone character. It keeps it throughout, only it idealizes it by giving it a gem like, transfigured, vibrant, crystalline aspect'

Hans Sedlmayr, Die Enstehung der Kathedrale

The role of printing in the shift of understanding during this time is, of course, immense, and this particular copy of the book seems to me, to beautifully represent the transition.

David Alan Harvey

2008-11-11T16:01:00.003Z

© David Alan Harvey

Some of the posts on David Alan Harvey's Work In Progress detail his process when putting a book together, or rather the many different ways of putting a book together:

'well, the first thing is the idea or the concept...this is the hardest part (and where i am now on this one)....the second thing, is the actual shooting....this is the hardest part...and the third thing is editing your work down to something that works...this is the hardest part....and the fourth thing is the securing of a publisher and the control over the layout....this is the hardest part.....and the fifth thing is the distribution, the creating of exhibitions and the pr "selling" of the book...this is the hardest part (because by this time you are totally tired of these pictures and are moving on to something else)...'

Tanning Salons

2008-11-04T12:00:00.003Z

I’ve been hanging out in tanning salons lately; in fact I even went on a sun bed the other day, all in the name of research, of course. Trying to create a contrast to the more ‘spiritual’ photographs that I have taken at the eclipse, solstice etc. However the sun bed photos have a spiritual atmosphere all of their own, if I don’t sound a wanker saying this about my own work. This is because of the light; the eerie glow of the blue, the unusual effect by having this enveloping light source, and the shorter wave length of UV. Mostly though the pictures remind me of mortuary slabs in TV police procedural dramas. The light makes the body seem lifeless. Being on the beds is akin to being slowly roasted in an industrial cooker. Surprisingly hot and really claustrophobic. I only managed about two and a half minutes but now I feel really good for having a dose of sunshine- so begins the slippery slope! By January I’ll probably have full scale tanorexia. My beloved, being a man, insisted on going on for twice the recommended time and now has sun burn. I feel a bit guilty, for me the whole idea of going on a sun bed seems wildly exotic and massively irresponsible, yet for masses of people, particularly in the North of Britain this is normal. The list of tanning salons in Manchester extends into the hundreds. The owner of the salon showed me older beds which were more powerful and looked even more 80’s factory. Apparently people travel from the other side of Manchester for the sake of this additional radiation. I only they took Melanotan II instead, after they got over being violently sick from the injections, they could be horny as well as brown! There’s nowt as queer as folks…..

Incline Press

2008-10-28T10:38:00.005Z

I'm lucky to have guidance on putting a book together which matches the research potential of Chetham's Library in the Oldham based Incline Press. I went to meet Graham Moss, the founder of the press yesterday, another time warp. Seems I shall probably be having a round binding so that the book will open flat and double spreads can be put in as inserts to avoid the problems of having two halves on an image misregistered. Also can get a title page beautifully handset. Yet to decide quite how the cover will be, but I know that I'm getting great advice as you can see if you check out the output of the press: some examples above and more information, including how to buy the books, at absurdly low prices for their beauty on the website.

Is there a ghost in my house?

2008-10-28T10:31:00.002Z

Slightly off topic but a long standing personal interest. The upper half of a man's body manifesting in my front room! The magic of sunlight..

A Shepherd's Calendar

2008-10-23T12:00:00.005+01:00

Visited Chetham’s Library last week to look at some of their collection for two reasons. Firstly to look at sun symbols, but also to get design inspiration. I’d like to have a (subtle) reference to the early Renaissance going on in the design to echo the concepts going on in the photographs. As I write this I realise that it is the first time I’ve articulated this particular understanding of the project- early renaissance being the point where superstition hit reason…. Anyway I don’t want to produce a school history project to recreate the Magna Carta, all burnt page edges and staining with coffee: rather to take some influences like binding, type and proportion in to a modern design. I’m lucky that I’ve some great resources nearby for researching this sort of thing in Chetham’s Library and the John Ryland’s Library, both of which have superb collections. Visiting Chetham’s library is an adventure in itself; you go through a small door (Alice in Wonderland, Being John Malkovich) and go back in time. It is a place where the act of consulting a book is made beautiful. The images here are details from a ‘Shepherd’s Calendar’ (late 15^th C) - a misleading name for a stunningly complicated book charting solar and lunar cycles and eclipses. This astronomy is then linked to astrology, in a manner abhorrent to our modern scientific understanding. It is a beautiful object but the funny thing is it seems like a really really good school history project, the sort that the kid who was amazing at drawing would do!

Pieter Ten Hoopen

2008-10-20T14:04:00.004+01:00

images © Pieter Ten Hoopen

Pieter Ten Hoopen's photography is massively atmospheric, due to his use of movement and colour. He was a winner in the World Press Photo Awards last year for his story on Kitezh 'the invisible city'. He talks about the project on the World Press website, explaining how in missing the exact time that the legendary city is supposed to rise up from the lake now standing in its place he focused instead on the neighbouring town of Vadimirskoe, also invisible in its dearth of employment and high rate of alcohol abuse. He is represented by Agence Vu which showcases a great selection of his work.

On Demand publishing

2008-10-19T18:24:00.004+01:00

In a quandary about the best way to go about producing this book. There are so may things that can go wrong between scanning a negative and holding the book in your hands. My issue with on-line publishing is the lack of control and the lack of physicality to the process. But with self-publishing I'm not sure of the best way to actually get the photos on the paper- I worry about precise registration. Conscientious has a good collection of experiences about these issues to learn from.

The Grateful Dead

2008-10-19T18:05:00.005+01:00

I'd like to go to Egypt to shoot but it's looking unlikely as it isn't vital to the book. So here's the Grateful Dead and The Merry Pranksters grooving at the pyramids in 78.

Sun Dog

2008-10-16T23:39:00.003+01:00

How have I never heard of sun dogs before? Or to give them their correct name parhelions? It like when I realised that there were no adverts on the BBC at the age of twenty. Both images courtesy of wiki media commons, the second a seventeenth century copy of the Vädersolstavlan depiciting the optical phenomenon over Stockholm.

Prayers

2008-10-11T15:40:00.001+01:00

Hans-Christian Schink

2008-10-11T15:11:00.003+01:00

Another proponent of the black sun (see Chris McCaw, Harlan Erskine, Ansel Adams). But presumably an originator, and winner of the inaugural REAL photo award, some more information on Mrs Deane and read in the BJP last week. The photography is stunning, I love the role of the light in exaggerating the graphic of the composition. It is so difficult to avoid covering the same ground as other people- something that used to torment me as a mannered art undergraduate. As I get older I begin to think does it matter. Each of the contemporary photographers who I'm aware of has used this motif in a visually and conceptually different way: each has been successful.

Saint-Sulpice Tripych

2008-10-09T10:40:00.004+01:00

Image © thismediathing.com

A pleasant surprise at Saint Sulpice was the LED triptych installed by artists Jim Campbell and Benjamin Bergery, working under the name 'thismediathing'. The LED installation gives a very low light working in harmony with the church interior and the imagery relates to Biblical themes, filtered through through the reinterpretation of Renaissance representation. The faces are blurred and the content ambiguous, yet contextualised through the location. The dim light of the LEDs and the church interior emphasising the remote reverence of the work. Churches make fine galleries, as I suppose was one of their original functions... Saint Sulpice itself also housing some stunning painting by Delacroix.

Catholic Sun Worship Devil YouTube Frenzy

2008-10-02T12:43:00.006+01:00

I find the Catholic Church's absorption of pagan beliefs and symbolism interesting, but some people are a bit more paranoid about it, or even that it is evidence that the devil won the battle between good and evil and Christianity is a trick to get us all to worship the Sun- sadly I can't locate this particular entry to the youetube canon so I'm posting a more reasoned argument...

On Sungazing

2008-10-02T12:37:00.000+01:00

Saint Sulpice

2008-10-02T11:43:00.003+01:00

Back from France and in a scanning marathon. Its initially depressing to see the photos and then gets better... but apart from a few instant standout shots my opinions can shift quite a lot on what will or will not be included. At the church of Saint Sulpice in Paris for the Equinox, as detailed in the occult conspiracy blockbuster the Da Vinci code (see the second picture) the church has a gnomon (see the first picture) and is in effect a giant sundial. On the equinox the sun is channeled through a hole and hits a marker on a brass line set into the floor of the church. The circumstances of the installation of the gnomon are explained without reference to CERN or mad monks in J.L. Heilbron's 'The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories.' which details how the Catholic Church came to convert four cathedrals into solar observatories during the 17th and 18th centuries, despite the church's reactionary response to scientific advances.

Due to a slight error, still a sore point, I have no picture of the light hitting the marker. It was a gloriously sunny day too! These photography missions I have been taking for my book all revolve around a chance moment of light; at Stonehenge the sun rising over the heel stone, being able to see the eclipse in Siberia after days on a train. This reflects for me the chance nature of the photograph itself- the search for the decisive moment, but through the process and looking at the resulting photos I'm getting to understand that it is about what lies around getting to that moment of chance too. The Catholic Church, and indeed all spiritual belief systems that I am aware of, make use of light, as symbol, and as atmosphere. The calendar is intrinsically linked to the sun of course, and this made its movements of vital importance to the Catholic Church, seeking to define its year of worship. The failure to get the money shot, which given the placement of the line after the church's construction, would not have been terribly interesting visually, gave me a chance to think more about how the church used light to instill reverence and glory into its rituals. Devices such as stained glass, rose windows, and candles result in this controlled cinematography of worship. The final photograph I've posted here was taken in one of the side chapels that line the church, and it was like a pool of 17th century light had been fixed in time. Also its interesting to think ultimately the church is a giant camera obscura..

Smaller?

2008-09-15T19:50:00.003+01:00

Thinking about layout, the above being rather influenced by the layout of Tony Evan's photos in English Sunrise as designed by David Hillman. The book is curiously modern in concept and presented with the attention to detail that makes viewing the book a great experience. Little things like how the pages open and the size of it in your hand. Simultaneously the book is really dated by the circular corners of the pictures, and the colour of the prints- I don't know whether the nostalgia trip was attended but it is a great lesson in design. In particular I like how the photographs are presented small, demanding an intimate viewing experience. I am working with a small format and creating book photographs as Alec Soth would have it. I want my photographs to be like icons, small and richly coloured prayers.

PhotoMNE, Lourdes

2008-09-14T17:57:00.005+01:00

Looking greatly forward to this, especially to see Guillaume Riviere's work. It'll be interesting to return to Lourdes which has become a bit of dream-like condition in my mind. More info at the official website about the other photographers.

transparency

2008-09-14T16:47:00.003+01:00

I love it when photographers are properly open with technique stuff like this, and don't give it all the coca- cola secret recipe tale; although truth be told i struggle to be open about process:

'AFH: What about this next photograph [Untitled, Morrissey 23]?

RM: Our nickname for this one is "the hulk" because he's all green.

AFH: How are you getting these colors?

RM: The colors are the result of film experimentation. Before I go to the concerts, I expose the film to different lights - Daylight, television light, tungsten light, sunsets, colored lights, morning light, basically all kinds of light. I expose the roll and then shoot it again at the shows. Between exposing the film and utilizing the intense stage lighting, i've got a process down to achieve new color palates.'

(from an interview with ryan mcginley on the saatchi blog)

'Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae'

2008-09-11T23:16:00.000+01:00

Oh God and these, so bizarre and beautiful: "Angels form an arc under the central light, which is YHWH, the Hebrew letters for God. Daylight is the source of direct light, refracted light, and light reflected by night (on right). Divine authority, a hand writing a book that absorbs light directly from the source of all light, oversees the daylight, and it is a little higher than Reason, the hand writing a book above the night, which receives a more modest eye's light. Below daylight is Profane Authority, which receives only a lantern's light; below Reason is Sense, which points to an image produced by a telescope. Emperor Ferdinand enters the picture as one of Kircher's patrons."

Kircher's Magnetism

2008-09-11T23:01:00.003+01:00

Images from Kircher's Magnetism via the amazing Bibliodyssey, the last being a remarkable machine, a sunflower clock: '"To illustrate his belief in the magnetic relationship between the sun and the vegetable kingdom, Kircher designed this heliotropic sunflower clock by attaching a sunflower to a cork and floating it in a reservoir of water. As the blossom rotated to face the sun, a pointer through its center indicated the time on the inner side of a suspended ring. Kircher claimed that it didn't work well because enclosing it in a glass case would block the sun's attractive force, and that it was 'therefore susceptible to inaccuracies due to the wind'."

I especially like the ideas, and the esotericism of the imagery: I love the pattern of the magnetic fields, and the hint of magic.... But I still can't get my head round how to bring these things into my book without distracting from the photography.

The English Sunrise

2008-09-10T21:52:00.004+01:00

Very potentially excited about this book, hopefully winging its way to me. 'The English Sunrise' won a Gold D&AD Award for graphic design in 1973. Photos by Tony Evans, written by Brian Rice, design David Hillman. The book seems to be a document of the sunrise motif in English vernacular design, and from what I can gather is quite minimal in its layout. It is still such a modern idea- I've mulled around on some variations of it myself-and I think that the execution of both the design and photography might reflect that.... the second image is taken from some one's site who has cut the book up and is selling it with some nice quote about sunrises stuck on the back of it, apparently you're meant to string these cards up 'like gems' as a form of home decoration- travesty!!! Well I suppose it's enjoying a book in a way...

Forests and Light

2008-09-04T23:27:00.003+01:00

The aestheticization (is this actually a word yet?) of disaster, as my course would describe it? Christopher LaMarca's exquisite photographs from the book 'Forest Defenders' document non-violent protest against the logging of ancient forests. These photographs are a touch misrepresentative of a selection, concentrating on his subtle treatment of light in illustrating the atmosphere of the land. I think they are very beautiful, I hope this beauty is compelling in promoting awareness, I would buy the book if I could. I've been hunting rainbows for some time now...(His website and Redux dealing with representation.)

Eric Carroll's Sunburn

2008-09-04T22:43:00.002+01:00

'Sunburn is a meditation on landscape, particularly the photographic cliché of the sunset. Eric William Carroll asks, "Why do we feel the need to repeatedly photograph something that happens every day? Is it beauty? Is it time?" Using photographs of landscapes and sunsets found in the dumpsters of one-hour-photo stores, Carroll pushes the images into sublime fields of color through bleaching and silk-screening. In the end, the artist hopes not to describe the beauty of a sunset, but rather re-imagine it.' quoted from here- Eric's website here and blog here

What Sun Gazers do with their powers

2008-09-01T18:27:00.002+01:00

Now drowning in esotericism... '49-years old Zaporozhye` townsman Nikolay Dolgorukiy refused food and eats the Sunlight by eyes since the 25th of August, 2003' (source) . Maybe I'll get to visit him- struggling to uncover British sun gazers: not that there's any sun to gaze at here any how- report.

Plan A or Plan B?

2008-08-27T23:06:00.000+01:00

The Black Sun or Sonnenrad

2008-08-26T20:43:00.004+01:00

The Black Sun or Sonnenrad, symbol of the Nazi party and still banned in various European countries, originating from ancient solar symbolism, now perverted through its associations. Image from wikicommons.

Eclipse photos and narrative confusion

2008-08-26T18:56:00.004+01:00

Now presenting, for the first time ever..... some photos from the Siberian Eclipse mission. Starting to put together some ideas for how my book will flow using rough scans from prints as a guideline- plan being to only scan the negs of the definite contenders after doing some test scans to get an understanding of the colour parameters. This will probably turn out to be a silly way of going about it but it seems logical at the moment. Sequencing is going to be as much of a mission as going to Siberia, some things work visually together but that doesn't necessarily mean that the meaning is enhanced. The easiest thing to do is one image per spread on the right but for my purposes that then loses some possible connections. I 'd like to layer up as many connections as possible without losing the individual resonance of each image. Arse, and I haven't even gotten near print issues yet... but in a way it is enjoyable almost like playing Snap trying out different relationships between the photos.

Stained Glass and the Pencil of Nature

2008-08-20T17:52:00.003+01:00

Off on increasing tangents now with the project. Looking at how the Medieval Church incorporated solar symbols into their iconography. Stained glass transformed the light flooding into the dim churches, enhancing the glory of God's presence, and his sign- the rainbow. Many early examples, featuring solar symbols which echo alchemical illustrations, were destroyed during the Reformation: but even in more modern examples the sun symbol is hinted through halos and St. Catherine's spoked wheel. Now just got to find out how and which to photograph...

Christ as Sol Invictus

2008-08-13T21:29:00.002+01:00

Christ as Sol Invictus, the invisible sun, showing the influence of Roman sun worship upon the development of Christianity. Some information from someone who clearly knows more than I do here, and some translations of contemporaneous texts here.

The Sun Museum

2008-08-08T09:53:00.003+01:00

A great additional benefit of travelling to Novosibirsk for the eclipse was the discovery of the Sun Museum. Essentially one man's life work, the gallery gathers together representations of the sun, from around the world collected and carved by Valery Lipenkov. The museum is kind of the story of his life and sun fascination in physical form, laid out in rooms bearing the ghost of their former functions as a home or a bar. I liked the photographs of Valery, wearing a beret and beaming beatifically alongside various gurus and shrines. Sweetness aside the museum was fascinating, showing the different forms that heliolatry takes: the reindeer of Siberia, eclipse dragons devouring the sun, the swastika reversed at the solstices. The night before the eclipse they held a ceremony to protect the sun. As far as I could tell, given my mastery of Russian extends to four words, each person there recited poems, sang songs and danced for the sun. On the way up to the museum I mistakenly walked into a cosmetic surgery... disturbing some woman post op with pads over her eyes who lurched up on me. The whole museum experience was weird and uplifting, and gives some deeper perspective on the symbolism of the sun.

Exhibition at the No Soap Gallery

2008-08-08T09:22:00.004+01:00

Returned from Siberia! My show, 'Photography and Spiritual Experience', is on at the No Soap Gallery in Novosibirsk until August 13th. Massive thanks to Artem, Constantine and Olya for all their help.

To Siberia

2008-07-26T00:35:00.004+01:00

So slightly apprehensively setting off to Novosibirsk, Siberia, for the Solar Eclipse on August 1st. A partial eclipse will be visible in the UK early in the morning. I was outside Edinburgh Zoo, on my way to the festival, for the 1999 eclipse. I think the animals were making strange sounds but that could just be the perversion of memory. I took a photo- would probably have burnt my retinas out if it hadn't of course been cloudy. But the light still made a very strange effect through the clouds, streaks of light. I can't find the photo of course....

Martin Parr

2008-07-22T15:50:00.004+01:00

Like every photographer must do eventually, no matter how different the intent, I find myself photographing following in the footsteps of Martin Parr. Sometimes I think that there must be several Martin Parr's, or perhaps, more likely, his sleep patterns are like those of Margaret Thatcher. His photos from the total eclipse in Cornwall in 1999, show the impact of the weather on any photographer, they are good, but not fantastic... but of course there is something terribly British about the bloody rain: '"The weather bonded people together," reports Parr. "The atmosphere was good- humoured - it was the Dunkirk spirit, and all that."' The best photograph, most classically Parr in its post-modern document, comes from the following day: 'On returning home to Bristol, Parr realised he hadn't documented the full story. "I got back and switched on the 11pm news, and all the newspapers had this picture on their front cover. I thought, `I must photograph people reading it.' So the next day, I went to Weston- super-Mare to find someone."'

Parr does work constantly, which I really respect, and this must feed back to the ground-breaking work that he does and has produced, ground-breaking regardless of personal taste. In addition, surely Magnum must appreciate him keeping them in post-its and beer for their annual knees-up. (quotes from this Independent feature, images Magnum)

Ryan McGinley

2008-07-17T15:09:00.006+01:00

Ryan McGinley's new photographs, pass far beyond the low-fi aesthetic; capturing beautifully ecstatic experience. His road trips are a structure to make photographs of an idyllic imagined summer- naked!

Solar Eclipse Path 2008

2008-07-14T12:44:00.002+01:00

Planning to try and get to Novosibirsk in Siberia for the Solar Eclipse on August 1st. The irony being that it'll probably be bad weather like the solstice, yet it appeals to me that this is the nature of both life and photography, to pursue this photograph across a continent with no guarantees of anything but that I'll struggle to find vegetarian food in a Russian train station. Since the eclipse of 1999 visible from the UK the hobby of eclipse chasing has become increasingly popular with people travelling across the globe to rack up total eclipses. There are some great sites devoted to this like Eclipse Chasers, and thanks to this site for the image.

Alexander Binder

2008-07-14T12:18:00.002+01:00

Via i heart photograph, Alexander Binder's experiments combining home made kaleidoscopes and pinholes with a dslr to create the gorgeous impressions of light (website here). I'm down with his experience of photographing, in particular the spiritual sensation of bringing light, time and experience together: 'I started photography at the age of 14. Since that time I developed a deep interest in not only reproducing a scene but catching the aura of a certain situation. From my point of view traditional processes of capturing light (e.g. camera obscura) are the best solution to merge light, time and space - and thereby reproduce the atmosphere of a special moment.'

Cape Light

2008-07-14T11:02:00.004+01:00

I've been thinking about the different properties of colour and black and white film and how these contribute to meaning. Although of course I have used colour film in the past, since I became serious about building a body of work I have used only black and white and digital. This is because of the level of control I can maintain over the appearance of the photograph from capture to print. Yet now in trying to record these solar rituals I find that I need to use colour, that black and white film is not creating the sense of half forgotten memory that I feel photographing these events; and it is important to me that there is a material product created at the instant of capture, so I can't use digital. Joel Meyerowitz explains what this difference means to him in the interview with Bruce MacDonald which prefaces the 'Cape Light' catalogue:

MacDonald: 'What's the difference between light in black and white and light in colour photography? Do you relate differently to the light?

Meyerowitz: 'The fact is that colour film appears to be responsive to the full spectrum of visible light while black and white reduces the spectrum to a very narrow wavelength. This stimulates in the user of each material a different set of responses. A colour photograph gives you a chance to study and remember how things look and feel in colour. It enables you to have feelings along the full wavelength of the spectrum, to retrieve emotions that were perhaps bred in you from infancy- from the warmth and pinkness of your mother's breast, the loving brown of your puppy's face and the friendly yellow of your pudding. Colour is always part of experience. Grass is green, not gray; flesh is colour, not gray. Black and white is a very cultivated response.'

MacDonald: 'What you're saying is that black and white translates light from all the different hues into tone, and there is no way to tell the light reflected from a red from the light reflected from a black?'

Meyerowitz: 'Close. It expresses the light as a matter of intensity. There's no meaning attached to the light.

MacDonald: 'Black and white photography translates colour into form whereas colour photography can convey significance from the very roots of the act of vision itself, from a place where you respond to primal kinds of things- colours, textures, sensations. What does that do for you the sense that you can deal now with all of those primary responses about colour?

Meyerowitz: 'It makes everything more interesting. Colour suggests more things to look at, new subjects for me. Colour suggests that light itself is a subject....'

Gueorgui Pinkhassov

2008-07-04T21:14:00.003+01:00

Boris - no his name is Gueorgui- why do I want to call him Boris? because its easier to spell? Anyway, Gueorgui Pinkhassovi is led by light to his images, particularly in the beautiful book Sightwalk , viewable alongside an extended feature Just light like on Magnum. I like especially how the book has been laid out, each image resonating against its opposite counterpart. It makes me think about layout but also wonder whether I mind it having no conclusions. The sequencing is aesthetic, rather than drawn from a verbal idea of narrative. I always felt that it was wrong for understanding of images to mimic understanding of words, but photographs that have aligned themselves with 'meaning' are those which have become verbal descriptions- starving African child, barren landscape, typological portrait of person belonging to weird group. This doesn't seem right, but then this painterly approach has a very slippery sense of meaning, which is what I struggle with myself at the moment. It is much easier to feel secure with what you are doing when it can be read in an instant. Also post Marks and Spencers their description of the book seems a bit absurd this is not just any book.... '"Sightwalk" is more than just a book of photographs. It is a modernist Japanese photograph album created from Oriental fabrics and papers, and bounded by hand. It contains the work of Gueorgui Pinkhassov, a highly-acclaimed photographic artist, innovator and member of Magnum.' ahem!

After the Rain

2008-06-27T21:23:00.003+01:00

A week on from the Solstice and I have just about caught up on sleep. It was a cross-country mission and yet to get photos back from processing, I don't know whether the end justified the means. There were over thirty thousand people there, a strange mixture of druids, pagans, international tourists, families and the, as predicted, local teenagers taking drugs for the first time. One guy sat quietly for hours drawing a pen and ink sketch of the scene. At three in the morning the centre circle was packed with drummers and crusties dancing on the stones, and around the henge a sea of umbrellas and beer cans. Groups of people huddled together under bin liners in a soft almost imperceptible English drizzle . The whole scene was incongruously lit by floodlights, which were turned off as the dawn approached. The dawn like, the rain, was difficult to perceive and the day's light became a white haze of dampness. The drumming intensified with the dawn and pagans gathered around the heel stone to perform a ceremony whilst in the circle some lifted a sun on a pole towards the east, and the A road lined with departing cars. As the solstice itself, at about six am approached, the crowds had thinned out, driven off by the rain to the makeshift parties in the car park. The remaining hardcore danced on to occasional blasts of a horn, people getting kind of naked, whilst others had built up a relationship with a particular stone, and perhaps under the influence of drugs, had a chat with it or hugged it or slept against it. I don't know whether I felt any spiritual response, already a memory for me my mind has kind of transformed it to a Bacchic mist, in which the stones seemed over real, like they had been built by a props department. The photographs for me will hopefully capture my experience of the time passing there. I took such an experimental approach to exposure in such grey light and I was shooting for so long without the prior benefit of sleep, I can only hope ... But like the start of a relationship the anticipation is exciting- viva film! (You can see the BBC day in pictures of it here.)

Adi Lavy's 'Camp Sundown'

2008-06-25T13:12:00.003+01:00

Adi Lavy's Camp Sundown series records the reversed life of a summer camp for children who suffer from Xeroderma Pigmentosum, an extremely rare disorder that causes the skin to blister or develop cancer from even the briefest exposure to UV light.

80 attoseconds of light

2008-06-24T23:40:00.003+01:00

Don't want to make a point of regurgitating stuff from other blogs but, via Conscientious, the shortest flash of light ever captured

Stonehenge Solstice

2008-06-20T00:46:00.002+01:00

Off to Stonehenge tomorrow to photograph the solstice. Weather forecast- rain, surprisingly enough. According to recent news stories the circle was perhaps primarily a burial site, as opposed to some kind of giant sundial. Yet its ambiguity and the lack of written evidence informs our fascination, it is a place that we may now occupy according to our spiritual need. Trying to plan I attempt to research/imagine the scene. Lots of New Agers as far as I can glean- I'll be expecting many dreadlocks and also some messy local teenagers who've sampled mdma for the first time. But also that the light will do something surprising during this period of time, or at least there is the chance which is the nature of natural light. I am researching for existing ceremonies that reflect our ancient worship of the sun, but in England there are not really many which are not new constructs. This might be a result of general climate conditions here- shit, drizzle, summer over- we are hardly likely to have developed a solar culture as in ancient Egypt, but perhaps our assumptions of history may be wrong. Or else I need to do more research. Can make my mind up about this during the 24 hours without sleep I've got coming.

Paul Graham 'American Night'

2008-06-14T00:41:00.004+01:00

Where do I begin? Paul Graham's poetry of ethnic segregation in America turns ascribed values of light and dark on their head. Too much light blinds, conceals not reveals, at the outskirts of the perfectly exposed American Dream. Our diurnal relationship with light became perverted through religious and cultural conventions : light, white, good vs dark, black, evil. A better set of explanations here.

Photo book blog

2008-06-14T00:17:00.002+01:00

Eventually there will be a blog about everything.... and 5B4 is particularly great, especially if you are researching to create a photo book for your masters course.

They Shoot Horses Don't They?

2008-06-13T22:38:00.004+01:00

At the Appleby Horse Fair to try out shooting colour film as its been a while, for reasons of cost, concept and control I've been sticking to black and white for personal work. Not delighted with the colour so I might need to keep to black and white for the solstice as the varying light is going to be a bit of a challenge. As somebody said (Meyerowitz?) you have to think in colour too, and I don't understand how the film will react. I have time to get a handle on one film if I was to shoot constantly over the next few days but the range of light means that I will have to change film speed and then I reckon it would make more visual sense to use a range of films rather than having two and pushing.... but I want to shoot colour... its a quandary. I think I need to seek advice from somebody old school who really knows film....

Gypsies are of course photogenic, almost as much as war, although the atmosphere was rather more chav than Koudelka. There were a couple of camera clubs and a few pros taking the classic shot of the horse splashing out of the river. Most people who I know will wonder why I don't have a lovely picture of a horse coming out of the water if I were to show them these pictures, and would think me a better photographer if I did. This gives me vague anxiety and also pisses me off. But then am I just achieving a simulacrum of a more elite aesthetic- kids with toy guns, moments of contemplation amidst the bustle? Enough theorising- as it was certainly some strange and memorable experience, a bit like a Friday night in the city centre- too much beer and a feeling that it is about to kick off only with galloping horses thrown into the mix. And the girls were wearing outfits like a crop top and matching hot pants made out of orange lurex, and everyone was getting really bad sunburn and throwing beer cans in the river. My boyfriend said that somebody had just had a shit in the sink when he went to the pub toilet. I should really make it clear that this isn't aimed at gypsies as most people there had, like me, come to watch or shoot horses.

Chris McCaw's Sunburns

2008-06-12T13:43:00.003+01:00

Chris McCaw's Sunburn project: The extended exposure causes the sun to burn the photographic paper in the camera. The intense light, as with the black suns, causes solarization. I like how, both in his work and Harlan Erskine's Black Sun Project, the discovery has come from involvement with process; playing around with things and the sheer love of photography. Conceptually strong but the concept follows not leads. I find a lot of contemporary art photography quite empty, too sleek and concerned with its own importance, as if it has been conceived in the cafe at an art gallery. Now I understand why photography became obsessed with its own representation but the loss of serendipity, or rather its smooth absorption into art world agendas is tragic. McCaw describes:

"This new project initially began completely by accident. In 2003 an all night exposure of the stars made during a camping trip was lost due to the effects of whiskey. Unable to wake up to close the shutter before sunrise, all the information of the night’s exposure was destroyed. The intense light of the rising sun was so focused and intense that it physically changed the film, creating a new way for me to think about photography."

But it took skill, experimentation and knowledge to convert this discovery into a successful series of photographs as you can read here. I can manage the whisky fuelled camping element, the other parts still require some work, although last time I drank whisky while camping I woke up on the fire, luckily having put it out through rolling across it.

Harlan Erskine's Black Sun Project

2008-06-12T11:34:00.002+01:00

Harlan Erskine's Black Sun Project exploits a glitch in a mobile phone camera leading to the solarization of the sun. His post discusses his research, some interesting thoughts, and references Minor White's Black Sun, and also Chris McCaw's Sunburn project, literally burning the negative, who I'll post about next...

Ansel Adams- The Black Sun

2008-06-11T16:58:00.006+01:00

"Drawing on his deep understanding of musical theory, he adapted the language of sound to explain subtle variations of light. From this discovery of the similarities between these physical phenomena he developed in the 1930s his famous Zone System in an attempt to devise a standard procedure for exposure and development that would give consistent negative quality. "The black and white picture known as The Black Sun is one o f your best-known ones. Tell me how you came to take it. I was working in the desert east of the Sierra Nevada a little after sunrise. I wanted to black and white photograph right into the sun, planning to use the brilliant flare as part of the composition. I made several exposures with a 5 x 7 camera and Isopan black and white film; I intended to develop one in Kodak D-23.I knew I might get a little reversal - a phenomenon of excessive exposure - in this negative, and as the sun disc appeared to have slightly less density in the centre of the general flare I decided to develop the next negative in Pyrocatechin, a highly compensating developer. In this negative the disc of the sun was almost fully reversed and has black and white printed very dark. Reversal can be a very exciting effect when it's properly used. I don't think that its physical chemistry is yet completely understood. Actually 'The Black Sun' is not a good description of this black and white picture any more, because it now means the equivalent of a neutron star, and that's an astronomical phenomenon which had not been discovered at the time I made the black and white picture. But I guess the title will stick!" (source- and I'm guessing it is generally from 'Examples- The Making of 40 Photographs')

Walter Herdeg

2008-06-09T23:24:00.006+01:00

...And then some thirty seconds later (thanks AIGA) I learn that Walter Herdeg founded Graphis, the copy I have is of the one hundredth edition, in celebration devoted to the sun, and that Herdeg started his career designing this solar symbol for St. Moritz. The internet is humbling. His love of Garamond as body text strikes a real chord for me and his concept of a 'service layout' where form follows function utterly apposite for a photo book, and I have that delightful feeling where you have stumbled unexpectedly on something that will be inspirational. But best of all is his comments on selection: "I think in recent issues there might even be some examples of Post-modernism in which I feel there was talent. But then I show them not even realizing that they are Post-modern. I leave that to others who are much more articulate than I. I am so much an 'eye' man. For me, it's all visual."

A Zodiacal Being

2008-06-09T23:20:00.006+01:00

After some very general trawling of the college library I pulled out an old Graphis book about the sun in art. It has the charming feature of six or seven inserts on different paper of various sun symbols- I should photograph it really so you can get the full effect. It is impractical, but lovely which is really the more important thing for a book to be. It also has a very charming introduction: "At all times, under all skies, the profound relationship of Man to Sun has persisted, and is still giving birth to new symbols, new images. I have gathered in this book a choice of the loveliest and most startling if them." (Walter Herdeg). I love that 'most startling'. It reminded me of the role of the sun in alchemical symbolism, where it might signify gold, and further- the philosopher's stone. Above, some plates from Bibliodyssey, the first from Splendor Solis, the sun in the context of the landscape represents different stages of the alchemical process; the second a: "Zodiacal being. Allegorical frontispiece with alchemical imagery, showing the Sun and Moon as givers of all terrestrial and subterrestrial life." (source)

blogorexia

2008-06-09T22:12:00.004+01:00

Still feel a bit topsy-turvy with this as I had done quite a bit of research before and now with some of these ideas and references it feels like I've stumbled into the middle of myself having a conversation with myself. I've also developed a form of blogorexia where I keep reading and looking at other people's blogs (primarily Conscientious, primarily American art scene) and comparing myself unfavourably with the famous. Still no endeavour, no progress...

Olafur Eliasson

2008-06-06T13:37:00.004+01:00

So has the study of natural light become less relevant in our neon age? Olafur Eliasson's Domadalur series explore the changing effect of light on landscape just as Monet explored this theme 100 years previously in his Haystacks and Rouen Cathedral series (good article here). As the light changes colour shifts become heightened, in both instances this is highlighted through repetition: a tactic more usually associated with contemporary art than impressionism. Eliasson's explorations through installation go further into our experience of light to transcendent effect, for instance in the Weather Project at the Tate Modern. This was truly a sublime experience, visitors prostrating themselves to the illusion of this hypnotic sun. It seems photography's obsession with light diminished as colour became an accepted medium but as Eliasson observes:-
"Even though one of the largest intercultural common constructions is the agreement about what color is what color (time being the all time largest !), there is still a very large portion of individual opinion about color (unlike time). Color has in its abstraction an enormous psychological and associative potential, and even though color has been cultivated to the extreme the amount of individuality in experiencing colors is equally extreme.This points to that color doesn’t exist in itself, but only when looked at. The unique fact that color so to speak only materializes when light bounces off it into our retinal circus shows us that analyzing colors is in fact about the ability to analyze ourselves."

Tim Davis

2008-06-05T16:00:00.009+01:00

Furthering the idea that light may pervert perception Tim Davis' Permanent Collection and Illilluminations. This though, artificial light, understandably long considered shady...

Trent Parke

2008-06-05T15:15:00.013+01:00

I have the names of thousands of great photographers that I want to link to rushing through my head like the Generation Game conveyor belt. I can't remember them all.....a toasted sandwich maker.....a his and hers towel set......a cuddly toy......a...oh shit, er.... But perhaps an apt place to start would be Trent Parke, the first Australian to be made a full member of Magnum:- "I am forever chasing light. Light turns the ordinary into the magical." You can see his work (obviously then) at Magnum, and on in-public, which includes his recent shift to colour, medium format (market forces or love of experimentation ?). The latter also hosts his wife, Narelle Autio's work- stunning in its own right. Must be nice to be able to go halves on your equipment. Parke's work is spectacularly concerned with light, Australia becomes a dark land brightened by sudden apparitions of otherwordly light. The effects are created in camera with a bit of mild dodging and burning, and nicely Parke isn't prissy about sharing technique in interviews. It is sort of modern pictorialism, and I would imagine, much mimicked. Indeed I am guilty of this intent, but for the fact that I live in Manchester, and even on the single day of the year when it isn't raining the light is of a completely different quality to the intense low sun of a late Sydney afternoon. As Barbara Bolt would have it in her book 'Art beyond Representation', the glare of Australian light can be so bright that it whites out perception.

Rudolph Arnheim

2008-06-05T00:27:00.007+01:00

‘If we had wished to begin with the first causes of visual perception, a discussion of light should have proceeded all others, for without light the eyes can observe no shape, no colour, no space or no movement. But light is more than just the physical cause of what we see. Even psychologically it remains one of the most fundamental and powerful of human experiences, an apparition understandably worshiped, celebrated, and importuned in religious ceremonies. To man as to all diurnal animals, it is the prerequisite for most activities. It is the visual counterpart of that other animating power, heat. It interprets to the eyes the life cycle of the hours and the seasons.’ (Rudolph Arnheim)

I have a blog.

2008-06-04T18:10:00.005+01:00

I have a blog. How strange. The general purpose is to pull together a set of disparate research and ideas for my final Masters (photography, Bolton) project on the worship of light. All the people who contribute to the internet, and in particular photobloggers, have given me so much: it seems a little bit churlish of me to be balking at sharing something in return. But there you have it- I don't like being stared at even in cyber space and I'd far rather be watching from behind the lens. I'm sure this must become easier with time.