To be, or not to be

This is a picture of me at the Milnerton Market. I am wondering whether I should include it it the book. I am not recognisable, and I am tilting my Stetsonius in a gesture of politeness(the wind actually). It appears if I am acknowledging a greater force, which I am.

Baldessari

In his work called 'Throwing 4 Balls in the Air to Get a Square' the artist tries to do as the title suggests. In my estimation he throws tomatoes at the documentary project by implying that formalism and the modernist documentary project are redundant.

A central image in my N1 project has been a this shot which refers to his failed attempt to get a square. The balls to right of frame particularly.

The N1 project never really shows the Road, it exists by implication. And Africa is beset with easy, centralised images of itself.

SchMIFA

Here is a shot of FIFA's Green Point Stadium in the early stages of its development.

These guys are fascists and prevent the sale of anything which depicts their structures. So I guess the question might be: at which point does a construction site begin to resemble the intended object, and at which point do the attendant copyright questions around its visage begin to take effect?

Murder and arrogance

This is Blitz. He was a general in the notorious gangs of Pollsmoor prison. He was killed shortly after he left the safe confines of the jail in which he was a king pin.

We got along pretty well. He said to me that he could have me killed very easily. I knew this. I asked him not to have me killed, using the prefix 'please' and trying not to emphasise my concern. It worked.

I can't remember exactly why he was inside. He had killed a couple of people. I think he said on a Sunday, because they were making a noise. If my memory serves me correctly he said six.

The film was supplied to me by my employers. It had been damaged by Xrays. I am retouching it now.

PS. The singular portrait was made in his cell on a 4 by 5 inch camera with almost no light, assistant or guard. Behind me are a range of fairly nasty inmates trying to steal my equipment. It was fucking hot-that's why Blitz has his crucifix showing.



A long account of the prison gang system was written by Jonny Steinberg with whom I worked in Pollsmoor. It is called The Number.

Architecture and arrogance

I recently completed some work for the architecture firm Noero Wolff. They employ me to photograph their buildings and they don't prescribe the way in which I work which makes the result satisfying to all involved.

My grounding in photography has made me aware of the way in which people occupy, and move through, space. This training combined with free architecture briefs means that the buildings are invariably couched in a broader context which includes other structures and people.

I think that if the people who surround the building are composed in way which is staggered in a particular style the viewer will be implicated in a set of vectors which make looking at the work more engaging, both in terms of scale and simple aesthetics.

Architects who revere the photograph in which their product is isolated from context are arrogant.

Russian ESQUIRE

Hah! Some lewd work in Russian Esquire.

The magazine called me and asked me for the usage of a photograph from the Milnerton series. I love the photograph. It features all sorts of cheesy detritus including a poster depicting some babe just about to tear open her blouse and expose her breasts and a microphone which obviously cut its teeth on satin rugs draping the karaoke floors of Chinese immigrants' lounges.

It's a very, very well put together magazine. I was astounded. Check Bob Dylan on the cover.

Distinctive Stylus

Every photographer has his, or her, own distinctive stylus.

Apple Pie

I think that William Eggleston's brilliance lies partly in his ability to slice parts(car fin, black man, blueberry, alcove, leg o' lamb)of his immediate environment off which approximate to a particular Deep South sensibility.

With all these slices(cut, even, in foreign lands) he reconstitutes a steaming apple pie whose nostalgic mass must surely remind him of home.

The Seer.

The bloodier photograph contains two dilemmas:

1. In some ways photography can demean private or restricted events, like in the case of this stab victim being loaded into an ambulance, on film. The viewer can become trapped in a corner when the subject looks at him or her and, in a sense, frames another act of violence. How dare you look at me?

In this case the victim is so high that although his line of sight pins me(and you), he registers nothing. The vision in his mind's eye of us kneeling at the back of the ambulance and pushing the shutter must never really have been anything more than a passing semblance in a whisp of crystal meth smoke.

2. Stephen Shore told me that in his seminal work entitled, Uncommon Places, there is no red. He has tried to denude all his photos of the colour red. He believes that the gamut of photography and print cannot sufficiently render shades of red ie. All red is the same in photographic prints despite them being varied. Red is dead. This photograph is a prime example of red is dead.

The cross on the ambulance driver's lapel is also red. Maybe the hospital services knew this when they made their Red Cross(I know they didn't, grant me poetic license), and made it so that they task would always be given immense gravity when they were depicted with the bloodied.

The same can't be said for sky blue.

The other photograph is from the same job which involved photographing a night on an ambulance in the rough Coloured areas of Cape Town. The Medic is checking the depth of a stab wound, seeing if it's pierced the lung.

I think this photograph is effective because the man's penetration of the seated's chest is much how seeing a photograph of violence can stab into our experience or not, for that matter.

This was a tragic SA scene. Everyone in the cramped house was drunk or stoned on something. Kids, folks, grannies and grandpas. Only the two innocent kids staring down from the framed photograph were exempt in that time.

“out of the RED gamut.”

In photographic parlance Gamut refers to the complete spectrum of colors that a given color system can produce. In photography, the gamut available will depend on whether the photographer is working with the RGB (red, green, blue) or the CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, key/black) color model.

Because each of these color systems starts with uniquely different set of primary colors, their combinations produce a distinct set of secondary and tertiary colors. For example, while the gamut of RGB includes a pure blue, that of CMYK will render a bluish purple. Depending of the subjects of the photograph and the desired effect, a photographer will elect one of the color models to have the resulting gamut in his photos.

If a color system lacks a certain shade within its gamut, then the color is “out of the gamut.”

Keep in mind that photographs don’t have to be in color to have a gamut. For example, pictures taken with black and white film or treated with sepia each have their own unique gamut. While black and white pictures will have a color spectrum that ranges from white to gray to black, the gamut for sepia toned pictures will span from white to light brown to dark brown.

Although it originated as a photographic term, gamut has come to have a broader meaning in the English language. In general terms, gamut can refer to any kind of spectrum.

*explanation stolen from the www(photography.com) and adapted slightly

Himmel Uber Berlin

These are some shots of yours truly in Berlin. '03-'05 I think.

Up a tree with Messrs Fritz and Mcubbin. Tom Fritz works at the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Psychology in Leipzig which means he knows a shitload about Monkeys. Crawford knows a shitload about tree-climbing and maintains that the Converse Allstar is a 'look-no-further' in the department.

Tom told me that in Leipzig Zoo was a large ape who had been recorded(moving picture) receiving fallatio. So we trooped to the zoo. The large ape looked sad and forlorn atop his pole and the whole idea made me feel uneasy.

Ida was my number one, but I fucked up.

Whisky was my drink of choice.

I am Jo's daughter's godfather. The Polaroid is a Poloroid Polaroid.

Nails

Hammering in a nail is essentially a violent act. See below.