ess muss sein

ess muss sein - it must be
take me back to berlin, take me to the delabidated east, take me to prague to warsaw to moscow.

top & bottom - holocaust memorial, berlin
middle - street art, mitte district, berlin

the paradox of everything

perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing
- sylvia plath

look sharp

in my previous post i mentioned dutch photographer anton corbijn. i saw his exhibition inwards and onwards at the foam gallery in amsterdam. his subject involves artist celebrities, from musicians to painters to models. he has published books and made films, photographed album covers (for example, U2's joshua tree album, in its entirety) and magazine covers. his subjects include anthony kiedis, johnny cash, anton corbijn himself, depeche mode, REM, kate moss, naomi cambell, coldplay, nirvana, tom waits, gerhard richter, lucian freud, damien hirst... need i go on? this guy is grainy, great and grunge. plain cool. have a look.

Alexander McQueen - 2007

Gerhard Richter - 2010

Elvis Costello - 1977

REM - 1998

Naomi and Christy - 1993

Don van Viet - 1993

submerged

photographer, wayne levin, is 99% of the time submerged. he's a photographer from the states, but has travelled around as part of the US army in his past. always connected to the ocean, he settled in hawaii. my favourite of wayne's collection are his black and white images. since i came back from my travels, i was inspired by the work of anton corbijn in amsterdam, i began working with black and white and have realised it is more difficult than i expected, hence the influx of external inspiration.
here are some of his images from under the surface.
(my favourite is the first one)

gems

I recently visited the Milnerton Market which is held on the weekends. This market brings traders who sell just about anything, from handy andy in old cola bottles to tools old and new, from old books to old toys. It's junk to be blunt. But junk is relative isn't it? One of the purchases I made was a handful of old National Geographic magazines (R5/each), you know, the ones which have been faded, where the photographs become unsaturated (specifically the green, which turns into the green of the forest after the rain). Today, to avoid the mountain of books and research that needs to be tackled, I paged through the magazines I bought. It prompted me to look up some more recent photographs on the National Geographic photography website. Here are some of my favourites, of the black and white photographs:

Children playing in rain, Bangladesh (2010)

Humpback whales, Tahiti (2009)

Light and Shadow, Agra, India (2009)

Persian Scholars, Iran (2009)