What to buy in February 2009

This is not a new release. Actually this book has been around for quite a while. I think I purchased it in 2005, but even then it wasn’t new.
I had already written about Sally Mann two months ago. She is an outstanding photographer, being famous for the outdoor nude images of her children. “Immediate Family” is probably her most famous publication and sparked a lot of controversy, especially in times when the public had become very sensitive towards topics like pedophile child abuse etc.

The images shown in this book are taken with a large format camera and beautifully crafted. They show Sally Mann’s children in and around their home. The pictures are strikingly open and natural, very much in the nudist tradition. The set up is similar to Jock Sturges’ images of nude colonies in France and the United States. They are in no way pornographic or indecent (whatever that word means). They are just beautiful!

The book can be purchased here…

This is from one of her exhibitions in Jackson Fine Art.

going to work

Seoul, November 2008. Early in the morning I walked around the area of my hotel. It was cold but the atmosphere and the light were just beautiful.

the square and the sea

This is a picture taken on a Malaysian beach in October 2008 where we spent a long weekend scuba diving. I was trying out the potential of my new HOLGA and was amazed by the amount of nice motives that you can find on a beach. And the light was just beautiful.

This is also another example of the square as such a simple but perfect frame for composition. I am always struggling with rectangles, especially the 3:2 ration that is standard on a 35mm camera. How do you fill a longish wide rectangle, making use of the whole length? Not easy!
With the square I never have problems. It just comes naturally, like a natural way of putting things in place. Maybe that’s why the Old Chinese used to see the world as a square?

Photographers: Thomas Stoffaneller

Thomas Stoffaneller is a photographer from Innsbruck/Austria. His images show beautiful street scenes from Asia and Africa , landscapes in b/w, all on film and beautifully executed. This is classic darkroom work and a good example that there are still things which cannot be achieved with a multi automatic multi megapixel DSLR.
To be able to craft this kind of images you must have a feeling for what you see and then be able to translate that into images and onto the paper.

Thomas and his partner Stefanie Klaunzer share a wonderful website which can be found here!
They are moving to Malaysia this year and I am very much looking forward to meet them.

East Coast

My daughter Maya, Singapore East Coast Beach, Jan. 2009…

masters of photography

Working in Projects

If there is one thing that I have learned during the past years, then it is that the quality of my work becomes much better when I work in projects. Like most people my photography used to be rather spontaneous. It’s like when people tell you they never leave home without a camera, or they walk out onto the streets to shoot what comes intotheir way. This seems to be the “Henry Cartier-Bresson” way.

Well, to be honest, I don’t think that any of the street masters of the 20th century ever worked that way. Random shooting, in my experience, usually leads to random photography with over 90% of rubbish. From my experience I can tell that my results become much better if I have at least some kind of theme in my mind before I take my camera out. Then I know what to look for with much better results.
For the last four years, I have mainly been working in projects. That means I spend a big time of thinking about topics, set ups, perspectives etc. before I start to fill out what has been an idea and now becomes reality. When there is an idea, a plan, a structure, the results become much more consistent, much more thought through. Planning usually includes decision about the theme, the perspective (i.e. the camera), the film used, light and picture format. Usually I have a list (in my head) about all the things I want to have covered so that there is nothing missing.

An example of a rather formal street project in Shanghai is this image. I took my Mamiya onto the street, placed it on a tripod and asked the bypassing people to pose for a portrait, on a stool against the wall. The plan was to get a good overview of ordinary people in Shanghai (urban China) at the beginning of the 21st century. I chose a fixed camera position, neutral daylight (Spring and Autumn mornings) and always the same Color slide and/or b/w film. The project went on through the years 2005 and 2006 until I had the feeling that I had covered a good range of different characters.

Today this project alone means more to me and shows more about the place than hundreds of random street images I took during my first few years in China. It just makes more sense and is simply more thorough and complete than anything I could have done without a project theme. A good lesson about photography and the creative process!

My January Strip

intimate

Some portraits are just more personal than others. I don’t know how exactly it happens but sometimes the camera is able to catch something, a certain look, that is only fully revealed when the image is out…

The Maid

This is our maid Puji, together with our daughter Maya. Maids also run under “Nanny”, “Ama”, “housekeeper”, “domestic help” and other terms to describe what they are or what they do. Sometimes they work during the day, for a few hours or full time.

In rich Asian or Middle East countries (Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong etc.) they usually come from the poor neighboring countries like The Philippines, Indonesia, or Sri Lanka/India. They stay with you and are more or less part of the family, taking care of household and children.

Most of these women come from poor backgrounds and work abroad to support their families at home. That means they leave parents, husbands, children behind and stay with someone else’s family for two or more years. Most of the time they don’t see their relatives for a very long time and work on standby between 72 and 90 hours a week (6am to 8pm, six to seven days a week). The conditions they live in mostly depend on the legal protection in their host country and on the treatment they get from their employers.
As one might guess, in some places neither is very good. In the Middle east you often hear awful stories about abuse. Maids have to perform dangerous duties, are sometimes beaten and do not get the appropriate private space. In congested places like Hong Kong it is very common for maids to sleep on the kitchen floor, and even in our pampered Singapore maids regularly have to sleep in the children’s’ room, or in windowless storage rooms or bomb shelters inside their employers apartments. The pay is far below every local standard, regular fixed working hours don’t really exist or there is no control mechanism.
In today’s conditions, the local economies have more or less adapted to the availability of this kind of foreign labor. This means the cost of living is so high that most middle class families depend on a second income which means they need domestic helpers. Thus, the system feeds itself: Cheap foreign helpers create higher (double) family incomes which then lets prices soar. In the end you depend on the maid while there is no market for locals to work part time as cleaners, baby seats etc. Our family is no exception.

To be frank: I welcome the opportunity for foreign people to work in countries where they can make much more money than in their home countries. This means they can support their children, send them to better schools and improve their life. What I don’t like about it is the insufficient legal protection, the lack of regular working hours, and the poor pay compared to local standards. I think “equal pay for equal work” is something that should be achieved everywhere. In my opinion, the current system creates not only a master-servant mentality; it also leads to abuse and a chauvinistic view upon poorer countries and people. Not very healthy for a nation!

So, please, fellow Singaporeans, start to show a little bit more dignity and humanity and make rules that not only protect the maids from abuse but also create a legal environment without too many grey areas. Make it compulsory to provide every maid with a decent room and recreational time! Pay them a fair salary and treat them like employees, not like servants or temporary slaves! Teach your children that every human being has to be treated with respect and dignity and show them that their parents can cook and clean as well, in order to bring up children who will not depend on servants to tie their shoe laces for the rest of their lives!