Photo of the week

BART, Orinda, August 2009.

This picture was selected Photo of the Week by The Lilliputians, a Flickr group thats takes its inspiration from Gulliver's Travels and the power of images to transport us into our own Swiftian adventures. Perhaps it is fitting that they chose this image of a commuter who is equally lost in the world of imagination, forged by words and not pictures, a fellow traveler aboard a different vessel. Thanks to the moderators of the group, Rinaldo and tabacstar, for the recognition. Very cool, indeed.

What do you hang on the walls of your mind?

American photographer Eve Arnold asked herself that question.

These would hang in mine, the works of my favorite Flickr friends. For the most part, the pictures included here are the ones that introduced me to their work. Different styles, all. What they have in common are sensitivity, lyricism, and grace. What would you hang on the walls of your mind?


1.China Rules!, 2. Self Discovery, 3. Untitled, 4. Gulliver, 5. MoNtErA, 6. Annecy, 7. DSC_9689, 8. no, 9. *, 10. Non ritorno, 11. *, 12. Ogliastra, 13. Street sellers, 14. Room, 15. Pierrot #1, 16. Death in her Hands, 17. Untitled, 18. Località S. Francesco, 19. Modeling Fall Fashions at Richland, Declassified, 20. Untitled, 21. Secret time, 22. quiet before the storm, 23. Almost self-portrait :D, 24. My Youngest, 25. Untitled, 26. Euridice, 27. Danza che ti passa, 28. El Cristo del Volley, 29. sainte lucie au centre culturel suédois, 30. Le Quesnoy, 31. In a different light, 32. ride or die, 33. ali 6/8/07, 34. Untitled, 35. eventually, 36. 20060812 - Weekend


1. santa_cecilia, 2. Untitled, 3. Those footsteps, deep into the silence, 4. cigarette vendor, 5. Untitled, 6. Scapular, San Roque, 7. artherosclerosis, 8. Before Breakfast 79 of 120, 9. black snow, 10. bubbles, 11. flavor safari, 12. Lewis Carroll Try, 13. boxe, 14. Untitled, 15. Orchids, 16. Grail, 17. Sagada, Mt. Province, 18. isolation, 19. Mom / Мама, 20. Untitled, 21. NOTHIN' AGAIN GRANDPA ?, 22. The Fist Project -- Unity is Within Everyone, 23. inked_photograph, 24. Engot Under The Bed, 25. Modern romance, 26. hair, 27. County Fair - 159th Year, 28. Mayo Uno Labor Day Rally, 29. I suoni delle Dolomiti // Dolomiti sounds, 30. Me. My back. Long story., 31. Shells on the beach, 32. Untitled, 33. rockclimber, 34. Tongue tied, 35. *, 36. Galleri

Biblical

Untitled, San Francisco, June 2009.

This man prostrates himself regularly for alms in the city's finance district, a Starbucks paper cup lifted like a chalice above his bowed head against a space that resembles a cathedral. I've put many a coin in this man's cup before, but have restrained myself time and again from taking his picture. Until now.

Two years ago, writer and photographer idyllopus wrote about a picture I took of a man reading the newspaper in a downtown park (right). The picture reminded her of Saint Paul's miraculous release from jail as told in the Acts of the Apostles, a story whose pre-Christian origins she traced to Euripedes' The Bacchae.

Idyllopus' biblical analogy resurfaced from memory when again I saw the man with the paper cup; at that instance, I thought of the story of Job and his unremitting anguish, and took two quick shots with my Leica. A co-worker dismissed all this as performance, a theater of mendicancy. Maybe so; yet I cannot deny that something unpleasant stirred in my soul that morning and I can still taste its bile.

Starfish, Graciela Iturbide, and a gift from Sardegna

Zoe with starfish, August 2007.

This portrait of my daughter, Zoe, is a tribute to my favorite photographer, Graciela Iturbide, the Hasselblad Award winner for 2008 who is best known for her disturbing yet moving depiction of indigenous Latin American cultures.

In the mystical world of Iturbide, animals are everywhere. Birds, iguanas, dogs and other animals populate her images of ritual, mourning, celebration and destruction like a menagerie of portents and symbols. In her self-portraits, eyes become birds, snails crawl up her skin, snakes come out of her mouth. "They are inside of me," she says of the animals, echoing the Mesoamerican belief in tona and nahual: the animal designated at birth to be a person's guardian angel (tona) and the animal the person transforms to in a separate reality (nahual), akin to the daemons in Golden Compass.

In yet another instance of one image begetting another, Sardegnan photographer Massi Peana sent us this really cool picture of himself with a red starfish and dedicated it to Zoe. Massi is a remarkable photographer whose self-portraits and images of his native island fortress of Alghero possess the painterly quality of dreamscapes. Aside from being a talented photographer, he is a chemist, a sportsman, an accomplished violinist, and is getting married in a few weeks. Tanti auguri, Massi!



Graciela Iturbide, Eyes to fly with? Coyoacan, Mexico, 1991.
Graciela Iturbide, Self-portrait, Coyoacan, Mexico, 1993.
Graciela Iturbide, Self-portrait in the country, Pachuca, Mexico, 1996.
Graciela Iturbide, Self-portrait with snakes, Oaxaca, Mexico, 2006.

Fly, blackbird, fly

OBJECT OF DESIRE


Those of us who can only dream of using a Hasselblad or Rolleiflex twin lens reflex camera can stop dreaming now: Blackbird Fly is here.

OK, maybe it's not exactly a Rollei, but it looks cool, doesn't it?

This unabashedly low tech plastic camera was designed by Hideki Ohmori, the Russian Lomo proponent who now develops toy cameras for his own company, Superheadz. This strange bird comes in a variety of plumage (I like the orange one the best), uses 35mm film, and has a framing mask that lets you take square format photos.

Like its siblings, Holga and Diana, images from the BBF are wildly unpredictable and idiosyncratic, meaning, lots of fun. They can also be breathtakingly beautiful, like the photographs of plastic nico or chomdee.

I want one. Whoever gets me a BBF can be my BFF.

A gypsy in the city and some thoughts about Flickr

Paul Passes Through, Bush Street, San Francisco, September 2007.

I was stepping out of my office building to have a quick smoke when I saw this man playing his accordion across the street. Awash in harsh light with wild shaggy hair, moustache, goatee, and a bright orange kerchief wound tightly around his neck, he looked like a gypsy lost in the city. I took out my handy Leica and started snapping pictures of him from afar. In my viewfinder, I saw him staring at me, and I mimed him a wordless "may I?" and he nodded yes and motioned me to come closer. His name is Paul, a Polish musician from Syracuse. I mistook him for a busker and offered him money, which he refused. He was just passing through, he said, on his way to San Diego where he is writing and playing music for a troupe of street actors. You look like a gypsy, I said. He slapped his accordion and guffawed. "Well, in a way I am," he said.

This picture of Paul was cited in The Online Photographer in an article by New York Times writer Howard French. In his thoughful essay, Howard writes in defense of Flickr, the online photo sharing community. Flickr has been ridiculed as nothing more than a repository for children's pictures, flower macros, and overexposed holiday shots of sunsets. Howard disagrees and so do I. Unlike Photobucket or Multiply or Picasa, Flickr is a real community. I've been lucky to know many Flickr photographers who share the same passion for creating images and looking at photographs. We critique each other's works, share tips and techniques, exchange Photoshop macros, trade prints, talk about gear and other objects of desire, call each other's attention to noteworthy books. We also talk about our kids, exchange recipes, and, on occasion, take pictures together. A Flickr photographer from Sardegna became a good friend and has invited me to his wedding. Two very talented Norwegian photo enthusiasts, buddies in real life, are my email pals. We talk about our work, our many frustrations, photographers, and Joni Mitchell.

I met Palanca prize-winning writer Willie Pascual through Flickr. His traveling notebook project, Lagalag: The Traveling Journal of Filipinos, brought together twenty Filipino photographers to tell their stories in pictures. Two notebooks, filled with photographs and mementos and confessions, journeyed to 10 destinations in the Philippines and 10 destinations in foreign countries. Two years later, the journey of the notebooks is almost complete.

So beware the snob who derides Flickr in my presence because he's in for a good fight. Nothing has inspired me more than the virtual presence of Flickr photographers looking over my viewfinder with their critical eyes.