/13 - Chance

In the continuing search to find images that somehow embody the essence of a moment, or of a place or time, it is sometimes possible to eke out a drop of that essence by sheer will or force of trying.

More often than not, however, fleeting images come and go and only in hindsight capture some of what has passed - engrained in the memory, an image (or reverse image, outline) that remains when the moment is gone.

During an October weekend in New England I had taken the car to look for the autumn colours I was expecting to find in the Boston hinterland - and as the day drew closer to an end it became abundantly clear that I was probably a week or two too early to hit the peak of the foliage fanfare.

Still, as I was about to get in the car and stow away the (underused) camera, there was a single leaf on the car roof, a section in what looked like black fumed glass reflecting the overhead branches and the curled up orange sheet that had come to rest at just under eye level. An easy image, and yet something I would not have been able to anticipate, nor construct purposefully, even if I had tried.

Boston 2018 : 241/365

/12 - Clever

Occasionally we find ourselves running, focused only on getting to our destination, as in a tunnel - with scant regard for what is hanging on the walls around us, left and right.

On this occasion, however, a series of animated images (actually, overlays of two images seen individually when viewed from two different angles like some novelty postcards) caught my attention. Even though I was running, I stopped and found myself reaching for my camera on this one, which somehow summed up the frantic mental pace at work with the ironic back-breaking physical reality.

This was taken at the moment when, dead center, the two pictures merged. I actually passed the poster several times - given that I was on a moving walkway at the time, I could actually stand still and still move past as the images overlapped to get the right moment. Not something that happens much in the office, it has to be said.

Vienna 2018 : 192/365

/11 - Shape

One of the quirky pleasures of life in Athens is the rather frequent presence of cars that in other European countries have left the roads many years ago.

With many of these cars, alone the shape, or the detail of a light, or grille, or mirror, are enough to allow identification. Is this what is meant by a design being iconic? Probably.

Athens 2018 : 135/365

/10 - Unexpected

Every now and again an experience (sometimes large, sometimes small) comes along that presents an opportunity for reflection and makes entirely unexpected connections. Much is always made about being prepared for the expected as well as the unexpected, but in these cases the reflection is driven by a complete lack of expectation and a surprise about something completely new.

A one-day visit to Lowell, on a dreary, lonely weekend was a case in point. It was not a complete surprise, I confess: I had been advised by a colleague that the town might be of interest, but had not taken the advice seriously. I thus embarked on the drive to Lowell for lack of something better to do, thinking about the absent family as I drove my way through the rain. As it turned out, this was fertile ground fora short trip to a set which had come almost directly out of what I had seen previously in the north of England: a 19th century industrial town, red brick, built on canals and harnessing the power of the river to run the mills and ignite the capitalist spark. A National Park, no less, documenting a (mostly) well-preserved heritage that had (in some cases literally) been transported straight from Victorian England to the New World.

Apart from the photographic vein that yielded much more than I had expected, and apart from the heartstrings that were pulled that day as I thought of England, the trip had provided me with raw material that subsequently required substantial time to work through. The photographic element was rather straightforward: with the weather that day alternating been grey and drizzly, and the heritage sites generally cloaked in similar colour schemes (brick, steel, oil, wood), putting together a unified set of images was not a big challenge. The pictures themselves, however, and the wholly unanticipated nature of the experience (initially small, but expanding), still have me thinking about leaving room for unexpectedness on weekends to come.

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Lowell 2018 : 126/365

/9 - Notice

I’m not the quickest photographer - which is the kind of problem that will put a spanner in any plans for street photography (in addition to pangs about speaking to strangers on the street).

Every now and again, however, I notice structural and compositional elements that seem (at least in part) to be there. Sometimes (as with the picture below) the process of noticing these elements comes only in retrospect once it is time to bring the raw (sic) picture “back” to what I had in my mind’s eye when I captured the scene.

This can, on occasion, be considerable, and is often the point at which it is best to combine an image with a word or phrase that sums up what was going through my mind at the time. The creative process, seen from above, is thus an image, which elicits a phrase or connection, and which (with the camera ready) can be captured spontaneously and refined in processing at a later timepoint. Overall, this is a work flow well-suited to digital photography, as opposed to analogue: at least a part of the creativity resulting in the final image comes not at the time of taking the picture, or as a reaction to something that was carefully composed and visible mentally prior to an image or series of images being captured, but rather during the time afterwards, with the image working its way through the subconscious and conscious machinery to its final state.

A “decisive moment” thus turns into a short story - from the initial snapshot to the final vision. As in “The French Kiss,” below.

Frankfurt 2018 : 177/365

/8 - Concrete

 One of the mysteries of place is that the more one becomes familiar with a physical location, the more the trend is towards a failure to spot evolutionary changes in the environment as they occur. Perhaps it is a shift from the physical to the emotional: the emotional bond grows, almost as if an imagined world takes root and establishes itself, gradually growing, thereby edging out the things that are actually occurring all around us.

A return to a place after a time during which this bond may have wilted somewhat, or at least had to retreat somewhat, can often result in a shock to the system when a familiar building or spot has been transformed by construction.

Or destruction: inevitably buildings are re-built, or removed entirely - perhaps because they have gone out of style, they have become practical, or empty, or perhaps simply because someone has had a better idea of something to fill the space with.

The old post office close to the main train station in Mannheim was such a case: a massive, concrete, brutalist distribution factory which perhaps not without reason was well-placed next to the bustling commuter halls. And which has now given way to flats and shops, perfectly placed for the same commuters streaming out of the station and now with a place to go within a short stumble of the platforms.

Will it be missed? Who knows, but the concrete patterns and forms were rather symbolic of the time it was conceived in (1970s / 1980s): the post-office-yellow, of course, but also the angles, shapes, patterns which were meant to detract from the practical and utilitarian construct but probably ended up emphasising it even further, in the way that too much make up might simply lead to making a prominent nose or pair of eyes even more dominant. It may have been a bit of an eyesore for some, but it was as much a feature of the area around the train station as the cavernous entrance itself, and smelt of 1970s optimism.

The picture below, however, is not from Mannheim, but from Heidelberg. Another post office building that was being torn down, with a design from the same era (and architect: Otto Herbert Hajek) as its sibling some 30 kilometers away. One in walking distance from the Neckar, the other a similar distance from the Rhein: both have outlived their designated useful life, with their shapes and forms consigned to images and historical footnotes.

Heidelberg 2018 : 204/365

/7 - Layers

Given that place is such an emotive and important subject, it is not a long stretch to the question of what makes certain places attractive or generates attachment. Partly this pull derives from years getting to know a place well through immersion (i.e., living there), perhaps during a formative period of one’s life, while at other times it is the association with frequent visits (usually to emotionally important people) that might cement a particular bond with a place (and time, in time).

This has a deep truth when speaking about larger cities: London is a case in point, and Athens perhaps even more so. These cities are large, sprawling expanses, often with densely packed inner cores, which at first glance elicit generally negative descriptors: dirty, polluted, chaotic, time-consuming. These are all true, of course: but below the surface, at varying depths, are undercurrents turning obstacles into opportunity and the seething mass of humanity into a cultural and intellectual whirlpool. If the saying is to be believed, that for creativity one should “have many ideas and only keep the good ones,” then these pots full of stewing ideas, hopes, anger, frustration, and vitality are generating them at a frantic pace. It is not always easy to identify, let alone build on, the few nuggets or scraps of good ideas that emerge: but the very scale suggests that holding an active ear to the ground for long enough will eventually yield more noise than may have been expected.

Getting at thee ideas, however, requires not just an understanding of the aforementioned depths, but also the layers which separate the different groups that dwell at these various levels - layers that can be physical, mental, cultural. Where are the interfaces, the juxtapositions? Are they permeable, or hard borders, and how much leakage, intermingling, mixing is there between the adjacent groups of individuals?

Part of this can be done via images, but ultimately it will require conversation and the oral tradition. Photos are a good place to start: much can be read into, or inferred from, pictures that capture these boundaries. Layers in this sense have bright and dark sides, they may conceal or reveal - generally, however, they are there in plain sight, waiting to be caught. And the real advance is when people themselves verbalise what they see, and how they deal with, or skirt around, these topics.

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Athens 2018 : 214/365

/6 - Place

Walking across the old Olympic complex in Athens is, indeed, a complex mixture of conflicting emotions.

The site is still impressive both in its scale as well as ambition, with the white (wide) open spaces soaking up and reflecting back the Mediterranean sunshine, a seemingly perfect forum for the crowds to wind there way between buildings.

And yet: since 2004 the site has been in steady structural decline, though much of it remains in regular use (the bridge over Kifissias Avenue that takes me to school and the office still has the “Spirit of the Games” slogan draped across it, just to remind the busy commuters of a much more optimistic and not-that-long-ago era).

On foot (there are only few barriers to an unhindered wander across the expansive area) one is regularly drawn to the weeds coming up between the cracks, flaking paint, rust, graffiti, and a general sense of abandoned former glory. At one end the open spaces hum in the summer heat (with traffic in the background), while at the other the massive water sports facilities resemble a concrete and steel jungle which is partly still very actively in use and partly in a state of complete neglect.

Overall, rich pickings for a photographer, almost like the meal awaiting a vulture getting ready to feast on the aftermath of a large, and rather fatal, battle. And still, the sense that the pictures that were taken 14 years ago had a very different texture and feeling: much time has passed since then, as have locations and the places called home.

Athens 2018 : 151/365

/5 - Print

As a brief follow-on to yesterday’s post on time and photography, I thought it would be important to note that there is an essential need for time not just during the taking of any photograph, or as one is waiting to capture that essential moment, but also afterwards.

Partly this has to do with allowing pictures to rest after taking, perhaps in a similar way to what can also help with writing. A piece or image is crafted, honed, polished, and “completed” (or taken, snapped), but it is often only in the days or weeks or months after writing or pulling the trigger that the real essence of the work starts to peer through. Perhaps one notices things that hadn’t occurred to the viewer or reader before, or there are juxtapositions that weren’t in the foreground at first but become more and more prominent the more the text is re-read or the image re-examined.

In short, the review process takes time, and often there are certain images or phrases or simply words that will not let go: they are uttered, or found, and then hang around at the back of the mind for great lengths of time, surfacing at regular intervals and refusing to be put to rest, even after several attempts at capturing the nature of their persistence. These are often the most intricate ideas, perhaps also the most buried - something below the skin is just waiting to burst forth, like a ripe fruit, but it is only after bouts of handling or turning that this is possible and the riddle is solved.

One action that can help immeasurably when it comes to pictures is having them printed out and then simply pinned to a wall or placed surreptitiously on a desk. Below is one such example: this image has been through the mental washing machine several times but refuses to let itself be ensnared to date. Many different elements (including around how and when and where the picture was taken) jostle for emotional space, but have not yet allowed themselves to be aligned and arrayed for final inspection.

That time will eventually come: but for now it needs to do some additional subconscious work to enable a full and fruitful unfolding.

Lermoos 2018 : 50/365

/4 - Train

 Time when traveling can be both a blessing and a curse - with much time spent waiting, minutes and hours can seem endless, while on other occasions provide the right pause for reflection and constructive boredom.

Especially in trains this often gets the mind rolling: even more than in an airplane one is a captive audience, close enough to the ground to recognise trees, ditches, roads, cars as they flit by, yet tied to tracks that are two-dimensional as the cross spaces that are at once plain and at the same time often hidden from view behind buildings and through suburbs that one would normally never set foot in.

Time can also be made to expand under such circumstances: drawn out and elongated, expanded and extended into long lines and abstract fields of colour using longer exposures. The camera is held still, the iris open and looking outward as the image builds up, layers, and eventually snips out strips of light as objects rush by. Individual lights and walls become streaks of grey, built up into parallels that resemble the same tracks the train is traveling on, with the darkness in between.

Frankfurt 2018 : 183/365

/3 - En route

 Having embraced colour in a way I wasn’t expecting at the beginning of the year, I have come to discover that there are certain tones and hues that keep returning to the pictures that are being added to my favourites folder.

Mostly these are greys, greens, and light blues - mostly pastel hues within a certain gloomy atmosphere that tends to work (for me) both in the brighter light of Greece and on the tarmac of transit airports in more overcast countries.

The picture below is a case in point: not only are the colours part of the aforementioned mood board, but the subject matter is almost a reflection of what I am sure I look like much of the time when in transit or en route, and the content and material nature of the image (glass, steel, concrete) is somehow more widely symbolic of the age we live in.

Travel generally provides time for reflection (as well as boredom): occasionally this holds up a mirror to my own situation, while in more creative moments there is an opportunity for abstract photography and images that are more deeply evocative of movement and pace.

Paris 2018 : 185/365

/2 - Neon

When I first started out on my 365-photo project I was convinced that I would be mainly shooting in black and white. I’ve had numerous ideas about shooting black and white on film, while experimenting with colour on digital cameras, but it was never that straightforward and I have lacked the discipline and rigour to adhere too closely to such rules.

Colour has thus seeped gently into the pictures, and looking back over the past 9 months I see mainly subtle greys, greens, and blues creeping into the images (or perhaps the images I am being drawn to are ones that predominantly express these colours). An example will be the subject of tomorrow’s post.

Additionally, however, and driven by travel and the need to photograph early in the morning and late in the evening to fit around work schedules, I also find myself rather fascinated by neon lights, and especially the contrast with the surrounding darkness. I have never had the confidence to shoot film at night, so colour goes naturally with digital experiments in these cases (as does the travel associated with these locations) - something that is further amplified by the ability to tweak the tones and saturation to make the image match more closely what I remember seeing in my mind.

Below is one such image: simple and obvious, with the usual vantage point of the camera pointed up from the pedestrian on the street, but nevertheless quite representative of what one sees when walking the city at night.

Paris 2018 : 232/365

/1 - Kentauros

There has to be a first post: and this is it.

The main reason for choosing the image below is because it is the image that was taken today. It could have been any of the images taken since January 1st as part of this 365-day project - but it’s this one because one has to start somewhere, and this is as good a place as any.

Athens 2018 : 236/365

I have driven past this shop dozens of times and today, for a change, the light turned red at the right moment for me to come to a halt right across from the shop entrance - and I had my chance.

I have wondered with every passing about it’s typography, how it stands out, and what it tells us about the owner (or founder). It was likely very modern at the time, a time which was probably just long enough ago (1980s?) that it is currently en vogue again. And it certainly stands out: the backboard color is unusual, the height of the building (compared to its neighbors) is unusual, though the fact that it is a workshop/garage is not.

All in all it serves as a distinct reminder of a path I take frequently when in Athens: in both directions, incidentally, though only in one direction (home) does the opportunity present itself to stop outside the shop.