I think Sally Mann would love this photo if she saw it. This image is thick and loaded like everything created in the south.

same video HD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UcUA8QBC40

Χίλια ευχαριστώ και πάλι!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc9RnwPXoJ0

Gracias to our Spanish friends …we are ALL ONE…

oime…thank you ALL…

Thank you for your all time and advice, I honestly appreciate it. I will surely take notice of everything you’ve mentioned because you’re absolutely right about the kids/family. I am totally guilty of lately leaving them a little aside being driven by my desire to capture the ultimate photo. In fact there’s a rising suspicion within me I’m not even enjoying taking photos as much as I used to. Time to slow down and enjoy life and capture it sometimes on film or card and if I don’t get the image it will never be the end of the world. Celebrate the fiesta and be part of the celebration and not just being a viewer isolated being extremely close but so far away. I think the following quote is brilliant and kind of sums up many of your thoughts…

“When the child was a child, it didn’t know that it was a child, everything was soulful, and all souls were one.”
Peter Handke

And then last night I read the following words and realized to be able to express oneself like this you have live a life, think life, celebrate life be alive and then art and creativity with truth will perhaps appear but it’s always secondary…

“Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.”
C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

….as for the pedestal(tongue set firmly in cheek) sits rotting in the backyard at its end as a pot plant stand come bird feed stations ready as landfill as I fill in my ponds, the jars are full of this years cherries

the books sit in a rack covered in dust a new one is about the join the fold, seen by few and fast losing their relevance every now and then I give some away ………… ah!!!! the blackberries seem to be a permanent fixture in Tassie but I keep on brush cutting and poisoning…..

Sweet Crude Man Camp…

“What a bastard Beethoven sounds — arrogant, paranoid, disagreeable. Why am I still surprised when people turn out to be not at all like their work? A suspicion of the idea that art is the place where you become what you’d like to be… rather than what you already are…”

“Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit — all these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided.
It’s the sound of failure: so much of modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.”

well yes i agree in general…let’s move on..let’s not get shackled by “permanence”..get it….however, i don’t think postmodern is either over nor in conflict with “disappearing art” ..some art, specifically performance art, like the original Shakespeare theater performances , like Cristo, like JR, is totally intended to go away, to disappear, to be ephemeral…

i am even working on a project that is going to take me weeks to do, and may “last” less than an hour….but you can bet your boot straps it will be documented….Cristo’s fence in Central Park is not there anymore, yet many films and photos do exist to “prove” it happened….same with JR….he moves fast, his stuff is gone fast, and yet he too wants to do more books….perhaps not as the original art , but as “evidence”….

you Imants often express disdain for the permanent, the archive, yet seemingly in stark contradiction you also express here how you most value your own books….tangible hard copy…to be treasured, maintained, kept “permanent”..to be put literally on a pedestal as you did for the Burn show in Sydney last spring….

i am totally for moving on….i get bored quickly with any status quo….at the same time i might also be for preserving whatever was going on in that “status quo”…moving on does not mean forgetting….

cheers, david

great film pitch by Myrto!! very very well done….and terrific pictures as well….for sure we should support her…thank you for bringing this to us…

we have thought many times here at Burn that we could sort of be an emphas.is or a kickstarter….but that is another whole commitment and effort and we simply cannot…but yes let’s get out the support banners for Myrto and her work….

you have contact info for her??

cheers, david

whatever you do, you had better spend time with those young children you have at home…i have seen too many photographers, or other driven types, neglect their families in order to “get ahead” or take the assignment of a lifetime….any reason why you cannot integrate your family with your photography? sure many have done it, but so what? many have not done it as well….many have done every subject…whatever has been done before you on any topic should not influence you at all in terms of your own action..photographing your family is therapeutic and bonding at worst…classic at best…

something i have always known, and yet gets reinforced every minute of every day, is that if it is not personal, it will never be great….good documents sure abound from photographers who were detached….but great? i cannot think of one great book or great essay that was not personal….personal does not have to mean shoot pictures only of your family, although that is a good way to get connected totally to yourself and to them…win win…but personal does have to mean something you CARE about…

98% percent of the photographers i see are simply looking for something dramatic or cool or hip or shocking or whatever…we have all been guilty of the “find something different” syndrome….does not work…works to sell a story to a magazine, sure..but long run? ..do your realize how fast a story even in a big magazine gets lost in the pile of stuff in the corner? instant gratification, perhaps a paycheck, perhaps even a pat on the back from your peers, but alas if “greatness” an objective, better make it personal…..

hours in front of a computer screen, hours in the darkroom…same thing…i would suggest you shoot NOW, process later….

try this…force yourself not to see what you have shot for a month…yes, shoot shoot shoot…but do NOT LOOK…resist the temptation to see if you “got the shot”…forget it….get lost in interacting and shooting…let the cards pile up, the film go unprocessed….go totally crazy..forget what i or anyone here will think…just immerse yourself in living the damned subject whatever it is …yes, this is an exercise, but it will help you to shoot like this later even when you are processing every day or whatever….

this will force you to think not about the pictures but about living it feeling it breathing it….perhaps ironically this is turn will give you the “results” you might have been trying too hard to get before….

cheers, david

I’m sure they think that it will be much more difficult to work such a story in the western world, so shoot off to the other areas which only tends to perpetuate stereotypes. I’m sure the access/privacy/legal (in other words getting your arse sued off!) issues are put in the “too hard basket” Just my 2c worth….

Please check this amazing project below and SUPPORT THE ARTIST:
MYRTO PAPADOPOULOS , help her realize it..
Click link below:

http://www.emphas.is/web/guest/discoverprojects?projectID=804#3

THANK YOU ALL!!!