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Little pieces of us
When I was still not even a teenager, I lost my mother to breast cancer. I still remember the night she died vividly, its an image etched in my mind that will stay there for a long time. There are other images too, of happy times and of sad times, memories that were strong enough to survive. However, as time passes, these memories fade. This is probably good on some level, but it also robs us of the fundamental building blocks of our life.
After my son was born, I realized that this would continue. As time passed, small details that gave me joy were forgotten, evaporating away, their place taken by new memories that inevitably also faded away. I realized then that it was up to me to try and collect these little pieces, to give them a permanence that my memory could not.
And so my collection began. Trying not so much to chronicle important dates and events, birthdays or visits to a doctor. Instead, I wanted to capture images that communicated the feeling of the moment, a drive home in the pouring rain, or a moment of uninhibited play.
Photographs: Rafal Pruszynski
Website: www.flickr.com/photos/jinju/
Panos, as I said, I think the personal cost for Rafal’s decision (should he pursue this) could be much greater because he has no plans to move on. My point is that Rafal didn’t get into a relationship for the purpose of making a book of it. Which is different than Sobol. You are correct, though, that the end result could be the same.
JIM..
you really care about INTENTIONS…and i AGREE…
BUT… “intention” could be tricky….
Just because Sobol “moved on”…. does that really proves his original “intention”???????????
Please DO NOT confuse the RESULT with the INTENTION…
think all those couples that got married ( WITH THE BEST INTENTIONS ) and later DIVORCED…
Does that MEAN that they were just “using” each other???????
And how about all those couples that compromised for numerous reasons and stayed “TOGETHER”..
till the end of time…
HMMMMMMMMMMMMM… does that proves that they were “better” people…
does that prove that their “intentions” were the best?????????????
Just because they stayed “together”???????????
Please, think about it for a minute Jim… Think about it….
DO NOT CONFUSE THE RESULT with the original INTENTION Jim..
It is simply UNFAIR!
( How do we even know Sobol’s original “intentions” regarding Sabine??????????
( I personally have more respect for couples that they DIVORCE than couples that stayed together..
I found them ( latter ) ultra suspicious…
My grandparents stayed “together”, stabbing each other till their last breath…
Liers.. Hypocrites…
And on the other side people like SOBOL or even Jared Iorio… that they fell in love and split when the time is “right”… when the candle is being burned from both sides… and move on with their lives…
Who is more honest…????????
you chose!
( my bet? : none and both at the same time )
think about it for a minute Jim.. think about it…
I don’t think Sobol was ambiguous about his intentions.
The other alternative is worse in my mind, “Well, I loved her deeply but it just didn’t work out so I’ll publish this book filled with the intimacy of our relationship to gain fame and fortune.”
I know it’s old fashioned, but I think there are places we should just ethically not go.
ok… here is my theory about FAMILIARITY…
PEOPLE( the mass ) ARE SO NAIVE THAT they prefer to eat at a “mediocre restaurant”…
just because is standing in their neighborhood forever…
than try a new “healthy , clean, tastier joint”… that just opened merely a month ago…
thats a fact…
FAMILIAR IS BETTER , THE “WEAK” admit…
Why???
Well, they have been there forever they answer…
Panos, all kinds of relationships fail for all kinds of reasons. But most people don’t publish books about those failures.
But Jim…
Im not sure, i just suspect….that Sabine’s boyfriend
had always the camera in his hands… and i suspect ( i wasnt really there )
that he told her numerous times that his camera is his primary wife…
Again, i wasnt there… but this is what i always confess to my girl (s)..
immediately… Sorry babe… First my camera , then YOU…
iM HONEST…
( i guess/hope that Sobol was the same…if not then fuck him)
:))))))))))))
i´m really trying to get beate to write her views on this.. i just woke up to her anger about some of the comments..
all she sees here is a man who is besotted .. utterly in love.. respectfully passionate and expressing that to us..
..
rafal.. ignore what you need to and carry on – it´s a tremendous tribute and as beate says – your wife must be very proud of you..
david & beate.
And there’s the problem, panos. You and I use the same words, but our life experience is so far apart that we aren’t speaking the same language. The relationships are primary for me, not the camera. If it had ever been a choice between the relationship and the camera, then screw the camera. And that’s from someone that has spent his whole life with a camera in his hand.
Jim,,
what makes you think that Sabine is about “failure”????????????
david, I asked Rafal if his wife had read this thread and what she thought about it. He didn’t respond. It would be interesting to know what she thought.
Jim, i hear you man…
My exaggeration has to do with “HIS” INTENTIONS…
JUST BECAUSE THEY SPLIT… doesnt mean he exploite her
panos, Sabine is not about failure, it’s about exploitation.
… in other words… if someone could prove that Sobol was such a manipulative human being,
that all he cared about is just his FAME then, yes im with you… but who can prove that?
His “successful” book doesnt prove bad “intentions”…make sense?
Again, im not “defending” Sobol… just to defend a magnum guy…
really, who gives a s**t…
i just tend to believe than very early in their relationship she must have realized
his obsession about photography and his intention for a “book”…
Again, this is just my assumption… thats all!
jim
it would be interesting, although if it were close to beates response she would be angry – particularly at some of the womens idea of feminism..
b tried to place herself in a project like this.. easy really since there is always a camera hanging around our relationship.. it´s just a part of life.. as much as sharing a kiss or slobbing on the couch.. there is photo taking..
if it was her in the photos she would feel proud, she says.. even if the photos were more graphic that does not give anyone the right to judge either rafals wife, rafal himself nor comment on how their beautiful boy may feel in time.
personally i have stayed away from getting too involved with this discussion – all i feel is that rafal has done a good thing.. a decent thing.. and man – you want to see some of the photos i have from parties and music industry and then think about exploitation, as it is something i have even wrestled with myself.
:ø)
d
His “intention” was to create a book. The result was to exploit a young woman (and a village).
panos – i think you´re spot on really.-. judging a photographer by one project.. or even a lifes work.. meaningless when there is so much purely commercial work which really does exploit – purely for the money..
fame and the rest.. well.. i think of leibowitz as someone who sought fame.. rankin.. certainly not sobal who´s reach does not go much further than the photo and creative industry world..
d
david, I acknowledge that I’m “old fashioned” where relationships are concerned. Folks are extremely open about their personal lives these days. As I’ve posted, though, it’s not simply being old-fashioned. There are ethical implications for me. I fully understand that others do not have these issues.
..honestly jim i think that our disagreement really has to do with the “intention” and the final “result”..
“broken relationship” and a “great book” = exploitation …( for you )
i still disagree…
the GREAT BOOK is a result of a great photographer…
Otherwise , every “great relationship” should result to a “great book”…right?
But take a look over “here”…There is a “great relationship” but sorry, the photography “part”..
is “mediocre”…
So… i still think that Sobol would have made a great book regardless …staying together or moving on..
HE IS A GREAT ARTIST… ( not every “artist” is meant to be that great… regardless the success of their relationship… )…
I still think that he “MOVED ON” played a big part on your “exploitation” comment…
i think there are too many unknowns about sabine to truly use such a strong word jim..
time is going to reveal more, although i for one am glad the work exists.
you have a very ridged moral compass jim.. and i know that morals are fixed.. however i just think much more information would be needed in order to make any judgment.. information we actually have about rafal and his work, through seeing him online, and since it´s his work i would defend here i can´t really say more about sabine..
panos, we are still not communicating. It is that his intention was to move on that creates the ethical problem for me. It was a project.
David.. i mean.. yes…
JIm ( and me ) have done mediocre work just to survive ….
that is “exploitation”… to its fullest..
Why a “relationship” is such a weight to judge whats exploitation and whats not…
david, morality has nothing to do with it. “Morality” is fixed and useless. My concerns are ethical. But that’s totally off topic. :)
i mean have done ( sold )… mediocre work just to pay bills…
I was doing portraits all day today just to pay bills…
Do you think i can pay the fucking car payment with my fucking “venice work”…
come on now… gotta be honest..
laughing/crying ( same thing )
No…no.. Jim its not off topic…
Again f**k Sobol and all Sobol’s but really…
that he “moved on” or “married her forever” have nothing to do with his ART…
hey jim – you represent a stream of thought regardless of age or background and so it is a valid exploration of the work..
afterall – whats the sound of one hand clapping? :ø)
i constantly get suprised by peoples work, reactions to the work and more.. photographing beate, through love affair and through pregnancy.. birth to breakfast.. it´s an amazing revalation to have a camera hanging around..
if there were even a hint of exploitation i would not be possible.. any ill intention would be prohibitive to the work..
showing the work in time will be a relief of sorts as there is a powerful body building up, and if it gains commercial success then receives judgment – who cares?
i think others perception of a photographer is interesting.. less than relevant over time though..
the more sabine is discussed the more will buy sabine and the more ´successful´ the sales become.. i don´t think that makes it exploitative.. it is an unseen benefit i think.. since in the moment photographers working on something so personal rarely think of commercial issues nor moral ones.. i don´t .. i just photograph for the love and out of love.. even earning a modest income for a long while..
anyway.. flying to bergen today to check out flats and look for clients before moving there soon.. must get on..
have a good weekend.
david
So ART is the deity you worship and it trumps everything else?
panos.. good point.
ethically i was in an area of work where reward did not match the graft..
i´m off now..
enjoy
d
For me, david, there are just things that are not for sale, regardless of how pure my motives in creating it.
not at all jim.. i am a photographer..
life is the ´deity´ i worship and the furtherment of serendipity, understanding, compassion, relative reality and love is what i try to bring to the table..
i´m a photographer – not an artist – by my definition and i enjoy people expressing somethign which has been real to them.. photographs which do not bore me stupid.. and even get my lover, who is not a photographer, involved on all levels..
man – jim – you´ll have a field day when i get round to my essay being on burn :ø)
REALLY have to go now.
d
i´d rather earn from something which shares intimate experience and feeling than something which makes kids buy a hamburger :ø)
GONE:
and thanks for the natter.
david
Interesting thread.
David…Beate..
have a great day… 4am…over here…
time to go to bed…
but i enjoy Jim tonight…
maybe im dead tired Jim.. maybe thats why we cant communicate…
i just still have a hard time to “accept” that f*****g Sobol…was such a cruel man..
but you never know,… u never know!
ok… ALL…please take over the steering wheel….
DEAD TIRED … i need to be at the hospital at 8am…
Thank you Jim…( and goodnite )
for the stimulation/conversation….
but if i keep talking , i will regret it..
see y’all after coffee…
BIG HUG
Wow! it gets heated here. First as someone who is married and has kids with a Japanese woman I have been looking forward to Rafal`s story for a while. It was not what I expected, as most everything is not on burn, and yet i liked it. To me there is not enough shown of the intimacy needed in a cross cultural relationship where your wife, traditionally the weaker and more more subservient side of an Asian relationship, becomes the boss, guide, teacher and mother. Maybe Rafal is not so helpless as i am here but I`m sure his wife takes on many responsibilities on his behalf and I do see some of that strength in her, the glasses especially are like a sign that this is her serious side for this particualr image. BUT it should not be under estimated, in conservative Korea, how empowering those near nude pictures are. Rafel shows respect by hinting at greater intimacy rather than showing it “full frontal” and he does this without the usual tricks of blur, angle, garin and lack of focus; he shows his love for his wife in the careful framing, even if it is just to show a part of her,and he shows us his passion for parts of her… How anyone can call that macho is beyond me.
So I would like to see some scenery, something about the isolation of being a westerner, especially a non-American westerner, in Korea. If it is anything like Japan I am sure he has had it tough and some of the other work on his Flickr collections shows these things. But this is not the project Rafal wanted to show and this set of images is more an ode to his family of whom there can be no doubt he is very much in love with.
This essay is not Sabine, Sabine is Magnum worthy work and singleminded in its purpose, which was to document a love affair in a culture removed from what we ordinarily know. That does not make it exploitative though. I felt uncomfortable when I first saw Sabine because it is intimate and unfamiliar and yes you do worry that maybe Sabine would not like her very private moments printed and consumed by strangers. But isn`t that true of all photography we admire, we admire it because we could not easily do it, we could not get the access, have the vision in that closeness and the bravery to put ourselves and our loved ones out there to be judged. It is so much easier with usual reportage and yet few ask if the famine vistim or conflict bereaved want their images on the front of papers and magazines. Sobel created a work that will probably be talked about for hundreds of years I don`t know if he planned it all along (probably) but that doesn`t mean he didn`t love her and the town he lived in. Journalists have to take a point of view don`t they and Sabine is journalism in a way Rafal`s work is not. I like journalism and was hoping perhaps that Rafal`s essay would strike a cord with my experiences here in Japan. Yet there is nothing there that paints a bigger picture, a story of the photographer himself, in a strange land where his wife and son become, almost by default, the only meaning in life. That they mean the world to him is clear: the images are poetry for his love, but as someone said Rafal is missing from them. He is there in the pictures of his in-laws, his life is read easier in their reactions to him and situations that are perhaps mundane to them but still full of wonder to him. And he has said these essays should be viewed together and when you do they make more sense but this one is, in my opinion, purely about love and though that wasn`t quite what I was expecting, I like it none-the-less.
And I am sure is wife is proud of him.
Damon
“Sabine”, Sobol famous? Come on, Jim, even as a photographer, there are better ways to get fame shooting an “eotic” relationship close, and still leaves us guessing if that was exploitive, pornographic, while the fame and $$ roll in.
Again, I have no opnion so far Sabine” was exploitive. Sure could be, and also not by intention. But you seem to know Sobol better than us. I catch myself being exploitive easily, with a camera, while I travel. I don’t mean it, I love the world, I love people, but I love stealing their spirits, so to speak. MAKE IT MINE forever. Open discussion with no end, really. the egg and the hen, etc…
One thing, a lot of great art would not exist if we go by the morales of exploitiveness. Shit,it’s not a perfect world, I have a feeling that is the reason for art actually (and a few other things, like Panos single-handedly, ahah, the search for an untied, unsubmissve, undrenched, japanese porn actress….Yeee haaaw?)
I meant eXotic, not eotic. Sorry. Too much coffe already….
Herve, we’ve probably beat this horse to death. I lot of great ideas here.
I think these essays probably stay up too long, though. David needs to toss us another bit of beef to chew on. :)
Yeahhhh….. “little pieces” by Rafal: a lengthy critical assessment and discussion of SOBOL’s intentions with “SABINE”…..
:-))))
c’mon Jim… dont get “greedy”…
but i agree… this horse is “dead”…
morning y’all…
driving to the hospital..
( Herve i hear u… Sobol stole the act… Now after all this discussion about Sabine in Burn…
He must feel really “famous”…)
(…unsuccessful attempt to laugh…)
A discussion of Sabine was certainly relevant as Rafal listed it as one of his influences.
totally Jim..
Otherwise we wouldn’t even bring that
Great Artist up..
Why would we?
DAH
After all the ethical posturing, only seems fair to at least invite Jacob here to weigh in on the exploitation issue…
jared, the debate over Sabine is not a new one. I would be surprised if Sobol wanted to play.
Ok, with regard to Sabine…….ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…..as I’ve written before on this thread, at Lightstalkers (after I saw Jacob’s exhibition, long before either he or Sabine were part of Magnum or wpp radar) and as i’ve written countless times before, Jacob did not set out to…….
o, fuck it, never mind…..
i’ve reach the point (epiphany) where it’s better for me to just show work and work on my writing, as a way to deal with these issues….
so,
näkemiin ja katso u myöhemmin
b
p.s. Herve, im so happy you’ve returned from T-land…enjoy reading thoughts, both supportive and provocative….
Who said it was new, Jim?
I’m just saying, a guy who doesn’t know you judges your character publicly (quite harshly), to a pretty large audience, an invite to respond should maybe be offered.
I doubt he’d want to “play” either.
The certitude with which you say things really annoys the shit out of me, Jim. Like talking to a teenager sometimes.
jared, why would my opinions, regardless of how rigidly expressed, annoy you? Do you think that Sobol gives a flip what I say about him? Curious.
Hey on a off note I really liked your “Can’t pay the rent” opening Jared. Really great concept. I wasn’t there, I just saw the video.
In general I quite liked the essay. It had a nice tempo. However, I felt that it still had room to mature so to speak and this could perhaps only come with time.
I have to agree with the other commentators that the photographer has to move away from ‘the masters’ in the genre and develop his own style. The continual referencing by Mr Pruszynski to people such as Sobol over the last month or so, will inevitably cause people to compare. Unfortunately, that it was what happened here.
Anyway, here are a few observations that I made while watching the piece.
To begin, I felt that the photos were to formally/rigourously posed. It seemed that the photographer positioned his subjects (wife and baby) in the large majority of the photographs according to some preconceieved idea (perhaps under a strong influence from his mentors?). There just didn’t seem to be any fleeting moments that were intuitively caught on the run that signalled the author’s own unique style. In this genre, that to me is where true talent lies – the ability to observe then capture an emotion or moment in a split second. That is what separates photographers from agencies like Magnum with the rest of us. The only photo that did demonstrate this was the photo in the taxi of his wife sleeping. I felt that this was the best of the piece as it wasn’t planned and shot over and over.
This overly formal posing is also evident on the flickr set. I had a look at the flickr set as suggested by Rafal and it seems that for example in the great majority he positioned his baby in the middle of an open space in a shopping arcade then photographed conitinually from several angles. There are no great moments caught on the run. Hence, I have to agree with David Alan Harvey that the photographers persistant suggestion to look at his flickr set was wrong. This was the final cut/edit and ‘one’ has to learn to live with it.
Also, I wasn’t overly impressed by the ‘noise’. I felt that the flash didn’t help the highlights and in a few cases they seemed blown. But, that could be just nitpicking on my behalf.
I disagree with some other commentators that he was pimping out his wife. They are both in a mature relationship and it takes two to tango. That comment just felt plain wrong. I can see some trace/evidence of love in their relationship, but I didn’t feel that the photographer captured it in a daily setting away from the bedroom. Sex can sometimes obscure peoples true emotions as they get caught up in the act. I want to see real love through emotions that are validated by facial expressions in arenas out of the bedroom. Of course, harder said than done…
Anyway, I look forward to watching the photographer mature and hopefully catch those forever fleeting moments such as Sally Mann or Larry Towell.
Cheers,
Johan