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Evi Lemberger

Ein Nichtort, or the Fairy Tale of the Galoshes of Fortune

play this essay

 

“Heimat ist Nichtort. Heimat ist Utopie. Am intensivsten wird sie erlebt, wenn man weg ist und sie einem fehlt; das eigentliche Heimatgefuehl ist das Heimweh. Aber auch wenn man nicht weg ist, naehrt sich das Heimatgefuehl aus Fehlendem, aus dem, was nicht mehr oder auch noch nicht ist. Denn die Erinnerungen und Sehnsuechte machen die Orte zur Heimat.”

(p. 32, Schlink in Heimat als Utopie)

“Home is a Non place. Home is an utopia. You can experience in the most intense way, if you are away and you miss it; the actual home feeling is the homesickness. And even if you are not away, the home feeling nourishes itself out of the missing, out of that, which does not anymore or not just yet exist. Because the memory and the longing are turning places into homes.”

(p. 32, Schlink in Heimat als Utopie)

Transcarpathia is a region in the west of Ukraine surrounded by the natural border of the Carpathian mountains and artificial borders of the countries Hungary, Slovakia and Romania. During the 20th century the area changed countries 7 times: it was part of  Hungary until 1918 when it was occupied briefly by Romania, went back to Hungary, and then in 1920 became part of Czech Slovakia for 20 years. For two weeks it was an autonomous country, went back to Hungary until 1944, and then belonged to the Soviet Union until the newly founded Ukraine took it over in 1991. Nowadays the area is quite dismissed by the Ukraine government. The population is 80-90 percent unemployed, and most people are subsistence farmers. People of different nationalities and religions are settled in this region, and dependent on the make up of the population, the language and time is set to Ukrainian or Hungarian.

Eastern European countries, like Romania, Hungary, Slovakia or Slovenia, are all dealing with a similar problem. These countries, which were part of the large Habsburger kingdom, have been part of a sort of a game: borders changed and countries founded according to their geographical location and political interests rather than according to history, language or culture. There has been no consideration for the society and culture of the people who have to deal with the politically drawn divisions.

I traveled in Transcarpathia, visiting different places in order to find out about the inhabitants’ identities, their ideas and wishes. Talking to people from different national and religious backgrounds, I tried to find answers to this question of identity. The result is a personal account of an area and its people who, confronted with a lack of national identity and limited in personal and professional development, are drawn back into their personal surroundings: the home and the family. But at the end its just an interpretation, an interpretation of an issue I can never get even close to. In trying to understand peoples’ identity, which consists mostly of irrational and undefinable feelings, the interpretation feels like just a scratch on the surface, my surface.

 

Bio

Evi Lemberger holds a degree from the London College of Communication that included a short exchange term in Leipzig at the “Academy for Art and Design”. After finishing her degree, she worked as a photojournalist in Moscow, working on a commissioned work from the Norfolk Contemporary Art Society in Transcarpathia, Ukraine and writing for the online magazine “jetzt“ from Munich. She also completed photo essays in Hungary about Racism and Antisemitism, and most recently about the Transibirian Express from Moscow to Vladiwostok, which was exhibited in August in Dresden, Germany. She currently has a scholarship to study documentary photography at the International Center of Photography.

 

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Evi Lemberger

80 thoughts on “evi lemberger – ein nichtort”

  1. Stunning. Thank you for sharing your desire to understand. Your work speaks well to your inquiry.

  2. Looking forward to spending some time with this essay once I’ve done some tedious archiving work.

    Love how frequently Burn gets updated. At first the long comments on posts had me a little wary/overwhelmed, but the depth of debate is inspiring – just wish there was sometimes a better way to archive the great links and occasional brilliant digressions. Bravo to all involved.

  3. FRAMERS INTENT…

    our New Year’s resolution is to update our site so that archived stories have a new life…we will also highlight many comments and have a special place for them..it will be incentive for all to write brilliantly!! welcome to the discourse here….a pleasure to have you…

    cheers, david

  4. Jim

    Good to see you here again. Hit f11 on pc, full screen helps.

    I like what I see. Could do without the captions.
    Evi, you need to stop doing C prints.
    Kodak C prints will be faded in 10 years.
    Inkjet prints with present technology are superior in every respect, colour gamut, d-max, and are rated at more than 100 years.

  5. Gordon, I am always amazed at the claims of new paper technology for archiving, claiming 100 years when how could that have been tested. Just an odd thing.

  6. David,
    It’s a pleasure to be here – looking forward to contributing more and seeing this place grow over many years.

    Lee and Gordon,
    I was under the impression digital prints have a life of around 40 years – both giclee and c print. I was also under the impression that c print is often used interchangeably with LAMBDA to refer to digital inkjet printing. Would love to know if there are any other specifics, this is something I’m comparatively new to.

  7. JIM POWERS..

    i often feel that is true here and i totally agree with you particularly for this essay…i often feel like labeling essays “this would be better with big prints on a wall”, “this would be better as a book sequence”, “this should be built out a multi-media” etc etc….as a matter of fact , i do not think ANYTHING actually lends itself to a computer screen…the ideal is always something other than this…we have just gotten used to looking at pictures here in this manner, but they are rarely served up to their utmost potential…

    cheers, david

  8. LEE..

    Henry Wilhelm has ways…he is THE acknowledged master tester of the archival qualities of photographic prints….gallerists, museum curators rely on the word of Henry…i am not a scientist but i have talked at great length to Henry….he simply measures deterioration rates with intense light exposure to various mediums and calculates accordingly…of course he could be off a bit, but folks paying lots of dinero for prints rely on the word of Henry Wilhem….

    the first thing to know of course is the difference between ink jet printers and prints…there are dye prints which is what most people make..they look great, super sharp, and are gone in 7 years or so..do not even think about selling a dye based ink jet print…THE archival ink jet prints are pigment prints…a bit less sharp than the dye because the ink is thick and the ink jets have a larger hole than the dye printers, but they are up now to 200 years longevity again “according to Wilhelm”…

    cheers, david

  9. I do no overly like to look at pictures on the screen, but without, I’d have missed so many.. and as long as we still think that the pictures would be better viewed on a wall, book etc. we hopefully will keep on doing prints, books and the like, and go to exhibitions, into libraries..

    Off for a rather long drive.. crazy trip, with stops in two museums, hoping Irving Penn is any good :)

  10. Lee

    I was going to post you a link, but others beat me to it.

    If you must make C prints, at least have them done on Fuji Crystal Archive paper. It’s projected life-span under average viewing conditions is 60 years compared to 10 for Kodak. When we used to print our own colour in the pre-digital days, I did my own fade tests . I made two prints of the same neg on Kodak and on Fuji, and put them in a south facing window. The Kodak print faded badly and the white base took on a yellow stain within a matter of weeks. The Fuji print was slightly faded after a couple of months, but faded evenly, and the whites remained white, the Kodak print by then was completely horrible.
    Kodaks’ answer to fading concerns was to change the name of the paper to “Endura”. They did not unfortunately make any changes to the paper.

    I am completely amazed that collectors and museums purchase C prints.

  11. EVA…

    there is no doubt that the most impressive way to view a photograph is screen projection…if i show my old Kodachromes or even b&w copies through a Leitz projector up on to a fine screen , people think it is the second coming or something….they are properly blown away by what an image looks like with light coming in behind it an projected through an optical lens…it is the reverse of taking the picture in the first place , so it is “natural” in a way that no other photographic process can duplicate…by the way, i do have old Kodachromes from childhood (50+yrs old) that were stored in an attic subjected to heaven knows what temperature variance etc…they look terrific …the Ektachromes are all but gone, but the Kodachromes seem to want to live forever…

    GORDON..

    yes, C prints generally are the quickest to fade and yes, the Fuji Crystal Archive is the way to go to at least get chromogenic prints up closer to silver gelatin longevity…i cannot remember exactly the stats on silver , but i think 80 years or so which is not that great compared to the projected 200+ on pigment inkjet….

  12. I like this work if we look at this work as the start of an ongoing project. There’s interesting stuff going on in these photos. Among other virtues, they remind me of what life in the U.S. looked like when I was a child. Can’t pin down any one reason. I’m sure part of it is the pose for the Polaroid look of the people photos as well as the absence of modern conveniences–not a single phone, tv, computer, ipad, ipod, nothing–in the background. At first I was a little turned off by the Polaroid thing, but now I find I like it. Guess a lot depends on the author’s intent though. If that’s not the look you’re after, you might want to reconsider your approach to those portraits.

    Regarding the merits of looking at work on a screen, a helluva lot depends on the screen. Photography processed for and seen on a 27″ Apple screen, for example, can look pretty damn good. I imagine the high end digital televisions can produce impressive images as well. And if not now, then someday.

  13. DAH,
    Ironically, while Kodachrome is regarded as the champion for dark storage longevity it
    rates as one of the weakest longevity performers when exposure to light is factored in.
    Mark

  14. Framers Intent

    You wrote
    “I was under the impression digital prints have a life of around 40 years – both giclee and c print. I was also under the impression that c print is often used interchangeably with LAMBDA to refer to digital inkjet printing. Would love to know if there are any other specifics, this is something I’m comparatively new to.”

    The life span of dye based inkjet prints varies, depending on the ink set, and the paper. The projected longevity of dye based prints from the major manufacturers has increased drastically over the past few years. However, pigment based ink-jet prints are still the best choice, and are expected to last far far longer than either C prints (conventional photographic paper) or inkjet prints.

    A Lambda or Lighjet print, are prints made by digitally exposing conventional photographic paper and have the same limited life-span. Most conventional photographic prints, even your snaps done at Walmart, are digitally exposed now, even if they are done from colour negatives. The negative is scanned. The Lambda printer was just one of the first out there.

    Finally, “giclee” is just a fancy name for ink-jet, and “Iris” prints were very early ink-jet prints made with a printer that was intended for use as a proofing tool for off-set printing. We have Graham Nash, the musician and co-founder of Nash editions to thank for the birth of ink-jet printing.

    I have a great book “Nash Editions, photography and the art of digital printing” which is absolutely fascinating. There is an exerpt from the book, with an essay by Willhelm here:

    http://www.wilhelm-research.com/nash/Nash_Editions_Book_Wilhelm_Print_Permanence_Essay.pdf

  15. Gordon,
    Many thanks for the clarification, appreciated. Like I say, I’m new to a lot of he specifics of printing, so I’m looking to learn. :-) I’ll check out the Nash book for sure. Nice one.

  16. DAVID…

    Yeah, screen PROJECTION is of course something quite different from screen as in computer screen.. and also different to prints, because of the light.. beautiful to look at for sure.. a treasure those childhood Kodachromes!!

    I’m not a touchy feeely person, normally, but when it comes to photographs then I am very much.. best thing is to hold the print in my hands.. guess that’s why I spend so much time in the darkroom.. and that’s what I miss with screen projection.. but it does give that something else in exchange which a print cannot..

  17. home, for me, is almost never about one specific physical place over another but rather the memory of what we imagine constitutes, ‘feels’, like home: safety, warmth, joy, sorrow, protection and above all, the conduit of memory….having lived around the world…having had a peripatetic childhood (a number of homes, including Asia), having anchored my life/home to both people (wife and son) over state, it’s always interesting when I see essays tackle the notion of both Place and, by extension, Home….

    I don’t feel like I have a home, but where my wife and son are, but where my parents and in-laws and siblings are when I visit them, and even then i feel adrift…..maybe home, for me, is by a body of water….maybe home, for me, is within the country of a book i’m reading, within the ideas i’m wrestling with or thinking upon, within the pictures i’m making or the sentences or poems i’m chiseling away at….

    in russia, it always feels like home….in florida, in new york, in carolina, in california, in france, in asia, in portugal, in toronto…..now, in cambridge, with Wittgenstein….who knows….

    Transcarpathia has always been defined, too, by migration, by a gypsy sense of place (added to by it’s shifting ‘national’ identity)….there is a hint of that here in this short essay…rather, not so much an essay, but a window into a project i’d like to see much much more of….the pictures reflect this shifting identity…in the faces of the people and children, one sees slavic and romani and moldovan….also, within the pictures within the pictures…the portraits, the rugs, the artifacts….looked at closely enough, the pictures reveal a sense of this place: it’s multiplicity and it’s multiculturism and it’s movement…..looked at closely enough…

    i like the easy with which the portraits are photographed and that they’re not (at least the portraits) overburdened by a formalism that, increasingly, bothers me as viewer/photographer (dusseldorf objectivism run amok), rather they see ‘caught’ rather than staged/held…..and i like that, alot…

    i do want both more pictures (much more) and more external pics…somehow i long to taste and feel the landscape of these villages, these hollers….because we’re talking about a story of a people both rooted and propelled by the land…landscape, fields, mountains…i want to feel more of that here….

    so, congratulations on the pub and thanks for bringing work about a religion not so well known or understood…looking forward to seeing more :))

    cheers
    bob

    as for the issue of looking/holding prints ;))…ummmm…..

    well, photogrpahers see A LOT more photographs through books (and now web) than they do by looking at and holding real prints….even the number of my own photographs (negatives and actually prints) is far far out-scaled by the number of photographs i’ve swallowed in books and on the web….and i’ve see alot of photoexhibitions (participated too) in my life as a photographer…..besides, i think (blame my immersion in wittgenstein) it’s a question of use….why do we fetishize the print over the result of what a photograph(s) has given us….i actually DO NOT CARE at all about whether i’ve seen a photograph on the web or a wall or in a book in on the palms of my hand….what they accomplish (story, inspiration, movement, joy, propinquity) has everything to do with the nature of the medium (pictures) and less to do with it’s appearance…..but hey, that is just me ;))

  18. BOB…

    interesting…i suppose my love of the physical print is simply because that is how i first viewed photographs…you make perfect sense…and i do totally view the image and what it does or has to say way more than anything, yet somehow see a computer screen image as lacking….you are correct, we have all seen way more images because of their access on the net than we ever did before…i suppose my desire for Burn 01 comes from this ultimate love for the tactile…holding that book in my hand has more value than if i run back through the archive here…so yes, i guess as i think about it more and more , the tactile nature of a book and the physicality of a print on the wall do mean more to me than the same imagery on the computer screen…you use the word “appearance” and i am not sure i would describe it in that fashion..it is not exactly appearance or quality for me because the iPad imagery for example is amazing in quality and “appearance”…”better” than a printed book actually…literally jumps out at you in vibrant translucent color or b&w…i guess if i really analyze it , it must have something to do with my sense of permanence of art…like knowing a piece of sculpture will last, a painting is forever, etc etc…the computer screen for me is still just not “real”…not real not permanent like a book or print…and i think after reading your comment it is most likely just generational…just what i grew up appreciating….i do not think logic has much to do with it…

    cheers, david

  19. There is also the matter of how the technology influences your perception/attention to the work. With a computer, it is easy to navigate away from something – flipping through screens is embedded into how computers/the internet is portrayed and how it functions or did in it’s inception (in inception – we used the ‘net to find specific information, or on message boards, hitting “refresh” to see if there was a new message).

    With a book, I devote some time to it. I’m trying to give the work here the same regard – hence my not having viewed this presentation yet. I’d ordered Alex Majoli’s Libera Me Book I which arrived last Friday. I spent a moment just enjoying having the book in my possession, but I allocated a good hour later that night for me to devour the images. I’ll return to it, but that’s my approach with books. It’s partly also their nature – they have a physical presence and a weight to them. Hold Stephen Shore’s Uncommon Places in your hands and it feels like you’re holding the weight of time you’ll spend with it. Books demand our time in that manner more so than computer screens.

    With slideshow presentations (be they computer-based, as here, or at a meeting and with a projection screen) I always feel like my attention to the first few images is a little distracted as I’m also trying to gauge (however subconsciously) how much time there is between images, so I know how “fast” or “slowly” I should be reading the image.

    Funnily, and perhaps conversely, this also reminds me of something W.H. Auden wrote in his book The Dyer’s Hand, about poets and their assessment of their own work. He argued there that all poets should type their own work, not hand write it, for we have an attachment to seeing/producing our creative work in our own hand. The act ad aesthetic of hand writing made the poetry seem somehow more poetic. But when typing each line, any clunkiness or flaw was easily apparent. He also said the greatest honour one could bestow on a poem (and thus it’s creator) was to copy it out long hand, for this was arduous and not something you’d do willingly unless you really loved the poem.

    I wonder if something similar could be said about photography. I know that, while I love many images, the amount of those images I’d be willing to carefully print from negative would be much smaller (assuming here that I have access to all negatives and all photos are from negatives….ignoring the reality of digi for the sake of the thought experiment). What if I had to make each photobook I own by hand? Would I have done that for Libera Me*?

    I don’t know that working on computer aids my objectivity with my own work, though. I find printing makes me more objective here – for one it costs me to print my work (and I don’t have a great deal of money, so £50 prints here really means £50 not spent on a new lens, or, or, or), but also I find that can pull the different prints together more easily, comparing individual pritns or different orders/selections. Hmmm.

    Sorry, that was quite a ramble.

    *Disclaimer – I love Majoli’s work, so probably yes. But you get my drift.

  20. MTOMALTY..

    yes, i have heard this about Kodachrome if exposed to light…but in fact original Kodachromes never see the light..they are almost always in dark cold storage…no reason for otherwise…i never projected my originals and i do not know anyone who did or does…i always projected super dupes except in very rare cases….

  21. Ramble continuum….

    Re books v computers – I meant to make clear that when viewing a book, you are doing precisely that. If I care about the book, I allocate time, I find a suitable space, minimise distractions (even switching my phone off at times – do this with music, too, haha). With computers, it seems de rigeur to have several windows, programmes, or tabs open at once. Multi-tasking is built into their nature/our use of them. I’ve rarely browsed the internet for several years now without having more than one tab open at any time. Viewing photography in that setting, the photography is having to compete with the other million things – with Twitter, with someone trying to start a Skype chat with me, with iTunes, etc. I try to make a point of switching those things off and allocating time to the photographs in the same way as with books, but this doesn’t help with the vast amount of images we consume via the internet by either stumbling upon or deciding to “quickly google”.

  22. DAVID :))

    TOTALLy understand….the weird thing, i guess, for me is that I fell in love with photography through looking at photobooks…actually saw way more photos in books before i ever remember seeing a photoexhibition…though, i feel the opposite with painting/sculpture ;))….i need to see them in real life :))…but i totally understand, i still love (kind of) looking at my own prints/marina’s prints…and i cherish seeing great pictures in print, but the weird thing is that, using your work, I came to love your work from the book…first Divided Soul, then Cuba, then Living Proof…and the PHOTOBOOK I REALLY WANT BY HARVEY is Tell it like it is…and that lives on in my memory in my head…..i guess for me it’s always been how pictures live inside me head, the stories in them and the pictures themselves…pictures, i guess, are always like books to me…thus, their similarity (and the way i do my own photographic work), whereas paintings/sculpture i need to see in reality….sort of like films…i don’t need to have the film reel, to love the film ))…..but, i guess, because that is, like you said, dependent on how/when…i ‘became’ a photographer when my grandmother died and left those boxes of 10,000’s of color slides…and got her old cameras and put aside painting…even the darkroom, which i onced loved, was short lived…it was always the pictures in my head that worked :)))))

    somethign to chat about over beer in May :))

    hugs
    b

  23. FRAMERS INTENT :)))

    yes, have always loved that advice by Auden…(was told to read the book in my senior year in university, part of my senior writing seminar)….it is similar to David’s advice that all phtoographers try to edit by looking at real prints, scattering them on the floor, sifting…….i’ve made 3 photobooks by hand (all as gifts) and it kind of determines the edit ;))….then again, one of the books involved cutting up the actual prints into thin parts, pics with holes in the middle, etc…

    i look at all the stuff publish at BURN as if i’m looking at a book (still the way i process pics)….i always look at least 2 times before i write an then always a few more times after i’ve written…shit, i still even go back and look at my essay that was published here (though it is painful to look at as i see lots of pics i would have removed and some i left out (for fear of the audience not getting their madness/abstraction) have put in)…..so, i’m taking my time with the thing i’m honing for burn, not for perfection, but because it is like a book chapter…..

    i still think, ultimately, it is the life of the photograph in the photographers/viewers head that matters….though, the prints do matters to the collectors/museums….even the few folk who have bought my own prints, i wonder if they mean anything….i know one person who keeps on in the bathroom :)))….wild stuff

    running
    b

  24. At the very first glance, I was struck by image #1 for a simple reason. In my neighborhood, there are a number of families who relocated to Alaska from Russia, the Ukraine and elsewhere in the Soviet block after the iron curtain melted, as well as others who had come here even before.

    And I saw some of their faces in the portraits that hang on the green wall.

    Not literally, of course, but the resemblance is exceptionally strong.

    I also had the same reaction as MW – the feeling that in some ways I could have been looking at pictures from my childhood – particularly the outdoor shots.

    As to the images themselves, I don’t know what to say. I like them all. I have no criticism of any of them. I am a little amazed at how in some, most notably #13, you do something that I would be unlikely to do and that is to fill the center with big, empty, space and it works. It makes me wonder what I am missing and of course no matter what we get we are always missing something.

    Concerning the discussion of viewing, I do have an Apple Cinema Screen monitor and a good image looks very impressive upon it.

    But I think one thing that happens to me is that if I am not in the field shooting, I am likely to spend anywhere from 10 to 16 hours a day, sometimes even more, sitting at my computer staring into that screen. For me, this puts a feeling of exhaustion upon the screen. Also, because there is such an overwhelming flood of images on the net that I want to see. I find I tend to click through images much faster than when I look at a book or view prints.

    Sometimes, I just long to get away from the computer and to lie in bed with a well printed book and just take my time. I hope that maybe an iPad might do the job in that regard, but there are so many things, from broken lenses, malfunctioning laptop, malfunctioning 1Ds M3 and things I need to purchase that have a higher priority that I have not been able to buy one.

    It will be awhile before I can.

    Maybe the iPad experience might help. I don’t know. The screen is kind of small.

    Better than my iPhone, but still small.

  25. Lets not forget also that with a book and a print, at least with good quality ones anyways, the images are ‘correct’.
    They are faithfully reproduced to the photographers intention. They are also, usually, at a size where viewing the image is satisfactory and constant.

    Online however,no two monitors are the same. The colour shifts are different, some are calibrated…most are way way off(run a HARDWARE calibrator on your system and get back to me if you dont believe this). The backlight screen affects massively..brightness too high..too low…lamp fading. The contrast range varies very widely.
    On a laptop the viewing space, especially for verticals, is unsatisfactory. In short. View a single image on several computer moniters and you are seeing several different versions of the image..Few ,if any of them, representing the fidelity of an original. That is the nature of the digital realm and we mostly accept it. But accepting it with this knowledge is quite different from just assuming that what it looks like online is any kind of constant.

    And as we are hijacking a thread I should say that I like the green textured wall in the opening shot……although obviously I can not tell if I am seeing it correctly :)

  26. Just to hijack this thread a little more… may i second Bob Black’s petition for “Tell it like it is” printed as a book!
    Yes books and prints for me are top of my list, but just can’t forget how much i’ve learnt online staring at images on a screen.
    I can’t see this essay yet, mobile phone doesn’t support Flash.

  27. PAUL PARKER…

    well, Tell It Like It Is exists as a book..only problem is that there are only four copies on the planet..two of them in my bank vault…

    everyone at Magnum is pushing me for a reprint….Bruce Davidson most particularly…ironic since Tell It predates East 100th by three years which always has everyone scratching their head….

    yes, for me online is for gathering like minded souls and education…books, prints are for appreciation on another level..for some not a better level, but certainly a whole different experience nevertheless…yes, if you had my little Tell It in your hands , you would see something way different than what you see on my now neglected website…

  28. David…
    Maybe a Burn printed special edition ”Tell it like it is”?
    Maybe we can Skype this week? No problem if you are busy I can wait until after Rio :)

  29. DAH, Some time back you had mentioned you were planning on taking a film crew back to Norfolk and do a follow up to ”Tell it like it is”. With your crazy schedule is that still in the works?

  30. I don’t think that it is a generational thing.. I’m referring to what DAH has said above about the physical print:

    “and i think after reading your comment it is most likely just generational…just what i grew up appreciating….i do not think logic has much to do with it…”

    more a question of character, nature.. you give a book to my two sons, one will read it from cover to cover, back, upside down and right to left.. the other one will take it outside, tear off the pages, take off his glasses and with the help of a sunray set them to fire, one after the other, and watch the smoke, collect the ashes and find a way to mess around with that as well..

    At least for me it is a physical need to HOLD something, AND to do it myself, the whole process..

  31. Didn’t quite know where to post this, but though it would be of interest to anyone passing through London on 18th.

    Talk by photographer Carol Allen Storey about The orphans in sub saharan africa at the frontline club london http://home.the-aop.org/Members_Exhibitions

    cheers

    ian

    P.s DAH would it be an idea to have an area on the site to post exhibitions/seminars/talks about/by /of photographers/photoraphy

  32. I’ve adapted quite well to my Kindle for book reading, buying a physical book meant waiting at least 10 days all going well…although i can’t see myself buying a digital or pdf photography book that is a tactile experience the nearest i can get to an artist’s print and personally the experience would be lost in translation if it were digital.

  33. DAH

    Viewing Burn 01 for the first time, I was surprised to note that I liked the screen viewing experience more than the printed page in many cases.

    Part of this discussion has been about permanence, which we place great value on. I sometimes wonder why that should be so. Not all art is permanent. I think of live music, dance, theatre, a moving poetry reading, a spectacular meal, all which exist only in the moment and then, only in memory.

  34. In the print vs projection debate (computer screens and tv’s are projected), I don’t see it as a contest and since I don’t have to choose one or the other, I guess I won’t.

    Thanks to you all, I now have a great appreciation for very well-made photo books. I first understood what everyone was talking about when I checked out the Salgado books at the NYPL, one from Italy in particular opened my eyes, or I should say senses, to the experience of great photography in a great book. Now I own Davidson’s three volume retrospective which is of that quality as well. Unlike lesser, two dimensional, reproductions, the great photo book takes the photograph into at least four dimensions, touch and smell being the obvious two additions. And although the computer screen is great for color, as yet I don’t believe the technology can reproduce black and white nearly as well as the old fashioned methods.

    But I love viewing photos on the computer as well, though not just any old screen. A well-processed photo on a large hi resolution monitor is a beautiful thing in its own right. And I like the ability to randomize and loop photos. That’s how I edit when I have time. Random sequences often suggest subtle connections and deeper meanings and the effortless repetition allows my unconscious to get more involved. I see things I wouldn’t if I were paying close attention. And recognize photos that just aren’t good enough, or simply don’t belong. Then I hop up and fix a photo or edit the sequence. For me it’s an effective, and extremely convenient way view photography.

    I enjoy viewing other photographers’ work that way as well. I wish the Harvey’s and Davidson’s of the world would put out their work on DVD or something so I could run a high res slideshow of their work. To do so as a companion to a book would be ideal. That would be the best of both worlds.

  35. Mw…
    I’m still kicking myself for not having purchased the three volume Bruce Davidson retrospective. I’m now waiting to see when the second edition is on sale. Luckily as far as I’ve heard Steidl is planning to print a second one.

  36. Gordon Lafleur…
    You’ve got a good point with the permanence issue…more oriental way of thinking, life is kind of easier that way!

  37. Uhm.. Paul.. there’s a used one on amazon.co.uk.. it’s only £ 755.. and shipping is £ 2.80, wbich is VERY cheap, the books weight a ton! ;)

  38. Paul Parker,

    You just made my day. I’ve been shooting a bus series, here – http://www.flickr.com/photos/framersintent/sets/72157625128002567/ (unedited collection of images – about 40-50 of those will make the final edit, I expect). I wasn’t aware of Davidson’s Subway until 2 days ago, when a friend tipped me off. I’ve googled the images and they are simply amazing, so beautifully made, so I was gutted to find getting a photobook would be impossible in my situation. Fingers crossed on that 2nd Edition of Outside Inside.

  39. Sorry to divert conversataion :) Framersintent have a look at driveby shooting by Max Forsythe there are a few subway/bus pics in there.

    Ian

  40. Framers Intent…
    From what I’ve heard it’s just a matter of time… Steidl printing seems to work full drive round the clock, once they find a space in their schedule they will begin printing the second edition.

  41. Eva…
    There must be something wrong with that price! I saw in August on Amazon usa the book only going for 125$. It must be signed or something by Davidson.

  42. Eva…
    That is amazing, but i’m pretty sure most of these book will never sell at those prices…it’s obvious they don’t realize a second edition is being planned.

  43. Framer

    Be careful out there on the subway. Davidson was mugged and relieved of his camera at knife-point while shooting the project.

    Paul

    Yes, I’ve been giving this more thought. The mere act of using a camera as an instrument of meditation, helping us to narrow and focus our consciousness often seems like enough. I’m thinking of Vivian Meir and her tens of thousands of un-printed negatives and un-developed rolls of film. And didn’t Gary Winogrand leave hundreds of rolls of exposed un-developed film as well?

    Maybe it’s time to enable the “shutter release without CF” in my cameras custom functions. I discovered this function by accident, after doing a portrait session without a CF card. The camera shows you the photo you just took, but of course does not store it since there is no memory card.

    That way, we can see the picture we just made, then just get on with making another one. Think of the time saved editing and archiving.:)

    That got me to thinking. How would I feel if every photograph I’ve ever made were lost? (or if I burned it in a big bonfire like what’s his name) Actually, the concept is not really all that difficult to embrace, and might actually be liberating and cleansing.

  44. Gordon Lafleur…
    Brett Weston, burnt his negatives to push the price up of all the prints he left his daughter Erica. His nephew spent years in his darkroom with Brett every morning printing loads and loads of images. When he asked his uncle why so many and why so urgent his answer was ”we’re not printing images we’re printing money”.

  45. Gordon Lafleur…
    This all very zen. If you like BW landscapes there is a lovely book on *Tao te ching? (SORRY on the bus my library isn’t close by) with photos by Jane English, very unasuming, so very beautiful and of course full of oriental wisdom.

  46. Regarding the Davidson book, if anyone’s interested I’ll consider selling mine. I can make it a signed copy even, albeit signed by me. Don’t think I’d consider it for less than $1500 though.

    F.I., you have some great shots in there. Do you see them as standalone singles or is there some deeper story happening?

  47. Evi

    Sorry, we seem to have become distracted. It is often the nature of the comments here.

    I especially adore the first photograph in this series. This photograph, and the others that follow, demonstrate a wonderful sense of formal, yet not classical composition. You like playing with edges, a very powerful place to position elements within a frame. Here, the shoes anchor the photograph, and above them float the visions of their owners and kin. The colour and texture of the wall is wonderful and perfectly complemented by the reds in the portraits. The whole thing is framed by the short walls on each side and on the bottom by the tiles, leaving the top open for the visions of the shoes owners to float up and away.
    Your last photograph echoes this composition.
    I just love it.

    BWT I’ve tried to explore your site, and can see text, but no photographs. I’ll try again later.

    Cheers

  48. Evi – I feel kind of bad for you! You work so hard, score a slot on burn, eagerly wait to see what people have to say and then the discussion goes elsewhere!

    It is an interesting discussion though.

    That said,

    John Gladdy:

    “Online however,no two monitors are the same. The colour shifts are different, some are calibrated…most are way way off.”

    Yes, and for me this is a very vexing thing. When I post to my blog, I in no way shoot to process images to perfection as it would take too long – and yet, I still put work and considerable time into making each image look somewhat like I would like it. Afterward, when I go here and there and see my work on other people’s screens, it seldom looks anything like what I see on my screen. I sometimes wonder if I would do just as well to spend no time on the images at all, but just to let them go straight out of the camera onto the blog and save all that processing time.

    Yet, I never can. I always process them. Damn waste of time, I fear.

  49. Aitken,
    Thanks for the link to Max Forsythe, I’ll check him out.

    Gordon,
    I suspect the NYC subway c.1980 was (and still is) a different beast to a British bus…but thanks for the concern, I choose to take the risks.

    MW,
    It is in part an exercise in working with limitations over a sustained period – a simple matter of can I make 79 images in this way without being forced into repetition and boredom. But it’s also largely about liminal space – this small space shared by strangers, all with a destination and nothing to do but wait, like we’re trapped between two world for a time. Whether that is enough to be considered a narrative, I’m happy to wait and find out at the end of the project.

    Evi,
    I’ve looked at this slideshow a couple of times now, forgive me for the digressions in this thread and for not posting about your submission yet. I’ll be getting around to it, I just want to sit with this one for a while, to give it a considered response. The opening image is fantastic.

  50. Evi

    I have just re-visited your site and was now able to see the photographs. (the photos take a long time to load, but are worth the wait). Wow. So many wonderful images left out of this edit, which I don’t think does you justice.

    The Bavarian series is marvelous as well. I must dive back in for another look.

  51. Now I hate to be an “I told ya do”, but….now didn’t I tell all of you a month or two ago to just forget the new lens or gadget or whatever and buy Davidsons set? Jeez, it was even dis-counted on Amazon .ca at the time for about $130. I have to say, it is absolutely stunning. I do hope there is a second edition. If so, you all need to just fork over your credit cards. (and I don’t even get a kick-back)

  52. I just started going through the comments…wow! I could spend hours here just listening to you all! It’s better than any discussion panel at photo workshops! Thank you everyone for acting with civility, normally blogs are filled with enough vitriol and scum to scare me away.

    As per the print/screen discussion…I went to PhotoLA this week, held some platinum prints in my hands and nearly melted…I’ve spent all day staring at this damn LCD screen and I feel like I want to pop my eyeballs out with a spoon and put them in the freezer – so much pain! That’s the difference between a print and the screen for me!

    Back to the essay at hand…I just went through your website Evi, stunning work all around! Your use of texture with the natural light makes me so jealous, and inspired to shoot color again. I’d love to see these in person some day, any exhibitions coming up in 2011?

  53. Evi –

    The opening sentence to my last comment should have included a few extra words so as to read…

    “Evi – I feel kind of bad for you! You work so hard, produce an excellent portfolio of images, score a slot on burn, eagerly wait to see…”

    As I stated in my first comment, I found your images excellent. Also a bit motivating. It reminds me that I really must dig deeper into the community in which I live than I currently am doing. Who are these neighbors of mine who look just like the people in the portraits that hang on the wall in your picture?

    Yes, I have photographed a few of them – children, mostly, caught in passing as they are out to play, and maybe have a dozen of the more open and friendly adults, but I don’t really know anything about them. They keep largely to themselves – and so do I and my family. So, when I look at your spread, I think I should make an effort to find out who they are, what happened in their past, what caused them to leave the place of their origin and then to come to my community? How do they feel about life here and how does the community feel about them?

    I really don’t know the answers to any of these questions (save, perhaps, for the latter, because I think my community is largely a community of escapees from one society or another and tends to accept, but necessarily to embrace, anybody. In fact, I don’t think it really embraces anybody).

    So you have given me an assignment.

    I have no idea how to go about fulfilling it and when am I going to find the time, given all that I am already trying to do?

    I will have a floating deadline – flexible by years.

  54. jbnightingale…
    No idea if you’ve been round here much…but here is a very good dialogue you may enjoy, nothing to do with subject here but still brilliant. Just go to essays and look for Michelle Frankfurter/Destino

  55. Evi…
    This afternoon i will finally sit at my laptop and view your essay, mobile doesn’t support Flash…sorry for hijacking the comments yesterday.

  56. Evi:

    just a quick follow up to my initial post….finally (this morning) had an opportunity to look at the entire essay as it appears on your website (as well as the other work)….entrancing, really…prefer the longer edit on the website, including many of the portraits left out and some of the pics of objects (love the umbrella!)……..in actually, the longer edit takes on a very different spirit, something closely akin to your work in Bavaria….like, actually, the relationship between the Bavarian story and the Transcarpathia story…siblings, of the same family….more an indexing of what we create from place….thoughtful, intelligent…

    :))
    cheers
    b

  57. GORDON…PAUL..BOB..EVA..

    one of things we are getting ready to do here at Burn is to figure out how to get around a photographers own submission….so many cut themselves short when submitting here…and yet for us to look at dozens of submissions every day and then figure out which ones deserve more private detective/research work is a formidable task….

    last year i did do one piece of interesting work when i looked at a single entry, dug around a bit and found the photographer had a whole essay on the subject…so good that it became an epf finalist in the long run…but that was almost luck that i found the other pictures….fishing around websites is very time consuming and exhausting particularly when you are second guessing a photographers own submission….most DO require cutting, not adding..but this cannot be assumed…it is easy to assume “cut”…90% of the time this is the case with no apology..but not this time…

    so we are trying to figure out the best plan so that we never have to see a letter like yours wishing you had seen ALL of Evi’s pictures…the only thing we can think of so far is to spend even more time with each photographer and their work…we already do a lot, but we might just have to do more…this would mean of course less frequent updates to Burn…less published…this is the sacrifice to making sure sure sure we have everything that a photographer IS…

    after two years of publishing Burn, we know for sure that photographers in general are their own worst enemy…not saying this about Evi, but in general ..in any case, we want to alleviate this problem..any thoughts most welcomed…

    one thing we will do for sure is right NOW is to go back and bring many of those other pictures in from Evi website…we all make mistakes…but this is one we can fix ….

    cheers, david

  58. GORDON…

    you are quite correct..not all art is permanent…and the Ozymandias syndrome is often pervasive…the quest for something permanent is probably part of human nature…manifested in extreme by the Egyptians and yet played backwards by the the indigenous of North America and Africa…in the big picture i am sure we all realize photography is also transient…a collector print lasting 200 years works for a gallery sale now, but is yes a bit humorous in the long run….what i want is a Polaroid photo that lasts 1000 years…instant gratification, one of a kind, and long term gallery sales!!!! :)

    cheers, david

  59. Glad to hear there’s more on the website and that those will be added to this set. I’m gonna go over in a minute and check that out. I’ve been sitting on posting about Evi’s submission because I like the work presented here, but I did feel the essay as it first appeared felt incomplete – that there was more exploration that could be done, more depth given to the images. This is a topic that could definitely merit a longer examination. The images here, both in composition and in their use of colour and light, strike me as being quite meditative, so I think a longer set of images could reveal more of the subtleties.

    David,
    As an interim measure, would it perhaps be prudent to ask published photographers to make clear there’s a link to their site with an extended edit there if this is the case? I.e. post the 20-40 images and text here, and just link to the page on their site that has the 130 or however many there are? Just a thought, until you guys come up with a better way of handling things.

    Paul,
    Yeah, I saw those. Also checked out Christophe Agou’s Subway series – http://www.christopheagou.com/ it’s called Life Below, and images 14 and 18 stood out for me as particularly interesting and haunting images. My bus series is quite different, both in lgiht and colour, but also an English thing of not really showing great amounts of emotion or interaction, everyone is lost in their own worlds, in a way that I didn’t get when riding NYC subways myself. Even on the London tube people are a lot more reserved and almost superficial in their interaction than you get in other countries. Part of the interest for me. Agou is worth a check, in my opinion, some really nice work on his site.

  60. Framers Intent…
    Yes we English don´t show too much emotion… ask my spanish wife :)))
    You should try doing this series in Spain!! Sitting on the bus with my son last night I noticed how everyone is studying each other…no way you can steal an image without being caught. The Agou link is really full of powerful stuff… thanks
    BTW I´ve got sitting on my lap and original 65 Strat and 59 Les Paul by my dog, so whenever you want a Burning jam session come over to Mallorca. :))))

  61. FRAMERS INTENT…

    we start with their site…first thing in submissions is a link…..then we ask them to submit in a particular size for Burn if we like the work ….they often submit in the new size short of what was on their site…unless we have a photographic memory of every single picture, which we do not, then we take what was submitted in the correct sizing as having been what we saw in the first place or what they chose as their best……by this time all of the correctly sized pictures are in our slide show program and there is no more referencing the original website of the photographer….we are working on a new system which should help this… but it is a little crazy to look at say 40 pictures by a photographer and say “we love your work, please re-size” and they re-size say 30 instead of 40…see the problem? one other thing that can happen as well and i think this is what happened with Evi, is that we get a story…the photographer is still shooting the story and adds to their own website ,but does not add to what we may have…some of our stories are several months old by the time we publish and a photographer could have added a significant number of pictures by that time…remember, most of these essays are indeed works in progress

  62. Evi…
    I love the ease with which you have portrayed the quotidian, nice and simple but still so engaging. Your interior shots show profound interest for these people and your way of framing is fresh… I love it. Keep on!!

  63. DAVID :)

    Please KNOW that my letter/comment was in no way a criticize of BURN or the editorial decision. I assumed that it was Evi’s decision to go with the shorter edit, as I know you give the photographer (always) the final word in how they wish the work to be presented. Moreover, I know the shere volume of submissions means it is up to the photographer to choose what/how/which edit to submit. Having worked with a number of Burn-published photographers on their edit selection/choice, i know how difficult that is for many photographers. In fact, just last night I participated in a projection and discussion for young/emerging photographers which I had co-juried, and much of the discussion of the work deal with narrative/edit and presentation. Good work with weak edit, good edit enhancing less strong work, etc. Besides, I don’t think it is BURN’S responsibility to go hunting through websites, that must be the photograhers work :))….and believe me, i’m keeping my ‘talent scout eye’ open always, which includes trying to work with photographes prior to them submitting…as a way to lesson the load you and anton and diego and annamarie have with all that…:))..

    all that said, i really want to encourage Evi (if it is possible) to work on the longer version. It really is very strong and completely changed my understanding of both this essay and her overall aesthetic and conceptual framework. The work is superb and is much more complex, cinematic and probing than this short edit belies. In fact, it would make for a fascinating book to compare Bavaria with Transcarpia in her book….she not only has a strong feel for place and for the objects in a place, but the moments arrested are even more intriguing….some of the really superb portraits and superb interios, she’s left out here…i encourage all to take a look at the full edit…

    in truth, that is actually a great learning tool for BURN audience: to look at different edits…and to the thought-work themselves ;))…

    that said, for me, BURN is simply doing nothing short of fantastic….and I, as a photographer, friend, supporter and Burn-published author, ask nothing more than what you guys continue to pull off…it’s just mad great…all without a budget…and pro-bona work..:))

    and i’ve got more prospects for you too :))

    anyway, keep up the fab work…and would love love to have Evi jump in and chat about the edit…

    hugs

    running to finish something

    bb

  64. P.S I spoke with Aaron last night at the projection…and he was so happy and humbled and just loved working with the BURN crew :)))….great experience and he felt very honored :)))

  65. BOB..

    no no , did not think you criticizing Bob …this is all something we are working on to make all work out best for the photographers who do submit….we all want the same thing of course…

    cheers, david

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