the email from toni arrived midweek, just a simple line: this week: no concepts (in head), no photos (in camera), no screw (for tripod base)…
jenny: might this count? just caught by chance in today's art lesson.....
requires slight stretch of imagination to fit the task as it was only 'dark' because of strong sunlight behind her; plus it was an easy peasy pic - so p’raps 'good for soul' to have a go with a night-time tripod..…am crossing fingers for decent sunset sometime (v) soon - but may have to resort to being driven through m'way tunnel (lots round here - all those mountains!) with camera on dashboard.....
toni: i tried shooting through aperture of bird hide today - looked like i'd only taken half a frame... just a huge slab of black down one side of pic... correct exposure eluded me completely [well... that and wayward pooch bouncing over all other very quiet birdwatchers...] so am home alone tonight. think it is going to be a 'camera on chest of drawers shooting bedside lamp' number. hmmm. v imaginative. and if this doesn't work, am scuppered...
toni: Too angsty about taking pic, so have forsaken 'escape to the country'. Tripod? Nope! Sturdy chest of drawers? Yes! Self-timer? Yes! Bed-side lamp illuminated? Yes! Click. Wait. click. Click. Wait. click. Hmmmm Well... there's a <truth> about the shot!
jenny: .....I think I might just have found some light in a dark place.....
toni: what’s your light; is it clever? mine is dull. [cue: sulky pout]
jenny: nah - not clever; just hopefully not downright cheating.....(cue: innocent look of 'hopefully-I-am-not-being-a-cheat') is sparkle of sun on stream in dark dark wood.....does that count, do you think? otherwise it's a tripod in the garden tonight (yes, I have screws with mine, even though it is ancient and the legs are a BUGGER to undo) in vain hope of catching the moon setting or at the very least, the last Easyjet flight of the evening
toni: have been thinking about this week's challenge a lot - how, metaphorically, 'seeking out light in the dark' is the job of every photograph. think this is why i have struggled so much - for instance, my daughter coming home from school grinning, after my own crappy day - this was light in the dark, etc, etc.. but more so really, wanted to write to you about a photography exhibition i saw a few years ago in den haag
i kept finding inadvertently, that all the photographic pictures that moved me seemed to be taken by hungarian photographers - and this exhibition featured them all. there seemed to be an eye for composition [andré kertesz once said, i think, 'all you need to take photographs is a beating heart and an understanding of pythagoras'] and a tender beauty and emotion in so many of the shots. i bought the book of the show, and read the following, which just struck me so strongly:
the curator spoke of the shocking horrors and losses [of people and land] of the great war which were inflicted on all hungarian people. and he talked of how many of the photographers turned disenchantment into creative energy... and despair and melancholy into social criticism. then he wrote this:
’to be a hungarian photographer, you must stare into the greatest darkness. it's not enough that you distinguish between light and dark, you have to tell the black from the black. if there is a god, then you will find him in the slightest gleam of light, and in the barest principle of composition.'
so... i don't know... every time i read this, it moves me so much. seems to say so much about life's struggle generally - and the importance of picture taking in that. and it is this too, which makes this week's brief feel a little-overawing to me - how does one, symbolically, demonstrate the light in the dark? i think a stream in the woods probably does it just perfectly…
meanwhile, this morning i found the missing 'plate' for my tripod - though am beginning to feel affection for straight-forward simplicity of Bed Side Lamp
as for next week; we must ‘hand someone something’…..just ponder the possibilities of that!
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