Roads, Swallows and an Inner Dialogue with Plossu

After his young employees show him a creature they created with AI, a creature writhing on the ground, with movements the AI "imagines", Miyazaki's reaction  hits the nail right on the head: "Every morning...I see my friend who has a disability. It's so hard for him just to do a high five, his arm with stiff muscle reaching out to my hand. Now, thinking of him, I can't watch this stuff and find it interesting. Whoever creates this stuff has no idea what pain is... I am utterly disgusted....I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself."

Recently I fell in love with the photography of Bernard Plossu. And I began to wonder why. That's when I thought back to the Miyazaki quote, especially the bold bit. Whoever created this stuff had a human sensibility that I could connect to.

Although I haven't been as much of a nomad as Plossu, I felt that the notion of "the road", for example when looking at this photograph of his, might have lifted his heart in a similar way to mine when I took this one.

Or when I look at his pictures of swallows, let's say this and this, I imagine that Plossu felt a similar kind of excitement as myself, the moment I took a picture of two rows of swallows on electric lines next to ancient Roman columns.

I even love it when he seems to be goofing around, taking a picture of his camera, because I did the same recently (who hasn't, right?), whilst I was photographing with my Rollei again after a two-year break (it felt quite weird initially...and I was so surprised when I reached the end of the roll after only 12 exposures!)

And there's even more. I find it charming that Plossu's been using nothing but an old Nikkormat with a 50mm f1.4 Nikkor for the majority of his work. Even his preferred look of his prints speaks to me: "The printing is still traditional black-and-white, no gimmicks, no black skies, nothing fancy—when something is gray, it has to be gray."

You see, it's all these imaginary threads that we weave in our minds that bond us to another person. On a deeper level, there's also the consolation that - although it very often does not feel like it - we're not alone!

Now, the million dollar question I ask myself is: what if tomorrow Plossu turns out to be an AI. It isn't so hard anymore to imagine such a future.

* In this post I used links to some of Plossu's photographs, which means there's a risk that you will not see the pics if the link is removed. I will not directly insert the pictures, as they are copyrighted material. These days not many people seem to respect this though. For example, Instagram is awash with Plossu's photos under #BernardPlossu. I have no idea if this is lawful.

Thoughts about Luck

When I was a wee boy, my worst habit was, my mother always says, that I used to run away. I would disappear. The search party would eventually find me in a neighbouring village. Even in mid-winter, with snow and ice and what not. Mind you, this was in rural Germany, where most people knew each other and each others' kids. Still, my escapades could've turned ugly. And now that I'm a father, I can understand how terrified they must've been.

I don't know whether it's the embers of that old habit that doesn't want to die, but I still enjoy wandering off. Preferably on an early morning with a camera. If the stars align, luck could be on your side.

Talking about luck in photography, I used to love this kind of "lucky coincidence" snapshot, but I'm not a big fan anymore. I mean, unless you are a true wizard, how many times in a lifetime can you pull a hare out of your hat? And if the only talking point of the photo is such acrobacy, without any other redeeming quality, so much for the worse.

Maybe it's an age thing, but nowadays I gravitate towards "quiet observation and contemplation". The photographer Robert Adams (one of my favourites) recalls that when asked how he found his pictures, he said, I paraphrase: "they happen where I stay long enough". I personally find this so profoundly true. Don't rush, give it time and you might start to see beauty even in the most mundane looking things.