The Fall of Icarus

 

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Diptych on 24x30cm Ilford MG Warmtone FB Semi-Matt paper.

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As fascinating as the story of Icarus is, I love how Brueghel the Elder depicted it in this painting, and how W.H. Auden interpreted the painting in this poem.

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Well, here we are, at the end of yet another year. Apparently, film photography is still making its comeback. And yesterday Pentax thrilled many with their announcement that they were considering making new film cameras.  All good news, but I wonder how sustainable film and paper production is, with the ever-increasing prices and our plummeting purchasing power. I also wonder how healthy darkroom printing is. Generation Z seems to enjoy film photography, but if they only scan it to upload to social media, they are missing out big time IMO. 

So, that was 2022. If you've taken the time to write comments, thank you, I appreciate it! Reading your thoughts and exchanging ideas is an important motivation in writing a blog.

Cheers!

Fortyfive Pancakes

The pleasure and freedom of walking and taking in life with a simple camera and a single lens. Unburdened with weight and excess stuff, the body, and more importantly the eye, stays fresh much longer. You might miss a couple of photos because you didn't bring those three other lenses, yet the gain is much greater than the loss. At least that's my experience.

It could be a point&shoot or a Holga. For me, it's usually a Rollei TLR or a Nikon F2/F3 with a 45mm pancake lens. I'm very fond of the latter combination, and have often preferred it to a Leica. In an interview, the late and great Mario Giacomelli, when asked about his camera, remarked that he wanted a "working man's camera", and sent his delicate Kobell to Milan to have everything removed that he deemed unnecessary. (You should check it out. It's wonderfully bizarre). For me, the F2/F3 are a working man's camera: spartan, robust.

I prefer the 45mm focal length over a 50mm. 45mm feels right. Maybe that's why I have both 45mm pancake Nikkors: The ancient GN-Nikkor and the much newer 45mm-P version. Both are wonderful. The old one had some Guide Number  coupling feature for flash (hence the GN name), which I've never used. Other than that, it's a bit weird in that the focusing is reversed, and the focus throw is very long for mid-to-infinity distances and then gets a bit short for near distances. Mine also survived a fall making the focusing very rough at some distances, turning it into a working man's lens...oh yeah!

I feel more relaxed when photographing people when what I put in front of  my face is of the humble kind. Nothing that looks like it's gonna steal their souls. Even better when it looks like a working man's camera :)

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The working man's camera the working man had with him for the above photos:

Post-bark Trauma

Out of the blue, a small dog, sitting on the lap of its heavily made-up owner, barks at B. Of all the people rushing by in the street, it decides that there is something wrong with B, and only B. Seemingly calm, B keeps on walking. Dogs are known to have acute senses, he says to himself. "What was it? The rucksack? Something out of the ordinary in my appearance or smell...or thoughts? Something noone but a dog can sense? Maybe I exude a sinister aura? Or could it be that whatever irritated the ugly beast is indeed visible to everyone, nevertheless is something one tends to keep silent about." In any case, a seed of self-doubt has been planted. Pre-bark, B had one worry less. Post-bark, he's thrown off-balance. One could even argue that he's a different man now. B keeps on walking, but somewhat more insecure, wondering what that stupid dog noticed in him. Although another possibility, he considers, is that he's yet again being too thin-skinned; a burden he knows to have carried his whole life.

The Lead Pack

Injury prevented me from competing in the Istanbul Marathon for a few years. It took me quite some time to shake off that frustration; but eventually, I set myself to photograph the event instead. Especially the elites, who I would normally never be able to set eyes on during a race. Here are the lead runners storming past me in 2019.

I had photographed the 2017 and 2018 marathons as well, however non of the photos from those two years are satisfactory for various reasons: wrong place, wrong light, bad luck etc. Prior to the 2019 race I scouted various locations, thinking about the background and direction of light expected at the time of the event.

As a hopeless print connoisseur, I should add a couple to this post. The first one is on 24x30 cm Ilford Classic, the second on 30x40 cm Forte Fortezo (FN4). Anybody remember Fortezo? Single grade and just wonderful! I still have a few of 10 sheet 30x40 cm packets.

In hindsight, that roll of FP4 on the second print seems ridiculous; it reeks of instagram vanity. Consider its presence as an indicator of scale. Still, the film I used for this photo was indeed FP4, my all time favourite (developed in home-mixed D76 1+1).

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Recently I found some old and long forgotten color negs in my archive. Unfortunately, they are in pretty bad shape. I have no idea where and exactly when this photo was made (1993 or '94 maybe), neither who took it, but here I am, poor old sod in the middle, the lead pack probably far ahead, pushing through the 3000m steeplechase torture at a university race. The clock tells me that most of the pain is yet to come.

Homage to Koudelka

Exiles - Josef Koudelka

I had always thought this to be Josef's own arm, as he was staring down a Prague street in 1968 during the Russian invasion (hmm, history is repeating), but got suspicious when I decided to do a homage picture in Istanbul, because on all my attempts my arm invariably entered the frame from the lower left corner instead of the left edge, and also extended "into the space". Then I did some digging and found this Guardian article according to which it is indeed the arm of a passerby!

The watch happens to be a Raketa 2603, made in Saint-Petersburg. This webpage has a very nice montage of a Raketa 2603 with the original picture.

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To obtain a similar perspective and size of fist as that in Koudelka's photo I tried several different focal lengths between 24mm to 35mm on a 35mm camera at home. In the end I thought 28mm was about right. In an interview in one of his books Koudelka stated that he used an East German 25mm lens for his Gypsies series. That work was made in the 1960s, so I think it reasonable to assume that for the Prague photo he used the same 25mm. Maybe the Zeiss Jena Flektogon 25mm/f4 on an Exacta? Like this ?

Anyway, on the 13th March 2021, on a sunny but chilly day, I walked the streets of Istanbul with a 28mm on my camera and the purpose of doing a homage to a photographer whose work I come back to again and again. This picture from the single roll I exposed that day has had the staying power for me: 

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Dogfood, a zine that I love, called out to its readers a while ago and asked them to send their Koudelka re-enactments and published a wonderful selection in its 8th issue, from which I hope it's OK to show a couple of spreads:

As you can see, some of the arms do enter the frame from almost center left; and indeed one from the right! Have they all had a friend to pose? Were they all aware that, to remain faithful to the original, it had to be someone else's arm? Or are my arms too short? I feel there is a mystery out there.

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Some 20 years ago, I was desperately looking for a copy of Koudelka's Exiles. It was out of press and nowhere to be found. Then one day I was in Rome, walking the back streets, and entered a small bookshop...and to my delight found a brand new copy from an Italian publisher (Alinari). I bought it on the spot of course. The opening photo of Exiles is the '68 Prague picture, by the way.

I'd like to end with a lesson learned: books go out of print. When they are gone you might never find another one; at least for a reasonable price, because the prices of some will skyrocket (Amazon's algorithms probably have a hand in that as well). So, if you like a photo book and have the means, I strongly suggest you buy it while it is still in print.

The Smell of Bread

The community "Backhaus" - literally meaning "Baking House" - was a very common occurrence in German villages. Farming families would each take their turn in baking their bread that would last them several weeks. Relatives from my maternal side live in a small Swabian village in southwest Germany, and when my grandparents were still alive they regularly baked their bread in the Backhaus. 

Today the practice seems to have largely ceased. I even read that in some places the Backhaus is now used by tourists where they are baking under supervision!

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In 1995 I was fresh out of university in Istanbul, went to Germany and lived with my grandparents for a year. I had already dabbled a bit with my uncle's old M42 mount Revueflex camera and colour print film, but the prints I got back from the shops were mostly poor. I can't remember  how exactly, but at one point I found out that for the best quality I had to shoot slides. And indeed, the first roll of slide film was a revelation! Those colours, that clarity...it was unbelievable. Then, with the little money I had, I bought myself a new camera: a Canon EOS 500n with a 35-80mm plastic zoom.  In hindsight, that cheap lens coupled with slide film gave remarkable results.

So it was that one morning in 1996, with that Canon camera I photographed my grandmother baking bread. It was her turn in the Backhaus, which is a couple of hundred meters away in the village centre. Here she is at home in the kitchen preparing sourdough loaves. Note the size of the trough!

This picture is full of other memories as well. For instance, as a child I used to crawl into the small space below the radio on the wall.

A couple of hours later, fresh out of the stone oven, the bread gets a good scrubbing with a brush dipped in water (for a crisp crust):

And here's the baked bread, which will be carted back home:

Some of the bread that would not be consumed in the immediate future will be stored in the community freezer !

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Fast forward 5-6 years, during which I thought (or marketing departments made me think) I had to have eye-controlled focus and got myself  first a Canon EOS 50E and then even a Canon EOS 3 (now that was a loud beast)...which - including several lenses - were stolen during a break-in whilst in London, of all places! Shortly after that burglary in 2002 I saw a discount on brand new Leica M6's and decided to make a clean break with Canon, and bought an M6 TTL with 35mm and 50mm Summicron's. I've been using that M6 with lenses ever since. My sample must have been a monday camera though, as it's been in repair several times for some serious issues (broken hinge on back door, broken shutter curtain...). Still, it's been a constant companion for two decades now and I never much regretted the stolen Canon's.

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One sunny day in 2003,  a period when one million Turkish liras could only buy a döner plus a drink, I had slide film in the Leica (Fuji Velvia) and found the approaching crate of bread extremely appealing.

I'd started using B&W film in 1998 and was shooting it alongside the occasional roll of slide. Sometime around 2005 I completely quit slides and concentrated on B&W exclusively (is there anyone who can still afford slides?).

In 2017 I made this picture in a small bakery on the Mediterranean coast (with the same M6 and 35mm lens):

(Lest you think I blew the window, the tiniest detail of netting is actually visible in the print, which I couldn't preserve whilst processing the scan. Still, I should've done better.)

Later I tried to give the young man a print, but didn't see him again. I was told he went to university.

And on a stroll in 2020, I stopped mid-stride in front of this apartment door in Istanbul, where plastic bags full of bread were hanging (again the M6, but with a wobbly Zeiss 28mm this time):

So, looking back on this small bit of personal history and selection of pictures, one could say bread means something to me! As to what kind we eat at home: my wife has been baking sourdough bread for 20 years and is still using yeast that she continues to grow from the first batch of yeast which she cultivated 20 years ago.

Plenty of Rope

A very enjoyable read is Jerry Burchard's piece in the two-volume Darkroom books by Lustrum Press where he's talking about his night photography . Jerry said "My decision is what to point it at and what the exposure will be. The camera sees more than I can, so I give it plenty of rope and watch what happens." 

I don't know whether I gave the camera plenty of rope in this case, but it did record a sea of dancing lights in the background which I could never have anticipated.

The print is on Ilford Cooltone paper, so if on your monitor you see a coolish tone  in the second picture, that should be all right.

Our Sea

 

Every summer, we spend a couple of weeks here.
It's a place of many memories. 
Boyish things for example,
like a quick 100 meter dash with my son, 
watching him grow stronger every year;

or many a confidential tête-à-tête,

whispered to the murmur of pebbles.

The Romans called it Mare Nostrum:

Our Sea.

In the morning the heat quickly becomes intense, but I like to linger on, 

because close to midday Our Sea begins to sparkle, 

a sight dear to me. 

~

Remembered Photographs

As the afternoon faded away, a large herd of sheep, returning from their daily pastures, slowly moved in and covered the slope visible in the picture. This is a small seasonal settlement in the mountains of Turkey, where shepherds keep their herds until fierce winter sets in. We had set up our tents for some semi-wild camping and had already acquainted ourselves with the four or five shepherd dogs. In another moment the peaceful atmosphere turned into commotion. A pack of wolves - I counted four -  dashed out of the woods in front of us, at most 100 meters away, and dived into the herd. As we froze, eyes wide open, everything around us seemed to accelerate. All dogs charged upwards instantly. The shepherd hurried towards the action. The shepherd's daughter appeared from one of the shacks and sprinted, rifle in hand. In a matter of seconds they were chasing the wolves through the woods; we heard shouts and incessant barking; shots fell. A couple of minutes later all was silent again. The wolves hadn't been able to grab a lamb, but they had a scuffle with one of the juvenile dogs, which eventually managed to escape unscathed. The shepherd's daughter was carrying back the small dog, covered in wolves' saliva and still shaking from the ordeal. After the excitement had died down we made ourselves comfortable in an abandoned hut, cooked chestnuts over a fire and sang songs...

...wondering whether the night would be safe, especially because we had our kids with us. The vigilance of the dogs gave us some comfort.

Missed photographs can be particularly painful. I wince when I think back to the shepherd's daughter, that courageous young woman, so obviously used to taking matters into her own hands. Clearly, she loved that dog dearly, the way she was holding and caressing the small, black, shaking creature in her arms. What a beautiful portrait that would've been! I believe she would have given me the permission for a picture if I had asked; sadly, I didn't have the presence of mind.

In all the years of hiking and camping in the mountains, I've had quite a few surprise face-to-faces: bulls, wolves, wild boars...even a bear, which to my relief took flight. In my minds eye I can still see it's wonderful shiny fur as it looked back at me one last time before disappearing in the forest. I was so lucky it didn't have cubs. No photograph exists of any of these encounters, only memories.

Tuff Triangle

There is this enchanting piece of nature called Cappadoccia in Turkey. An amazing history of thousands of years. Stunning churches carved into volcanic tuff. Fairy chimneys, each one a marvel of its own.  But when I returned to Cappadoccia last summer after a gap of 9 years I found that much had deteriorated. On top of other concerns, now the ATV business was thriving,  creating such a roar and churning up so much dust from sunrise till sunset...

...but hey, if it helps one to show off their great adventures on insta reels...and it fills some pockets...then what's the problem, right?

Anyway, here I was again, walking from one valley into the next, stuffing my backpack with discarded plastic bottles all along. It was getting hot, sweat was flowing profusely, I had a hat and sunglasses and my Rollei T...

...and plenty film. Tmax100 this time. Not my first choice, but I'd had so much frustration with other roll film over the last few years that I was happy to have anything that was simply trouble free. The problem I'm talking about are the well documented "white spots" on Ilford film, which came about by the backing paper interacting with the emulsion*. And with Kodak Tmax400 I had the backing paper imprint issue, where the writing on the backing paper would transfer over to the emulsion, so that your prints had "Kodak" written somewhere in them.

So, Tmax100 it was, and back at home I developed it in Tmax 1+9 at 24 degrees C. The negs are quite beautiful!

This print - a photo from that day - is on 24x30 cm Ilford Classic FB paper. My go-to paper & size for what I consider "finished" work.

Last weekend, whilst lost in daydreaming, I thought what if I make a big print by patching up four sheets of 24x30 cm paper, in effect giving me a surface area of 48x60 cm. Of course, I could've bought 50x60 cm paper, but that's beside the point, because I was simply curious about how a patched up photo would look (also, 50x60 cm paper is hard to find and very expensive, considering the rare occasion I use it; and another, although minor point: requires a significantly larger volume of chemicals).

I thought this picture would be a good candidate for this size, so I set to work. I used Ilford RC Satin because it lies flat and racked up the head of my Focomat 2c enlarger for a print size of 45x45 cm. After arranging the sheets on the baseboard and exposing them, I developed them individually. Here is the print (or should I say prints?), held together with magnets on my pin-up board next to a random, regular sized work print:

I quite like the not-so-precious DIY look. After taping the four sheets together on the back one could even get it framed.

By the way, most of the other clutter on the board is songs, exercises, strings etc. for the guitar. I've been a guitar learner for a few years now - still very much at beginner level and thoroughly enjoying it  - and I practice sitting on the couch opposite this board.

So, that's that. Summer in the northern hemisphere and its myriad challenges for the B&W film photographer is upon us. For those of you in the hotter regions, good luck trying to stay calm whilst spooling your film onto reels with sweaty hands in pitch black darkness; I feel your pain!

Take care and maybe I'll see you at another "agitation" 😎

* Ilford say they have solved the problem and indeed my latest rolls of HP5 have been spotless. And also, to Ilford's credit, they sent me replacement film after I contacted them. Of course I've lost some precious pictures, but still I appreciate their customer support.

An Envelope

A large manila envelope dating back to WW2. Itself containing many smaller envelopes that were used by photo businesses for storage of customer negatives and prints. The owner of the pictures was from Baden-Württemberg, southwest Germany. They show scenes whilst he was in the Wehrmacht, stationed in the Caucasus in Russia: a dusty road during a march; looking out of a freight train; reading a letter in a field of flowers; a downed plane; artillery.

Many of the photos are annotated on  the back in the then common Sütterlin script, mostly not legible for me.

"Perutz" is a brand of film that often comes up in these envelopes.  The verso of tiny vintage prints reveal paper names like Agfa Lupex, Agfa Brovira, Gevaert Ridax, Leonar. All brands that have been washed away in the tides of time.

The negatives for a lot of the more interesting pictures are missing.  And many of the 6x4.5 and 6x9 negatives are in poor shape. This 6x9 neg looked pretty good though, and I thought it deserved to be printed bigger...

...not least because the soldier who made this photo was my grandfather; a devout farmer, dragged against his will into hell, like millions of others. Wasting the best five years of his life, he would return with a damaged lung that would trouble him until his death.  Still, he was so lucky to be able to make it back and see his children and grandchildren.

Here he is on horseback. The photo is not dated, but he looks very much a teenager, so I presume it must be before the war.

SOS Covid

The pandemic with its lockdowns has seen the rise of the "Corona walk" of the troubled and socially distant photographer. I empathise with you, dear friend. It was hard not to lose heart; trying to stay calm behind your masks and fogged up eyeglasses, unable to see through your viewfinders; trying to neither lose sanity nor sanitiser. The invisible foe always seemed to be around the next corner.

This is a tiny summary of my nocturnal excursions from January to April 2021, between 7pm-9pm, before the 9pm lockdowns in Turkey. I would sling a Rolleiflex TLR around my shoulder and doggedly walk the same route in İstanbul over and over, only occasionally slipping into some side streets. The Rollei was usually loaded with Ilford Delta 3200, a beauty for night scenes with street lights; although you really have to know how to expose and develop D3200. 1/15th or 1/30th of a second at f/2.8 and the exposure was taken care of, and I could concentrate on the big struggle of trying to make something worthwhile.

At that time I was thinking about ways to handcraft books using real prints and mucking around with different options, one of which resulted in this mini-album. Obviously, being an experiment, it wasn't meant to impress. As you can see, it's as basic as it gets. Lowest grade cardboard for the covers, a sheet of A4 paper, some double-sided tape; and the five photographs of course, in this case 9x9cm prints on Ilford RC Satin (lovely paper).

I've also done a bigger version with different photos, but it doesn't work as well. Size really does matter with this type of folding design. I would say the same for accordion type albums.

And here's an exciting account on Ilford's  website about making a photobook from prints. Make sure you check out the video as well. Pretty cool, hah?

Friedrich's Crusade

It wasn't meant to be. Friedrich Barbarossa, the German emperor, leading an army of crusaders to Jerusalem, would never reach the holy land. Setting off in May 1189 from Regensburg, marching through the Balkans, they would reach Constantinopolis, then cross the Dardanelles, keep moving southward through Anatolia - fighting off Turkmen attacks all the way - pass the mighty Taurus mountains and just a short way up the Mediterranean would reach this point on the river Saleph on June 10th 1190.

The sixty-seven year old, red bearded emperor allegedly wanted to cool off in the June heat by taking a quick dip, but drowned in hip deep water. A "so it goes" moment in Vonnegutian tradition. Some say his horse slipped and he hit his head against a rock. Others claim a heart attack, which doesn't sound too unreasonable because the stream was most likely freezing cold from the melting Taurus snow.

After the loss of their emperor, the army fell into despair. Most returned back home via sea. Few continued their crusade towards the holy land. As for Barbarossa, Mos Teutonicus was administered. His flesh was interred in Antioch in St. Peter's Church; however, the whereabouts of his bones is still unknown.

Today it's quite mind-boggling to think of tens of thousands of crusaders in heavy armour marching 2500 km over the course of a year. Not dissimilar to Xenophon's March of the Ten Thousand. And at this spot, they still had many hundreds of kilometers ahead. 

It was summer when I made this picture. On June 10th 1190 the crusaders probably had a similarly hot and hazy day.  As they were marching down this valley, surely some of them must have been thinking of home,  so incredibly far away now.