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 can 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 #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.

Palace Street

Close to where I lived in Istanbul there was this 1st floor balcony where someone had copied Millet's famous painting "The Gleaners" on the wall. It made me smile every time I passed the building. Sometimes the man who lived there - maybe in his late 60s - sat in front of the painting, enjoying the sun, watching the odd passer-by. I often met his eye, but never approached to ask whether it was him who'd made the painting. Not that I was shy. Sometimes I just do not want to know, because the mystery feels more appealing. In hindsight, I probably should have tried to make a photo of that scene.

There was another wall-painting that I also loved. It's a well-known character of a famous Turkish cartoonist, the late Latif Demirci. That one I didn't want to let slip. On a grim day during Covid and amidst the economic crisis, I made this photo.

There is one nuance I should explain for the non-Turkish speaking reader. The street sign on the right, which is actually only half of the complete street name, reads "Palace Street".

A New Beginning

I had posted this photo on my old blog 8 years ago. In this day and age it's probably daft to post a picture of  - of all things - a flower. But it's a print that I come back to and it has taught me a thing or two; small lessons for myself I hadn't written about in that old post, so I thought why not do it now. Here it goes...

- For close-up photography, I should first try to use my 55mm/2.8 micro-Nikkor before reaching for the 105mm. The way the shorter lens describes three dimensional space is just wonderful. I almost feel like a bee suspended in mid-air, looking "into" the flower.

(As superb as the 55mm/2.8 micro-Nikkor is though, I find it very difficult to use for subjects that are roughly in the 3-4 meter range, like a full length portrait. The focus throw is so short, if you are the tiniest bit off you miss critical focus.)

- The line that runs down in the background is the corner of intersecting walls. It wasn't a deliberate choice; the plant just happened to sit in that corner and I didn't bother to move it. Not sure what you think, but I ended up enjoying that compositional detail. In a not too in-your-face way, it breaks up an otherwise homogeneous background. Without it, the picture would be even more banal than it is now and probably wouldn't work for me anymore.

The photo is printed on Ilford FB Warmtone semi-matt paper. A paper that has always amazed me with its gorgeous surface. It probably isn't suited for every photo, but it can be stellar with the right one. Yep, good things don’t come cheap. Still, I think every darkroom printer should at least have tried it once. It is even more beautiful after selenium or sepia toning. By the way, the colour comes from sepia toning, of course.

As for the film and development, I must've been in a very experimental mode back then, because instead of changing only one variable at a time, I changed everything at once. This is one of my very first (if not the first) Fomapan 100 roll. And in those days I was trying out various two-bath developers. Here I used a modified Stöckler developer for the first time. I'd read about it in an article by Wynn Bullock in one of the Lustrum Press "Darkroom" books and wanted to give it a go. I still can't quite fathom how the neg turned out so nice. 

Some time later I became disenchanted with two-bath developers because literally everything that was written about them in the famous darkroom cookbook turned out to be false: there is significant development in the A-bath, how long you develop in the A-bath does effect the amount of development you get, therefore the A-bath can not have an indefinite life, development is temperature sensitive. I really don't know what the authors were thinking. The final nail in the two-bath coffin was when I tried to develop Delta3200 in Thornton's version. That was the worst combo I've ever tried and made me go back to good old D76, which I've used ever since.

But now, looking back at those Fomapan 100 negs that were developed in Stöckler and how exquisite it (the film? the developer? both?) has rendered the highlights in the petals…hmm...one wonders. I think I should first give 35mm Fomapan 100 a try with good old D76. See how that turns out and then take it from there.

～

Let me finish with some news. I've had my Focomat 2C enlarger shipped from Turkey to Germany. Dare I say, a new darkroom might spring to life in the foreseeable future.

One Gone, One Left

It was bound to happen sooner or later. The Eucalyptus tree that dried up a few years ago for unknown reasons has been cut down. Because I'd very much enjoyed this pair in the last 20 years or so, I'd written a post about them some time back.

Looking at the stump, now barely worth a second glance with all the litter around, it's hard to imagine what a majestic element it was in the landscape.

I find it difficult to remain optimistic about the remaining sibling. People will continue to take comfort in it's shadow...

…and in the hot summer nights it will continue to watch over the chit-chat under its leaves. But for how long?

Stardust

Paul Desmond and Dave Brubeck playing Stardust

the bass line, chug chug chug chug...

the consolation of watching infinity

in a river flowing, a cloud drifting, a child laughing.

The Print Experience

Do we appreciate a painting more, or let's say at a higher, more sophisticated level, if we paint ourselves? What about music, literature, poetry? At least from a craft point of view it has to be so. Only when we practice a craft ourselves do we have a much better understanding and appreciation of its history, theory, practices, challenges etc.

In my archive I have a set of a dozen photographs by Turkish photographer Fethi Sabunsoy. It was 2003 when he gave them to me, a few years before he passed away in 2007 at the young age of 57. In the 22 years since, I have returned to these prints again and again; like you would open a small poetry book and re-read the same poems that you have read hundreds of times before.

This picture is one of the gems in the set. He took it in 1998, in an old, traditional coffeehouse in Gaziantep, a city in southeast Turkey. Every time I flip through the photos I stop at this one (and many others) and stare at it for a very long time. The wonderful mood, the silent poetry pulls at my heartstrings. And man, the print! Fethi was a first-rate craftsman.

But let me put print quality aside for a moment. The first thing that always springs to my mind is, what a huge risk to place a window that bright so prominently right on the corner. Fethi must have had time to contemplate the composition and he went for it. As far as I'm aware, in those days it was his regular practice to include the film rebate in the print - a la Cartier-Bresson - so it's very likely he correctly assessed that the rebate would pull in the window and that the risk of a totally unbalanced print was minimal. In any case, what he’s done is masterly.

Every time I hold the print, I tend to scrutinise the glasses and ashtrays on the table. The way light has rendered their edges is just so delicate, so sublime!

Then my eye always wanders to the cheap, lonely light switch, dangling from a thin cord that appears to have a knot in it. I'm sure, before pressing the shutter Fethi noticed this switch, saw how it was illuminated by windows perpendicular to each other, rim lighting it from two sides. He possibly even saw this switch as the "punctum" of the picture (this is the first time I said punctum on this blog) and made sure he placed it in front of deep shadow. Again, absolutely delicate and rendered pin-sharp.

The calendar on the wall also never fails to catch my eye. The date reads 17, the rest is not legible. On the back of the print Fethi has dated the photograph as 18th April 1998. Most probably, on the day the picture was taken the calendar had not been attended to yet.

What else? The sense of depth thanks to the diagonals, the chair in the far window frame, the question why the tables are all racked together (in preparation for a planned gathering?), a portrait of Atatürk hanging in the deep shadows in the upper left corner...the little details and questions go on and on.

I know that Fethi printed this picture on long-discontinued Forte Polywarmtone paper, lending it a lovely chocolaty finish. It is fiber based, 18x24cm in size. Before the year 2000 Fethi was using a Nikon F90x (later he switched to a Leica M6). And if I'm not mistaken, he was using the AF 28mm/2.8 Nikkor (alongside the 50/1.4 and 80-200/2.8 Nikkors). So it must have been this combo he used here. The film was most probably Ilford HP5. I've seen the negative of another photo from this trip to Gaziantep and that was HP5, so that is what my assumption is based on.

On the back of the print Fethi wrote: "The corner of an old coffeehouse is quiet and calm, awaiting the people who will come for a chat".

How a photograph can transport you to another world...

Thank you, Maestro!

Big Dreams

"A man dies the day his dreams have died" - Yaşar Kemal

~

I recently came across a short street interview. The backdrop is a city in southeastern Turkey. The interviewer and interviewee are both young man in their early 20’s. 

Q: “What is your biggest dream?”

A: “My biggest dream?...(pause)…I had a big dream…but I can’t remember it now”

Both start to giggle.

Q: “You can’t remember your biggest dream?”

Another short pause.

A: “I swear I can’t remember what it was”

 

 

A few days ago, Instagram recommended me an account. I recognized the name; it was an old friend from university. Back then we were both in the Track & Field team. I ran the long distances, and he was a very good 400m runner. After graduation he made his PhD in the US and then became an academician, a sociologist, at a university in Turkey. The last time I saw him was about 17-18 years ago. What intrigued me with his IG account name was that it ended with “music”. I went ahead and checked his feed and was almost knocked off my chair. He had turned into a musician, a guitarist, a singer and songwriter. Had produced 2 albums and 30 songs. Was doing live gigs and producing video clips. Had his music videos on Youtube, his songs on Spotify. He had grown long hair, and – to rub it really in - it was still black! I’d had no idea that he had all this in him. I haven't asked him how he felt about this transformation, but from my point of view, it all looked like he was living his big dream.

The Rhine and a Poplar

When I first saw Gursky's "Rhein II" I was mesmerised. The 1,9 x 3,6 meter print was hanging high on a wall in the Istanbul Modern museum and it had a presence that gets lost on a screen.  That feeling of awe has stuck with me ever since. Now I live minutes away from the Rhine and it has become a muse, not least due to the lasting impression of Gursky's masterpiece. During my walks I enjoy observing how the seasons, the time of day and the kind of light changes the mood of the river. 

At a very sweet spot there is a poplar tree, which has become a subplot in all the photos I make of the Rhine. On this particular overcast day last January, the waters were high and the tree was half submerged. The sky had a delicate range of pastel blues, a kind of softness that always strikes a chord with me.

Only while writing this post and looking at Gursky's website did I realize that 19 years after "Rhein II" he made "Rhein III". Clearly, it's a river that lends itself to decades of exploration.

The Golden Horn

The golden colours of the Golden Horn in Istanbul at dusk have been immortalised in paintings such as this one by Aivazovksy, from 1845. If you look closely at the painting you'll see white sails at the lower left of the setting sun, close to the shore. That's roughly from where I made all three photos in this post. 

Over the course of almost thirty years I must have walked and photographed on the same shores many hundreds of times. Saturdays, my feet took me there almost automatically. It's a place with a certain magnetism.

The earliest photo at the top is from 1996. Looking at the clothing, it must've been late fall or early winter. I was still a young man and had started my first job in October that same year. Here, on a Saturday afternoon I was taking in the bustle on the piers of the Golden Horn, my camera loaded with Fuji Sensia slide film. Back in those days fishermen would sell their daily catch right at the shore.

The second photo is about 20 years later. In the mean time I have married, have had a child, have been fully shooting B&W film and have become a decent darkroom printer. The afternoon light over the Golden Horn is still glorious at times. At the back is the Suleymaniye Mosque. The boat at the far right is named "Golden Boy".

Life went on, it got harder by the day, and Istanbul also kept evolving and growing (massively). Towards the end of the pandemic I started to increasingly use an old digital SLR, but with my much older manual lenses. Still, I kept being drawn to the same place. Like here, on the 11th December 2023 at 13:43 (thank you EXIF file). See the funny rainbowy spot on the back of the bench? Somehow the lens (a Nikkor 28mm f2.8 AIS) managed to  produce this little trick.

The tremendous change in technology from the earliest to the latest picture goes without saying. But I keep thinking about a more subtle change that has happened in parallel. Here's an anecdote. Sometime around 1998 or 1999 I rose very early and went to the Suleymaniye Mosque (have a look at the B&W pic again) to photograph the Golden Horn from up there. The mosque has a garden facing the waters and I was taking pictures from the garden. It was a cold day and the place was completely deserted, until a man approached me. It was the imam of the mosque. He asked what I was doing. I explained. I asked whether I could make a portrait of him. He accepted. Then he asked me whether I'd like to come up and enjoy the view from the domes of the mosque! Of course I did. And so we went up some narrow stairwells to the top of the mosque, climbed out from a door  into open air and began skipping from dome to dome. He was very accommodating and I made pictures from up there towards the Golden Horn...with a tripod! But the light was too harsh, or more likely I wasn't good enough: the pictures turned out to be unremarkable. Anyway, the reason for this anecdote is, I believe this would never happen today. Obviously, increased security is one reason. But also, with the rise of the smartphone and mass tourism, that garden has been packed with phone yielding crowds ever since. Today, I think the imam would rather sit in his office, either for his peace of mind or maybe to doomscroll on his social media feed, only popping out from prayer to prayer. And that thought keeps nagging me ever so slightly.

One Year Later

It's been a year of many changes that came with a move from Istanbul to Düsseldorf. Photographically, without a darkroom, it's been a year of almost only digital photography with a single old DSLR. I've enjoyed and was often amazed by the capabilities of the digital sensor, and have tried to come to grips with raw converters and other software. For the time being I've stayed away from proper digital printing though, only using a Canon Selphy for the occasional 10x15 cm print of barely acceptable quality.

But at the same time, I've found a new appreciation for film and the darkroom. Simply because it can be completely, inherently detached from the MADNESS that social media and AI have become. Still, I'm a bit surprised that I don't miss film & darkroom as much as I thought I would. I was tired of having printed for decades, with the prints just piling up in boxes with no other use. That weariness still lingers. But we'll see: I find myself constantly searching Ebay for a good and reasonably priced enlarger, so the spark must still be somewhere inside me.

The only black and white film I shot this year was high up on the Anatolian plateau in Turkey. I was holidaying on the Aegean coast in the summer when I received some disturbing news which caused me to embark on a two-day drive across the country. On the second day, heading south on a meandering and deserted road I saw puffy clouds on the horizon. They were rising from the Mediterranean Sea, 1500m below that horizon line! I was so mesmerised by the view that I pulled over, set up the tripod and exposed several frames of FP4+ through my Leica M6 with the 50mm Summicron...similar to the iPhone pic below. That film is still in Turkey, waiting to be developed.

And that's about it. Next year earth will continue its journey around the sun, light and shadow will move across our lives in their own wonderful ways, whilst we go on about our own little journeys,  hopefully in good health, with our loved ones around us.

Let me end with a quote from Montesquieu: "We must create a happiness that can follow us in every age."

Dry Spell Ahead

My personal circumstances are about to change drastically (I'd hinted at it in a past post). Now, for the first time in 27 years I won't be having a darkroom. I don't know for how long. As this blog is intrinsically linked to my being involved in printing, this post will presumably be my last for some time. But like these snails, I'll be waiting for the first morning dew for another rejuvenation*.

If you're reading this, I reckon you've been here before. I hope you found a bit of yourself in here, a common ground which bonds us all together.

So, good luck and take care until the next time!

* I can only guess that that's what they do :)

Vivian and Other Strangers

Sometimes I think about Vivian Maier. Not her posthumously discovered photographic archive, but how she had kept it all to herself throughout her whole life. Decades of serious photography and seemingly no urge to show it to anyone! You might remember Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Self-esteem is right up there in the pyramid. We tend to want the pat on the back. There is a reason for the like button on social media after all. Maybe Vivian thought about her photography in different ways; ways that were completely detached from what we would call "achievement"; the simple love of a picture as a memory for example. Or maybe other forces were at play; maybe she was discouraged by a male dominated milieu. Being a nanny, was there anybody who would've taken her work seriously? It's also a possibility that she just didn't feel like pushing her own work. Without the pushing and promoting nothing tends to happen. The whole thing is a mystery I wish Vivian didn't take to her grave.

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I usually don't stop a person on the street to take their picture, preferring to photograph in the confines of what's available without my interference. But here I was, on the ferry in Istanbul. It was a cold spring day. No matter how cold or wet though, I tend to travel on the upper deck, in open air. The ship was approaching the pier, and the passengers began to make a move, when I saw this young man with his dog tucked into his coat. I didn't think twice, hurried over and asked permission for a photo, which he kindly accepted. "Please, don't bugger this up!" whizzed through my head as I quickly focused the Rollei T (loaded with HP5) and exposed two frames. Thank you, dear stranger!

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I've been using Ilford's cheaper Kentmere range more and more and find both the 100 and 400 speed versions are perfectly fine films. Here are two prints from my last roll of Kentmere 400. It was developed in home-brewed D76 stock solution, together with another roll of the same film. You know what?...if someone had told me these prints were from 100 speed film, I wouldn't have doubted them one moment; the grain is that tight.

The first is a picture I made whilst having a quick and lonely dinner in a local Kadikoy* restaurant. I'd been observing the scene, the comings and goings for a while, then when I thought all looked right, I raised my Leica with 35mm Summicron, focused, waited for eye contact, and exposed one frame. As I lowered the camera the chef ordered the waiter to add the photo to my bill :)

* A district on the Asian side of Istanbul.

After dinner I strolled around in the streets. I've always liked the night-time look of some of the stand-alone cafes by the pier in Kadikoy. They can have a Hopperian air with the neons and the lonely souls. Here, I didn't want to get too close, as I wanted to include the enveloping darkness of the night in the picture. The same camera, same lens, same film, and the same suspense for the "right" moment. 1/30th (or maybe 1/60th) at f2. Man, the Summicron never ceases to amaze me.

Many years ago, I showed my mom some of my pictures. "Why do you take pictures of people you don't know?" she asked. Her question still makes me chuckle today, although I have often asked the same question to myself.

~

Finally, let me show you some prints and the Kentmere negs. The prints are on 24x30cm Ilford Classic and slightly selenium toned. It's a bit difficult for me to get even lighting on my viewing board (oh the irony!), so no perfect reproductions here (although I've fiddled around with the file quite a bit to get a decent look), but they should give an idea. They look much better to the naked eye ;-)

BromoFog

I'm glad I didn't throw out the packet of paper when I discovered it was heavily fogged. It was 10 sheets of 30x40cm Ilford MG WT semi-matt, a lovely paper, but apparently this packet had sat far too long. Mulling over whether I should bin it, I eventually thought why not print on it with heavy overexposure and then bleach it back? The bleach should remove the fog, and with it also the overexposure, leaving me with a normal print. At least that was my hope and I'm glad to say I wasn't too far off. Of course, snatching the print from the bleach at just the right moment (like in lith printing) would be critical. As would be the "right" dilution of the bleach. I used the bleach that came with Tetenal's sepia toner kit. If, like me, you prefer a fairly dilute bleach, then what comes with the kit is way more than what's needed for sepia toning.

So I went mad with those ten sheets. Cutting them up, using various negatives etc. Many were destined for the bin, but some looked good. I re-fixed the good ones and even put them through selenium toner just for the heck of it. I had gone this far, I might as well go all the way to the end. Interestingly, all prints have a very strong yellow tint, including the border.

This photo of the volcano Bromo on the island of Java is one of the better prints, if not the best print I was able to make from that fogged paper. The picture is from a month long trip to Indonesia in 2019. Trying not to loose my balance on the thin ridge of volcanic dust (tumble down the wrong direction and you're in serious trouble), I squeezed off several frames, trying to get a good-looking plume within the black abyss. I used a Leica M6 with a Zeiss 28/2.8 lens. The film was FP4+.

By the way, this is a straight colour scan of the print and on my monitor it looks exactly like the print itself. Well done CanoScan 9000 Mark something!

And here is a video of the environs at the same spot. Man, what a stunningly wild and beautiful landscape!

And it's as short as that, fellow photo-nuts. Now we can all go back to watching camera reviews :-P

I used to think of writing a mildly sarcastic rant about youtube camera/lens "reviews". Then I re-discovered Phil Rogers's hilarious blog post about said topic here. That settled it for me; I couldn't have expressed myself nearly as well as Phil. He wrote that in 2015. Blimey, was it so bad even back then?

On the other hand, buried next to all the atrociousness, there is so much wonderful stuff on youtube. Once in a while AI gets smart and recommends me something that I probably couldn't have found myself. For example, take this video about Dutch photographer Krass Clement. A thoughtful and articulate man, who has deeply thought about photography...and my god, his photographs!

Two Trees

Did you know that time does not exist on a photon? Remember time dilation? As you speed up, your clock ticks slower and slower, up to the speed of light. And on a photon, which travels at the speed of light, the clock stops. Weird, ha? 

So, can we say that without time, a photon has no “personal” history? That's what I infer from reading up on it.

~

For over two decades my parents have been spending the hot summers in a small flat on the southern coast of Turkey. The view from the balcony is spectacular, especially with a lovely pair of eucalyptus trees on the shore. Whenever I visit them, I photograph these trees.

Left is east and right is west. Hence, the above photo was made close to sunset.

Often you see people enjoying a picnic in their shadow. And the sea provides an ever-changing backdrop, from calm blue to jagged lines of high white foam.

The above two photos are from several years ago. 

Then in the summer of 2022, upon arrival, I looked down from the balcony and was hit by a nasty surprise: one of the trees had completely dried up. They had endured for decades, now this. 

We had no idea what had happened. Incidentally, there was a newspaper article during that time about a much loved but dried up tree in a nearby city. Some weirdos had drilled holes into the trunk of that tree and filled them with acid! At least that was the verdict of a botanist. Well, I got suspicious. Maybe the same sick people had been playing their foul games here as well. I inspected the trunk of the tree carefully but couldn't see anything extraordinary. Anyway, I got in touch with the mayor's office and they said they would look into it. Haven't heard a word from them since.

I was back at my parents' flat two months ago and was relieved that the tree was at least still standing. It was still providing shade for those trying to get out of the sun. But I'm worried about these trees. Their future seems a bit uncertain. I dread the day when I'm going to look down and find that they are gone.

~

At this point you might be thinking "bloody colour photies?". Well, I sometimes have colour neg film in a second camera body. It's an occasional side hobby, which I rather enjoy. I've even done my own C41 developing. More about that in another post maybe. 

My main material is still B&W film though (and more and more digital these days😳). This is with a Rolleiflex and Tmax100 film. 

Printed on a Focomat 2c through a 100mm Focotar on Ilford Classic FB, the quality of the print is all I could wish for.

And this long exposure is with a Nikon F2 and the 55mm/f2.8 Micro-Nikkor on FP4+, during a moonrise. By the way, the white spot in the lower centre is a warning sign that shows where a turtle (Caretta Caretta) has laid eggs. 

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Consider this: photons leave the sun, hit and reflect off the moon, the sand, the sea, those two trees, and come through my lens and land on my film, reduce silver halide crystals to metallic silver and render a picture. From their perspective, they are emitted and absorbed at the same instant. With a non-ticking clock, which can hardly be called a clock, none of those photons could possibly tell the story of their journey. Yet, they enable us to tell our stories with photo(n)graphs!

The Ship of Theseus

Is there a way to start a blog post with Greek mythology and not sound awfully pretentious? I don't know, but I love the question at the end of the story. You most probably know it anyway, so I'll make it very brief. After slaying the Minotaur in the Cretan labyrinth, Theseus escapes to Delos by ship, some 300 odd kilometers to the north. He arrives as a hero, because he's stopped the sacrificing of Athenian youth to King Minos of Crete. To commemorate Theseus's feat, the Athenians start an annual pilgrimage to Delos with his very ship. Over the years, wear and tear on the ship make maintenance work inevitable. Rotten planks have to be replaced by new ones. Observing this, there comes a time when Greek philosophers ask an interesting question: once every part of the ship has been replaced, is it still "the ship of Theseus"?

The never-ending rebuilding of Istanbul brings to my mind Theseus's ship. As in "is it still my Istanbul?". But thinking this over now, maybe the proper (Greek) analogy would be "you can't swim in the same river twice". Anyhow, during the pandemic this building was on my walking route and I loved the single window in the facade. Did the owner of that flat just say "The hell with my neighbours and regulations. I'm gonna knock down the wall here and open a window!"? A couple of months after I made the first photo a gaping void replaced the window, signaling what was going to come next. Shortly after, as expected, the whole thing went down. Now a new building is there. Its shape is remarkably similar to its predecessor's. So far, it's a white facade, sans window. That might come later!

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All three of these photos were made with a Bronica RF645 and the 65mm/f4 lens. They are printed on 24x30cm Ilford Classic FB paper.

The first two frames are on Tmax100 film and were developed in Tmax (1+9) at 24 degrees Celsius. The last frame is from a few weeks ago and is on the new Kentmere 100, which I developed in home-mixed D76. This is my first ever roll of Kentmere 100 and it looks all right. I probably should reduce the development time a bit though; the negs look a bit contrasty.

The Game

I've long thought of writing about the zines I and four other photographers published over the course of 5-6 years, but wasn't quite sure where and how to start, because there are many aspects to it. I didn't want to force it, so I let it linger. And now, whilst on holiday, sitting in a strong breeze, from a fairly high vantage point watching the Mediterranean waves crash onto the shore, the content of this post started to form in my mind and I pulled out the laptop. Here it goes...

It is called "Gözaltı", which literally translates to "under-the-eye". It also means "being under surveillance" and "being in custody"; plenty of subtext there. Self-publishing the zine had quite a few pain points, one of them being coughing up the 100 Euros per photographer. 500 Euros, that was roughly the cost of 2000 zines, each 16x24cm in size, with 32 pages. 100 Euros per photographer, every 6 months, for a zine we give away for free, without expecting anything in return. It doesn't sound too much, but it was a problem that came up in our discussions quite often. Why throw good money out of the window? We talked about trying to find a sponsor and what not, but eventually continued to cover all costs from our own pockets.

Anyway, the moment we were done with the edit and design of our fifth issue and had to collect the money, one of our photographers decided he'd had enough and pulled out. Obviously, you can't blame anyone on money problems; everybody has their own circumstances after all. So, with four remaining in the group, we had the challenge of completely redesigning the issue, and the question of whether we would continue as four people or whether we should look for another photographer. In the end, an excellent photographer whose style we thought would enrich the zine, and who, as a person, would also be a good fit to the group, accepted to join. And indeed, with her contribution of pictures and her help in the edit, I think issue 5 turned out really well.

I should very briefly summarize the concept of the zine. We aimed to publish an issue every 6 months. Beforehand, we decided on a theme, usually a simple word. For example, the theme for issue 5 was "Game". Then we have about 4 months to produce photos that fit the theme. In the last 2 months we try to finalize the edit, the sequencing, the interior design, the cover design and the printing. Once printed, the cycle begins again. And in the meantime, we also deal with distribution of the printed zine, another can of worms.

The editing & sequencing was always the highlight for me. Because here we would all gather in a suitable space, with all pictures laser printed in small format which would be easy to pin up on a board, and we would all talk about the photographs. It was extremely enriching to hear everyone's opinion on each picture and why this and that sequence would or would not work (which could be an entire new post). This was our final edit, but there were many other candidates prior to this.

A social media presence, especially on Instagram, is also a must for visibility. So, after publication, we prepared all sorts of "content".

With the camera it's a bit goofy and I slightly cringe when I see it now. But I did take the photo with that camera and lens. I was on a conference trip to Barcelona and only took the plain-prism F2 with an old pre-AI 35mm/f2.8 Nikkor with me. You can also see the front cover and get an idea about the size of the zine.

This is another one of my pics. It still fits the theme, but has a lot of sadness in it as well. We used it as the closing photo. The first and last photo, and the two-page spreads always had somewhat more importance and I could often sense some hard-supressed rivalry for those spots :)

Here are a few short notes about the above photos:

1. A spontaneous scene in Istanbul. I had a Pentax 645Nii with its standard 75mm/f2.8 lens with me. This camera is a workhorse but somehow I can't fully bond with it. I could say it's a close friendship but not a love affair. I'm not exactly sure why, but the way it extends towards the front, especially with anything but the 75mm, must have something to do with it. The film was Tmax400.

2. A playground in Adana in southern Turkey. Made with a Leica M6 and 35mm/f2 ASPH Summicron. My standard companion for 20+ years. The film was Ilford FP4.

3. Barcelona, as I already mentioned. The film was Tmax400.

4. A zoo. The camera was a Nikon F4 (which I hate) and the 45mm/f2.8 pancake (which I love). The film was Ilford Delta 100. The fine detail on that 30x40cm print I find quite remarkable.

Quite a motley of cameras...that can't be a good sign.

I had two more photos in that issue which I've not included in this post.