Mucilage

The "Spiderweb"

In late spring 2021, millions living around the Sea of Marmara woke up to an environmental disaster. Huge swathes of the sea surface were covered in sea-snot, aka mucilage. Turns out it had been in the making for decades and Mother Nature finally had enough. Apparently, She'd been telling us that She didn't feel well in her own language for a long time, but some of those who should've been listening and acting were clearly not paying attention.

When phosphorus and nitrogen levels rise in the sea, combined with warmer and relatively stagnant water, a reaction is triggered in phytoplanktons which begin secreting mucilage (for more detail: Eutrophication).  Why do phosphorus and nitrogen levels rise? Because of human activity, plus mismanagement. It seems there is a limit to how much untreated waste water you can dump into the sea!

So, one June morning, the shores of Istanbul, which can be breathtakingly beautiful before sunrise, looked like this:

 

The two B&W pictures here are part of the emotional fallout of this event in my psyche. I made them because I found the graphical resemblance to "mucilage" very striking, and because I felt that they mirrored the miserable condition we are in. They were made in the same summer of 2021. Both are found objects and there is absolutely no interference or rearrangement on my part.

The "Angelfish"

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I made both pictures with a Rolleiflex T (plus a Rolleinar 1 in the "Angelfish") and Kodak Tmax100 film. The prints are on 24 x 30 cm Ilford Classic FB paper.

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I'd like to add an epilogue about something fascinating. I made the "Angelfish" on the shore of this salt lake:

Now, whilst wandering around this shore, my shoes sinking into the salt/mud, I recognized some barely noticeable movement in a small puddle of salt-water. Upon a very close look, to my amazement, tiny and very strange red dragons I had never seen before were fluttering around in the extremely saline water. 

Any idea what they are? Maybe I've discovered a new species!*

*Thanks a lot to the one and only Phil Rogers, who with his comment shed light on my ignorance: They are brine shrimp larvae.

Hagia Sophia - Two Views

Despite all its problems, it still is a privilege to be living in this megacity that has few peers from a historical perspective. It is very rich in super-symbolic icons from Islam and Christianity. One of these is the 1600+ years old Hagia Sophia, a Unesco World Heritage Site, which was built as a church, then was converted to a mosque, then a museum, and finally, since a couple of years back, is a mosque again. Being one of those super-symbolic icons, it has been fiercely fought over as to what ideology it should serve. My guess is that the fight ain't over yet.

These are two views from Hagia Sophia, when it was still a museum. One is an interior made from the upper gallery, the other is an outward view from a window on the upper gallery, towards the Blue Mosque - another icon - in the distance. I love harsh mid-day sun for this kind of architecture. I think it defines the form of a curved dome very nicely.

The negs for these photos are from 2007 but the prints are from a few weeks ago. I was going through my negative archive, inspecting them with a loupe (a reversed 50mm lens actually...it does the job), and was struck by the beauty of these two adjacent MF frames. 

Yes, just like a print, negs can be beautiful in their own right. Then I saw that these were Delta400 developed in Perceptol (1+1), a developer I haven't used for ages. Naturally I was curious how they would print. And boy, do they print nicely! The only extra exposure I gave was a bit at the top on both prints; nothing major. The scanner couldn't preserve it, and I'm not too finicky about it either, but there is the tiniest detail in the whites of the upper windows in the interior view.

I also have to add that the optic these negs were made with is amongst the very best I've ever used: a Bronica 65mm f/4 on a Bronica RF645. It's a shame that despite some very nice haptics, the camera is a bit temperamental and not the pinnacle of reliability, but its lenses are absolutely phenomenal. This statement is no hyperbole at all.

The prints are on 24x30cm Ilford Classic paper.

I haven't been to Hagia Sophia since I made these pictures. That's 16 years now. Wow, time does fly. But Istanbul has been so overrun with tourists over the last decade, that every time I passed the church/museum/mosque I saw the endless queues and couldn't muster the determination for another visit.

So, that was it today. Hope it was worth your time. That's the big question, isn't it? Will it be worth my time? Everybody wants our time these days. At least this place is ad free. And by the way, don't bother checking the prices for the Bronica RF645 now! They've become pretty steep. Also, given their track record for reliability, buying one without extensively using and checking it would be a huge risk.

Cheers...and cherish the light!