The view from Bob Creighton's house near Kilifi, on the coast of Kenya.
Historically this area has become a retirement place for white Kenyans who lease (there are probably some freeholds too) land along the beaches and cliffs.
Kilifi town was once only accessible by an unreliable car ferry, and before that a man powered rope drawn ferry, and now a bridge built by the Japanese. Urban development suddenly expanded tenfold. Speaking to my gran on the phone the other day I asked her how things had changed since I was last there. "The Italians have bought the place out," she said, "they are building multi-story shopping complexes and renting out apartments" The Mafia, she thinks.
The question for anyone - who is not a 'Mafioso', that is - wanting to live in this poverty stricken paradise, is how do you make a living? Tony Britchford, now deceased, came up with a pretty good plan - using a radio he became the 'yachties' SSB connection within the western Indian Ocean.
For 18 or so years he guided passing yachts into the well protected Kilifi creek through a break in the outer reef, under the bridge (70'/21m, some yachts would drift backwards under it just in case they had to motor forward in the event it was too low) and also under the power lines spanning the creek soon after the bridge.
The anchorage was just below his and our house seen in the picture, from where he offered services and advice.
17 September 2008 - 7:59am — Philip Cartland
We are a culture of discoverers. Everywhere we are discovering things and if we are not then we are wishing we were. Choose any field, there we will find our discoverers in any number of professions: we have scientists cataloguing, we have travellers wandering, explorers poking about, entrepreneurs, anthropologists, investigative journalist, photographers, internet surfers, etc...
When we embark on a mission of discovery we have set up for ourselves certain goals. Even if we decide simply to drop everything and head out, we cannot leave without some kind of justification. Our justification can be any variety of things: discovering the source of the Nile, simply getting away from it all, exploring a hitherto unknown jungle for a Bird of Paradise, learning something new, simple entertainment or it could be researching a cure for cancer.
We understand, from the onset, any goal must be for the benefit of the individual or the group otherwise it would be pointless. This is the first prerequisite. But the second prerequisite (intrinsic anyway) is that the object of pursuit must reside in the unknown, a place or idea devoid of man's touch... virgin territory, otherwise, obviously it would have been discovered already.
So once these two prerequisites are satisfied the voyager heads out to places hitherto unknown, in the hopes that there he will find his sought after delights.
The road is full of perils, it is very much the hero's journey with pitfalls around every corner, but with bravery and endurance, at last, the goal is achieved (our hero can fudge it if he fails, after all he lives in a marketing, ad infested world). His discovery, however, is rendered useless, unless he promptly returns home to report his findings to his fellows.
But his compatriots are very sceptical and he must provide evidence, he must provide a photograph, a diagram of data, a carcass of the bird of Paradise in question, a witness, anything to prove his exploits otherwise he risks falling into obscurity as a charlatan. If he does as required, presently he will have convinced the world of his sincerity and thereby, with luck, receive a degree of fame as reward. He proceeds to write his memoirs, canonizing himself as true and brave. He squeezes every last drop of juice out of the hype by assigning himself medals of accomplishment and accepting offerings of respect from his fellows. He is now the first human to have achieved such and such commendable height and has now established his importance.
Meanwhile, our innocent virgin 'jungle' discovery has been lying quietly fallow. And when the furore has died down, our compatriots guided by the laws of the state which are wisely made for good business practice, set about extracting the benefits, because in our troubled lives anything that will relieve our suffering, anything with the promise of a utopian life must be penetrated very thoroughly in order to extract all that is beneficial for the good of humans and the propagation of its species.
Our compatriots dig into the discovery's unforeseen nooks, analyse its details, and prepare it for the plate, so to speak, before finally extracting and consuming it. This last phase is accomplished very efficiently and very soon our virgin is not a virgin anymore, but an old and wasted lifeless hag.
Though there is a vague sense of guilt (especially among sentimentalists), and those who did not reap the benefits complain bitterly of wonton exploitation and misuse, our guilt and gripes do not stop us embarking on yet further and more refined voyages of discovery.
And so we grow richer and richer from the good works of our prestigious discoverers who innocently bring us reports of wealth in far flung lands and hidden realms. Wherever our discoverers stick their noses, soon their fellows will follow and we know in the case of jungles, there is too much good wood to waste on nature and we know too, rather us be rich, than us be poor and others rich.
17 September 2008 - 7:57am — Philip Cartland
I read The Bang Bang Club by Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva in one sitting.
Before you've even hit the second page, you're immersed, bullets singing past you, rusty bars and heavy knives jabbing at you, and the smell of petrol on flaming flesh.
The insanity of racial violence bought to you by way of 'beach bum' photographers and, dowsed with dollops of intimacy and history; girl friends, mandrax and bhang parties, Reuter contracts, suicide and Afrikaner gunslinging racists (itching for a full on battle to the death with black people). Out of this chaos emerge images that win the pullizers, sell newspapers and signpost history.
But the awe dies, you've realised, that in fact, bringing yourself to within a hairsbreadth of death (yours or someone else's), might not be so heroic after all, its like voyeurism into lunacy, but once you've seen it, an apathetic deadness sinks in, faith in life destroyed when you see how much is now left to repair.
Apartheid has barely faded and the Rwandan genocide is coming alive and then Iraq and Iraq, and shit you know I've missed some. bang, bang, bang!
17 September 2008 - 7:54am — Philip Cartland
Here's a little snippet from the book, the Zanzibar Chest, by Aidan Hartley:
"I managed to get a vehicle from some Tutsi guerrillas who knew me, and Lizzie piled in with photographers Sebastiao Salgado and Giles Peress of Magnum. Snap, snap, snap went the photographers, all in a line. Up ahead, a truckload of bloated Hutus blasted by RPG: snap, snap, snap. Go on for five minutes. Heap of corpses seething with maggots, partially eaten by dogs: snap, snap, snap."
A ripping book.
17 September 2008 - 7:51am — Philip Cartland
"Obviously there are far more areas of black than white in my vision, and the space that I'm so interested in looking is to be gotten through my use of Black as a POSITIVE space rather than a negative - (The way most photographs dict[tate]"?
Page from Gibson's diary describing his experience press checking the 'Somnambulist'.
Source: archives of the Center for Creative Photography (Univ of Arizona), I am the fortunate owner of a book, describing the best of these archive, called 'Original Sources'.
'Original Sources' has lots of interesting and rare info, including diary entries, collected pamphlets, letters and paraphernalia that reveal otherwise hidden motives and ideas behind the photographers and their images.
17 September 2008 - 7:50am — Philip Cartland
Not surprisingly Nobuyuyoshi Araki dominates this book I'm reading, 'Setting Sun - writings by Japanese photographers'. Some photographers are quietly subtle, not Araki.
Here are some juicy bits.
"As a photographer I am confidence, overconfident - abundant - sensation, constipation sensation." - Photographic discourse at a strip show
There are quite a few self references to his own intelligence and genius:
"Why does the morning of a hangover have to be nice weather? The strong autumn sunrays hit my intelligent head and double my headache." - Photo apparatus between man and woman
"As usual I have got a hangover. My intelligent head is throbbing." - My father's lover, or, an introduction to portrait photography
Relationship politics behind the scenes of a strip show. Apparently Rika was sleeping with her sisters boyfriend, and, by the sounds of it, Araki himself. Her sister, Komadayu, tolerated it but couldn't handle it. Obviously Rika could.
"The adorable Rika, who squealed as we got into the bath together, who was so shy (yeah, right!) - women are more terrifying than photography." Photographic discourse at a strip show
Stuff-it to silent shutters and invisible masters:
"Even when I take photographs on the street, I don't hide the fact that I'm shooting. Until the person notices that her photograph is being taken, there's no motivation to release the shutter." - Photographic discourse at a strip show
Araki believes himself to be an advocate of anything woman:
"If you photograph 'something' amazing. it'll be an amazing photograph. That's obvious. In which case, the people being shot, must have something amazing for the photograph. They make big effort, women do. I cheer them on. A photographer is the cheering section for a woman's moan, and her slave." Photographic discourse at a strip show
There are couple of references to his desire to touch his dead mothers breast - can't quite work that one out myself. Also he wished he could photograph her at the funeral but received 'suspicious' looks from his relatives. Here he speaks of the phone call that informed him of his mother's death:
"I'm always up before my wife and am idle - I tooled around with my dick, as I usually do, and thought about my Mother. And yes my premonition was on the mark. The phone's ring was like a cry." - My Mother's Death, or An Introduction to Family Photography
Here's an earlier post on Araki with links to images etc.
17 September 2008 - 7:49am — Philip Cartland
This week I found a translation of written works by Japanese photographers, called 'Setting Sun' (book sale link, short review). A cursory glance convinced me it might be worth buying.
There is too much to go into here but I thought, over the next couple of posts, I'd say a thing or two about 3 of the photographers that stood out - things perhaps, that you wouldn't pick up just by viewing a few images alone.
Ordeal by Roses
Eikoh Hosoe, quite a well known and regarded photographer on this side of the world, writes about his photo session by invitation with Yukio Mishimi (pictured in the thumb, a prolific writer, who is considered by many critics as the most important Japanese novelist of the 20th century). The book arising from this was called 'Ordeal by Roses' (Barakei) and expressed the themes of Life and death. Now, here's the story as written by Eikoe Hosoe himself:
"Despite the fact that 'Ordeal by Roses' was a document about life and death, I felt it taboo to mention the word 'death'' in regard to the theme of the book, until the fall of 1970. At the end of that summer, we changed the sequence and layout of the work for publication of a second edition. Mishima chose the titles for each section and called the final chapter "Death" then asked for my approval. I accepted the suggestion at once, having known all along that the essence of the last section was morbid. Shortly after this decision, on November 25, 1970, Mishima committed suicide by seppuku [ritual suicide, was an intregal aspect of feudal Japan. It developed as an intregal part of the code of bushido and the discipline of the samurai warrior class.] at Ichigaya Heights."
Later Hosoe writes:
Several of the photographs were blown up and used in the exhibition [called 'Yukio Mishima', held in October, a month before his death] in a section that Mishima titled 'River of Flesh', beside which he wrote: "I will never admit the decay of the flesh"
Its worth getting hold of the book to get the subtleties and details.
More images by Hosoe
17 September 2008 - 7:46am — Philip Cartland
Take this question put to Guy Tillim:
PM: At the same time you admit to capturing the 'worthy moment', which also points to all the countless moments of truth which go undocumented. Are there any photographs you have taken, which beyond the notion of looking for the photographic moment, have amounted to a visual lie?
and the answer:
GT: Yes, but I won't tell you which ones! Perhaps in this context there are no lies, but then there is no truth either.
Then you look at Tillim's images.
We only need half a brain to realise images lie (even quite as badly as say, the british media), and quite substantially more than a brain, bordering on superhuman abilities, to find the lie. If there is any judgment to be planted perhaps it should be sown near the intentions of the 'peddler'. In the case of the british media, the sentence? Life. In the case of Guy Tillim? The right to lie.
17 September 2008 - 7:45am — Philip Cartland
"In tokyo he is high-fived by men in the street and mobbed by young women clamoring to be photographed by him (a Japanese game show even offered that privilege as a prize); he receives letters from women telling him, what they are prepared to do in his pictures, out grossing each another in what appears to be a frenzy of exhibitionism."
It's easy to recognise who David Chandler is talking about in his review in the November issue of photoworks. There's an exhibition of Araki's images at the Barbican and I'm wondering if the gallery's not just another of the clamoring masses desiring to host or be hosted by this man's manic produce. I'm not against him totally or 'for' him for that matter - just annoyed.
There was a time when I would pick up one of his books, but absorbing the sheer number of his images is like trying to view a landscape through a shattered pane, or trying to stick your hand into a shoal of fish in the hopes of catching one. And all his women wrapped in ropes, I'm sick of it really. The analysis below by David Chandler says it nicely:
"But the addict is ultimately a bore; too immersed in himself, too tiring to be with, too reliant on the delusions and compliance of others around them. Most great art comes from a singular and obsessive attention to things, it is borne of an urgent desire. Yet great art also opens out from that point. Spending time with Araki's work is, for me, like being confined to an addiction, like being dragged on an interminable journey of the self with photography as a desperate and continual means of personal re-fabrication and with photographs as a gaudy and pale replacements of life" - David Chandler
P.S - "Arguably Japan's greatest living photographer"? Huuum..?
17 September 2008 - 7:43am — Philip Cartland
What I'd call 'the American traveler photographer mystic' is a strain of photography particularly infectious (to me) and seems to have become a process, originating in Evans, where the face of America is redefined each time someone photographs it in a new way. 'Ordinary' America, in this tradition, appears, largely, to be the subject matter, whether by direct portrait, mundane streets or odd suburban paraphernalia. Ironically the audience, generally speaking could not be further from this apparent 'common' world, yet it is amongst this audience and through its media where the identity of America is actually defined and reflected visually.Photo by Stephen Shore, from Uncommon Places - Houk Gallery If they (our folk outside the photographic sphere) get to see these works at all, would they not be looking at themselves and their pictured environment with perplexity rather than recognition? I suspect, too, that they would be too busy living their ordinariness to waste time on a photograph. Perhaps they won't even be aware, 20 years from the shutter's moment of truth, that via a gradual cultural osmosis, photography will have given them a new face and called it America. Because cultures don't really model themselves on the photographic image; they develop instead along their own lines of traditions and norms, we may find the public visual map of America, widely differing from its actuality and that the pictorial definition is far more about the photographer (and his following) than the subject and their identity, however noble or ideal the pursuit. Was America ever like Stephen Shore's vision, if so is it still that way? For those of us that aren't in that world we may really think it is, if we don't carefully notice that the dates say 1973-1979, or when at some point we are shown a differing image by a new generation of photographers.We've tired long ago of the oft repeated 'superstitious' fear claiming that the camera steals one's soul. Perhaps though, it's really true, well in so far as it substitutes it with a select fake?
17 September 2008 - 7:41am — Philip Cartland
