Going digital doesn't get you off the hook. Hey, yes that sudden freedom - you can snap away without worry - may not quite be what it seems. With film you'd be hard hit spending your frames like that, certainly, but going digital well its not free either.
Question for today. How many digital images are worth one film image?
A digital image may not cost much, but you'll agree with me that it costs something? And would you agree that, generally, you take many, many, more digitals than film? Probably. The other day I filled up a whole 512mb of memory, and deleted the whole lot! I think, in all, I have at most 200 rolls of film collected since my first camera at the age of 15 (was a loverly old mechanical Nikon FM, with a wonky vivitar 35-105 zoom, and I took some of my favourite images with it), that's just over 20 years ago! Some of those images were published and not only paid for themselves but also for many more rolls of film.
Ok so the point being here that every little digital takes up a teeny bit of electricity, often spent without result, i.e. thrown down the drain. And every time your battery runs dry, well you plug it in and the mains gradually tops it up. It's kind of like a leaky tap, after a while it leads to an enormous loss of water, as Thames Water will warn us (We have a drought in london and a hose pipe ban. It's also to be noted that Thames Water company themselves lose huge amounts of water from leaky old victorian pipe, they fix a leak every six minutes which shows, not how well they are doing, but how bad the problem is! Naturally they don't hesitate to charge us for their problem)
You do pay for your electricity, I hope? So tell me, if you added up all the images you took and chucked away in the life of your digital camera how much would it have cost you, and how much was completely wasted?
I think we all suffer from Leaky Tap Syndrome, in more ways than one. We don't notice it but drip, drip, drip, there goes our cash. New technologies often encourage waste over the long term.
17 September 2008 - 8:09am — Philip Cartland
"Photography is clearly all that hunting is, except the bullet, even down to the jargon; and the photographs are treated exactly like stuffed heads." - Alistair Graham, Gardeners of Eden
Some people like a trophy of the trophy: Better trophy photos
What about press photography there is an awful lot of trophy hunting there?
Yes, thanxs James, a perfect link should have thought to link to them!
17 September 2008 - 8:08am — Philip Cartland
1900 71.1 million
1950 166.3 million
1970 275.1 million
1985 419.5 million
2000 626.6 million
2025 1,172.6 million
Source
Are the effects and importance of human encroachment on habitats, given back seat to campaigns to save animals within ever decreasing national parks?
"In terms of elephant ecology, a single elephant pooulation in a national park is as incomplete a phenomenon as a single elephant in a zoo enclosure." Ian Parker - 'What I tell you three times is true'
"Tourists may be as malign as a multitude of poachers in their multifarious influences upon animals and habitats" - Ian Parker
Just some thoughts to keep you on your toes.
17 September 2008 - 8:07am — Philip Cartland
Walking past a godown, (Mombasa Kenya) filled 15 feet high with crumbling dried fish, I took this picture of a man loading some of it into a van.
Contrary to expectations, much of this dried fish does not originate off the coast of Kenya - despite plenty of deep sea fishing businesses, the 'shallow' continental shelf is narrow (50km at it widest point) and so large scale fishing is quite reduced - but comes by dhow or ship from Somalia and the Arabian peninsular.
Dried fish is a delicacy amongst coastal people who cook it in a variety of ways: some of them fry it or make it into a soup, others make it into a fish curry.
Fish oil is also extracted under great 'pressure', from dried fish. The old process is very interesting I think. The fish is lowered into a deep well - often found in the warehouse afore mentioned. At various levels salt is added, and then finally a huge pile of stones is dumped on top - like two tons of stone perhaps. A couple of months later the oil has oozed out. The Fish oil is used to protect the hull of wooden Dhows from insects and the remaining dried fish is still sold as food despite the absense of its oil1.
1 - 'Cargoes of the East' by Esmond Bradley Martin and Chrysee Perry Martin.
17 September 2008 - 8:05am — Philip Cartland
I've just bought the following book: South Africa: The Structure of Things Then, by David Goldblatt. Rather than go into the usual review I thought I would take one image and its caption (images are extensively captioned in this book). I'd first say that Goldblatt takes great pains to avoid the decorative, and further pains to make sure the full context is there. This book documents and informs thoroughly and therefore is priceless, in my opinion, not only as a record of the effects of Apartheid in South Africa, but also as a model for other documentary photographers to work with, while also acting as an antidote to the hysteria of mass market photojournalism.
"Khaki clothes for sale here': Orania settlement for the Afrikaner volk. Orania, Cape, 25th Sep 1992.
"The significance of khaki has changed for the Boers. During the Anglo-Boer war of 1899-1902, khaki, the uniform of the kakies or tommies, was identified with British imperialism, the name kakiebos, khaki bush, was given to one of the more unpleasant weeds, the seeds of which were imported for the first time with fodder for the British forces in that war. But to right-wing Afrikaners of the 1980s and 90s, who regard themselves as the upholders and defenders of Boer republicanism, khaki has taken on an entirely different symbolic value. Khaki pants and shirts are the working clothes of many Afrikaners farmers; khaki symbolises the attachment of the Boer to his land. Khaki became the uniform of right-wing activists in such movements as the AWB [link to a pretty grusome image taken by a member of the so called Bang Bang club and marking the final days of Apartheid].
Here in Orania, a settlement established by right-wing Afrikaners as the nucleus of a proposed Afrikaner state or volkstaat, the khaki clothes for sale at a house in the village were therefore a means of demonstrating identification with certain values. They stood for Afrikaner mobilisation in the fight for their 'heritage', their land and as working clothes they signified the ideal of 'self-labour', which was embraced by these who came to Orania. There were to be no Blacks in Orania; there was to be none of the culture of dependence of Whites on Blacks for physical work that had been endemic in South African society since its origins in the economy of slavery at the Cape.
Before coming to Orania the man of this house held quite a senior job in the city of Bloemfintein. Now he earned a fraction of his previous income but declared that he was very happy, 'I get by on very little here and I don't have to worry about Kaffirs, communists, and trade unions'."
There are more pictures from the book here
17 September 2008 - 8:04am — Philip Cartland
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
