Inspiring Photographers
I got this today:
Your site stats for 10/18/2003:
Your site “TIFFINBOX” received 1 new subscribers today.
It has 10 total subscribers and is ranked #666 on Bloglet.
Not one to be superstitious, but can someone please SUBSCRIBE to TiffinBox.org [use the box in the left column] and knock my insidious ranking down? Tell a friend or friends.
Thanks! :~)
From time to time, I am going to go out on a limb and recommend books that are both interesting and useful. While initially they will be about photography, I promise to research books that will interest designers and writers as well. If you are reading this and want to send in your suggestion, I would love to hear from you. Send in your suggestions to me at: seshu[at]pipalproductions[dot]com.
Here is the first of what I hope will be many books you can use:
I am a big fan of Frank Van Riper's column in Camera Works, The Washington Post's online feature about photography. His writing is lucid and his experiences as a photographer universal, such that we can all learn from him and his wife, Judith Goodman.
Last Christmas a friend gifted me Riper's book – Talking Photography – a collection of his columns that have appeared on the website.
No matter how you classify yourselves – an emerging professional or an ardent amateur – I recommend this book to you. Apart from technical “how-to's,” the author clearly describes the “why's” behind doing certain things on photo assignment. The writing is authorative, but not overwhelming or intimidating. You don't have to read it cover-to-cover. You are given the liberty of picking and choosing columns that interest you. Eventually, I suspect, you will end up reading them all. They are that good.
Much like my former post post, there is another photo exhibit that's making the rounds in the US. Scroll down below for dates and times.
Associated with the exhibit is a symposium that promises to discuss the political weight images carry (in the context of the British Raj, of course). Hot topic, in my opinion. How are South Asians perceived now has much to do with how we were photographed in the past. I am sure Vijay Prashad of The Karma of Brown Folk fame has something to say about this.
19th-century Photos Show Indian Monuments Location: Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St., New Haven, Conn.
Thu., Oct. 16 through Sun., Jan. 11, 2004 at the Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St., New Haven, Conn.
Free and open to the public.
The Yale Center for British Art presents “Traces of India: Photography, Architecture and the Politics of Representation” – a new exhibition of more than 200 19th-century photographs of India’s monuments. Organized by the Canadian Center for Architecture, the exhibition will show major sites on Indian history and demonstrate the interpretive nature of photography of British India. On display: photographs, engravings, prints, maps, books, postcards, posters and other artifacts. A related symposium, “Representing the Raj,” on Oct. 17 and 18 will look at the photos’ political and cultural messages.
The art center is open Tue. – Sat., 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sun., Noon to 5 p.m.. It is closed Mondays and major holidays.
For more info., call (203) 432-2853 or visit www.yale.edu/ycba.
I recently (as of two minutes ago) heard about this opportunity. Thanks to Jim MacMillan and the NPPA-L (the National Press Photographers Association's list serv) for spreading the word.
Please direct your enquiries about this scholarship to the appropriate folks. I am just a messenger.
$5,000 for your education!
The Ron Patel Scholarship Fund is now accepting applications for 2004. This year, the $5,000 scholarship will be awarded to a photojournalism student to advance his or her graduate or undergraduate education, according to fund president Mary Patel. Deadline is December 1, 2003.
Ron Patel was the renowned editor of the Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer, and Mary Patel's husband, until his death on Jan. 7, 2000.
There are no age restrictions on this scholarship. The $5,000 check will made out to the school and the student so the winner must either be in school or about to begin.
The Philadelphia Conference is assisting with outreach and details.
Complete details are availabe online at:http://www.philadelphiaconference.org/scholarship
Questions may be directed to: scholarship@philadelphiaconference.org
Om writes with great regret about how he is missing out on the Nasreen Mohamedi show at the Talwar Gallery in NYC. I have to confess I had never heard of Mohamedi before Om mentioned it in his blog. Given that I live so close to the city (well, relatively) I should really try and check it out before it closes on October 25.
Anyone else visited the gallery and seen the show? Want to send me a short 100-word report? I'll promise to post it here and credit you for it (of course!)
Talwar is showing her photographs from the 1960's and 70's, which she never exhibited. {From NYTimes}
KODAK sells most cameras in India
Business Standard, India“For the US-based imaging major Kodak, India has become the largest market
for cameras, bigger than China and the US.”
Om Malik, blogger-writer-thinker extrordinaire has had a book out for some time about the telecom industry. One of his blogs – Not Really Indian – is a must read (listed under Desi Blogs to the right).
The Economist just called his book, “Broadbandits: Inside the $750 billion Telecom Heist,” the most entertaining of all the books on the topic. Go out and buy it. Or better yet, check the Writer's Nook in the left column of this blog to find his book and buy it through Amazon.com. You'll be supporting this site and Om.
GOVT plans to allow aerial photography Times of India, India UDAIPUR:
“As part of its efforts to do away with archaic and irrelevant regulations, the government is planning to repeal the law preventing aerial photography.”
Airports today. Temples tomorrow. One can only hope. I remember being chastised for making images at a temple just outside of Chennai. The guy who came up to me and asked me to put my cameras away was the official “bell-ringer” of the temple. Not your garden variety cop. An argument was inevitable as the man gave no rationale for his extra-curricular police activity. I can understand that the temple sanctum is sacrosanct but can anyone tell me why photography outside the main sanctum is such a big national risk? Anyone else have similar experiences?
Negotiating contracts has never been easy for freelance photographers. But here comes the The Independent Photographers Toolkit by the National Press Photographer's Association. Check it out and bookmark it! It is a work in progress so expect to see new links and features.
The NYTimes is rightly fascinated by the blind making photographs. Read All About It Here.
And if you don't have a NYTimes account, you can read the article below.
Photographers Make Art as Another Way of Seeing
By ERIN CHAN
Ben Paige cannot see light; he cannot see anything. But to create photographs — his pictures are haunting, in black and white with light that swirls and sways and sprays — Mr. Paige does not need to see. Besides, in a certain sense, he already does.
Mr. Paige relies on concepts he has already visualized, and on what he hears, touches, smells and tastes, as well as what he remembers from the three decades before his sight went away. Sometimes, he has an idea days before he creates a picture. Other times, inspiration hits him as he walks into the photo studio.
He is part of Seeing With Photography Collective, which works out of the basement studio at Visions at Selis Manor, 135 W. 23rd Street in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, a community center for people who are blind.
Among the others in the collective are Sonia Soberats, who, like Mr. Paige, takes the Access-a-Ride shuttle to the studio every Thursday, and Ed Bassuk, who has cataracts. He shuffles in each week from Chelsea with his assistant, usually toting a Peruvian felt hat as a prop and a disposable camera for candid shots.
When Ms. Soberats, 65; Mr. Paige, 67; Mr. Bassuk, 86; and others arrive, they navigate six sets of doors and a staircase to reach the studio in the basement, where they find other members of the collective and some sighted volunteers.
To people in the collective, photography is more than a hobby: it is a chance, in a way, to see again. “I put all my heart and soul into it,” said Mr. Paige, who lost his sight to cataracts 35 years ago. “It means everything to me.”
The collective has put together a 54-piece exhibition called “From Within: A Photographic Exhibit of Work by Visually Impaired Artists,” which runs through Oct. 24 at the Hudson Guild's Gallery II at 119 Ninth Avenue, between 17th and 18th Streets. Last week, several in the collective headed to Arnheim, the Netherlands, to talk about their methods with the sighted and the blind.
The instructor, Mark Andres, started teaching photography to people with impaired vision 17 years ago at Lighthouse International, a nonprofit organization focused on vision rehabilitation. Five years ago, after experimenting with photograms, which are produced by exposing objects on photo paper, Mr. Andres started leading the collective in a technique called light painting. So far, the group has embraced light painting with the zeal of a thrill seeker trying a new roller coaster.
Members of the collective incorporate one another in their photographs, turning friends, many of whom they have never seen, into art. They capture scenes and concepts they have already constructed mentally — for example, confinement in a doghouse, a metaphor for the difficulties of being disabled in a world built for those who are not.
For his part, Mr. Paige wants to evoke fear in his photographs. On a recent Thursday, Mr. Paige set up to shoot a subway ride with three passengers reading newspapers, their heads on the seats beside them.
“It's the train from hell,” Mr. Paige said. “I do very scary pictures. It makes people stand up and pay attention. When people say `Wow!' that's when I know I've accomplished what I'm looking for.”
As Mr. Paige sat on a chair that would soon become a row of subway seats, Stephen Dominguez, a photographer for 16 years who has only partial sight in one eye because of glaucoma and cataracts, helped him set up.
Using the collective's usual method, Mr. Paige left the shutter of his Speed Graphic open so that he and Mr. Dominguez could manipulate different aspects of the scene. That way, they could capture multiple images on a single frame.
Handling his flashlight as deftly as a laser pointer, Mr. Dominguez highlighted human torsos, subway poles and rubber mice. He muted other items, mainly people's heads. As the lighted items' images were recorded on the film, the nonlighted heads remained dark. Mr. Dominguez lighted them only when the passengers shifted positions and their heads rested on top of the makeshift subway benches.
When the lights came on, there on the film were the headless newspaper readers with their lost heads on the seats beside them. But when Mr. Paige heard Mr. Dominguez describe the photo, he was not fully satisfied. He started over. After four tries over two weeks, Mr. Paige finally heard a description he liked and declared his photo done.
Ms. Soberats's intentions are different. She seeks beauty rather than fear. For her, creating photographs has not only instilled a sense of pride — she insists on doing all the lighting — but also serves as a form of therapy. In 1991, glaucoma took her sight, a few months after Hodgkin's disease killed her only son and a couple years before ovarian cancer killed her only daughter.
Ms. Soberats worked through her grief and found an outlet in photography two years ago. She first came to the class to learn how to take pictures of her family, and eventually found a form of self-expression.
“When I tell people I do photography, they don't believe me,” she said. “When a person achieves something that others think you can't because you are blind, you feel it much more.”