Multi-tasking

I love bicycles. I think the world would be a fantastic place if there were no motorized vehicles allowed inside the core of a city except for emergency, delivery, and public transportation. Cheung Chau is like that and it’s great. It’s amazing how much quieter it is. Of course, there is always the problem of the weather.

Don’t like the rain. Use an umbrella.

Big is Beautiful

I have had too many cars in my life – all inexpensive, used things, always on the far side of a decade old. One was a 1971 Lincoln Continental in Wimbledon White. It drove like a hovercraft and sucked fuel like a jet on afterburners, but it had an 8-Track and prodding that thing around town while Mayfield’s Superfly soundtrack played was a wondrous experience. I bought it for my feature film and it was a fantastic production vehicle. Could carry a crew of eight easily, while two light kits, sound gear, and camera crap all fit in the trunk with room to spare. Phil and I moved all his belongings in one go, including an IKEA

bookshelf that didn’t even need to be disassembled. It also carried a Euro sized version of vonTrier’s Europa (Zentropa in Canada) inside. It died in Keremeos BC one night, wheezing its last. I grabbed the plates, signed the pink slip over to the hotel, packed up my crap for a courier to pick up, and hopped on a bus to Vancouver, for a wedding of Christal’s friend.

My last car – and if I am lucky, my last car ever – was a 1974 Mercedes 280 that I had restored. It had the best brakes of any vehicle and even after 25 years the doors closed with a thunk. It looked like a car a kid draws. Square and boxy, with just enough curves to be sensual, it didn’t look like a suppository, or not one you could possible insert without excruciating pain. No nonsense elegance.

I just bought a lovely Mamiya RB67SD this weekend as a birthday self-present. It reminds me of the Benz. Boxy but curvy and kinda sexy, and all functional elegance. I got it down in photo-scroungers heaven which is next to stereo heaven and second-hand electronics heaven – basically, blocks of heaven that can take a day, easily, unless you tire of looking and marvelling at stereo gear carved out of solid blocks of unobtanium; every kind of camera ever along with lenses and odds and sods; all else that has an electric heart, including, I am sure, some used pacemakers and maybe an actual Arvik or two.

The Mamiya is big; every review you will ever read will remind you or complain of this. With it in only one hand, you are worried about dropping it. If you don’t have over an octave reach on the piano, it’s a two-hander. I have tiny little hands but a good grip and I like using both hands.

It’s obtrusive and you are aware of taking pictures when using it, which is one of the reasons I bought it. It’s not quite as engrossing as a view camera (I am guessing, never having used one, but wanting to) but it is deliberate. You are probably shooting with a tripod, which makes you consider placement and your lens more than using a digital 35 with a healthy zoom. The waist-level finder stares at you, challenging your composition. Winding the film and cocking the shutter are two operations. The mirror noise reminds me of the Benz’s doors – a healthy kathunka (the shutter is a whisper). There is nothing unsubstantial about it .

It is all about the process and I like processes. I like the rituals when I bench or deadlift or clean the weights for a press. It’s tactile, and I am dying for opportunities to take it out and use it. To get that groove, which I know I will screw up but since I won’t be shooting sports or doing street photography, that’s fine. I’ll probably forget to cock the shutter, or wind the film, or pull the darkslide, and miss the shot, just as I often forgot something with the Moskva V I have and ended up having to trigger the shutter by pushing the little lever that the shutter release rod is supposed to prod. I am hoping that it forces me to concentrate more on the 35mm work with the 30d, which is all to easy to take for granted. The luxury of space is freeing but may also spark carelessness, which is not what I want.

Works of art – or consistently good photos- are deliberate. That’s the big difference. It’s knowing the gear and how things react. And sometimes not being able to see right away is a good thing. To remember what you saw and how it is supposed to look. To remember that when you pick up the film and check the print or the scan and see if it matched.

I hope I enjoy it as much as I want to.

Look and Learn

I like to look.

The other day my friend, Yinni (nee Enid), asked me to help her to take good photographs. It’s flattering of course, but I am sure my answer was not so helpful.

I loaned her a copy of Taschen’s Icons book.

To know how to take good photographs, you need to know what a good photograph is. To know that you need to look and learn.

It’s a simple idea, but in today’s world where the woman next to you at the internet cafe in Florence has a laptop full of craptastic photos of herself and friends in a panoply of drunken poses it’s becoming more difficult. Basically, like everyone is a writer, now with digital cameras everyone is a photographer. Uhhh…no. People get lucky. Take 1000 photos and yes, out of the shit, there will be gold. It’s statistics but not talent. A good photograph is not an accident. A great photographer getting an great photograph accidentally (see Robert Capa’s photo of the soldier being shot) is not as accidental as Mary Myopia getting one – he knows where to be and where to point the camera and he waits. It’s a fine point but think about it for a second and you will see what I mean.

Reverse what I wrote in a piece about equipment: take the digital camera away and put an old manual Pentax with a 35mm lens in the accidental photographer’s hands and see what happens. The gold disappears because AP will take only 36 photos. Do the same with someone who has a developed aesthetic and he will still get gold, and you will see a series of thoughts being worked through on the contact sheet, not a random exploration of stuff like an idiot running pell-mell looking for shiny things.

People ask me how to write better. I say read. Ask me how to take better pictures my answer is the same. Look at good ones and study them. Why is it good? If you don’t like it, why?

If you look at much contemporary art photography you may be at a loss, too, for a lot of it is pretty rarified and obscure (see what I wrote about George Rousse for an example of what I mean). I am far from knowledgeable about contemporary photography but I want to know more because I want to be better.

I go to galleries and, because I don’t live in Paris or New York or London, I buy books. Not too many but I am getting over the hiccup I get when I see the price of a photo book. Amazon is great, unless you accidentally order two copies of a $45 dollar book – thankfully, I caught it in time. I recommend books that don’t rely on pictures but talk about the essence of a photograph – Sontag, Barthes – and books that do.

When I was about ten and started to take pictures and develop them (Kodak Brownie from a pawn shop for $5 which I worked for. Took 620 film which I developed and contact printed using a kit my parents gave me that came with teeny tiny trays and a little box that used an incandescent bulb for the contact print box. I think it cost $15 way back then from Consumers Distributing which had a catalogue that caused me to dream of getting a Praktica SLR for $150 but I ended up moving to a simply Instamatic that took 110 film – which I don’t ever recommend trying to hand process even with a ten-year old’s hands – and with which I tool pictures of telephone and power wires) I went to the library and looked at photo books. Granted, naked women was an impetus – thanks Ralph Gibson – but I just looked and looked.

When I returned to photography after a long hiatus – when my parents gave me a Pentax K1000 for Christmas – I returned to the library. And used book stores.

I am constantly amazed at people who want to be photographers but don’t know who Robert Frank or Cartier-Bresson or Irving Penn. They all know Ansel Adams and Robert Doisneau and Brassai from postcards and they may recognize Annie Liebowitz and Richard Avedon, but that’s usually the extent. It’s like a filmmaker who has never seen a Godard film or Citizen Kane or a writer who has never read Tolstoy or Lolita.

The problem nowadays is how to choose. Galleries are easy. It’s not a big investment. But photo-books are. Space and money.

I found this great website the other day – www.5b4.blogspot.com. It’s all about and only about photobooks, written by a compulsive buyer who really knows his stuff. I can’t remember which blog turned me onto it, but one thing that impressed me was that the site was so good that Alec Soth, a photographer whose excellent work I was lucky enough to see at the Jeu de Palme in Paris, sought out the author who goes by the name of Mr. Whiskets.

So, if you want to take better pictures, read and look. And if you want to know what to read and look at, ask Mr. Whiskets.

Tastes Like Ass

Ass is good.

Take that as you wish and in whatever way you do, I would probably agree with you. In this case, however, I am talking about the animals. Donkey is pretty damn tasty.

While I was in Europe, indulging in luxuriously fatty cheeses, meats, olive salads, and other decadent things, I was missing the peasant food available back in the Lair, particularly my favourite place, Dong Bei Ren, which I have written about before.

It’s a chain of ethnic food restaurants featuring north-eastern Chinese food (literal titles are handy and yes, China has many different ethnicities and like Indian food, it’s not the same. It’s a big frickin’ place). It’s hardy fare. Meaty and saucy, with crispy green veggies and sometimes delicate spices like the mutton with coriander we had last night. Donkey is a specialty and is often gone. Last night, it wasn’t, which I attribute entirely to it being my birthday dinner (could have chosen any restaurant). It is mild and pleasant, surprising if you are expecting the pungent tang of goat and other animals that taste like they smell

(wonder if that applies to people? If there is ever a zombie uprising –and here I mean real zombies as opposed to the hordes of meandering and mindless tour groups I saw in Florence with their cattle-eyed stares, I am going imitate a typical club-going douchebag and douse myself in cologne)

but a relief.

The dinner started with two little plates from the roving cart of delights. Some veggies with something like pine nuts, and what I thought was pickled cabbage like kim chi. Both were delicious, but the cabbage was actually meaty. I wanted to know, so Lucy asked the waiter and they had a short but wordy discussion in which the word “meat” was mentioned several times.

It turned out to be a subtitle experience: Lucy just said it was a dong bei specialty with some kind of meat, but she couldn’t understand what kind. Yes, three minutes into one sentence. I was suspicious but continued to eat because it was so damn tasty.

I always have their zhaozi, or dumplings, which are fantastic, and this spiralled flat bread which I use as a gauge for measuring other dong bei restaurants. Dong Bei Ren wins all the time. Fresh, and piping hot, the bread is magnificent. Some super fatty brie melting all over it would be heaven.

I ate until I couldn’t eat, then I ate some more. I ate until my veins pumped digestive fluid.

Amazingly, I remember that the first time I ate more. How, I don’t know. I am still full, and it’s 16 hours later.

Later, Lucy admitted to slightly misleading me about the mystery meat. It is a dong bei specialty, prepared from the skin of an animal particular to the region. Specifically, some type of frog.

I devoured a heaping plate of frog skin.

Not so bad since earlier that week I was at a congee restaurant eating a hot pot of frog along with a congee of pigeon and eel. And that was good, even if I can’t do frogs legs and damn, some of them are really, really big, like they have some kind of mutant turkey frogs somewhere.

But that sentence makes me a bit queasy and I am not sure I could eat another plate. It’s the words: “Frog” and “skin”. Really, it’s “skin”. I have no problem with muscles and even tendons, marrow, and other inner bits (not a big lover of offal, though), and chicken skin while on the meat is good, as is fish skin, but I don’t know about a plate of just skin. I can’t do pork skin like they do here, what with little follicles and such, and the layers of subcutaneous fat wiggling away underneath.

God, it’s good to be back here. Tonight we are off to a concert on Er Sha with dinner at La Seine and tomorrow to a new Indian restaurant.

Guangzhou is an eater’s paradise, but only if you leave enough room and don’t go el bloato; sometimes don’t ask before you eat but just point and go; and, sometimes, never ask.

Dong Bei Ren, for those who are curious, is on Tian He Nan Lu, Second section. Head to Grandview Mall and walk to Ti Yu East (dong) road. Cross and turn right. Turn left at the next road (Tian He Nan Lu Er Duan) and walk and walk until you see a restaurant with a green sign and a bright red interior on the right (south) side. It may also have groups of people sitting outside drinking tea and spitting sunflower seeds onto the sidewalk. There are others in the franchise, but I have it on good authority that this is the best one.

The Crane on the Plane is mainly next to the Seine

Paris se souvient

Close to where we stayed in Montmartre, there was a small memorial to the surrealist, Andre Breton.

Florentine Light II

Again, I must return to the glorious light here in Florence.

Today I went into the Basilica San Lorenzo, designed by Bruneschelli, the artist who did the dome on the Duomo. It is fantastic and sadly but gladly, barely visited.

Notre Dame is a wonderful creation but as you would imagine from a gothic creation is it leaden, heavy, and dark. The spirit weighs down in the dim. Cloistered is apt. The stained windows are wondrous, but the windows in the apses and little rooms allow little light in, and it depends heavily on the intense artificial light that has been kludged in.

In contrast, San Lorenzo is light and spacious. The tall windows at the end were pouring the late afternoon light in, and all the big portholes that line the main hall were bright. The extra light for the big fresco on the dome were distracting and too yellow, not mixing well with the natural light. They were unnecessary.  It is a place to celebrate not too feel guilt.

Mary McCarthy, in her great book The Stones of Florence, writes that Bruneschelli knew where and how to put windows; he had the Platonic idea for windows, but a realistic idea, not one restricted to the airy plane of abstraction, but one he applied. You can see it at San Lorenzo on a bright afternoon. It doesn’t need stained glass. Such ornamentation would interfere with the great frescoes and art displayed around. If you have an hour or so to spare and are tired of the mingling million in Florence, do yourself a favour and visit it.

Hooligans

I have not been in a fight. I don’t know what it’s like and what it feels like. I have boxed and found it stranger to hit than to be hit. I know I would fight if I had to; if I had a good reason, I would.

Football is not a good reason, but it is enough for the louts that have infested Florence today. There is some important match on tonight involving the Rangers, a team from Scotland judging from the thick accents that have been ringing out in the squares and on the streets today.

I wandered into the Piazza San Giovanni in front of the Duomo today to find it swarming with small groups. One was singing against a wall, a team banner strung up over their heads, their shirts off. All the groups seemed to be drinking. Bottles were strewn about the square, and benches were covered more with glass and plastic than people.

One of the singers had had too much and was being led away by some friends. They were interrupted by some rival fans. From what I gather some words were said and they were not kindly received. Punches began to fly and one guy was on the ground before I knew what was happening.

I had already had my camera to my eye and was just fixing the exposure since I was shooting into the lovely afternoon light, so I just kept shooting, getting nice and close. It was over quickly and the combatants split up before the police arrived. I think some of the Scottish fans were taken away.

It was a frightening event. Violence as you may be able to tell is very affecting to me. That of the statues gripped me, but this was something else. It was not mythic. It was pathetic. It was slightly thrilling, too, I must confess, to be covering it. Not the nicest thing to admit.

The game is on now and the quiet cafe where I am – Cafe Niam on Via Contatta which has a 5 Euro buffet including wine and free wifi – is bustling. I imagine that no matter what the outcome of the match is tonight, the piazzas will throng with the tifosi, which is a more accurate word to describe what these guys are like, for guys that sport is the excuse for the actions.

Meeting Monsters

Again and again the news turns to Austria, the newest testimony to the depths of cruelty that people are capable of. Newscasters mention shock and surprise at the fact that the captor hasn’t mentioned why he did it, or how he was able to go on vacation while four people were trapped in his little warren. What answers do they think they can get? What can he possibly say that makes it all coherent?

Just before this segment on CNN, there was a few minutes on Somalia where a woman described a man being dragged away, his limbs cut off, and then killed by a roving gang. Why is there no question about this behaviour? Perhaps because we understand it all too well already. Perhaps that’s the difference: there isn’t a randomness to his actions. They lasted decades and were methodical, exacting, careful, and so hidden and internal.

The trouble with monsters, as we are finding out, is that they don’t look like Medusa or a Centaur as in the statues: they look like everyone else, act like everyone else, vacation like everyone else. You don’t know and we will never know.

But that is the job of art, not the news. To help us to see, to perhaps understand. Don’t expect explanations.

Don’t expect to know.

Myths and Marble

As you enter the main hall of the Gallerie d’Accademia he’s there, standing calmly and proudly, even haughtily, knowing you are there staring in wonder, just as everyone has for centuries and will for centuries more. David’s placement helps. He is there under the dome, in his own spotlight: the nexus of the entire building. He is glorious, and, as Michelangelo hinted at, you could see that he must have been trapped in a block of stone as some of the other statues, whose freedom was entirely granted, and who strain against their prison. All his dopplegangers around the city, around the world, staring out of magazines don’t prepare you for the reality. You can’t really see the Mona Lisa, hidden and barricaded as it is by the throngs, but David is right there and the closer you get, the more you realize that if he breathed and moved you wouldn’t be surprised. You swear that if you could touch the stone, it would be warm.

In the majority of pictures, you only get the front view, but he is a statue and you have the chance to move around him; however, in deference to the usual view you don’t have the distance to back up and appreciate Michelangelo’s work. You are left craning to see, and the details that are no doubt in the back and the shoulders are absent. There are reasons that statues are meant to be public, and to have space around them as they do in the Piazza del Signora, and where one of David’s copies stands, calmly watching the struggles going on around him.

In that he is quite unlike other famous statues that stand in the Piazza: Cellini’s Perseus and Giambologna’s Hercules and the Centaur. They are not calm but violent and terrifying. Persues stands holding up the Gorgon’s head, blood pouring out, her body twisted under his foot, one hand reaching back impossibly to grasp a leg broken back, her neck a fountain of gore. Even the models in the Bargello impress with their frozen horror and you almost want to look away. Hercules grasps the centaur in his left arm, his hand wrapped around the throat, bending the human torso back like a bridge about to snap. His left arm is raised high, a cudgel poised to smash down. The horse body of the centaur is folded back and under Hercules, his arm hopelessly grasping at Hercules’s hand. It’s the expressions that hold your attention: the centaur’s mouth is open, no doubt mutely screaming and you can see that he knows he is about to die. Hercules’s face is grim and furious determination, scowling down at his foe.

It’s not surprising to me that painting can seem so much like life: it can play with perspective and lighting, and is very much a single, subjective moment. But a statue must affect you whatever the viewpoint you take. The effects of these three different statues is quite amazing. I feel I could look at David for hours, come back when I need to calm down, relax. Perseus and Hercules I am drawn to by their violent power, but I can’t look at them for more than a few hours.