vrijdag 23 maart 2012
donderdag 22 maart 2012
Photographer Nan Goldin's best shots
I liked her view on childhood so much, that I just had to publish it on my blog.
'I let the children be themselves, and try to find out who they are'
Interview by Sarah Phillips
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 24 July 2011 21.30 BST
One of Nan Goldin's best shots Photograph: Nan Goldin
I don't photograph adults so much any more. I don't have a child and, psychologically, my focus on them is a lot about me wishing that I did. But I am a godmother to friends' children around the world – in Berlin, New York, Sweden and Italy. I don't remember much ever feeling like a child, so maybe photographing them triggers memories. They are wild and magical, as if from another planet. And they haven't been socially conditioned yet, so they can scream and express how they feel publicly. Sometimes I envy them. When I am in a group of people, the children and I find each other's eyes, and end up laughing at the same, unspoken thing.
Slideshows are my most important medium; they are like films that can constantly be edited. They always grow, as I show them over a period of years. These pictures are from the second version of a slideshow that was first shown last year in Athens. The images are edited and timed to a soundtrack. The music came first: all the songs are sung by children except the first, which is about pregnancy.I've been taking pictures of children since the early 1980s, and it's become increasingly important to me. I see a continuum in the children of my friends, some of whom have died. It's about hoping that my friends will bring up a new species of people.
This is one of my most optimistic works: not concentrated on loss, death or darkness. With other pieces, I have wanted people to faint, throw up or cry. I've also wanted to touch them and make them laugh. Here, I don't want people to faint or throw up. But I do want them to take away something about this puritanical new witch hunt over children and their sexuality. Everybody came out of the body of a woman, and that should not be forgotten, or be frightening. It amazes me that there's a controversy over public breastfeeding, that it can be considered disgusting. Or over children running around naked, especially in the US. Children shouldn't be afraid of their own bodies; it's the worst thing you can do to a human being.
'I let the children be themselves, and try to find out who they are'
Interview by Sarah Phillips
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 24 July 2011 21.30 BST
One of Nan Goldin's best shots Photograph: Nan Goldin
I don't photograph adults so much any more. I don't have a child and, psychologically, my focus on them is a lot about me wishing that I did. But I am a godmother to friends' children around the world – in Berlin, New York, Sweden and Italy. I don't remember much ever feeling like a child, so maybe photographing them triggers memories. They are wild and magical, as if from another planet. And they haven't been socially conditioned yet, so they can scream and express how they feel publicly. Sometimes I envy them. When I am in a group of people, the children and I find each other's eyes, and end up laughing at the same, unspoken thing.
Slideshows are my most important medium; they are like films that can constantly be edited. They always grow, as I show them over a period of years. These pictures are from the second version of a slideshow that was first shown last year in Athens. The images are edited and timed to a soundtrack. The music came first: all the songs are sung by children except the first, which is about pregnancy.I've been taking pictures of children since the early 1980s, and it's become increasingly important to me. I see a continuum in the children of my friends, some of whom have died. It's about hoping that my friends will bring up a new species of people.
This is one of my most optimistic works: not concentrated on loss, death or darkness. With other pieces, I have wanted people to faint, throw up or cry. I've also wanted to touch them and make them laugh. Here, I don't want people to faint or throw up. But I do want them to take away something about this puritanical new witch hunt over children and their sexuality. Everybody came out of the body of a woman, and that should not be forgotten, or be frightening. It amazes me that there's a controversy over public breastfeeding, that it can be considered disgusting. Or over children running around naked, especially in the US. Children shouldn't be afraid of their own bodies; it's the worst thing you can do to a human being.
'I'm very interested in their relationships with their parents'. Photograph: Nan Goldin
The pictures are both recent and from my archive. They are all children I know: my nephew; the new twins of my friend Amanda, whom I have photographed since 1989. There are a lot of pictures of Bruno, the boy with a temporary tattoo, the son of a friend. I just found a new picture of him looking very sad, which really touches me.
Generally, they love being photographed. I never set anything up, which people find impossible to believe, but it's true. I let the children just be themselves, and try to find out who they are, then go as far as I can with that. I'm interested in how little children identify themselves by gender. I think for them it's fluid. I'm interested in the melancholy I see, and the way children retreat into their own world. I'm very interested in their relationships to their parents – whether it is obvious that they are close, or ambivalent. There is one song about an incredibly loving son who doesn't want his mother to strip: he wants to take care of her.
I like the ones where kids dress themselves up. Probably my favourite picture in the slideshow is of my goddaughter Klara, standing on a paint can singing, with scarves wrapped around her. Whenever I went to visit, she and her sister put on costumes, then did a performance for me. The child in camouflage was born a girl but chose to grow up as a boy, then changed again at 15. That little one peeping through the hole reminds me so much of myself, hiding but wanting to see. The baby on the blue pillow was about a month old, and the look that baby gave me: that kid knew everything. Some people say that children know it all and life is about forgetting, and maybe that's true. They know something we don't, because they just came out of the womb.
I wanted to show the whole process of development, so I have included babies before they were born, like my pregnant friend laughing in the bath tub. She gave birth that night, after I left, and I like the idea that the flash brought the baby out.
I don't carry my camera so much these days: I don't have the same relationship with it. I've never considered photography one of the higher art forms. Everyone takes photos; now even phones can. The whole issue of digital is so depressing to me; my process is gone. There were all kinds of unknown things that could come out in a photograph, things you didn't know were there until you saw it; now it's all so flat. But then I never really saw myself as a photographer.
The pictures are both recent and from my archive. They are all children I know: my nephew; the new twins of my friend Amanda, whom I have photographed since 1989. There are a lot of pictures of Bruno, the boy with a temporary tattoo, the son of a friend. I just found a new picture of him looking very sad, which really touches me.
Generally, they love being photographed. I never set anything up, which people find impossible to believe, but it's true. I let the children just be themselves, and try to find out who they are, then go as far as I can with that. I'm interested in how little children identify themselves by gender. I think for them it's fluid. I'm interested in the melancholy I see, and the way children retreat into their own world. I'm very interested in their relationships to their parents – whether it is obvious that they are close, or ambivalent. There is one song about an incredibly loving son who doesn't want his mother to strip: he wants to take care of her.
I like the ones where kids dress themselves up. Probably my favourite picture in the slideshow is of my goddaughter Klara, standing on a paint can singing, with scarves wrapped around her. Whenever I went to visit, she and her sister put on costumes, then did a performance for me. The child in camouflage was born a girl but chose to grow up as a boy, then changed again at 15. That little one peeping through the hole reminds me so much of myself, hiding but wanting to see. The baby on the blue pillow was about a month old, and the look that baby gave me: that kid knew everything. Some people say that children know it all and life is about forgetting, and maybe that's true. They know something we don't, because they just came out of the womb.
I wanted to show the whole process of development, so I have included babies before they were born, like my pregnant friend laughing in the bath tub. She gave birth that night, after I left, and I like the idea that the flash brought the baby out.
I don't carry my camera so much these days: I don't have the same relationship with it. I've never considered photography one of the higher art forms. Everyone takes photos; now even phones can. The whole issue of digital is so depressing to me; my process is gone. There were all kinds of unknown things that could come out in a photograph, things you didn't know were there until you saw it; now it's all so flat. But then I never really saw myself as a photographer.
'She was born a girl but chose to grow up as a boy'. Photograph: Nan Goldin
I certainly think that my work comes from a humanistic vision of the world, rather than some kind of manipulative, theoretical version of art. It's about the people and places I love, and that haunt me.
I certainly think that my work comes from a humanistic vision of the world, rather than some kind of manipulative, theoretical version of art. It's about the people and places I love, and that haunt me.
zaterdag 10 maart 2012
Photography: Projects
My journey into the world of art has been entertaining, interesting and fun. But now I have to redirect my focus back to my own photography, as there is so much to do and so little time to spare.
This year I started of with two projects. All of a sudden I realized that I was spending all my time on only one project, completely neglecting the other, only due to a major lack of time.
One of these projects is about the past. If we look back on our childhood, what do we see? What do we actually 'think' we remember. I say 'think', because it has been proven that the memories we have are very often distorted. When there are some blanks in our brain, or we do not remember something completely, our mind fills out these blanks all by itself and makes up its own little stories.
According to me, our memories are also linked to age. If we look back on our childhood during and shortly after puberty, it is very often with distaste, because we only see the negative side of our parents. Why? Because we had to follow certain rules we didn't like to follow.
Afterwards, in our twenties, we start to doubt. Our parents were not so bad after all, but still, they often acted the wrong way.
The more we age, the more the view on our childhood changes. In the end, our parents were great people who always knew what they were talking about and we enjoyed our childhood very much.
Of course I am talking about the standard childhood in my area. I am completely aware of all the other things going on, but that is not my topic.
What I am trying to say is that our view on our childhood is a little blurred. It is dominated by our toughts and views at a certain moment in time.
My other project (which is consuming all my time at the moment) is about Cerebral Palsy. I am trying to show the world what an immense effort children with CP have to make every day, just to be able to have their muscles work a little more, to learn something new which goes even unnoticed and automatic in our case. Some children are only slightly affected, some very severe. The CP children are children who are very often being stretched day and night, until fully grown. The vast majority of them has been born premature, and they have to live with this affliction from the first moment they came into this world. I want to show you their incredible bravery!
These projects make sure that I do not have time for exhibitions or other stuff. I have to digg in, and I have to do it profoundly.
It is time-consuming, hard, emotionally wrecking, beautiful, magical. It is PHOTOGRAPHY.
This year I started of with two projects. All of a sudden I realized that I was spending all my time on only one project, completely neglecting the other, only due to a major lack of time.
One of these projects is about the past. If we look back on our childhood, what do we see? What do we actually 'think' we remember. I say 'think', because it has been proven that the memories we have are very often distorted. When there are some blanks in our brain, or we do not remember something completely, our mind fills out these blanks all by itself and makes up its own little stories.
According to me, our memories are also linked to age. If we look back on our childhood during and shortly after puberty, it is very often with distaste, because we only see the negative side of our parents. Why? Because we had to follow certain rules we didn't like to follow.
Afterwards, in our twenties, we start to doubt. Our parents were not so bad after all, but still, they often acted the wrong way.
The more we age, the more the view on our childhood changes. In the end, our parents were great people who always knew what they were talking about and we enjoyed our childhood very much.
Of course I am talking about the standard childhood in my area. I am completely aware of all the other things going on, but that is not my topic.
What I am trying to say is that our view on our childhood is a little blurred. It is dominated by our toughts and views at a certain moment in time.
My other project (which is consuming all my time at the moment) is about Cerebral Palsy. I am trying to show the world what an immense effort children with CP have to make every day, just to be able to have their muscles work a little more, to learn something new which goes even unnoticed and automatic in our case. Some children are only slightly affected, some very severe. The CP children are children who are very often being stretched day and night, until fully grown. The vast majority of them has been born premature, and they have to live with this affliction from the first moment they came into this world. I want to show you their incredible bravery!
These projects make sure that I do not have time for exhibitions or other stuff. I have to digg in, and I have to do it profoundly.
It is time-consuming, hard, emotionally wrecking, beautiful, magical. It is PHOTOGRAPHY.
dinsdag 6 maart 2012
Viral Photographs Bring Instant Success
This article intrigued me so I thought it was something worth while sharing:
Photographers used to spend lifetimes building up their portfolios and networks before their work became widely known to a global audience, but with the advent of the Internet, the fact that anything can “go viral” is completely changing the equation for success.
Wired has published a fascinating behind-the-scenes piece on Seth Casteel, whose underwater portraits of dogs became a global phenomenon just last month.
Before the photos spread across the world, Casteel was doing okay as a freelance photographer. He sometimes struggled to pay the bills, but his list of clients was growing. [...]
Now everything has changed. On that fateful February 9th, the photos mysteriously landed on Reddit, Facebook, Google+ and then Warholian, becoming one of the hottest trends amongst viewers on at least five or six continents.
More than 1,000 people all over the world have subsequently asked him to shoot photos of their pets. He’s got a line of publishing houses fighting to get the rights to his forthcoming book of underwater dog photos, and he’s made appearance on, or in, most major American news publications from the The New York Times to Good Morning America.
While PetaPixel wasn’t the first to share Casteel’s dog photographs — we were actually late to the game because we were waiting for permission from Casteel — we did play a huge role in another set of dog photographs.
Back in July 2011, we shared Carli Davidson’s photos of dogs shaking off water.
That post was soon shared hundreds of thousands of times, causing Davidson’s photographs to go viral all over the Internet.
PhotoShelter researched her story and published an interesting piece on the viral evolution of her images.
It’s a perfect example of a concept called “tastemakers” that YouTube trends manager Kevin Allocca recently spoke about at TED. The talk was about how videos go viral, but the points are quite relevant for photography as well. Here’s talk: Basically, if you want your photography to go viral, you’ll need three things: tastemakers, communities of participation, and unexpectedness.
First, make sure your photographs are truly unique and unexpected. Photographic cliché are a dime a dozen, and it’s the eye-catching and creative ideas that people feel compelled to share. Having work that’s unique and share-worthy is a necessary first step, but you’ll probably need a tastemarker to get the ball rolling. This could be a Tweet from a famous individual or a post on a blog or news site. Just like how nuclear bombs need to be detonated to get the nuclear reactions started, this is what causes the “viral” chain reaction to begin. Viral photos, videos, and stories are often published long before tastemakers cause them to go viral. Finally, community participation encourages sharing. It helps if people can recreate or remix your original idea for their own derivative work. In terms of photographs, having a creative idea that anyone can try their own hand at encourages sharing much more than something that’s inaccessible to the general public (e.g. dogs shaking off water vs. microscopic photography).
If you think you have all these ingredients in your photography already but have yet to see your photos go viral, don’t be discouraged — there’s also a huge element of luck involved. The tried and true ingredients of hard work and perseverance will also go a long way! Image credits: Photographs by Seth Casteel and Carli Davidson Article: Michael Zhang · Mar 05, 2012
Photographers used to spend lifetimes building up their portfolios and networks before their work became widely known to a global audience, but with the advent of the Internet, the fact that anything can “go viral” is completely changing the equation for success.
Wired has published a fascinating behind-the-scenes piece on Seth Casteel, whose underwater portraits of dogs became a global phenomenon just last month.
Before the photos spread across the world, Casteel was doing okay as a freelance photographer. He sometimes struggled to pay the bills, but his list of clients was growing. [...]
Now everything has changed. On that fateful February 9th, the photos mysteriously landed on Reddit, Facebook, Google+ and then Warholian, becoming one of the hottest trends amongst viewers on at least five or six continents.
More than 1,000 people all over the world have subsequently asked him to shoot photos of their pets. He’s got a line of publishing houses fighting to get the rights to his forthcoming book of underwater dog photos, and he’s made appearance on, or in, most major American news publications from the The New York Times to Good Morning America.
While PetaPixel wasn’t the first to share Casteel’s dog photographs — we were actually late to the game because we were waiting for permission from Casteel — we did play a huge role in another set of dog photographs.
Back in July 2011, we shared Carli Davidson’s photos of dogs shaking off water.
That post was soon shared hundreds of thousands of times, causing Davidson’s photographs to go viral all over the Internet.
PhotoShelter researched her story and published an interesting piece on the viral evolution of her images.
It’s a perfect example of a concept called “tastemakers” that YouTube trends manager Kevin Allocca recently spoke about at TED. The talk was about how videos go viral, but the points are quite relevant for photography as well. Here’s talk: Basically, if you want your photography to go viral, you’ll need three things: tastemakers, communities of participation, and unexpectedness.
First, make sure your photographs are truly unique and unexpected. Photographic cliché are a dime a dozen, and it’s the eye-catching and creative ideas that people feel compelled to share. Having work that’s unique and share-worthy is a necessary first step, but you’ll probably need a tastemarker to get the ball rolling. This could be a Tweet from a famous individual or a post on a blog or news site. Just like how nuclear bombs need to be detonated to get the nuclear reactions started, this is what causes the “viral” chain reaction to begin. Viral photos, videos, and stories are often published long before tastemakers cause them to go viral. Finally, community participation encourages sharing. It helps if people can recreate or remix your original idea for their own derivative work. In terms of photographs, having a creative idea that anyone can try their own hand at encourages sharing much more than something that’s inaccessible to the general public (e.g. dogs shaking off water vs. microscopic photography).
If you think you have all these ingredients in your photography already but have yet to see your photos go viral, don’t be discouraged — there’s also a huge element of luck involved. The tried and true ingredients of hard work and perseverance will also go a long way! Image credits: Photographs by Seth Casteel and Carli Davidson Article: Michael Zhang · Mar 05, 2012
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