Francesca Woodman

In April 2012, during a short vacation in New York, we visited at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMa) an exhibition of the work of the American photographer Francesca Woodman (1958-1981).

I was immediately intrigued big time. Rarely I have seen such a direct, personal and moving photography. She has possibly been the first photographer ever to use photography so explicitly to bring something that lives inside really to expression and by doing that establishing a dialogue through photography with herself, to experiment with and explore herself – as human being and as woman.

On almost all of her pictures she herself and only herself as the subject - almost in every instance naked, in a simple composition, and in a very magical-expressionistic style – largely taken against the décor of an abandoned, empty house, vulnerable and alone, as in retreat. Images that were not understood and received well at the academy of art were she studied and which to a large extent haven’t been printed ever during her life (that came to an end far too early as a result of suicide). Although on one end she was striving for recognition (and hence publication) – and hence for expression to and communication with an audience – her images also show a desire for being alone and an atmosphere of loneliness and struggle with herself.

I felt myself enormously inspired by what I saw. Not necessarily by the form and theme she chose, and her personal process, but by the idea behind it and how convincing that was elaborated: photography as a means of self-expression and object-isation (bringing to the outside in a material form) of something that lives inside that can hardly be captured (yet) in words, but even better in images – in order to learn from it. It inspired to experiment likewise (first the following summer in the Corrèze, see image above, later on around the end of the year at our attic) and make a few series with myself as subject, of which a few can be seen on my website.

I had to think of this when I was made aware of a play by Toneelgroep Maastricht, “How to play Francesca Woodman”. The play by four young actresses, which text has been written by Anne Vegter (Poet of the Nation) and Erik-Ward Geerlings (amongst others Decamerone, Mephisto), wil have its first performance on March 15 in Maastricht, but after April it will be performed across the country. I am very curious, and keen of seeing it!

Silodam

There he stood parked at the waterside, an old Citroën. Grey from the outside, but with red lining on the inside - and above us a grey sky over a ditto Silodam. A view in the mirror. Then our imagination takes us along - to France, rolling over some Route Nationale, southbound, following the sun. Last summer still, when life was languid, the days sultry and love intense. For a moment we feel again the warmth, taste the crispy bread, the salty cheese, a drop of sweat pearling over our skin, the buzz in a an distant alley across the square. Or the grass itching in our neck, another kiss. The rolling along the road, the rattling over a bridge. Our view strays off and everything now looks a bit warmer, radiating. The Silodam, are we still at the Silodam?

Waterloop Forest

Actually I am supposed to translate now my latest post on my Dutch blog on the personality of the photographer and its impact on how we see, create and interpret images, based on the personality theory of Carl Gustav Jung. As such a very interesting article, but rather lengthy - and seen the massive interest and feedback I get on my English blog edition (not), I am rather hesitant to put much effort in it. Unless you object of course :-). That's why I limit myself to just recapitulate what I wrote as an introduction to that blog: on my recent return to what I believe is one of the most poetic forests in the Netherlands.



The 'Waterloopbos' (water way forest) is one of the eldest forests of the Northeast Polder. This part of the former Southsea (Zuiderzee) was reclaimed to land in the period 1936-1942. This forest was created at the north-eastern edge of the polder in 1944, rather quickly after the water was fully pumped out in 1942. As the soil here consists of peat and sand above an impermeable layer of loam, the area, together with what is now the adjacent Voorsterbos, was regarded as inappropriate for agriculture - turning it into a forest was seen as a reasonable alternative.

In 1952 the government gave the part that is now the Waterloopbos to the Waterloopkundig Laboratorium (now Delft Hydraulics). Since then the forest was used by its engineers for creating models of hydraulic projects around the world. To feed these models, water from the adjacent 'Borderlake' (which is 5 meters above the polder level) was led into a myriad of canals through the forest - flowing ultimately into the Zwolsevaart, a large canal used to draw water from the polder to keep it dry. Once the model served its purpose it was just left in the wood and nature took over again. In this way you still find the remnants of many models across the forest, including models for the Dutch Deltaworks, a sea dyke for Surinam and ports around the world, including Rotterdam, Vlissingen, IJmuiden, Lagos, Bangkok, Istanbul and Beirut.

In 1995 the Waterloopkundig Laboratorium was privatised and a year later the management decided to move out as by then models could be created much easier using computers and in-house facilities in their new laboratories in Delft. Since 2002 the forest is owned by Natuurmonumenten, a large conservation organization every responsible Dutchmen is member of, and preserved as a very special ecosystem, including these models. The combination of humid forest vegetation and fauna along these half overgrown ruins of models, wave machines and sluices, gives the area a very special atmosphere. This is further emphasized by the water you hear running and rustling everywhere, the smells and the beautiful light filtered by the humid air - in particular in autumn and winter.

It is just a small area, allowing a brief walk of about 4 km - but once you are there, in particular as a photographer, you can amaze yourself for hours. Just watch these two images I took in December above and below (there are more on my website - click through the image - taken back in 2010).



I have a few more like this one that are even more pretty, which I might publish later (so please watch my website and this blog!).

Bärenquell

After having selected and processed my images of Heilstätten Beelitz in a first ‘run’ last week, I have now started with our next destination: the Bärenquell Brewery in Berlin. It concerns a historic complex of monumental buildings from the early 20th century, unused since 1994 and thanks to vandalism, burning and metal looting in a very deplorable state (though ‘cheered up’ big time with graffiti), waiting for demolition.

To us it was a great experience to enter the facility and to capture its final phase of existence. We felt a gloomy atmosphere, the level of senseless destruction was saddening and to witness drop-outs hanging around the buildings being busy with tearing off the last bits of metal was rather discomforting (strangely enough we also saw two young girls there too, who seemed to be beamed down from outer space). And still it was a great adventure that allowed you to be totally there, peaking in terms of intensity and level of alertness – fully focused at what you see and hear, at the photographic possibilities the area have to offer, and at the same time fully conscious of the danger that lures, both possibly coming from fellow human-beings as from holes in the floors, things coming down from the ceiling and everything in between. Driven by an unstoppable urge to discover and hunger for images we felt and moved like commandos storming room in room out, corridor in corridor out, literally chasing images.

Strangely enough I had to think about this when looking back at the occasion earlier this week, when I met again for the first time since 33 years with one of my old loves.  What stroke us both was the immediate familiarity we felt with each other that blew away the distance created by those 33 years. Even more astounding to me was the flow I came into, triggered by seeing all those familiar face expressions and ways of looking and talking, that took me back almost immediately to who I was, to my mental state at the age of 22 when we had our very brief but intense affair and when so much was changing to us. I suddenly felt, fully aware from who I am now, the high level of intensity of being and experiencing at that age, a level that is currently pretty rare in day-to-day life, but very much similar to being in a creative flow, like I experienced at the Bärenquell Brewery.  This told me that you really have the power to travel in (your) (life)time and that your mental state is a matter of choice – a river which flow you can alter as you like and to which, as opposed to anything else (thinking of Heraclitus), you can descend into again, time after time. This also reminds me of how as a child, in my more introspective moments, I imagined that I was merely the thought or remembrance of myself as an old man, my elder self, thinking back of his youth. As if I felt that old soul looking with me and through my child’s eyes – and in this way nurtured and enriched his mind with my imagination. In this way also this experience triggered by my old love enriched me, allowing me to take this along to my now, my home, my love today.

Meetings like these, and similarly these photographic explorations and the camaraderie we had during our trip – they allow us to wander and change the flow of our mental river. They are like rapids, like the transitional and more intense scores in that single, sometimes clearly heard but often hardly noticed symphony of life that make us want to join in and play.

Surely the images taken at the Bärenquell represent some of the dark episodes of this symphony – no illusions about that. These images aren’t pleasing at all. But just like immense beauty also negative intensity, as felt in anxiety, has the power to release the sublime, the ability to release ourselves into (life)time traveling deep into ourselves. Experiencing that make that spring - of love, friendship and joy of life we have in us feeding our lives - well up with even more vigor.

Old crap

Last week I visited with a few fellow members of the Old Crap Society (Oude Meuk Genootschap – OMG) several locations in and around Berlin, including the Heilstätten Beelitz, the Bärenquell Brauerei, a depot of Berlin Wall elements, Chemiewerk Rükana Rüdersdorf and finally Südwestkirchhof Stahnsdorf – places that have been able to escape from the wrecking balls but not really to stand the test of time. Besides six memorable evenings full of sausage and beer, good company and conversation, it gave us an adventurous dip in the phenomenon of ‘Urban Exploration’ (also referred to as ‘urbex’) – a sport that comes to the core of us as OMG.

What makes urbex to such a fun? Well, in the first place it is a kind of adventure that appeals to the boy in us as it stimulates imagination beyond any belief: the excitement of penetrating into decayed buildings, where the ghosts of the past have entered into a secret pact with the strong arm of security services that could emerge behind every corner. Feeling the hunger of the hunter – hunting for images in this case. The sound of splintering glass, the danger of falling through the rotten floor, the cold wind that bleaks through the open windows into the abandoned corridor; the distant stumbling of people living on the edge of society fiddling with paintbrushes or old metals, possibly preparing a can of beans over a fire of scrap wood.

In terms of photography – urbex is in the end a branch of photography – the job seems to be simple: making images of old crap. But to make images that are as exciting as the experience of making them is not as easy as it may sound. That excitement is almost impossible to be captured into the frame of an image, as becomes clear in post-processing. It turns out that the actual deal is to superimpose an emotion or idea of your own that is independent of place and time, that is more enduring and convincing than the fascination for decay and destruction. To transcend from transient matter, on the wings of your imagination, the desire to find the endlessness in the perishable.

The images that want to survive the remorseless selection must express the beauty of melancholy, accentuating mortality – but also as sacrifice, as stairs to a higher state of being, as windows to new life – all emphasized by the colors of autumn and the humid grayness outside that both emboss and accelerate the transformation. The desolation in the moment of death is further emphasized by faint signs of human life, like rags of lace, the skeleton of a chair, the signature of a graffitist, the shadow of an occasional visitor (or: the photographer himself?). But foremost by the sheds of light – that are nowhere else as pure, soft and essential as here, where there is barely anything of value left. To see the light in darkness, in conversion – to capture the mystical moment, I see that as the real challenge secluded in urbex photography.

Holiday pictures

Last June we were on holiday in Slovenia and Croatia – countries blessed with beautiful mountains, romantic towns at the seaside, narrow streets cheered up with colorful laundry, gorgeous beaches, quiet islands, suffused with endless sunlight and topped by day-in-day-out blue skies. The latter is of course, from the perspective of the average tourist, certainly not a punishment, seen the extensive period of rain we had since last winter. However, for me as a photographer this all together almost ensures a boringly ‘perfect’ mix of postcard-topics with the harshest contrasts you can imagine. Especially knowing that shortly after me the herds will come in, taking the very same pictures by the millions – this really challenges you to make something special out of this. Indeed, I could say goodbye to photography for the time being – or to the concept of ‘holiday’ as this is really hard work (not really). I chose for the latter.

To give it a go, we gave ourselves occasionally challenges and assignments to move us off the beaten track – themes like “the end of tourism”, “scars of war, “the lost village” or “big and small”. Themes that surprisingly offered us fun and some good material as well. Also, holidays give you the opportunity to do things in photography that usually take more effort, like playing with night photography or long exposure photography. After all, you are located already in the midst of that medieval village, or your tent happens to be just a few feet away from that jetty at the seaside, making it really easy to go out, interrupt your book and glass of wine and do you thing with tripod and release cable.

But you could also try to look through different eyes – changing quasi your retina. So put on your virtual photographic sun glasses (=filters) and change the way your experience light and colors. Back & white, of course, is the first thing that pops up. Thinking in b&w mode learns you to see differently, and different things. But what about polaroid, glass negatives, infrared, pinhole? And how about bleach bypass and solarisation? Not necessarily by changing your camera, or using 'real' filters. In the end, it’s holiday, why carrying all that old stuff? Just think about the capabilities of your image editing software (e.g., NIK Color Efex Pro) – that also includes filters like that or allows you to create your own 'recipes', emulating old photographic and dark room techniques. I am sure many serious photographers appall just by the idea, but why? If the chosen filter/recipe appeals to the feeling, the idea you got when you took the picture, and in particular if you are able to tweak and embed the filter well to make the result really yours, then suddenly you have, besides the default digital color ‘film’ (and black & white conversion) a range of other virtual cameras in your pocket. Allowing you to look around, experience and capture the world around you differently, merely through your inner eye. Then that abandoned village quietly bathing in the sun, apparently waiting for the people to return shortly, suddenly gets something eerie or magical. Those "scars of war" then really take you back to the battle of the cruel Post-Yugoslavian conflict.

Obviously, that takes more than just a tick in the software box – it requires phantasy/empathy at the moment of experience, imagination of how the end result should look like (to represent the inner image) – and requiring in turn understanding of the capabilities of your toolbox of possible filters and tweaks and how to apply them. It requires that you indeed free yourself of what your eyes can see – and to look inside at what unfolds in your imagination. How different is that from turning an image into black & white, something we all accept?

In that way our vacation eventually resulted in quite some interesting material – while giving fun too. Shortly to be seen on my website!

Under pressure

From May 25 until June 19 I had for the second time an exhibition together with Bart van Rijsbergen and Hester Busse, with whom I establish Photo collective InsideOut. This time we exhibited together with our creative coach Ariane James, who also had very fascinating work on display. In the meantime we are quite a few weeks further, but it tasted good – we want more of that! Next year we’ll do it again, was our joint conclusion. Of course it is fun if (many) people enthusiastically come to visit – that’s what you are doing it for. And furthermore it is an honor to get the opportunity to exhibit at Fotogram / the Amsterdam Photo Academy. And as a bonus we got a beautiful article in FOTOgrafie, written by their editor Peter Maat who happened to open the exhibition and while he took a tour along the images got so excited that he immediately wanted to write about it. That gives you a kick.

But it also works as a tremendous stimulus to work together towards an exhibition. Consciously give focus and direction to your work, and being critical about what would fit and what doesn’t, and looking together to what may add to it. A kind of making series of series. So, we begin to feel the pressure.

That pressure you also feel when you get home with a mass of very interesting material that you want to post on your website. In my case images need to fit ideally in series of 5 (per row). With not more than 3 series (15 images) per sub-gallery (page), and not more than 5 sub-galleries per gallery - if possible less. In that way I believe my webpages look the best.

Certainly when you get home with nearly 850 images you have to select very critically, not only on quality piece by piece, but also to order them in those series and galleries where possible – and further strengthening that coherence in your post-processing. Working backwards you will be shooting on location in terms of series as well – with an eye for what is really creative or just nice and registration, and furthermore: to attempt to shoot in series, exploring more sides of the same in a comparable, extending fashion. 

Does that put yourself under pressure? Of course! But the satisfaction is so much bigger when things work out. Like with the results of that photo weekend in Dortmund (recently posted under the name ‘Fundgrube’) where I spent two days shooting with a group of fellow club members under the guidance of Hayo Baan.

One plus one is two you would say – so the material for the coming exhibition is ready? Don’t think so. But every successful shoot is another step in your development. And in that sense, indeed, it is coming closer: that beautiful exhibition in Summer 2014. Keep me posted?