St. Patrick's Day in Baltimore

It was the day before St. Patrick’s Day parade in Baltimore and the gray skies opened up for a short time. Clouds moved in and I took my 1948 Rolleiflex for a “walk”. This time, I used a deep red filter to capture the clouds.

Well, it was cold and windy by the ocean, and the Fort McHenry Park was practically empty. Eager to click at least once, I decided to take a picture of Orpheus. On my way back, I decided to continue the “statue” theme the next day, during the St. Patrick’s Day. Could I capture “statue-like” people instead of taking relatively boring parade pictures?

… On April 16 the skies were gray again and a snow storm expected during the evening hours. A band was playing Irish music and the crowd was all red-head girls and men in kilts. Irish sausage, beer, and green hats were everywhere.

I was still looking for my “statues”.  Went behind the band’s stage and I thought that the bass player was photogenic enough for me to wait for the right pose. Then I thought “a halo above his head is appropriate for St. Patrick”. As if to help me with my “theme du jour”, he moved between the two cymbals for a double-halo, and even raised his guitar for a second to become my first statue.

Then, when the band stopped playing, two of its members were about to come down the stage. The waist-level view of my camera gave me a special angle to capture them along with a female member of the team (I assume). Focusing is slightly off, it was taken contre-jour, but gives an old-times' feel to the picture. The bass player is there again, this time in a rather dramatic statuesque posture.

On my way home I passed by the Inner Harbor and there was my last statue, this time including a dog watching the Harbor with a curiosity to match his masters’. Would this qualify as a statue representing the await of St. Patrick arriving by sea?
It was the last of 12 frames left on my film roll, and I was curious to see what my dark room would show when I develop the film.

..When I looked at the negatives, I smiled thinking that probably no one would take these pictures to represent St. Patrick’s Day Parade…!

March 17, 2014

© Vahé Kazandjian, 2014

Body Language and Environment

The interaction of people with their environment is always of interest to a curious observer. Do people have a different posture, body language or attitude when waiting for the bus in a cosmopolitan city than when they are in a rural town? Does the environment predispose to such postures? And, are there postures and body language generic to all people, no matter the culture or architecture within which they proceed with their lives?

I do not know the answer, but as a photographer I find it of special interest to capture people’s attitudes in moments when they become one with the environment or give added meaning to the context within which I aim to freeze the moment on film.

I think such curiosity is also what an artist needs to anticipate the coming together of a moment he needs to be ready to capture. I call it the anticipation of the ”promise of the moment” when one has to be just a split of a second ahead of what could happen and ready to capture it.

…I like to play a game when waiting endless hours in airports: I look at fellow passenger’s facial features in profile and try to imagine how they look as a “full-face portrait”. Then wait till they turn around and see how well I guessed their complete facial features. It is a silly game, but one that, mentally and visually, tests my ability to use a few data points to make projections.

Ok, back to photography and people’s self-contextualization.

This picture is from Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris. The façade of the cathedral is made of statues and head sculptures dating back centuries. I often wonder if over centuries our facial features and body language have significantly changed. Do we still walk the same way folks in ancient Rome, Constantinople or Paris did? Do we laugh the same way? Do our eyes open as wide when we are surprised?

That day I decided to look for people’s attitudes that would correspond to those displayed by statues and carving around Notre Dame. Not an easy task, especially when using a medium format camera with a fixed lens.

Here is what I was looking for: notice the walking movement and body posture of the statue on the façade of the Cathédrale above the left shoulder of the woman—isn’t it exactly the same posture and movement?

I took this second picture in front of the National Palace Museum in Shilin, Taiwan, after seeing an amazing collection of ancient Chinese artifacts and artworks encompassing 8,000 years of Chinese history from the Neolithic age to the late Qing Dynasty. The National Palace Museum and the Palace Museum in the Forbidden City in Beijing, People's Republic of China, share the same roots. They split in two as a result of the Chinese Civil War.
“The Emperor Kangxi and the Sun King Louis XIV" was the exhibit. I knew little about the cultural exchanges between France and China, and my visual and history-based curiosity was delightfully satisfied.The artwork, especially the paintings were absolutely amazing. I was most attracted by the delicate facial features shown in those drawings and paintings. When I walked out of the Museum, I saw this young woman, in a perfect profile pose looking exactly like the painting I had just seen. The resemblance was anachronistically amazing and yet, it was the perfect contemporaneous posture: she was holding an iPhone!

It is always tricky to take B&W pictures when surrounded with snow and having a few structures to break the monotony. Except when there is a barren forest and a “mountain man” in the middle of it! This one is from a snowshoeing trip in Vermont. It is difficult to not think about the adage of “trees and forest”—in this case one wonders if sometimes it is not appropriate to look at both the trees and forest at the same time in order to find a meaning to the larger context or experience the sheer harmony of co-existence.

Perhaps this can be called the ecology of interpretation….

March 15, 2014

© Vahé Kazandjian, 2014

La Mort En Roses

A few weeks ago, on a very cold but sunny day I decided to take my bike out and see the city. The streets were mostly empty and a heavy layer of salt covered the roads.  Out of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, I went to Fells Point where I was hoping to find more people out and about, and perhaps take some pictures.

The piers were empty, except for a tugboat of sorts being tested for sound functioning. And then I saw a bouquet of flowers affixed to one of the light posts. Got off my bike, took my camera out and checked out the flowers.

It was in memoriam of Roberto G, who died at the age of 41.

Who was Roberto?

…I felt as an intruder, yet it was a public memorial and on that morning I was the only one there. I did not know Roberto, and the inscription on the wooden heart said nothing more. Was he a street inhabitant of Fells Point as there are many? Did he die at that very spot? Did he like the summer evening open-air concerts in this part of the city?

So, I took a picture feeling that I was taking a picture of Roberto in that street, on that pier. Just that he was not there anymore.

A few days passed and I was wondering about Roberto, the man I never met, yet that I took a picture of when he was not there anymore. I wondered if the flowers were still there, knowing that such displays in public places are not allowed for long. So, back on my bike for finding out.

… It was the first warm day since a while and it seemed like all of Baltimore (and all its dogs) were in the streets. I was tempted to park my car, take my camera and walk around among all these people, but something kept me on that pier, in Fells Point.

It was not the disappearance of the memorial, but all the life that was now around that street light pole and the pier. Roberto was not there, but life was in full bloom.

I therefore sat opposite the light pole and looked around. Then, two ladies came by with their lunch bags and sat near “Roberto’s light post”. As they were enjoying the sun and the sandwiches, I decided to take a picture to remind me that life goes on, but that sometimes strangers like me do take pictures (on film or in their memory) to remind them of those we never met or will meet, the places where they have been, and that somehow, on a cold day, their memory gives meaning to the streets.

Seneca wrote: 

"Dum differtur, vita transcurrit"  translating as: "While it is postponed, life goes on."

R.I.P Roberto.

March 9, 2014

© Vahé Kazandjian, 2014

Pictures taken with a 1973 Olympus OM-1 and a Zuiko 100mm 2.8 lens.

March 8: Global Women's Day

It was only natural for me to go back to my unpublished pictures and see if I can do a collage, perhaps representing various attitudes or life moments exhibited by women I have photographed in city streets. Pensive, celebrating, tender, forceful or resilient, these attitudes represent the places I have been. In a funny way, I often think of a city, or even a country through a street picture of its people rather than the city center, its museum, beaches or tropical forests.

As I stated on the opening page of my blog, architecture and surroundings do not attract me as a photographer; just people do.

Here are six pictures, from 5 US and European cities, most taken in 35mm, some negatives from a few years back and scratched. The fifth one is among my favorites from a “texture” point of view as it was taken with a rare 1948 Industar-22 Soviet lens made in Kazan. The uncoated glass has a mind of itself as to how the picture will come out, and capturing a moment with a 75 year old lens is like time travel, this time going back.

March 7, 2014

© Vahé Kazandjian, 2014

Street Dancers

While dancers provide the technical challenge of capturing movement on a still frame, placing the dancer within a context that tells the story of a place or customs takes the photographer to that famous level of contextualizing.

From a technical point of view, modern cameras provide the “machine gun” shooting of dozens of frames a second hence the vast choice of choosing the best shot. For an anachronistic photographer like me, 50+ year old film cameras give me the choice of a frame every 3 seconds, which means that I would miss capturing many of the moves of the dancer.  Even then, I have only 12 shots in a medium format camera, or about 25 in a 35mm lightbox... (I say "about 25" since I roll my own film and often it is a guesswork.)  So, either one needs to know the dance, seen that dancer before, or be extremely lucky to capture a shot that goes beyond just a dance move.

I chose 6 shots of dancers each having a distinct character, and a seventh that may qualify as a dance…

      Dancer out of place

Here the “street” is a symphony hall. The dancer was out of place in the sense that the formal attire of the symphonic orchestra overwhelmed her presence. To the eye, her movements were too choreographed and not spontaneous enough. Yet, at a shutter speed of 1/30^th and wide opened at f=2, the 85mm Jupiter 9 lens on my Fed-2 camera did freeze a move quite gently. The eye of the dancer and the movement of the fan somehow isolate her from the formal background.

2.       Dancer in control

This one is all emotion and passion. Contrary to the first picture, this one does better not showing the dancer’s eyes.  I often wonder if in a still photo passion is better expressed with “eyes wide open” or “eyes wide shut”…

3.       Dancer who does not like the photographer

Why some artists, when they perform in the street, wonder why people take picture of them?  It seems to me when you have decided to perform in the street,  you have become part of the environment totally accessible to the public. Well, this Turkish dancer in Vienna did not care for the picture I took, which made the picture better….

4.       When all is not harmony

The New York Rockettes are world famous for their uniformity in appearance and their impeccable timing , especially when it comes to their legs. I took this one in New York and upon developing the roll, I realized that the lens was too slow and the 100 ASA too unforgiving for an indoors shot. But while the technical aspect of the picture is poor, it had captured a moment of non-synchrony among these amazing dancer—the legs are totally uncoordinated making the picture an unusual one for the Rockettes! One has to Google “New York Rockettes” to see how different are the pictures they show….

5.       When one can only guess

This is a picture of shapes and monochromatic tonality. The story can be anything, depending on the observer. What I like are the multitude of lines, movement, and public celebration of a sunny day in Baltimore, by the ocean side!

6.       Simplicity and Joy

One of my favorite street Tango dancing moments. Youth, posture, eye contact and sharing of traditions. Nothing fancy in this shot from Barcelona, yet one feels like being there can be a lot of fun!

7.       May be a dance?

In front of a hotel in Montréal. I shot this with zone-focusing my 1935 Russian FED camera, and contre jour. Yes, I do have one of these almost-a-century-old cameras… The lens of course is not coated and has survived an amazing century of human history.  I sometimes wonder how much of the past century’s changes were captured by this lens that had an unknown number of users before me.  I have adjusted the camera’s speeds a few times already, but the old springs (all original) and the fatigue of the steel parts makes all speeds highly unreliable. So, even more fun to see what comes out on the negative after I finish a roll!!

The lady was about to put her scarf on and I guessed that she would do so using the movement of a matador. After I developed the negative, I noticed that there was a man in the frame, which made me think of the bull, and I kept the picture just for the fun of it.

 February 24, 2014

© Vahé Kazandjian, 2014

Not a Circle, but a Continuum

It is the change of seasons, almost.  While still surrounded by snow, daffodils will soon pop their heads out of the frozen ground.

Street photography, sometimes in a serendipitous way, captures the seasons of life, in appearance, attitude and behavior. So, I thought a collage of the seasons may be an interesting project.

The pictures are from Europe, The US, Africa and Asia taken on both medium format or 35mm film.

I wonder if the sequence I chose to describe the change in seasons makes sense to you....

February 22, 2014

© Vahé Kazandjian, 2014

Cropping: Zen or Sin?

Those of you who have followed my blog for the past few months might have realized that like thousands of others, I learned and carried on street photography based on the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson, justly considered as the father of photojournalism. And yes, like thousands of others, I bought a 1954 Leica IIIF to “bend like Henri”!!!! Of course, we all quickly realize that the camera does not make the picture, but the photographer does. Yet, the tool has to be reliable and appropriate for the specific task.

While having the eye for a story and the quickness to capture it, one has to also learn composition very early on. It is said that Cartier-Bresson did not allow any cropping of his prints: the composition was always during the taking of the picture and not in the darkroom.

Well, rare among us are able to apply that rule as a principle. Instead, we try to compose in the field knowing that we will re-frame in the darkroom. In this area of film photography, I am not a purist.

In fact, for me reframing is almost a necessity for the following reason: nowadays I almost exclusively use medium format. In my case, that also means using a “normal” lens the equivalent of 50mm on 35mm cameras. Unless I am ten feet away from my subject, the 50mm lens will capture a vast amount of detail around the subject I have in mind for the story. So, I have to enlarge (that is why they call the apparatus “an enlarger”!!) to isolate and reframe the subject. The result is a cropped picture.

The rather philosophical question that can haunt us is the following:  is street photography supposed to show the setting unaltered? Or is it ok to rewrite history?

For me, the part is integral component of the whole, so it is ok to focus on that part alone. Does it represent the whole? Probably not always, but my goal is to tell a story, not do landscape photography.

Ok, with these considerations in mind, I will use three pictures and their “before and after”—you decide.

Picture One: Paris, Seine River Bank

This has been published more than once and is among my favorites. The forms, angles and texture are what a B&W picture asks for. Yet, it was not framed as it is shown above since I was more than a 100 feet away from the subject and used a Mamiya 645 1000s camera with a 80mm lens (equivalent to 50mm in 35mm photography).

On the negative, the woman shown above occupied perhaps 1/50th of the frame. Around her, the shot included the following:

The critical factor here was that I saw the three sitting at the edge of the wall, I did not see any detail about their faces, but knew that the woman with the black stockings was perfectly perched atop those stones. In short, I saw the scene, the potential it had, and what I can do in the darkroom. This assessment, contextualization, focusing and clicking took about 3 seconds.

Which picture do you prefer?

Photo Two: Saõ Paulo

                                                                

This one was a reject photo since it did not turn out as I intended: the man did not turn around to give the shot the 1950’s flavor I was aiming for.  Still, I printed it and used it in my discussion of failed shots.

However, the full frame encompassed more than what is shown above. Here it is:

Clearly, instead of the man at the phone turning around, a bystander saw me and spoiled the shot even further. But cropping would have worked if the main subject had done what I was hoping for.

Photo Three: Paris, Champs Élysées.

This is also a published picture. I took shelter from the summer rain under a balcony and caught this shot with a 1969 Nikon F, 50mm lens. It has movement and the woman blends with the off-focus tone except for her left foot that is in perfect focus. It gives the movement a freezing, just for a split second.

But there was an invited young man in this frame and distracted the viewer’s eye. So, under the light of my 1950’s enlarger using a 75 Watts tungsten bulb, I gently asked the “intruder” to leave the frame…

So, cropping: is it Zen or sin?

January 31, 2014

© Vahé Kazandjian, 2014