It's all about details too ...

One of the things that really struck me about Diana and Micha's B&B were the details ... exquisite details.

I felt concentrated, like a kid playing in mud, using flowers and twigs for decoration.  I had light and colour.  I was that lost during those moments when I played with my camera ... lost in the light, and the details.

This is an odd photograph and yet  I think I like it.  The light struck me but perhaps I saw the mosaic first.  I don't remember but it's like this.  You can spend hours in each room, outside, and in doorways, just noticing the details, one by one.

Before Photography ...

Before I committed to photography, I was pursuing a writing career.

I attended writing workshops with New Zealand writers and have this novel I've been carrying since the early 90's.  As I develop, move countries, learn new things, so too does my main character.  By chance.

Currently she's a war photographer who was in Iraq but who somehow ... happens to have relocated to Genova, Italy.  Before that, she was a woman in retreat, living in the mountains of New Zealand, alone with her dog, once again retired from a previously intense life.

There's a book of interviews with New Zealand climbers and mountaineers, almost published, two publishing meetings and an apology but 'they didn't think there was a big reading public for it', despite them liking it a lot.  The Everest tragedy happened later and climbing literature became more mainstream however, by then, I had enrolled at university: age 34.

I was heading for Bill Manhire's writing course in Wellington.  I ended up in Istanbul.

It makes me laugh to write that.  One never knows where life might take them if they allow it to take them ...

Anyway, back in my days of writing I used to drive my first husband crazy.  No, that's not why he divorced me.  I used to edit and correct as I wrote.  I would reach 27,000 words and edit it down to 3,000 words.  I was brutal and a perfectionist too. 

But it was my editing that made him crazy.  As I got closer to the final edit ... on a first chapter (hence I never finished the book), my editing would become minute.  I would give him the manuscript to see what he thought of my edit.  He would say, 'there's no change!'.  Exasperated, I would explain that I had moved two 'the's' and deleted an 'and'.  How could he not see the difference that made.

Children, never edit an unfinished manuscript.  Write it.  Fix it afterwards.  Or you will never finish.

The reason I write all of this is because ... there was another photograph of B&B Baur, like the previous one  but different.  I think the edit isn't so small but perhaps it is tedious to those reading this blog.

This is me and I need to 'see' both of them here, so that I can happen upon them unexpectedly later, and really 'see' them as a stranger.

GENOVA!

I flew over to Genova last Friday and immediately, upon arriving ... stories began to unfold.

It was a madly-busy, exquisitely-joyfilled 5-days.  And I couldn't reach the back-end of my website for some reason but honestly, I had no spare time. 

I stayed with the kindest friends out at Arenzano.  And I met their friend, the talented artist Giorgio Bormida.  Actually, I wanted to cook dinner for Francesca and Beppe before I left, and ended up cooking for Giorgio too.  It was only as I began dinner prep that I thought ... 'What have I done??!  Cooking isn't really my best thing'.  But they were all very kind.

I caught up with some of my favourite people there in the city but completely missed out on catching up with others.  It was lovely to catch up with Stefano, the owner/operator of Righicam, over lunch.  And with Francesca and Norma, from Le Gramole.

And then there was that 24 hours spent working with Diana, staying at B&B Baur with her and Micha.  It was sublime ... photographs and words to follow in the days to come.  I heard my first cuckoo as I sat by the open window in the morning.  And the views  ...

The kindness of Genovese strangers stunned me and ... well, it made me smile.  A lot really.  I met a lovely guy at a concert in Palazzo Ducale, who kindly explained all that was happening, to Outi and I.  But Outi and I is another whole story.

Meanwhile, here I am, just in from an 11-hour day of traveling.  It was a day that involved a train, a taxi, a plane from Genova to Rome, a bus to and from the plane, another plane to Brussels, then a bus and a tram home.

I shall return with photographs downloaded, with a mind rested and ready to tell you some stories.

Di's Plush New Office Chair ... the song

It's been busy lately.  Really busy.  But I guess that's nothing new however, on the list of things that make me smile, this song arrived on Saturday night.  Peter and Julie are back in Berlin but they read of my plush new office chair over on Facebook.  Hilarity followed, as they penned and then sang me a song.

Then yesterday was a beautiful blue-sky Sunday so Gert and I got up early and wandered off to Waterloo.  There's an antiques/flea market over there.  300 stalls.  Europe.  It's delicious.  A 5 euro leather coin purse was found.  The gorgeous Wendy was there too and, somehow, we bumped into each other in the crowds.

We came home via the most glorious bakery ... I exaggerate not.  Located not too far from Waterloo,  the La ferme du Hameau du Roy makes the most stunning baked goods I've tasted in a long time.  Gert took the photograph at the end of this post, using his iPhone.  We sat on the bench outside, with our food, enjoying the idyllic scene laid out in front of us.

It's been like that, the sublime mixed with the mess of everyday life.

It's life. 

Life as a Cascade ...

Last Thursday Peter and Julie arrived. 

Actually, I should write ... the fantastically talented Tenor, Mr Peter Furlong, and the exquisitely talented  Julie Wyma, Soprano, arrived last Thursday.

They were here for a private performance.  Hosted by lovely friends, Ruth and Marc, all reports tell me that it was very very well-received.

But back to the beginning of this cascade, this avalanche of people and events ... on Saturday, the incorrigible Baritone and Pianist, Chas Elliot arrived to stay too.  Meanwhile, Gert's parents were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary and there I was, on Saturday night, abandoning our guests to eat my first-ever Thai meal, at the Sombat Restaurant here in Antwerp.

Without exaggerating (I may say that often in this post), I can tell you that it was the most exquisite meal ...

Sunday.  I wandered off to Brussels to capture a First Communion celebration for Irish/English friends. It was just lovely.  The people were some the of nicest people you could hope to spend time with and the weather was perfect.

Sunday evening, a small nap on the train home before meeting up with Gert and heading over to Marc and Ruth's house for dinner ... where we caught up with the 3 opera stars, who had managed to impress their Antwerp audience.  We were all exhausted but very happy.

And suddenly, NYC was in the building.  Stefano and Shannon would surely have loved it.  'Dawg' and 'cawfee', and other 'w' words, flew round the table.  And then came the stories.  No one can tell stories like those three.  It was hilarious.

All of this AND Marc was sharing his quietly spectacular supply of red wine from Puerta Del Sol.  Las Ocho 2009, from Bodegas Chozas Carrascal would have to be the most divine red wine I have tasted ...  Ever.  It was that good.   I'm not exaggerating.  Not at all. 

Actually, when a wine is really good there is no hangover and it's true, on Monday we were all fine.  Exhausted because we had pushed ourselves as artists but no hangover. 

Monday.  We talked but lacked the will to attempt much.  Chas managed to leave after expressing a desire to stay but I'm sure he'll be back.  Peter and Julie had a round of meetings with various people in the afternoon and then we had the good fortune to end our day at Puerta del Sol. 

Well yes, that is the wine shop I love best in the world.  They import Spanish wine to Belgium but only after rigorously checking the quality.  Guy, Frank, and Jules really love Spanish wine, and Spain too.  It shows in the quality of what they sell.  (No, they really don't pay me to  write things like this.)

Today it's sunshine and laundry for me, and quite some work to catch up on...still.  I've sent Julie and Peter out to the park to relax before they return to their Berlin world tomorrow.  I think we're just all really pleased with how this week has unfolded.  The ongoing nature of good people, fine wine, and experiences that were kind of divine.

They will be back.  And maybe I can organise my next party around them and their remarkable voices. 

Meet Peter ...

 

 

Take down a musical instrument ...

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
- Rumi

A beautiful soul I met and was fortunate enough to photograph in those days when I lived in Berlin for a while.  Thank you, Noga.

Early Morning, Rome

My cousin and I were up early one morning in Rome.  And we wandered, cameras in hand, in love with the light. 

And we crossed the River Tiber and I caught this reflection ... this blur, and looking at it today it seems like a beautiful abstract painting.  The kind I would so love to paint.  I am hungry for colour in these days.  The winter was long.

Who Does She Think She Is - a documentary

I found a link to this over at the Creativity and Women site and followed it to this website called 'Who Does She Think She Is?' ... a documentary was made.

That question, it has had so much power.  It can be said with so much venom/distaste/disgust/disapproval ...keeping women, very powerfully, in their place.

Have a look, I think it's marvellous.

A little more on documentary photography

I wanted to come back to documentary photography once more and just say, never stop watching.  For me, it's a little like hunting ... perhaps. 

I don't go in with a plan beyond the attempt to capture the story.  To tell it true.  I picked up a 3-day documentary shoot, over on Flanders Fields, working with the New Zealanders a few years ago.

The image that follows is one of my favourites and I have to confess, it really was about swinging round and capturing this exquisite moment without thinking too much about settings.  A hongi ... a Maori greeting, was being exchanged. 

I had been traveling in France with the New Zealand veterans the day before and so they knew me a little. The New Zealand London Rugby Club were playing a commemoration match in Zonnebeke. 

Moments like these make documentary photography a big love of mine ...

 

 

On Documentary Photography ...

Her photographic work is magnificent and I love her presence: her portraits are stunning, they expose intimacy, humor, and pensiveness; her photographs capture the space, the movement, human interaction deliciously, in a way that one feels invited to an event long after it disappeared from the public scene.

In all her unobtrusiveness when working with the camera, Di is great fun to hang out with, the artists, scholars, thinkers, curators of our Berlin exhibition highly appreciated her, and when working together in Cairo, Istanbul, Berlin, or wherever else, I enjoy her kindness, humor, and delightful presence.

Shulamit Bruckstein, Curator, director of TASWIR projects / ha’atelier

Shulamit wrote this after a series of projects together and, in so many ways, lays out what I want to achieve as a documentary photographer.

I believe I need to be unobtrusive, invisible ... disappearing into the moment I have been asked to capture.  At the same time I believe that there are going to be people I need to engage with.  It's about building trust, if there's time.  It's about being respectful - I want people to enjoy my work afterwards. 

I prefer to wear dark clothes and quiet shoes.  I carry cough drops and tissues.  Nothing about me should stand out or distract people from the event.  I don't make eye contact when I move around ... unless I need to or unless I find a 'favourite'.  A favourite is someone who embodies something of atmosphere ... the event.  And there is always someone.

I love my flash.  It's a Canon Speedlite 580EX II and over the years we've become good friends.  I know how to twist and turn it, to bounce light and avoid shadows.  I work with my favourite lens most of the time, a  Canon EF 70-200mm 1:4L.  Some people get hung up on the latest equipment but I simply love whatever works for me.  This lens is my baby.  Attached to my Canon 5D Mk II ... it's magic.

I prefer to zoom because it allows me to stand back, on the edges, while still getting up close and personal without people realising that it's all about them.

Documentary photography ... unobtrusiveness, respect, the building of trust, connections, communication.  It's all of that and more.  I love it.

Creative People ...

Creative people tend to be both extroverted and introverted. We're usually one or the other, either preferring to be in the thick of crowds or sitting on the sidelines and observing the passing show. In fact, in psychological research, extroversion and introversion are considered the most stable personality traits that differentiate people from each other and that can be reliability measured. Creative individuals, on the other hand, seem to exhibit both traits simultaneously.

Scott Barry Kaufman

I enjoyed this.  Loved the idea that there are 'creativity reasearchers'.  And that I might actually have all these contradictions going on.

In a world that prizes labels, I just couldn't work out how to frame myself.  I might just stop with that framing nonsense now , and get on with the 'being' stuff.

I found the words ...

I believe that our way of 'seeing' the world is as unique as our fingerprint. I believe that the technical elements of photography are simpler than most people realise. With this in mind, I am offering photography workshops, women only.

You will receive a pre-course workbook that invites you to explore and come to know your camera via a series of simple exercises, with virtual assistance from me, if necessary. Then we come together, one-on-one or as part of a very small group, to put those new skills into practice out in the city, to create images that reflect your way of seeing and experiencing the world, and to develop your confidence with your camera.

Contact me.

Love Notes from Sahara

An old ice cream container appeared behind me, outside my office window, yesterday.  It was hanging from a long thin piece of green string.  Little Miss 8 casually asked me if I had noticed that there was 'something' out there.

I looked and found a little love note that had come from the kidlet who lives above me and I replied, then called out to let her know that she had mail too.  She hauled it and and so it continued till bedtime. 

The notes from upstairs always come with small gifts.  A piece of costume jewellery, a perfume-soaked piece of cloth, and there is always another note.

I sent up a beautiful cockle shell from my desk and then later, as a grand finale, a glue stick.  This morning she came down to breakfast bemused ... 'You sent me a glue stick?' 

I did.  Was there a problem, I thought you could maybe use one up there in your room?

This morning, to lure her back upstairs to clean her room, I announced there was mail, having loaded two pieces of green chewing gum and a horse picture to colour into the 'basket'.

I wonder how things will proceed today but I think I'd best take this seriously ... no more glue sticks, for sure.

I photographed the note using the camera in my new phone.  I am cautiously adjusting to the touchscreen and all the other wonders of mobile phones in the 21st century. 

Sunshine and the promise of 16 celsius by Saturday.

Good morning.

 

Diana Strinati Baur, True Vines (and writing a book review)

I finally reached university when I was 34 years old.

I hadn't known to dream it when I was young.  My people didn't have a history of university attendance but I was a natural  researcher, a terribly curious child who became an intensely curious woman. 

My first husband suggested the marriage owed me a degree as I had followed the development of his career, moving around New Zealand's South Island over the years.

And so I began.  I dived into literature, wanting the papers necessary to apply for Bill Manhire's creative writing course.  I explored film studies, psychology, and archaeology along the way.  Then I discovered social and political anthropology and detoured off into that seductive discipline.

Degree complete and realising that there wasn't much work in New Zealand (population 4 million), divorced, and having lost my mother along the way, I set out for Istanbul.  To teach English, of course, like so many good kiwi students looking for work and experience.

Ten years later and here I am, a photographer, a writer, a woman of dual-nationality living in Belgium.

All that to introduce today's story.  Last year, one of my favourite people published her first novel. I packed it, back in November, and read it as I traveled the 16,000kms+ home ...

Home for the first time in 8 years.  But the book pulled me in anyway, despite all that was going on in my head.  I recognised situations and characters, I knew that feeling of expat dislocation ... of not being sure of where home was anymore.

And then I arrived in NZ, put the book down, and spent 5 weeks wandering my old worlds, spending time with family and friends while sinking into that landscape I love more than any other.  There were roadtrips and beaches, mountains and forests, there were bush walks, jet boat rides, rivers ... everything you can imagine and more.  And friends, so many really kind friends.

I arrived back in Belgium ... that other home, to a life that demanded quite a lot of me.  4 hours on public transport twice a week, 2 hours on the other week-days.  And more.  And housework.  Life ... just the usual messy demanding life we all lead but I found it incredibly difficult to settle.

And the book review I wanted to write kept being put to one side.  I knew, part of it was that I had no space in my head for writing ... most definitely not even for serious review-style reading.  Time passed, it sat there on my shoulder, poking me occasionally, waiting.

Back at university we knew that to write an essay worthy of an A+, we needed to adopt a written language we called wankspeak.  Delightful I know but it was a way of recognising the elevation of language required to be truly worthy of an A+.

It terrified me.  I love poetic prose and always understood that that wouldn't get me an A+.  I developed a kind of nervous tic when it came to formal writing ... I required time, usually an extension on date due, and much misery.  You could say I developed a certain technique that got me through with maximum suffering.

Back to the present and somehow I had decided this book review needed to be worthy of an A+.  I should have pulled that idea out of my head at some point, discussed it with someone, had them say, Di, it's not about earning an A+.

Today, more than 4 months after opening the book, I decided it was time.  And I wrote.

I was stunned to find that I didn't need to reread the book, making notes and laboriously researching secondary sources.  I was stunned to realise that Diana's book had remained inside of me ... like the story of an old friend that I hadn't forgotten.  And that I understood, somewhere deep inside me, that it wasn't about wankspeak ... it was simply about tellling my truth.

Imagine that!

Anyway, let me introduce you to Diana, or a glimpse of her, via the photograph below.  Taken in Genova in October last year ...

 

 

Escobar Cafe, Antwerp

I love this cafe.  Recently discovered here in Antwerp, it's like a small oasis of good food and coffee, friendly people, and excellent music. 

There's an interview coming but for now ... today's lunch and a small glimpse inside Escobar.

Go early if you want a table at lunchtime.  I went back after the lunch rush for the interior shots, having enjoyed meeting the loveliest New Zealander and her 5-week old son just after midday.  It was a most excellent day really ... with sunshine!