(a) blog
consciously choosing moments and interactions beyond the digital to value the analog human experience
Why in photography does it feel like I am happiest when I am trying always to get things wrong instead of right?
I am deciding: To dance on the streets. To cook with my children. To make homes wherever I go. To dress up and be playful with my expression. To love you more than anything else in the world. To kiss you at least once a day. To smile at you, whenever I see you. I decide: To ride horses through the woods.
One of the many reasons I love analog photography so much for and maybe someday I'll even realise it is actually the most important reason of all - it's the connection with people you make. Sometimes it's just a smile you exchange after seeing someone's camera, sometimes it's a chat that evolves because someone asks you about yours. And soon after you notice you have something in common, somehow it seems it's all one friendly, analog tribe.
Yesterday I had the pleasure of dining with a very special French lady. Yes, lady is just the right word for her - somehow I couldn’t even imagine how she was ever eighteen years old and then you look at the women on the streets, in the cafés and shops and you know that age really doesn’t matter, it’s all about posture and attitude.
Morning observations. The feeling that turning my phone on is like letting a whole lot of world into my life - a wave of world. Will I do it? Will I resist? It's too easy to blame curiosity.
Picasso is 23 years old in this picture. Did he know back then what would lie ahead? He surely wasn’t afraid to find out. Let’s not be either. Let’s learn and understand, create and try to achieve. Let's make a home in a craft - any craft, be it in art or in business - let’s make it ours.
I often find myself thinking about a certain curiosity when it comes to photography: How we tend to be drawn to pictures that aren’t perfect, that are somehow even exactly the opposite. Looking at this image by Birgit Hart, it comes to mind that we anticipate a story through completing the gesture in our imagination.
For all of you carnivours, fans of Austrian "Hausmannskost" and those who seek to become more knowledgeable about it - this is one of a kind book that should from now on not be missing in your cookbook collection! Claudia Hütthaler's recipes of classics such as Tafelspitz, Blunzngröstl or Schweinsbraten come alongside secret tips and surprising discoverie and famous far beyond her own family table. Pairing her loved ones favorite recipes with artwork, photographed by Pia Clodi & styled by Pearl Collins, this cookbook has become an absolute extravaganza!
I wish it hadn’t been for Rodney Smith's death to read up on him and his work process, yet although I’ve admired his wonderful photographic work for a few years and even spent some time considering buying a print just a few months ago (Note to self: Should have done so and will hopefully now soon). I always looked at his images thinking they came from another photographic world than mine. Another place, another time.
So this photographer / gallerist has hit the road. First stop Munich, where I am staying with my dear friend Birgit Hart, her husband and two children. She's was one of the first ones, who inspired me to shoot on film - having attended FIND a few years before me she has been hybrid shooting (mixing film & digital) and quite frankly I believe her eye is just exceptional.
It’s almost two years now, that I went to Buenos Aires and looking backI am chuckling that I didn’t have quaintest notion I was intuitively adopting a very old idea. Taking a sabbatical or the advice to “let your fields lay fallow in the 7th year”, has recently found it’s modern day synonym in “taking a Sagmeister”, after it’s famed advocate and Austrian design luminary.
Film photographer Birgit Hart talking with Albert Roig and me about analog vs. fast photography, putting family first and the power of memories.