© Anne Turyn, 12-17-1960, from ‘Flashbulb Memories’ (1986)

“Colour expands a photograph’s palette and adds a new level of descriptive information and transparency to the image. It is more transparent because one is stopped less by the surface – colour is more like how we see. It has added description because it shows the colour of light and the colours of a culture or an age. While made in the 1980s, the palette of this image by Anne Turyn seems to date the picture a generation earlier.”

From ‘The Nature of Photographs‘ by Stephen Shore (Phaidon 2007) p.18.

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Yet, while I was recently watching The Genius of Photography (Episode 4) it came as a pleasant surprise to hear how William Eggleston was described as unreadable. This is the photographer of course, who brought serious colour photography into the mainstream art world (see for example a review by Photo Book Guide).

Soon after I took this photo above, standing by the entrance of Leeds University, and as I was waiting for a sudden wave of rain to pass – among shiny bikes and a man whose posture and reflection had intrigued me… well, very soon after that a security guard came out from his box running quickly towards me.

The Rolling Exhibition began as a simple photograph taken while Kevin Connolly was skating down a backstreet in Vienna some time ago. Kevin kept travelling balancing his torso on a skateboard, and now, after rolling through the streets of 31 cities in 15 countries, he exhibits what he collected: the stare.

Bonnard used to say “what are you after?.. why this instant?.. why press the shutter just then?”

I just answered “why did you just put this stub of yellow?”

He laughed. We knew sensibility cannot be explained.

For all those enjoying the pleasures of a pinhole camera, or even better, for those who always wanted a reason to try, click here for a Corbis link to five cool and funky designs of a pinhole camera. Download and print them for free

Don’t forget to check out the gallery as well. Are you surprised by the power of the pinhole photography? To add one more example,  I have included here a photo by Steve Gosling (below), which was the winner of the ‘Places’ 2006 competition by the journal Black & White Photography (Issue 66)

This photograph made by a pinhole camera revealed the ‘eerie formations’ of Yorkshire’s Brimham Rocks – formed of a tough sandstone known as millstone grit, a task that was not easy to capture with a standard camera.

According to the photographer, “it’s very difficult when using a standard camera to find a composition that works, because the rocks are very scattered. But the pinhole camera accentuates the texture of the rocks in the foreground in a way that a standard camera wouldn’t.” He also explains that the long exposure, because of the pinhole’s f/138 aperture, and the resulting movement in the tree and the clouds gives a picture a lift.

There is a time when not knowing what day it is feels very wrong, particularly when you end up buying the stale bread from the shelf. But most other times, it seems just fine.

There is a poem by Charles Bukowski claiming that…

there are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes decades
to realize this
and most often
when you do
it’s too late
and there’s nothing worse
than
too late.

There is a time when, despite being surrounded by so many people, someone feels their own body freezing out and the spirit turning into a statue from inside out. Suddenly, this time, one cannot simply move away or keep walking backwards and forwards, eagerly compensating for the time running out. In fact, those with the higher antennas might be the first ones left out; amateurs, angels, and professionals altogether… All this despite, again, that we all need – in the end – a certain level of emotional superficiality… And despite how everyone is aware that the sound of petrified legs hardly echo the most wanted and abused word at the moment, ‘friend’.

How could a body like this have a big love anyway!

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