Cinema5d

Cinema5d
Watching through them all, looking for ones with deeper contexts, maybe a wrong place to search, the ones I've watched so far are either about technology or trying to be meaningful and beautiful by showing already obviously beautiful things that don't need a cameraman.

Photography as a research method.
Walker Evans' pictures for Farm Security Administration.


discontinued.. not enough beef right now.

Sacrifise of a photojournalist

A blog entry to discuss and interpret the sacrifise of a photojournalist if it exists... meaning that a dedicated photojournalist does not get to live the life he sees through his camera, doesn't get to be close to the rest of people, which means he is either always in fascination of the world and therefore is able to bring his fascination to others using his craft. I need evidence and more elaborate description to attempt to figure out the truth.

W. Eugene Smith. A photojournalist known for his refusal to compromise industry standards, an artist for his search of the right way to portray the world in his pictures.

"I am a compassionate cynic," he wrote, "yet I believe I am one of the most affirmative photographers around. I have tried to let the truth be my prejudice. It has taken much sweat. It has been worth it." I have tried to let the truth be my prejudice... That goes against what most of us (young people half o' foot into the media industry) think. Subjectivity appears to be the only weapon, shield against the big and the almighty world before our eyes full of injustice and disharmony. I want to show you the world the way I see it VS I want to show you the world the way it is even though you and I wish it was different.

Some of Eugene Smith's pictures:

In all his biographies it's said that he is a loner (#1; #2; etc) which makes me wonder whether the price to pay in order to create art is exactly that huge - the world. It's very easy to find examples in a list of artists who really influenced modern point of view:

Franz Kafka

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Antanas Škėma

Extentialists and surrealists such as these mentioned above tend to create work that is well beyond current popular mindstate because their work is about problems so difficult to absorb, especially by the all-singing crowds, because of that they are usually forced to live a lonely life, because an artist misunderstood by the industry is nothing in the eyes producers and generally people who can sell artworks.

Uniqueness and revolutionary methods in their art is shared between Eugene Smith and those artists I have mentioned before

How much am I actually interested in documenting someone else's anguish…because nothing else is worth saving, right?

Creating a documentary, when the task was first introduced to me, seemed like a goal you take on with the mindset of a curious traveller who wishes to explore. If only I had realized what that "explore" consisted of right then.. nothing would have changed, I would still be here devising a masterplan to find a form of entry to another world. Any world, just let it be different than mine oh and if it also were violent but wouldn't touch me would also be good.

If I may suggest an allegory, taking a picture of a patch of wet grass with an iris so wide that it's all blurry at the edges means documenting nature as much as taking a picture of a bus stop is documenting life of all humans who have ever waited in it. Context is so huge and at the same time pathetic. Although my sense of poetry is telling me that bus stop will have witnessed an awful lot and if it could talk, would tell horrible and beautiful stories. But I digress.

Now, filming a crowd of drugged up teenagers trample a man on the street during a revolt would be something else. The contexts become deep in the storyteller's face and his story becomes alive if only he can express, portray them, if he can find the right tool. Apparently, just simply pointing a camera at something following your intuition might just catch something the world has never seen, a before unrecognised human emotion, etc.

It consists of steaming sweat and blood, extraction of epinephrine, great footage and even a greater amount of guilt. You stood there watching through a 55mm lens another man get trampled.

After watching the Mugabemeandamilliontampons I have a strange sense every time I hold a camera that I'm about to capture a piece of memory and by doing so destroy it's reality and turn it forever into a memory. Maybe that's what every bad photographer feels.

Or maybe it's just what a human feels when he gets out of the ever-available trance of dumb tranquility.