Two Portraits
I recently shot two very different portraits for two different people. The first one is for an architect named Euan Gray. He is currently building bespoke huts for various purposes (camping, reading, writing, gardening) in the Scottish countryside. I went to his workshop to get a portrait of him in his building environment. My favorite shot is below. I have to say the the soft light in Scotland when the sky is cloudy is so damn beautiful. You can check out Euan’s website at Wild Hutte for more info on his huts.
The other shot is a portrait of my wife Lena. I wanted to experiment with the idea of pixels and how we have come to view them as the building blocks of our new digital reality. In some respect we are all pixels now with our digital/online persona being the main thing people know about us. I find it interesting to figure out how to balance time in the digital realm with our time in the outside world. My wife is currently finishing her Masters in Design Ethnography and she has a couple of interesting websites as well… Lenacorinna and Luminurture.
Notes From Abroad
My last eight months in Scotland have been rich with contemplation and attention to detail. It has been my first year living overseas and the first time in my life that I have ever taken a break from work in order to focus on personal projects. With one finished (and looking for a publisher) and two others in the works, I feel like I am moving in the proper direction but I continually marvel at how long it really takes to create something with meaning (at least to the person creating, if not the audience). It requires much mental and physical effort to focus on the deeper connections of the idea and see it through to the material work. There have been many days in which I felt I didn’t accomplish a single thing, or even regressed, but I have kept at it. I’ve gotten quite a bit of solace from reading books this year. I’ve tried to read some classics, some philosophy, and even some memoirs. In Haruki Murakami’s book, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running [thanks, Fiona!], I was delighted to hear that he didn’t start writing novels until he was thirty-three years old. But he decided to write, and he dedicated his life to it. It sometimes feels like it really is that simple. I have to thank my wife Lena, for convincing me that I should pursue some individual goals this year and preempting Murakami’s advice by telling me to just do it. To focus on the tasks at hand and to take this year to more fully develop the language of my art. I have been reading, writing, going for walks, taking photographs, developing long-terms projects and conversing with Scottish and German artists over coffee. It has absolutely changed my perspective on life, values, and wealth. And although it has been a wonderful year, I still feel anxious about the future. Much like Nick Carraway from The Great Gatsby, when he echoes the perfect sentiment about reading, writing and art: “now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the ‘well-rounded’ man.” Here’s to all those who have been helping to make me a more well-round man…
Good Reads
Errol Morris is my favorite documentarian and quite possibly my favorite filmmaker as a whole. His search for universal truth among the myriad of perspectives in each single story is thoughtful, honest and stimulating. His work is food for the brain but it’s never pedantic or tedious. It makes poetic connections between the mundane and the grandiose, the subtle and the obvious. It leaves you feeling refreshed, learned and ready to create something of your own with a head full of new and interesting notions.
AND…HE RECENTLY RELEASED A BOOK ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY! Believing is Seeing (Observations on the Mysteries of Photography) by Errol Morris. If you have ANY interest whatsoever about photography, philosophy, the nature of truth, or just plain old history, this book is essential to your library. In six essays, Morris asks six different fundamental questions about the nature of truth as it relates to a particular photograph. Most of the essays revolve around documentary photography but the lessons can be extended to many different aspects of life. You are treated with an aha moment on almost every page in this book. I don’t know if it will make you a better photographer, but it will definitely get you thinking about the nature of perception and how it affects what we think we know. It will blow your mind. Just go read it.
Jane Gowans Jewellry
One of the great things about the UK is the amount of creative people I get to meet. Someone told me a few months ago that Scotland, in particular, is one of those interesting places that just seems to churn out talented artists. I think there is a lot of truth to that idea. Case in point is jewellry designer, Jane Gowans. She creates contemporary jewellry through a mix of traditional craftsmanship and modern techniques. Her designs are luxurious, structured, striking and minimal. These shots are for her new collection Geology Rocks (Styling by Jane Gowans Jewellry Design and makeup by SC Makeup Artistry). You can see more of her beautiful work (and some more photos) at her site, here.
*For those curious about the background…During the planning phase I decided that we needed a bespoke background since we were dealing with this unique jewellry. We had a limited to budget so I had the idea to use a stack of A1 black paper to make tall cylinders to mimic the designs in Jane’s new collection. I simply rolled and taped cylinders roughly eight inches in diameter, then curved a small strip of paper into the top, and lastly slipped another cylinder up and over the middle piece. The pressure of the small strip trying to unravel held the two tubes in place. This helped make the whole background collapsable, as I had limited space to carry it and limited time to set it up. It ended up being a very inexpensive and elegant solution to create some dynamism in the background while letting the jewellry take center stage.
The Recognition of Prior Assumptions
I can’t believe it. I finally have a finished mock-up of my new book The Recognition of Prior Assumptions. It was an incredibly arduous task to put this thing together but It feels good to have reached this stage. Now all I need to do is shop it around to publishing houses who would be willing to put out a book of photographic triptychs with text over the top (due to the size and number of pages there is no reasonable way to self-publish this thing). I will be talking to a few different publishers soon but any suggestions of contacts or publishers for this type of book would be greatly appreciated. With any luck this beautiful book will be available for sale soon. Below is some info about the project. Cheers…
This series, The Recognition of Prior Assumptions is a combination of digital photography and text. The triptych photographs and the corresponding poems were created over the span of three years, from 2008-2011. The work is concerned with the constantly evolving human patterns of behavior and creation. Both behavior and creation are infused simultaneously with a virtuous and ignoble personal history. Each poem deals in some way with the patterns created by human behavior, and it is the recognition of these patterns that comes to inform our worldview. Similarly, the photographs illustrate the interconnectedness of specific spaces and aim to extrapolate the patterns that occur within the creation of a specific site, whether it be natural, man-made or some combination of the two. These patterns of creation are subtly illustrated in all things humans work to build and appreciate.
Because both poetry and triptychs are traditions rooted in storytelling, the poems provide a greater depth to the narrative in the photographs while the photographs allow the text a physical space in which to be contemplated. It is in these quiet moments of reflection when we recognize intimate truths hidden within our prior assumptions. This series expresses the feeling of those frequent, if fleeting, moments of insight.
The Classic Fleet Collective Building
This is an image I made for the Fleet Collective in Dundee, Scotland. It’s meant to showcase their new offices in the old Dundee Chamber Building. Fleet Collective is a group of creatives working on solo and collaborative projects in fields ranging from filmmaking and design to public relations. I managed to grab this on one of the only blue sky days in the last two weeks…that’s Scotland for ya.
©2012 JIM BLACKSTOCK PHOTOGRAPHY
