Monthly Archives: January 2012

The ballad of a fallen empire

 

It is more likely undertake a reluctantly walk, someone holds your hand and you deny the other for the law of retaliation, keeping it clenched in the pocket.
Your eyes are dazed and you hide them behind sunglasses, even if it is dark around you. The light teases you, is because of the neon and the blinking, and of all the passengers eyes which are kicking your attention. They look like to move inside your mind and they cannot fit all. The place is shapeless, so much crowded the outline is not to be seen.
London.
You can barely think what you want to say  that a overhanging thought ends up getting off your mind.
You would stop the speed, shift the scene to fit yourself on a more comfortable stage – close your eyes, there’s always something above the level of the floor- but you cannot. This city is a trap, it is a circle of pleasant pity, loyalty to automation you cannot escape from. It might transform you in what She wants you to be. You dare to afford a scale of values no other cities will offer you.
Well, London, here we are.

Dalston back alley

Dalston back alley

A police car is passing by. It slows down the sound effect, split in the space of its presence. A police car is passing by, from the wrong side of the street.
The street is silent. Flighty. Swarmed about lights switched off and bodies, laid down on wooden plank to sleep. The street is empty.
The street is free of green, filled with yellow of the lamps. Where am I going, across this made-up enclosure, white tidy fences, where am I going?
London has a queasy taste. Mannerism and pose. It is complex and tragic. It has been pull-over during the night. The street is really silent, sometimes.
Nobody is walking, if someone is walking does he look for anything?

A city is almost the same of any other city.
Get off popular historical sites. Erase unknown languages tunes. Take off of your sight any memories reference.
A city is almost the same of any other relatively large and permanent settlement. It is a place to fit in all the contemporary human skills.  Well, any place to be settled in.
Is it that realistic? Have you ever found a place where everything would pretend to belong to you?
A city is a inner place to be. Everything around you is just the well-known way to reach a place, the time spent together, the privileged level of society, where you live, what you are.
How do you do that?

Olga lives in London

Olga lives in London

An old fat woman dressing in bright red is holding her shoulders. From the edge of the road her legs are more likely erotic signals, the fences of an old trap, the unseen black lace covered streets where you’ve always dreamt to be.
London is full of people that love each other without even ever met. London is crying upon the time used to be loved.

People make the city’s adornment.
Running the city, occupying the space, managing the society or maybe let the society fit the life into the well made box. Your city, London. Lights and dark, lack of time and time to be spent, your daily way to get to work is the space between what you are and what the city wants you to be.
Sometimes you can stop yourself assisting a building demolition and feel guilty towards the future. While the whole world is moving, just try to realize how much of life you have left before an empty gloomy field would be occupy by the progress. You just keeps going. Forget about the past with some little things to keep your memories up.

Life and death, epidemic revolution of feelings, you open up your eyes in a nursery room and someone has already put you in a dream or a nightmare, the fixed place for you.

London. What you can change about it.
Where the money run. Where you’re a pawn. Where the appearances can be deceptive. Where you can find a small dream to live in, you’ve got a job, a house, some rights, many places to be, fun opportunities success.

Is that the life you want to have?

Gay laid back

Gay laid back

You decide to show in public your inner trend. Your unwanted hair on the legs get out from the fishnet tights holes and they’re scratchy. It makes you feel pleasure and unease, it looks like you live forced in a box. It looks like you’re so depressing and contemporary.

Baby Madonna of the buildings

Baby Madonna of the buildings

This is a profanation of the city planning. This is a concrete wall made by God.
Look at the heavenly blu soutanes and the inside legs blood, a saint and dirty conception, a evil intention of getting closer to the sky and guess now how many drugs the baby Madonna would take to keep both feet on the ground and not let the life carry herself in lost highways.

This is London.
Tell me a story, tell me another story, because you London are so fake and violent while you’re so tidy.

DOWN BY LAW

The Down By Law analogue studio blog
Photographic experiments, coarse grain, Do it youself tips and the discovery of a city.

 

punk photography

This is a public service announcement with camera

Punk bands didn’t really know how to play, nevertheless they were just doing it. They didn’t care about perfect tuning or perfect instrument.

Ba-ba-banana, this ain’t Havana

Punks were misfits with wrong outfits

I am an orgasm addict

Punks took the Do It Yourself to the extremes, using it to get back the productive process, from the recording to the instrument construction to the distribution.

It’s purple psychology, Not just an old lady’s.

Punks claimed the lens of subjectivity is the only way to  see the world,

I did it my way

Punks were not tryin to give a lesson

Livin in a jungle it ain’t so hard, living in a city, it will eat out, eat out your hearth

Punks couldn’t care less

Listen to this, run

Punks were often lonesome wanderers of run-down areas

Yeah, Yeah, Industrial Estate and the crap in the air will fuck up your face

Punks thought that doin it was better than talk about it. Go out and get it.

I don’t know what I want but I know how to get it

 

 

from “Photography: an allegoric manifesto”

 

 

Night flash street photography

London night street photography. In order to do street photography you need some balls, to do flash street photography you need to be very confident (or pretty drunk), have a good fast-talk (just in case). If you really feel like flashing complete strangers in the middle of the night, even a fast glass is optional

the lady with the fur

Old street tube station, lady with a fur

Any combination of fast film / fast lens can do good, if you add a flash even a not so fast combination is acceptable. Anyway we were not shooting for any agency or portrait class, we were in just for the hell of it, so the two outfits were: minox GT (f2,8) + superia 400 @ 1600 + inexpensive flash and Yashica GSN (f 1,7) + superia 400. I’m not fan of the fuji superia, just it happened to find a big stock at a ridiculous price at a car boot sale, I’d rather use tri-x @ 1600 or, if my wallett is full, Ilford delta 3200. Of course the results are hit and miss, we had quite many out of focus shots just because we forgot to change the selective focus (damn cheap wine) or because with the lens wide open sometimes is difficult to guess the distance, especially with the Minox’s scale focus.

Hackney Road, lonely girl with cab

Hackney Road, lonely girl with cab

Walking through dark streets at nighttime flashing random people is quite invasive but in particular occasion you can do it without really raising (almost) any eyebrows. Shooting in tube stations, outside clubs or in busy street corners is safe and even without flash you can have good results, while in order to shoot in alleys and streets to passer-by the flash is a must and in this case a public celebration works on your side.

Hackney Road, couple walking through trash

Hackney Road, couple walking through trash

We took some of these pictures on new year’s eve around Old street and Hackney Road in London, overall the reactions were not bad: just one complains,a guy who asked the picture to be deleted (it’s always funny try to explain that you have to develope the pictures first) and a couple of funny looks. All the others couldn’t care less. It was good fun.

He has a shiny golden jacket, she has Madonna leggings

He has a shiny golden jacket, she has Madonna leggings

no, he didn't complain

no, he didn't complain

Old street station

Old street station