Photography workshop

I found it very inspiring to work with photography. With a digital camera, it's almost too easy to take an unlimited amount of pictures without reflecting on how they fit together, or how they are meaningful. To me creativity is only possible where there are limitations. Freedom is often supposed to be a requirement for creativity, but I think the opposite is closer to the truth - Daniele's Fantasy Saves the Planning is a good example. I have been reflecting on what these limitations can be in Dharavi, when it comes to photography. My "baddest" picture may be a starting point. But it arouses an uneasiness in me, because it clearly treats the people in the picture as objects. At the same time, I start reading their body language, without engaging in the constant search for the eye that is programmed in us to do unconsciously when we look at people, a phenomenon called the fixational eye. I'm not sure whether I want to use this very manieristic method.


I also had an interesting discussion with Stefano about photography and the way to deal with people in the street when taking pictures. Should one approach them and ask for permission, making them self-conscious, or is it better to just take the picture, preferably without them noticing (which I do sometimes)? Stefano's reply was interesting. He said that when he was doing the later, it was because he was chasing an image - I don't remember his exact words. He doesn't find that interesting anymore. I became very aware of my own chase for a good picture, in purely esthetic terms. What I find interesting in his attitude, is that it makes it clear that photography is both a result, and a process. Maybe the process should prevail. Maybe I should be more focused on the process, rather than chasing the good picture. It's an interesting ambiguity. I think the workshop has made us aware about the fact that photography is a medium which needs to be used in a very conscious way.

So following this newfound interest in the process, I decided to document in a simple sequence something that still gets my attention everyday, although I am becoming a bit "hemmablind" (swedish word for becoming blind to one's surroundings when seeing them repeatedly) since I moved to the Netherlands in july last year: the enormous windows on street level. They make the streets so interesting, framing private life (or public life for the people inside), warm light illuminating the pavement during the night. This would be unthinkable in many other places. The first sequence is from Rotterdam, the second one from Amsterdam. I notice now that there is another ambiguity at work here: dwellings and commercial spaces have the same kind of windows, and are both present in the pictures.