Don't Photograph Landscapes

Here is the article that I wrote following Herzog's talk last week. The Ubyssey newspaper published an edited version in last Friday's culture section...but it's Sunday and I've decided to privilege my blogfans with the original version. Enjoy!


Don't Photograph Landscapes

“I’m not here to show my work, I’m here to start a dialogue” said Fred Herzog, as he introduced himself to the eager crowd of aspiring photographers that attended UBC Photosociety’s first annual general meeting at the SUB on September 25. “I hope I can be interrupted often, and I hope you get used to my accent.” At that moment, a projector was fired up, marking the beginning of a memorable evening with the renowned Vancouver photographer.

Herzog’s work needed no introduction. After forty years of photographing street scenes in this city, his images of Vancouver have become as common to photographers as the totem poles in Stanley Park. Yet, it was the photographer’s presence, his own voice explaining his photographs that filled the evening with magic. The kind of magic that exudes from Herzog’s lively, colorful prints.

Born in Germany, Herzog moved to Vancouver in the 1950s and soon began capturing the life of the city with his camera. He separated himself from other photographers by shooting mostly in Kodachrome, a color slide film that was hard to turn into prints. This limited his ability to exhibit because “Making cibachrome prints was not feasible. It was almost impossible for me to make a profit selling the prints.” Thus, although his collection of slides continued to grow, his work remained in the dark for decades.

In a way, however, this initial marginalization helped to turn Herzog into a living legend. His images were taken decades before the were finally shown in galleries, turning his exhibitions into colorful odes to nostalgia. It takes only a minute or two of glancing at the impressive colors and contrast in his photographs to understand the power of images that bring back to life an era that is generally remembered in black and white.

Moreover, anyone that attended Herzog’s fantastic retrospective at the Vancouver Art Gallery last year understands that there is something very personal about his work. His images occur in the most public spaces, yet they remain deeply intimate. As spectators, it feels as if Herzog has suddenly allowed us to take a glimpse into the private life of his subjects, making us all voyeurs of life in an epoch that is foregone but never forgotten.

As a projector showed us some of Herzog’s famous images, Herzog explained that photography is about looking, about waiting. He mocked people who carry a bag full of expensive lenses saying “the picture has to be in your head, not in your camera bag” and underlined the importance of concentrating on a moment, on a sudden detail that makes an otherwise irrelevant scene unique. With this, Herzog revealed his place in the long tradition of documentary photographers who, like Cartier Bresson, causally roamed the streets waiting for the instant précis to capture a unique event forever.

Considering the inherent difficulty of shooting people on the streets, Herzog was quick to explain that it is imperative to look for body language, which includes clothing. Stopping the projector at a picture of a woman with a cigarette in her hand, he said that first impressions matter because humans automatically make judgments of the people they see, and thus, a photograph has to capture a gesture or a detail that gives a strong first impression. He then added, that “if you look long enough, you can find vitality anywhere.”

When asked about the risks of photographing strangers, Herzog first shared that “people have shouted at me, people have told me to get away, people have told me to get off their property, and people have threatened me with calling the police.” Thus, he suggested that we “shoot first, and ask questions later!” However, he confessed that in his particular case it has been easier since by the time he started exhibiting, most of the subjects in his pictures were too old to care. Almost jokingly, he suggested to wait thirty years before publishing a picture of a stranger because “a dead person will not take you to court!”

As the evening came to an end, Herzog delivered his most poetic moment. “To me, the city is a stage and the people on the streets are all actors.” In this sense, Herzog stressed that “We need to record how people look in their natural state…it’s the reality of how we look.” He explained that if photographers don’t accept the task of showing people with no interference, without staging them, then we will lose any visual evidence of the way we really were.

As a closing remark, Herzog comically reminded us for the twentieth time that in order to succeed as photographers, “don’t photograph landscapes, everybody does it, and nobody cares.”

Fred Herzog @ UBC

Last week I had the privilege to attend a talk with legendary Vancouver photographer Fred Herzog. My task was to take a portrait of him and then write a piece for the Ubyssey newspaper. I must confess they both proved to be tremendously difficult tasks.

Trying to take a photograph of a lecturer without intruding or without distracting him and the audience is obviously hard. And it becomes even harder when you are being judged by dozens of aspiring photographers in the audience and when your subject is a man who made his name in the history books of photography for shooting unsuspecting people in public places!

As the evening progressed and Herzog continued to talk about his work, I found it increasingly complicated to find a good moment to take my camera out and stand up to snatch a pic. I thought that maybe I should just wait until the end and ask him to pose for me with the white wall of the room as a background. But then...just as I was about to give up, Herzog said the magic words: "I like to record how people look in their natural state...it's the reality of how we look. I don't stage pictures." Aha!

I put my camera bag between my legs and quietly opened the zipper. I turned the power switch of my camera "On" and quickly adjusted the exposure settings. Herzog said "you have to wait for a good moment, for a gesture, a detail." And like a hunter, I waited.

Suddenly, the slideshow ended and the lights came on. It was over. Had I lost my chance? I became increasingly nervous...and then the miracle happened. Herzog was asked to sign a book. He walked straight towards me to find a pen on the chair next to mine (I was sitting on the front row). Then, without warning, he took a step back, slowly raised his pen to the light...and surely heard my loud CLICK!

Police vs. Photography

I had a rather uncomfortable experience last Friday while I was on assignment for the Ubyssey newspaper. You can read about it here. (for my non Canadian readers, RCMP stands for Royal Canadian Mounted Police.)

The online version of the paper does not show my pictures this time. But my lucky blog readers get special privileges:

Vancouver Soapbox Race

Today was the first annual Vancouver Red Bull Soapbox Race and I was sent by the Ubyssey newspaper to take some shots of the event. The clear skies and the heat prompted thousands of Vancouverites to swarm 4th Avenue in their beach attire, taking advantage of the last remnants of summer. It was a day for inventiveness and imagination, as 50 teams of soapbox racers displayed their creations on the pit lane, and then raced them downhill on a course with some fun obstacles.

Star Wars?
Batman
Team Steam
BC's Premier Gordon Campbell.
Here is the online slideshow! . Thanks to the Ubyssey's Photo Editor Goh Iromoto for making it possible!

Funny fact: the painfully 80s band Whitesnake participated with their own soapbox and finished in third place!

Folk Music Festival, part 3

On Sunday, I decided to put the lens cap on my camera for a while and become a true festival-goer. The first thing I discovered were the dozens of hoola-hoops scattered around the lawns at Jericho Park, waiting for a moving waist to give them a shake. I stepped over a purple one and suddenly became one of the hundreds, maybe thousands of curious festival-goers that enjoyed an instant flashback to childhood on that sunny Sunday at Jericho.

After a quick escape to eat an organic lentil wrap (veeery Vancouver), I went back to the main stage area and realized I was the only person without a blanket to mark his territory on the grass. The blanket situation requires a full post by itself, but I will just say that it looked like an unspoken "who brought the most exotic blanket to the park" contest. After a full ten minutes of trying to penetrate the blanket crowd and stepping on them all (accompanied by the classic "sorry, excuse me, sorry again, oh oops, coming through, hi sorry..."), I finally found a miniature blanketless square of grass and sat to enjoy the music of Bachir Attar and the Master Musicians of Jajouka.

As the sun was setting, I walked back to the media tent to meet the festival volunteer that would escort me to the back of the main stage in order to shoot the closing act of the festival. I knew it would be an important band, but I read the name of the performer and it didn't ring any bells. That explains why, when I entered the backstage area and saw Michael Franti calmly dribbling his soccer ball, I just said "excuse me" and walked past him.

Ten minutes later, I found myself mesmerized by Michael Franti. Watching him appear on stage was shocking and his music had a je ne sais quoi that left me in awe. I was paralyzed. I spent a whole song simply looking at him jump around the stage and absorbing his energy. Seeing a performer on stage makes us forget that they also walk as humans...on normal ground. To our eyes, they belong on stage, with lights and microphones and a fake background. But this man that had been so calmly playing with his soccer ball on the grass behind the stage, suddenly appeared before my eyes as the cause of all the shouts and the crowd's sudden hysteria. Anyway... here are the pics I shot after I got out of the trance:

Folk Music Festival, part 2

On Saturday I arrived just in time to see the master himself, Martin Sexton. There are only three letters that can describe this man: WOW. He injected the Jericho lawns with a spiritual energy that sent an extended cue for collective goosebumps. His voice reminded me of Ray Charles and Paul Simon, mixed with Dave Matthews on his better days (oh, sacrilegious comparison, I know). After him, I managed to get an escort to go on stage again and shoot the amazing set of Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet featuring Béla Fleck. Yes, I repeat, Béla Fleck, the banjo sensei that won 4 Grammys and was the only performer whose music I had on my iTunes! The main stage was suddenly turned into a display of virtuosismo by the banjos and the two violins that accompanied them. She delighted the audience with a song in Chinese and a story about her love for the time she spent recording there. Fleck was wearing a wicked pair of sunglasses that had some sort of foldable metallic window with a question mark and made it almost impossible to get a photo without a crazy glare.

The last act of last night was Spirit of the West, a band that had a truly personal connection with the audience. After 25 years of performing together, this Vancouver band is a favorite of the local crowd...some of their songs tell elaborate tales of North Van and sound like a Broadway musical. I wouldn't say I loved their songs, but it was impossible to keep still while listening to them. In what sounded like the celtic folk equivalent to a motivational poster, I was soon shaking my body to a fiddle and a mandolin! I hereby share my photos of this second night:

(click to enlarge)

Folk Music Festival

This weekend is very special for me. I'm covering the Vancouver Folk Music Festival for The Ubyssey newspaper! My assignment is to take photographs and write an article giving my opinion about the festival. I must say that I'm far from being a folk music connoisseur, but it's been a fantastic experience so far. On Friday I saw Aimee Mann, for whom I had great expectations (she won a Grammy for the Magnolia soundtrack), but she was dull on stage and sounded very monotonous. After her concert, I decided to try and see if I could get a press pass to take some shots of the closing act from the stage (it never hurts to ask). The media relations people were delighted to escort me to the stage corridor and soon after I was frantically taking pictures of Ozomatli!

Their show was so charged with energy that it made everybody in the audience stand from their portable chairs (yes, Vancouverites come very prepared to beachside festivals...with enormous organic cotton blankets from some country they can't pronounce and the most professional foldable chairs that make a Tesla engine look simple). It was very pleasing to see the large crowd singing, or at least trying to sing in Spanish and loving every second of Ozomatli's eclectic mix of Mexican folk and hip hop. As always, Ozomatli ended their concert by jumping off stage with large drums and doing a sort of carnival parade around the field. Here are some photos I took on this first day:

(click to enlarge)

Brad Mehldau, Bravissimo!

Oh, the indescribable joy of jazz festivals! I've just come home from a tremendous performance by the Brad Mehldau Trio at the Vancouver Centre for Performing Arts. The venue was perfect, and the crowd eager to clap and make noise after every single solo. Mehldau was very cool at his piano, keeping the rhythm by sliding his shoulders from side to side...his hands dancing over the ivory keys as he glanced occasionally at bassist Larry Grenadier.

There is a certain air of reverence at jazz festivals that has always surprised me...it feels as if the audience acknowledges that jazz musicians are a different breed, magicians that have a superior level of understanding about music. The stage becomes an altar of improvisation, in which creation occurs every instant and the sound is indescribably authentic. If you've lived through a 10+ minute piano solo, where the suspense grows with every note as you realize the music can take any direction, you might understand what I'm trying to say.

Back to Brad. They started off with a Thelonious Monk masterpiece. Then I believe they played a Coltrane song (please correct me if I'm wrong), and an Ella Fitzgerald classic. The common denominator in these songs was Brad Mehldau's incredible ability to improvise...to simply sit in his piano, feel the sounds coming from Jeff Ballard's drums, and reinvent songs that have been going around for decades.

After the fourth piece, Mehldau suddenly grabbed the microphone to tell us its story. He told us he dreamed the song while watching the movie "Easy Rider" on an airplane. He said his song was an imaginary eulogy that would be delivered by Wyatt (Peter Fonda) to George Hanson (Jack Nicholson) after his death. Priceless!

Then, unexpectedly, the trio began playing Sufjan Stevens' "Holland"! They started slowly, softly, in that very melancholy Sufjan mood...and then picked up the pace, stopped for a couple of solos, and suddenly bang! Holland appropriated by Mehldau!

And like a true maestro, Brad Mehldau saved the best for last. Yes...as you might have expected, he treated the audience with a Radiohead cover. (I must confess that the first Mehldau song I ever heard was his version of "Paranoid Android", about 5 years ago. I bought his "Largo" album and became an instant follower. One of the reasons why I wanted see him tonight was to hear one of his Radiohead covers). Fortunately, on this beautiful night in Vancouver, Brad Mehldau surprised the audience by finishing his performance with a magnificent version of "Exit Music (for a film)"!

I left my seat (orchestra, T-30) humming the last song and thinking that, although I adore the unpredictability of jazz (and the beauty of trying not to get lost in every song, thanks to my ADD), there is something inherently attractive about listening to an alternative version of a song you know by heart.

Turkey and Germany

In a couple of days, the national soccer teams of Turkey and Germany will be playing against each other in the first semi-final of the Euro 2008. I'm far too ignorant on soccer to talk about it, let alone post about it. However, just knowing about these two national teams facing each other in a massive media event sets my mind on various tangents.

About 70% of Turkey's immigrants live in Germany. Today, there are nearly 3.5 million ethnic Turks living in Germany (4% of the German population), of which, roughly 2 million have become German citizens, and about 60% work as unskilled labor. Turkish is the second most commonly spoken language in Germany, even more common than English. Turkish workers' remittances from Germany are a major source for external finance: about 2.5% of Turkey's GDP.

In other words, Germany needs Turkish workers and Turkey needs the money that Turkish immigrants earn in Germany.

Yet, Turkish immigration to Germany has not exactly been a smooth ride. Concerns about the "Islamization" of Germany have caused an ongoing debate on Germany's immigration policies and religious tolerance. Anti-immigration voices received great attention in the past election, and although Germany's Nazi past virtually eliminates any public discourse that could be considered racist, ethnic tensions are beginning to surface.

That is why I think Wednesday's match will be the most interesting match of the Euro 2008. Soccer levels the playing field between the two countries. Metaphorically, it allows equal conditions for Turks and Germans, at least during 90 minutes. Thus, an event of such magnitude has the power to either unite the country under the brotherhood of sportsmanship...or ignite the worst passions know to man. Needless to say, I would love to witness the streets of Berlin this week and enjoy Wednesday's game with a shawarma in one hand and a beer mug in the other.

Beirut in Van

I've been itching to write about Beirut's concert at the Commodore Ballroom since I boarded an airplane last Thursday with Zach Condon's voice still present in my brain. The concert was flawless, and although Beirut lacks a "show", it was an impressive display of musical virtuosity. The band didn't present special lights nor some interesting eastern European visuals (somehow I was expecting something of the sort). Nevertheless, Condon's voice has a natural flavour that transports you to the imaginary Soviet places of your liking without the need of explicit visual effects. He looked calm and comfortable on stage, and instead of feeling like the singer was putting on an act for the audience (the extreme opposite would be a band like Kiss), it felt as if the public had been invited into Condon's living room while he sang for himself. The concert never lost its air of intimacy. For a very fresh look of Beirut, check their Concert à emporter at La Blogotheque.

My head usually gets tired after listening to a full Beirut album. Their melodies are so rich that I have a hard time concentrating on their music when it plays for an extended time. In other words, I can't play Beirut as background music... the complexity of their sound demands my full attention and I have too much ADD to go trough a full album without a break. However, after Thursday's concert I've been listening to their albums obsessively. I even slept on the flight to Mexico with The Flying Cup Club playing on my iPod. It's almost as if the experience of seeing all the instruments come to life somehow made me absorb their music better, such that I no longer struggle when listening to their recordings. If any of my readers has a more scientific explanation for this, please share it.

I forgot my camera, so I didn't take any photos or videos... fortunately, someone called jchutter recorded a big part of their performance. Also, I sat behind the console most of the concert and the sound engineer had the official set list attached on it. As an anecdote, Beirut had planned 2 encore songs on their set list...but during the concert, they played about 6 encore songs. It was fascinating to see a seemingly amateur Condon discuss repeatedly with his bandmates which song to play next. Beirut was having such a good time with the audience at the Commodore Ballroom that they simply needed to continue playing and improvising beyond their planned set.

The official set list on the console at the Commodore was:

Nantes
Brandenburg
The Penalty
Mt. Wroclai
My Wife
Forks and Knives (La Fête)
Scenic World
Benito Juárez
A Sunday Smile
Elephant Gun
Cherbourg
After the Curtain
Gulag Orkestar
-------------(encore)
O Leaozinho
Postcards from Italy

And here is a playlist I compiled following the setlist:

An Interview

Given that this blog's first post in English had to be something special, I hereby share my recent interview with Hank Bull, director of Centre A.

The Champion of Asian Art.

The sole barrier separating West Hastings Street and the gallery space at Centre A is a long glass wall that can be penetrated through a small door. It feels as if the inside wants to permeate the glass and fuse with the outside. To a person walking along the street, the attraction is inevitable. No lineups, no reception, no ticket counter, no coat check, not a single flight of stairs or even a wall between the newcomer and the art displayed at the Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. 

I entered the small door for the first time, together with my friend Christiane, in February 2008 to interview Hank Bull, the director of Centre A. My first impression was that of a person who has just entered a large warehouse or a hangar, and feels uneasy in the large space. As we sat waiting for Hank on a couple of couches that lie in a corner of the gallery, our eyes began to understand the chameleonic properties of the space. The size of the gallery and the height of the ceilings make it suitable for any type of exhibition. 

Hank Bull appeared and after a brief explanation of our mission, we began asking him the questions that we had previously agreed upon. But Hank is not a person that can be easily bound and he immediately escaped the intermittent structure of our script. 

Almost apologetically, Hank began by saying that Centre A exists to break down barriers. His intention is to facilitate the transgression of roles of the traditional museum by expanding the field of cultural intervention. In other words, the art should not stop abruptly behind the doors of the gallery and the artist should not bow to the traditional labour structure that hangs over larger institutions. Artist cum curator cum explorer, Hank envisions a place without hierarchies, where multitasking is the norm, and where the artist and his art are in constant dialogue with the viewer, the bystander, and with the street. 

A decade ago, Hank took a year-long trip to Asia to escape the Paris-New York syndrome and he came back with the dream of creating an art go-to center in Vancouver that truly reflected the ethnic composition of the city. He dreamt of a place for new Asian artists to legitimize their art, but also for established artists to have a platform for interaction with the public. “Art is about people” said Hank, as he explained that by enabling residencies, the gallery becomes a workshop for artists, who develop their art through a constant interaction with the gallery’s visitors. 

The door of the gallery suddenly opened and a homeless resident of East Hastings appeared behind us. She gave us a joyful greeting and Hank introduced her as one of the honorary visitors to Centre A. In an instant, the life of the streets fused with the space of the gallery, marking the absurdity of the outside/inside binary opposition.

“Our location is crucial” continued Hank. The gallery is located at the cultural heart of Vancouver, on the corner that divides Gastown from Chinatown, West from East. The street outside is always vibrant with people walking or pushing shopping carts. Anyone can walk in, the door is always open. This enables Centre A to receive constant feedback from the community it serves and, thus, live up to the director’s vision: to build a pluralistic democracy through art.

I was interested in knowing how Centre A relates to the more traditional Vancouver Art Gallery and Hank explained that partnerships are very common in this city. This led me to ask how Centre A was different and he was quick to deliver the central response in our conversation: the VAG does not reflect the ethnic reality of Vancouver. Even if they cooperate, Centre A’s main drive is to boost the Asian presence in the city in order to fulfill its mission: “push the boundaries of contemporary art that question and complicate the construction of Asian and Asian-Canadian cultural identity.”

Centre A does not settle on a particular construction of “Asian.” It is crucial for the gallery’s survival to maintain an edge of transgression because, as Mr. Bull puts it, “you don’t want to be an agent for liberation and then become an instrument of control.” In this sense, “we don’t tell you what Asian is…we’re here to open the door to exponents of ‘Asian’ without defining it.” After hearing this I began to understand that Hank Bull’s vision includes a constant battle for ideas to redefine the cultural environment of Vancouver. Centre A then becomes not only the setting, but also the moderator and even the debater in this fight.

Hank Bull is on a mission to reinvent the museum and to save the Vancouver Art Scene from the bounds of western paradigms. Lucky for art, he won’t stop until cultural diversity is sufficiently represented in the city.

February 29, 2008