I have a lot of books on photography and I keep on accumulating and accumulating them. I think about is as a path that I am building for myself. Since there is so much to learn about, I sometimes tend to get a bit overwhelmed by the amount of information that I want to absorb and I keep on going back to books I read in the past realizing that they make way more sense to me after that other book I just read. Despite my weird approach, I like sharing things that I find useful for myself and that have helped and still help me understand photography, its roots, its development, its most important figures. So here is a small list of books that I found particularly interesting. I will spare you the “obvious” ones, such as the must-have Sontag books, Benjamin and Barthes.

Lately I’ve been reading “Photography after Frank“: basically a collection of essays by Philip Gefter, who worked for the New York Times for more than fifteen years. It’s a good book and I recommend it (it would not have hurt to have more photographs in the “illustrative” section but it’s fine I guess). Among my favorite essays “The Imagist’s Eye – on Henry Wessel”.

“Long Life Cool White – Photographs and Essays by Moyra Davey“. There are many reasons why I love this book. It could be the reflective writing, the personal photographs or simply how it feels in my hands.

“Unmarked. The politics of performance” by Peggy Phelan. This was a happy discovery and I have to say it’s not the easiest of the books I have but it is fascinating and I keep on going back to it. It is a very sharp analysis of visibility through a feminist point of view, through the examination of works by Mapplethorpe and Sherman (to list some). A very good way of describing the focus of this book is, I think, a sentence on page 27:

“Umarked concentrates on the broken symmetry between the self and the other, and the possibilities this break affords for rehearsing the political consequences of an acknowledgment of a failed inward gaze. Precisely because the gaze is “not-all”, representation cannot be totalizing. Representation always shows more than it means: in the supplement one can see ways to intervene in its meaning”.

“Illuminations. Women writing on Photography from the 1850s to the Present” by Liz Heron and Val Williams is also a very interesting book that I bought a while back. The title is pretty self explanatory.

Also, a good reference book for those who are interested in Surrealism, “Photography and Surrealism. Sexuality, colonialism and social dissent” by David Bate. I have to say it is rather hard to find books on photography and surrealism without having to buy a big expensive ouvrage. This one is clear and with a rich bibliography (which is great if, like myself, you start reading a book by looking at the bibliography).

An all time favorite of mine, although it is not too much of a theory/analysis oriented book, is the Phaidon’s 5-book collection of Women photographers, “Five Great Women Photographers“. I bought it when I was still in university and that’s how I discovered Mary Ellen Mark, whose work I admire and respect so much.

Also a monograph, “L’Hôtel” by Sophie Calle, a book (in French) that was not so easy to find. If you are familiar with Calle’s work you will know about this series, for which she took a temporary job as a maid at a Venice hotel and then snapped photographs in guests’ rooms. The idea (or the “game” as Calle calls it), came while emulating the fictional character of Maria, a character in Léviathan, by Paul Auster, to whom the author imposes a rather rigid set of rituals (such as eating food of one separate color each day, living a day based on a letter of the alphabet). Calle did the same and then published it all in a series of books, of which “L’hôtel is number 5.

That’s it for now. I will dig in my library and see if I find more books I can suggest. Happy discovering!

I am in London for a couple weeks to attend two interesting courses on textile design and this chaotic city tends to be overwhelming, at least to someone who is used to relaxed, “take-your-time” Berlin. Not sure why, but whenever I am somewhere, for something I had been looking forward to for a long time, I can’t stop thinking about the place I left behind, even though it’s only very temporary.

But while in London, I also take advantage of the amount of things to do and to see. Case in point, the Sally Mann exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery (she will be there on Saturday 24th from 3 to 4 pm for a book signing session). It’s hard to say anything about her work that does not involve the word fantastic. I had seen a couple of her photographs at a group exhibition in Vienna but the London retrospective offers a background and it’s organized in a way that allows you to unite the dots and fully appreciate how special her work is.

Besides this short report from London, I wanted to add a technical comment: some of the links to the exhibitions’ archives on the side column for “Structurally recyclable, basically disposable” have not been working correctly. Use the links from the Exhibitions page for now and I will try to fix everything as soon as possible.

It’s always nice to discover things you thought the world needed. Case in point, I recently stumbled upon the film photography podcast, which is something the world needed because, as the authors themselves recognize, the world is already filled with very technical, unfriendly (read=boring) film photography podcasts.
So, I guess my point is: if you’re interested in film photography and are frustrated by the unwillingness of many photographers to share their precious knowledge, listen to this podcast. It’s a breath of fresh air.

On a different note, here is a very useful website for large format photography, with plenty of articles with in-depth technical advice, such as on how to calculate bellows extension exposure compensation, an so on.

When I look at a beautiful photograph of a mountain I think that what I am looking at is inserted into a much broader environment. A city or a village must not be too far away from the mountain, there surely is someone skiing on its paths, climbing its walls. Is there a tunnel, a road, a passage nearby?

I’ve been looking at some of my photographs from the past and I have realized that I am moved by – literally, in that I function and work through – this contradiction. Although presence has been a topic in the past, I began exploring this more openly only very recently.

The problem is, and I will borrow Larry Beasley’s words, as quoted by Matt Hern in his book “Common ground in a liquid city. Essays in defense of an urban future” (I have a signed copy, by the way!):

“We have one group of people creating the private realm and one group creating the public realm, and the ones building the private realm are those with the wealth. And the people creating the public realm never have what’s needed to do the job”.

I would add, many people creating the public realm have what it takes – ideas – but not enough means or public support.

Now, when we apply this idea to Berlin, I have observed that the public space is following the same path of disappearance as in other cities. Debates are very much there and as sad as it is, I have observed that the idea that Berlin’s shaping of the public space is democratic is not so true. There seems to be one kind of direction, with very limited margin of maneuver.
One such example is the “Media Spree“, the big planning of commercial spaces along the river in Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain. A citizen protest movement already exists and a new demonstration is planned on the 5th of June. However, as of now it looks as though the plans will be carried out without really taking into account the citizens’ concerns. These concerns are serious as residents fear, inter alia, that they will be forced to abandon the area as rents will inevitably rise.

As I was thinking about the development of the city and new plans to “re-qualify” some of its areas, I couldn’t help but realize that the direction is indeed restricted, that is “public spaces that become more and more private spaces”.

Click on one photograph to open the gallery and then navigate

The one that I am particularly proud of is this one:

It took me quite a while before I finally got the perfect combination of magenta and yellow on the enlarger to match the look I had in mind.
This photograph is part of my small Geneva series, composed mainly of double exposures that I took on my bus ride to the airport.

Now the thing I wanted to delve into, also connected to the shop to some extent, is my choice of not printing more than 2-3 sometimes 4 copies of my prints.
As you know the process of printing in the dark room already makes the photographs themselves unique. Even the slightest temperature change can alter the print, not to mention the chemicals’ reaction with the paper will always produce slightly different results. This is already a point in favor of analog printing but I personally don’t want to print, say 20 copies of one photograph mainly because I don’t want to do chain production, especially with prints that are so work-intensive and time consuming to do.
Unlike commercial labs, I don’t need to develop and print massive amounts of photographs per day and it may sound strange but most photographers I know don’t spend too much time in the dark room. Dark room work is the work you do when you have shot, developed and selected the prints you need for a particular project, so that you end up using the dark room a couple of times a month.
Also, and most importantly, analog printing is not a process for which one prints 24 photographs in a row within an hour. It’s a long process, made of trials and errors, adjustments (aperture, time, contrast, etc..) and eventually it can take a whole hour before you reach THE perfect look, the one you had in mind. Processing times also need to be taken into account: prints (especially baryta paper prints) need to be washed for long periods of times (depending on the the paper and chemicals used, it could be also 30 minutes) and this obviously affects the speed at which one can work.
This kind of attention, precision and love is really meant to produce unique pieces of art and not à la chaine kind of production.

I have heard it enough times to make me worry: “dark room work will eventually die out or remain a very restricted niche field”. Is it true?
Be as it may, there is a certain tendency to dismiss analog photography and do-it-yourself printing for many reasons, especially because digital photography allows faster results that can be achieved without the need of a dark room.
This post does not intend to defend dark room work or analog printing, because each photographer has her/his own working methods. Even I sometimes use digital technology to print proofs before going to the lab. (It’s a timesaver, especially if you do color analog printing).
However, if you also worry that the craft of analog printing will slowly die, or want to know about it, keep on reading and maybe come back to see new articles on this topic.

This post is dedicated to difficult art of finding a dark room to rent in Berlin.
If you’re like me and move a lot, you have become accustomed to endless google searches for the nearest collective dark room to rent.

I will try to compile a list which is not exhaustive (at least I hope). This means: if you, yes you, the reader, knows of other collective dark rooms in Berlin and feel like sharing your precious address, drop a comment and in the future I will update this list.
Darkrooms in Berlin auf einer größeren Karte anzeigen

Let’s start with the Weinmeisterhaus (a place I love and hold dear). It is one of the last cultural strongholds in the touristy area of Mitte, in danger of being closed down (but resisting for now). There is a collective dark room here, use is free of charges, open Tuesdays to Thursdays from 2 pm to 8 pm. You have to be under 26 to use it though. The house also has a studio to do shootings and a digital “dark room” where you can scan and print your images.

I also know of imago fotokunst (I attended a color dark room workshop there). They have both a black and white and a color dark room to rent (9 euros per hour for black and white and 10 for color).

Another place where you can rent based on the hour is LichtMal open Mondays to Saturdays from 4 pm to 8 pm (here too you can buy a dark room card to save a little on the renting fees).

Then google tells me of Ulrich Hagel. Here, unless I am mistaken, you can rent the color dark room (with out without assistance). For the prices, see on the link.

There is also goLab, where renting of a color dark room is only on a daily basis.

I also found artprints berlin, where you can rent both black and white and color labs. Here too, renting is done on a 24 hour basis and price calculation is quite specific.

Finally, my recent find has been magenta. Here you can rent a dark room (and you work alone) on a hourly basis.

This is pretty much it for my part. There used to be a very cool place (people tell me) way before I moved to Berlin, namely the dark room associated with fotoimpex. However, helas, it is gone.

On the map

Darkrooms in Berlin auf einer größeren Karte anzeigen

Related blog posts

• Sharing knowledge - Film photography podcast, useful things
• Where to go for an analog C-Print in Berlin: my love for lists
• Work in progress
• On limited printing - the wonders of the dark room
• Sharing darkroom know-hows: Darkrooms in Berlin

Tags: analog, black and white, prints, space, weinmeisterhaus

]]> http://www.elisabettalombardo.com/2010/04/05/sharing-dark-room-know-hows-darkrooms-in-berlin/feed/ 4 http://www.elisabettalombardo.com/2010/03/19/the-december-12-candle-demonstration-in-berlin-for-the-copenhagen-summit/ http://www.elisabettalombardo.com/2010/03/19/the-december-12-candle-demonstration-in-berlin-for-the-copenhagen-summit/#comments Fri, 19 Mar 2010 18:27:43 +0000 Eli http://www.elisabettalombardo.com/?p=1152 TCKTCK…. The aim was, of course, to tell]]> On the 12th of December I went to a demonstration, a candle light demonstration in a cold pre-Christmas Berlin, held in front of the Brandenburg Gate and organised by the group TCKTCK.

The aim was, of course, to tell the world leaders who were then meeting in Copenhagen, that the people wanted a “real deal”, that is a binding legal agreement to stop climate change (or more accurately, to settle on a level of emissions that would allow us to stay at a level that is controllable enough and thus avoiding a catastrophe of huge magnitude).

Copenhagen was a failure, no one is hiding this fact.

I am publishing these photos NOW, that is months after the demonstration, not so much because of a gained perspective on the issue of climate change in the light of the failure to come to a binding agreement, but rather because my account was not so much aimed at documenting the demonstration, but at taking a piece of that atmosphere, the impression (real or not, that’s not up to me to decide) that at that moment those people who were holding these candles could affect the world to a great extent.

The idea of capturing this idea of being able to change things with showing up at a demonstration is not an attempt on my part to say that “nothing can change with simply holding a candle” (I am rather against this point of view, which usually masks one’s inability or laziness to be socially active). Sure I know the difference between people standing in the cold in Berlin and in other cities and politicians lobbying for a deal, weighing their pledge to their citizens with the interests of those who donate money to their campaigns. On the other hand, if we simply take this demonstration as a genuine interest on the part of the citizens to “do something”, there is still a point on keeping the information flowing, on other issues too, on all types of social issues that affect us all to different extents.

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Tags: berlin, environment, humans, lights, social issues

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