Seen in Arles... Andrej Ban

Another photographer whose name I wrote down in Rencontres d'Arles is Andrej Ban. I probably saw his work in the slideshows of the European Night. He's a Slovakian reporter, and you can see more of his stuff in his webpage. Some strong stories in there, although the stuff that makes me most curious is that he has a book about Slovakia. Close to home is usually good...

Arles: Night of the Year

In Rencontres d'Arles I was showing photographs in a slideshow with tangophoto. Here is a photograph of what the crowd that did not manage to get a seat looked like:





We were sharing our nice little square with a new music magazine called Vox Pop. I met by chance three girls from the magazine at a restaurant earlier, when I handed them my mosquito spray. Arles was full of mosquitos. Here the girls from the magazine look a bit lost:





And here are my new Dutch contacts, who were producing excellent photographs in a centric square of la Roquette by the simple act of bringing their own wine with them:






There's a different edit of the night in the f blog.

Arles: Christian Lacroix fashion show

I had free entry to the Christian Lacroix fashion show in Rencontres d'Arles. My seat was very very far away, so at some point I dodged the guy that was handling the big spotlight on stage and just walked down there. I shot maybe a dozen pictures, but was lucky enough to catch one of the two guys kicked out of stage. At some point they just ran into the middle of the stage and started to dance. As can be seen, one of them is carrying two cameras!












(All pics by me.)

Arles Polaroids: improvised Cardiff by Night Exhibition

Shot by Cyril Costilhes. Exhibited on the window of Pharmacie du Forum.

Seen in Arles... Stefan Vanfleteren

The European Night of Rencontres d'Arles was for me a bit disappointing. Lots of boring photographs of more of the same shot in more of the same way. It is amazing how many photographers from different countries decide to put a photograph of an abandoned car in the middle of the forest in their slideshow. Coincidence?

At least the Belgians were hitting a bit harder. They had at least two photographers that got ovations from the audience each time that a new bunch sat to look at their work. One of them was Stephan Vanfleteren:







The edit he has online doesn't seem as strong as what he was showing in Arles, and I can't find many of the photographs. His portraits of Belgians at home and in bars were very strong. Often funny, close.

The coffee walkers (and Arles, etc.)

These days I'm stuck into coffee shops. I spend lots of time in them usually, reading the newspaper or a book, having a coffee. These days I'm spending even more time. I just wake up, go through the usual bunch of emails and rss feeds, and head for lunch. Only reason for this is that I'm spending much more time writing my dissertation, and almost no time at all finishing off images. I carry on shooting the same amount (almost) and developing film. Sheets and sheets of negatives accummulate without seeing a scanner. There will be time for that when I finish writing... I hope...





One of the things with coffee shops is that I meet the same people almost every day. I start off in Albany Rd, eat there, later move to Wellfield Rd (now there) where I can connect to the wifi for an updated, and when everything closes, move to City Rd. A rota of other people doing the same is around.

On a different topic... I booked flights to go to Rencontres d'Arles. I'll start of visiting a friend in Bordeaux on the 7th of July, move to Arles on the 9th of July and fly back from Toulouse on the 13th. Is anybody else going? If you are, give a shout for having a beer! I only know of Audrey Bardou and Olivier Thebaud going there, and I sincerely don't want to spend the festival chasing Josef Koudelka around with my copy of Exiles. I'll do my best in making friends on the train there, I guess.

Also, I was briefly reviewed in snapshot.fi.

PS: bad photo of Neil by me.

Upcoming events...

There was a print of mine hanging somewhere in Milano (Italy) today. Next Thursday (till Saturday morning) I'll be around in London helping Maciej out with a workshop about photographying the city at night. If somebody misses it, we'll be in some pub around Brixton after that. Yesterday I also got confirmed that I'll be taking part on a slideshow in the Nuit de l'Annee in the Rencontres d'Arles photofestival. I must thank the Tango Photo collective on arranging this, specially Olivier Thebaud.