Spotlight... Brazil - by David Solomons

Today's spotlight is special due to many reasons. One of them, it's a questions and answers session. Another, that this very set of images was recently published as the first slideshow gallery in hardcore street photography. If you're interested in getting Brazil as a book, don't hesitate in contacting David.





Gareth Jelley: Why Brazil? What led you there? And where would you go tomorrow, if someone told you they could fund you to go anywhere in the world, on the proviso that you had to leave the very next day?

David Solomons: I had wanted to visit latin America for some time and I can speak a little Spanish so Brazil didn't make much sense in that respect. It was mostly on a whim as my father had recently died and I wanted to take more of a vacation than pursue a serious picture story, so I went there as a kind of testing ground to see how I'd cope taking the sort of pictures I was taking in London in another city. I felt Rio was a good choice as I thought I could also do something about its beach culture.

In answer to the second part of the question, I'd have to say Mumbai, simply because I've yet to go there and it's the kind of place I feel I could take pictures for days on end and still find something new and amazing.

GJ: Did you have any aesthetic ideas in your head when you went out shooting, in Brazil, or did certain aesthetic themes and patterns (like the blue, and the strong angles) emerge organically, revealing themselves in the edit?

DS: I had a friend who worked at Geo magazine, which is the UK version of National Geographic, and the beach culture idea was something I thought I could pitch to her if I brought back a good enough set of images. From that perspective I took tranparency film as opposed to colour neg. which is what I'd normally use for my personal use.

The light there was wonderful and I quickly recognized that the combination of that and the transparency film immediately lent itself to a different approach as I'd be exposing for the highlights and allowing the shadow detail to almost disappear. So yes my approach was slightly different in that regard but nothing that I'd consciously thought about, I was just excited to be photographing in a new environment.





GJ: Do you feel, personally, that your photos get under the skin of the place, looking into it rather than just documenting it? Are the shots in that collection shots you don't feel you could have "collected" elsewhere?

DS: I somehow doubt it, I would even go as far as to say I barely sctratched the surface of the place on a social level but that's not to say the pictures are any less valuable for that. It's difficult to say if I could have taken similar shots elsewhere, with some I could others maybe not so. Obviously where you have famous places like Copacabana beach or carnival celebrations, then I think people would recogize that that's where the shots were taken.

Joni Karanka: I've talked about this with you already, so it's like cheating. How did you fit your shooting style with Brazil? You don't show the same that you get out of London. But well, it isn't dull and rainy all the time either.

DS: London is my home town so I feel more like I belong there which maybe allows me to take more liberties as it were. I was a foreigner in Brazil and as such I felt more compelled to respect their cultural sensitivities. Many people there aren't so keen on having their picture taken as they feel they're being exploited by foreigners. Many of the poorer Brazilians are happy to pose for you if you pay them but I found doing the candid type of work I normally do problematic. So yes, I shied away a lot more from the 'in your face' type of shot and took a more wide angle environmental approach instead.





JK: On another note. These don't come through as holiday snapshots. How long you spent there?

DS:I originally only intended to stay for a month but ended up staying 10 weeks as I wanted to stay for the carnivals in Salvador.

JK: Do you feel influenced by any photographers in these images? There's such a large amount of people that have worked in similar conditions of light... Alan Harvey's Cuba or Alex Webb's Under a Grudging Sun pop into mind...

DS: Possibly, it's difficult not to see the similarities and I've certainly been familiar with those photographers' work for a long time. I never go out thinking I've got to do an Alex Webb shot here or a Winogrand shot there, I just see how situations evolve in front of me and I interpret that the best way I can. If they look similar that's okay with me, they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.





So, if anybody has more questions, just ask in the comments and I'll do my best to getting them to David.

Spotlight... Igor Moukhin

I´m a big fan of Igor Moukhin´s photography and I casually discovered him through his Flickr page. The reason behind why I like the images seems to be that in a way they are pure photography for me. They are direct, playful and not charged with cliches and artifacts. There´s a certain naturality in them. Igor somehow manages to shoot like a witness of life, that every so often strikes the right key. There is that casual feel about them that I love...











And I have a bad feeling that I´m misrepresenting him when I´m choosing images to show here. I´d rather go and give a visit at his webpages. Ok, back to topic. There´s even an article written about Igor over here with a lot more information in it that I could ever give. For example, I already forgot to say that he´s Russian. And that he´s been documenting the life of his country since the 1980´s. Non stop. I´ll quote: "Born in Moscow in 1961 and Moscow-based ever since, Moukhin was an original member (1989-91) of the influential group Immediate Photography, founded by his contemporary, the artist, teacher, and curator Alexei Shulgin." So yeah, he´s not some random guy you bump into in flickr it seems.











That´s the sort of stuff that makes me want to go out and take pictures. The sense of freedom and immediacy of the 35mm camera. No bullshit. Just reality hitting straight from the world into the film plane. Anywhere, anytime. It´s a pity I don´t have more to say really. I´ve been thinking about posting this for maybe two or three weeks now, and I just don´t have any words to add. Just a few images and reminding that I already used one of his images to start a post about tilted photographs.

Spotlight: The Park, by Kohei Yoshiyuki

Suppose you come to a typical pub evening to the Central Pub. You wander in like Radek, Pawel, Maciej or Bartek. Not that I'm saying that you need to be Polish, but it does help. Anyhow, you get in there to meet up for a few beers and a chat before going shooting somewhere or just drinking. You feel like going for the menu and you see something like this:





What the fuck? Joni forgot his book somewhere again. (Nicely lit, I must add.) Oh well, what's it this time? So you just get closer to figure the image out.





Wow! A guy sucking dry another guy! And it manages not to be porn! Great. The book is The Park, by Kohei Yoshiyuki. You can see more images at the Yossi Milo gallery. I also enjoyed the analyses by the New York Times and Alec Soth. I think that between them you can see enough images as for satisfying your curiosity.

I'm a bit sorry that I introduced this great book in such a straightforward and kevinsmithesque fashion. The sequencing is by far more subtle and as the same time as it is disturbing, you feel sucked into it. Kohei spent almost a decade shooting parks at night. Kohei spent almost a decade shooting parks at night when they were populated. Kohei did so armed with an infrared flash and infrared film. Kohei was not caught because his characters only saw a tenuous and distant flash of light.

The book opens with a couple lying on grass. In the distance we see the lights of the city. It's as dark as it gets and they don't see us. The next page shows a couple behind a fence. The third, a couple on the grass, she doesn't wear her shoes. All of them are lying back. At the ninth and tenth frame, Kohei gets closer. We can see the couples in foreplay, a hand here, a hand there. Suddenly, this monotony is broken. As a bunch of lions looking for a pray, Kohei introduces us to the watchers. They are behind a bush and we can't see their faces. The next pages approach us to them. We crawl with them, like a pack, towards the unsuspecting victims. The grass is white and bright. We see the couple. And then, the watchers fall on top of them. In some shots it's subtle, a close look, a hand that could be that of the lover. In others, it's just a pack, it's the vulture lifting the rabbit, it's violent.

That's the overall feel of the sequencing. It's monotonous but intense. It's a tune you already know, but it has subtle variations that keep you going. When we change to the second part, all the interactions turn from being between heterosexual to homosexual couples. Here Kohei shows us his best street pictures as well: a simply amazing arrangement of guys in white clothes walking around a park, perfectly placed. This part of the book is also permuated by a zen simplicity. The variations in vegetation and figures are great. That's why I chose the picture that headlines this post: it's fucking simple, but just great. It's sort of explicit (you know what's going on) but yet doesn't show you anything. (No, there's no nudity in this book.) The ground is cut out of the frame. Everything there is are these two central figures that are given a scale by the tree that raises next to them.

Such a strange and obsessive piece of work. I can't think of anything else than Kohei crawling there night after night with the voyeurs, pondering if that last shot of the hand getting into the knickers of the girl was good enough.

Spotlight: People I have Asked by stpiduko

Finally a touch of colour in this blog. stpiduko (I call him Eamon) shoots portraits of strangers. He's quick. Approaches a person, asks politely, and has probably shot by when the subject is getting out of the shock. Apart of all the blablabla that he does in the previous blog you can also see his stuff as a more stylish photoblog.









People shot anywhere stopped in the middle of their daily affairs. Something catches our eye in the images. The girl that has been shopping, the dressed up man in a party, somebody's new sunglasses. A very simple cross section of what the street looks like in 2007.












The complete series of People I Have Asked are here. Every now and then there are new images added. I think that Eamon wants to make a thousand...

Spotlight: They called me a corporate whore, by Hin Chua

The daily commute to the City. The skyscrapers and the glass gurkin casting their shadows on the passerbies. The expensive clothes, cigars. It's all black or grey. The day never ends. You wait and wait as the watch ticks slowly. You catch your boss for a screwdriver in the corporate bar. He's earns twice your salary and still complains. When you get home you've lost your tie.










That's what Hin Chua's series of black and white pictures make me think about. Finished off with a nice neorrealist style and some sense of humour, they give me a feel of something I don't want to be. It's too obvious to say that Hin's world is made of men in suits, spreadsheets and clocks ticking, but well, it's also true. I wouldn't miss all the references to other photographers in the complete series. First one here: