In Broken Images

He is quick, thinking in clear images;
I'm slow, thinking in broken images.
He becomes dull, trusting to his clear images;
I become sharp, mistrusting my broken images,
Trusting his images, he assumes their relevance;
Mistrusting my images, I question their relevance.
Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact,
Questioning their relevance , I question the fact.
When the fact fails him, he questions his senses;
When the fact fails me, I approve my senses.
He continues quick and dull in his clear images;
I continue slow and sharp in my broken images.
He in a new confusion of his understanding;
I in a new understanding of my confusion.

Robert Graves

London cab

My always faithful Contax 139Q and Zeiss Planar 50 f1.4. Tri-X and D76. Why am I writing all the tech specs? Maybe because I'm about to mix some D76 powder again...

Chemical heaven.

Uncertain

Today I remembered the 1st time that one of my exhibitions was awarded a newspaper review. It was a photography exhibition in Contemporanea (www.contemporanea.org) and the reviewer wrote:

"One leaves the exhibition feeling haunted and with the certainty that there is no hope, no escape, no future left for humanity"

It’s funny because nowadays all my pictures are full with color and light, quite different to what I was producing 10 years ago. I guess this is what living in the Caribbean makes to you... plus I was reading too much Jean-Paul Sartre back then.

I'm not quite sure if I've become a better photographer though.

London Underground - Victoria Line

For some reason I woke up this morning with this image in my head. I guess I've been missing home lately. I took this one a long time ago, in 1992 when I was starting to play with cameras, and I'd just discovered Kodak Tri-X.

Don't ask me why, but in this blog I'm having a great time showing images that I've captured using totally unglamorous equipment. In this case, a Ricoh KR10M, the 1st camera I bought with my own money when I was 16 years old. BTW the standard Ricoh lens was truly awful when it came to flare.

Once, just for the fun of it, I posted this same picture in a Leica photo contest... only to recieve positive reviews from "fellow" Leica photographers talking about the beautiful grainy/3D effect that "my Leica" lens had rendered.

Vladas

I've thinking for sometime now about shooting B&W film again, and today I spent the day browsing through old film scans. It's a long time that I don't shoot any film, at least a year and a half, and I do miss it. Sergio, a fellow friend photographer, donated me his lab a few months ago, so I guess that I don't have any excuses left!

So tomorrow I'll pay a visit to Sergio and see if he still has some D76 powder left... I'm lucky enough to have a freezer loaded with Agfa APX film, so it's time to give all that film a good use.

And just for nostalgy sake, I'm uploading an old portrait of Vladas, a much missed friend from my London days. BTW Does anybody remember Joe's Basement in Soho? That was the place where I used to take my film to be developed... Oh boy, how much do I miss those cool film days.