Cindy Gallop’s wonderful project, if we ran the world – find out more about her thoughts on this and web privacy on the BBC ‘Viewpoint’ series.

My Mother, on her morning walk
July 7, 2011

I sent this image to my friend and fellow teacher/photographer, Robin Gillanders. We were going back and forth about cameras and lenses, but ultimately, all this dicussion boils down to what really matters. I hope Robin does not mind me sharing part of the correspondence:

“Dear Robin

hope I am not boring you with my photo-nurding…

but just by way of illustrating what I meant [this refers to the use of autofocus lenses]: took this yesterday morning while walking with my mom. I did not want to make her feel self-conscious or break the magic of that early morning walk and stillness, and what really was for her a bit of a morning ritual and meditation. I wanted her hair in focus, had but a split second to shoot, and my fingers guessed focus and exposure while I was moving the camera into position, not to my head but hovering a few inches behind here almost at arm’s length. I don’t think I could have worked that fast or accurately with an autofocus… but then, I know this lens well, have known it for over 10 years!

Acht, more than anything else, just want to share this pic of my mom, ’cause I know you miss yours.

with a small tear in my eye and a bubble in my heart, more convinced than ever about the rightness and value of what you and I do,

love

Pradip”

]]> http://pradipmalde.com/2011/07/from-a-note-to-robin/feed/ 0 http://pradipmalde.com/2011/06/flatland/ http://pradipmalde.com/2011/06/flatland/#comments Mon, 13 Jun 2011 17:55:13 +0000 Pradip Malde http://pradipmalde.com/?p=2072 I revisited Edwin A. Aboott’s amazing book, ‘Flatland: A romance of many dimensions‘  while thinking about identity and belief. The introductory note to the book, penned by the pseudonymous author, A. Square, reads:

To
The Inhabitants of SPACE IN GENERAL
And H. C. IN PARTICULAR
This Work is Dedicated
By a Humble Native of Flatland
In the Hope that
Even as he was Initiated into the Mysteries
Of THREE Dimensions
Having been previously conversant
With ONLY TWO
So the Citizens of that Celestial Region
May aspire yet higher and higher
To the Secrets of FOUR FIVE OR EVEN SIX Dimensions
Thereby contributing
To the Enlargement of THE IMAGINATION
And the possible Development
Of that most rare and excellent Gift of MODESTY
Among the Superior Races
Of SOLID HUMANITY

•

Ow Ow Ow by Charles Bukowski

-

Few have expressed more clearly
the dichotomy of creative being.
So we should let go, let go, let go
until that too becomes an art.

Coming back from Haiti, seeing the environmental effects of plastic, thinking about how little I know of where my plastic waste goes, knowing I discard at least one garbage bag full of plastic a week, I feel bad enough about plastic. This video makes me retch. Go to VBS TV for the rest of the show. [be patient with the ads - sorry]

Cleanliness… 
South Carolina. March 2009 

After reading the English translation of the video interview, I found myself browsing around, looking for a particularly wonderful portrait of SdB I had seen many years ago. It still eludes me,  but I did find a Slate article about some controversy arising from the publishing of another photograph of her by Art Shay. Along with the concerns, at times bemused, that the writer of this article expresses, it saddens me that the political / hegemonic subtleties of the (photographic) gaze are still so elusive to most of us. LOOK at this. The editors of the magazine are sensationalizing an image that arose out of a personal and trusting moment between two intimates (in this case, Shay and de Beauvoir). Not only that, but I think their use of the image on the cover firmly shunts SdB into the very same social margins that she tried to disassemble. 

Where does all of this leave me as a photographer? In the same place as always: knowing fully that the photographic image is loaded with expectations of truth and fact, but its reading is always profoundly conditioned by context and placement. There are still far too many illiterates around. ["The illiterate of the future will be ignorant of the pen and the camera alike" - Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, 'A New Instrument of Vision,'  Feb. 28, 1936]

Room 26 and Gate of India, Mumbai Yacht Club
1995, platinum-palladium print, 8×10

 Just to the right of this view, off-frame, is the Taj Hotel, which was one of several terrorist targets on Wednesday. I wonder how the kind of testosterone-induced monotheism that inspires this madness can be good for anyone… if there is a God, surely IT has given up and is far more interested in another galaxy, far away…. Wake up Believers!

kozo hair. soap. (from the ‘dragon’ series)
September 10, 1998
11×14, platinum-palladium print

Are we safer?

Did we make the right response?