Damn: Photos of monks meditating

Yesterday I had this very idea.  A few hours later - bam! - there it was in my FB news feed.

The Still Point

Capturing the movement of the mind

In his latest work, Junsik Shin, a recent photography graduate of New York City’s Parsons School of Design, takes his camera into the Zen temples of America and his native Korea. In his most recent project, entitled “Ee Mut Ko?” (“What Is This?”), his eye follows not the ornate interior artwork or the sweeping curves of the temple architecture, but the monks themselves, absorbed in meditation. It is both an utterly familiar subject and an unexpectedly fascinating one, for who would have thought that the thing itself, sitting meditation, could be so visually arresting?

Borrowing Ideas

Back from summer holidays and it's time now to get everything into shape for assessment submission. In the meantime, I thought I'd note a couple of ideas worth borrowing.

The first is from Michael Rubin, who used a wall as his subject, shooting everything that passed in front of it in the course of some hours.  I could easily do the same in my neighborhood with a wall, a corner, a train station, or some other suitable landmark.  I'll be keeping an eye out for location on my future forays.

The second is from Jacob Aue Sobol, a Magnum photographer whose latest project is built around the idea of taking massive number of thematically related images within a short time.  Sobol did a 30-day ride on the Trans Siberian railway, shooting 1000 images a day.  His girlfriend filmmaker did the initial selection of 100 images per day while riding the train. Together they winnowed this selection to 20, leaving them 1200 images on arrival in Beijing, from which they made a final cut of 60.

I'm thinking I could do something similar here, driving across the UAE, say all seven Emirates in 10 days. What I would need is a driver, as doing both might be a bit too much.  I could edit in the car or at camp sites, and have a presentation ready on arrival on Day 10.  

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Photography Prohibited

Manjushri (Enryakuji)

Yesterday I visited Kyoto’s Toji, The East Temple.  It’s been on my to-visit list since completing my pilgrimage of Shikoku several years ago.  With a couple of exceptions, the 88 temples along the 1200km route belong to Japan’s Shingon school of Buddhism, a Tantric school established in the 9th century by Kukai.  Toji was the master's base in Kyoto and the first Tantric temple in the capital.  Toji is also unique for housing a large collection of rare sculpture and paintings, much of it brought by Kukai from China.  

A different way of seeing photographs

Yesterday my wife and I were sitting in department store waiting for my in-laws.  My wife pulled out a yoga guide she had just purchased and started flipping through it.  Each two page spread features step-by-step directions for one yoga pose, illustrated with a series of a dozen images.  As I looked over her shoulder while she flipped through the book, what I began to see was what a huge (and probably tiresome) photography job this book represented.  Altogether the book must feature hundreds of such photos.  This has nothing at all to do with the layout and design of the book, simply the work that went into capturing and editing all the images.

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How Do You Photograph A City's Bankruptcy?

I like the empty spaces and the emphasis on form and color in this collection.  

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Assignment Five: Narrative

Introduction

I don’t know if I could have found a more interesting subject for this assignment.

When I started thinking some months ago about how to spend my 8-week my summer holiday, I knew I wanted to do something to extend my photographic practice.  I began looking around the internet for classes, most of which seemed to be rather expensive and not in the direction I would be travelling, toward my in-laws in Japan.  I found a few organizations offering internships with newspapers and magazines in several developing Asian nations, but it seemed fees were too high for unpaid work experience.  I then came upon Unite For Sight, a US-based NGO supporting eye clinics in several developing countries and offering volunteer opportunities to photography students.  Three of their network hospitals are in India, east of and very close to Dubai.

With a reference from my OCA tutor and other supporting documents, my application to the program was accepted and my plan set in motion:  to do this narrative assignment on some aspect of life at Kalinga Eye Hospital.   Besides meeting my own needs, I wanted to do work that would be useful to the hospital, but communication from India was sparse.  The NGO claimed the hospital staff was busy and would be able to discuss things with me once I arrived. 

Review: War Photographer (2001): James Nachtwey

I had heard the name before but knew little about Natchtwey.  What comes to mind is Farah Nosh mentioning him at our Photojournalist workshop as one of the greatest modern documentary photographers.  I found the film online and had downloaded it some months ago before firing it up last night.  I find myself hanging out with the in-laws during the summer holiday and with some hours to spare, a great opportunity for catching up on reading, blogging, and films.

What struck me most about the film was Natchtwey himself.  He reminds me a bit of me, of someone who has spent a good deal of his life living outside his own culture and in doing so learned to modify his behavior in ways that insure his continued acceptance and survival.  He speaks slowly and articulates clearly. There is only a trace of an accent.  His words are careful and deliberate. As someone regularly in high stress situations, he has learned to manage his emotions and doesn't seem like the kind of person quick to anger, nor quick to excite.  His story of waking up one morning and deciding to be a war photographer seems mostly believable. He seems like the kind of person I would like to know.

Photographically, it was interesting to see someone working at the end of the analog age.  Most of the film seems to have been shot in the late 1990s and there are several scenes showing the photogrpaher changing film or labeling canisters.  I was surprised at how closely he gets to grieving subjects.  Just watching him made me feel uncomfortable.

I don't plan on  being a war photographer, but it was inspiring to witness someone giving his life to documenting suffering.  I'm afraid not many of us could do even half as much.

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