Listen to me - don't listen to me

It was no disaster. It was not even too stressful. Only with hindsight I discovered that the words that escaped my mouth without any major contribution of the brighter parts of my brain were, well, banal. Never mind, the people who listened to me presenting my book were already quite exhausted on this final day of the Darmstadt Days of Photography. To my left you can see Alexandra Lechner who together with Albrecht Haag organized this three-day-event with high professionalism and ease.

Thanks to my co-exhibitor Edith Buchhalter for documenting my performance (no, I won't show you the videos!).

First times

Next weekend (20/04-22/04) will be my first time at the Darmstädter Tage der Fotografie. This is the third edition of this festival in Darmstadt (a German city whose name I better not translate), this year's theme is "Overview".

My "Holy Warriors" series will be one of the juried exhibitions. On Sunday I will present myfirstbook (see below) there (3 p.m., same venue as the exhibition at Hessisches Staatsarchiv) - which is not only the presentation of myfirstbook but also myfirstbookpresentation. Now as I think of it, it might even be my first time in Darmstadt...

Guess which of the first times makes me most excited?

Sound and Vision

Was a long night again. Click above to see what I was working on.

Out now!

Yeah! Buy it here
Sorry, texts are in German only. (Thinking of that student from Romania who wanted me to send him Martin Heidegger's "Sein und Zeit" because he intended to learn German through reading this book. Buy my book instead! Much easier read and way more pics than in "Sein and Zeit"...)

Style Imperialism

I won't tell any names. There are too many. I'm talking about photojournalists with a strong style which they impose on each situation and location they are confronted with. The ones who make one catastrophe look like the other, others who make Mexico City look like Mumbai. Ok, that sounds too pejorative - since I am not even sure whether a distinct style is a good or a bad thing to have.

Still sometimes I think "photographer x in city y" is a less interesting subject for a series of images than "city y in photographer x", that is to say what a city (or situation) did to the photographer's mind and eye. The last nine days I tried to find out what the city of Istanbul does to me and my shooting. Since this was partly supposed to be a holiday I also tried to develop a new shooting mode - relaxed shooting. Before I only came in two flavors: intense shooting until someone or something stops me - or not touching a camera at all. Unfortunately this did not change much. And Istanbul did not really jump at the chance to have a true impact on me cause it instead chose to give me a terrible cold which somehow fogged my senses. Nevertheless I came back with some gigabytes of images which I want to assemble to a multimedia presentation. Well, if I manage to mix the sound which I amateurishly recorded... Maybe that was Istanbul's impact on me - that I developed an interest in sound and vision.

Two pics now, the rest in a couple of days.