Category: photosophy
I have really been interested in black & white recently. I just shot a wedding, and could not help changing many of the photos over to black & white, because they just looked better, if you know what I mean. I have also created my first black & white gallery for the website, using some yet unseen photos from the streets of Sanjiang, China.
Not too long back, I listened to an interview with Phillip Jones Griffiths, the honored war photographer who published Vietnam Inc. In watching the interview, he had some interesting comments about black & white photography in photojournalism, some things I had never really thought of.
I have just put up a gallery focused on Chinese guesthouses. It is not going to be displayed in any national art gallery, but it is a fun, photographic look at something that is a very engrained part of my life in China. And honestly, I fear that China’s development is going to destroy the quaint, stoic guesthouse and turn it into some smutty, cheap lodging.
With so many of my travels taking me deep into the Chinese countryside, I usually have had not choice but to warm up to these little guesthouses, because there has been no other lodging option in town. The beds are nothing to write home about, the bathrooms are notoriously awkward to use, and the neighborhood environment is often a little to karaoke-loving for me. Still, as I say in the gallery itself, it hits somewhere close to home.
I enjoy reading the musings of Herbert Keppler on his “Speaking Frankly” blog on the Popular Photography website. He often posts his notes and writings from days gone past, and it is interesting to see his perspective today and yesterday, comparing photography now and then. In some ways, we feel everything has changed, yet in other ways, it is just the same discipline with new tools.
He dug out one such comment from his 1969 “Keppler Files” which speaks about the automation of cameras:
I had an interesting conversation about my photography. I live in China, which you would probably have deduced already, and that means I have to have a visa to live and work here. Well, in the visa office for this year’s visa, I had a long conversation about photography with the officers there.
It all came up because I had the camera there with me—I was travelling and had everything on me…I did not necessarily want to carry a camera into the Public Security Bureau. I showed them a few photos, which I remember were particularly bad that day. Oh yeah, it was the day I shattered my protective UV filter! Anyway, I digress.