What is this thing called photography? Miroslav Tichý answers.

Say that you are interested in photography and people immediately assume that you have a deep technical interest in the camera. They ask you about the equipment you use, the settings you prefer, the software you are indebted to and the printing style you employ. As a photography enthusiast I am deeply bored by such discussions - my general lack of interest in gadgets most certainly translates to cameras too. I simply see something I like and I photograph it. I hope for the best. My technical skill may be negligible but my aesthetic sense and curiosity often get me there. Seeing the current Miroslav Tichy exhibition at the International Center of Photography revealed for me the difference between photography as an artform rather than as a technology. For every bunch of photographers I see drooling over a new line of SLRs or comparing lens sizes, I am reminded of Tichy's makeshift cardboard cameras and their absurdly primitive technology. For every photographer I see painstakingly photoshopping the dust particles off their image, I see Tichy embracing the dirt, grime, bugs and visible signs of damage that characterize most of his photos. For every photographer that I hear bemoaning the focus mistakes in their shots, I see Tichy's fuzzy, blotchy and depthless images. For every crisp, perfectly framed and smiling portrait I see Tichy's cropped, voyeuristic shots of women's bodies. I love Tichy's work for the same reasons I love photography - the framing, the accidental effects, the element of chaos, and the capture of everyday life as a slice of utmost significance.

Tattoo Promises

Eastern Promises (2007) is David Cronenberg's latest film, a sophisticated and shocking treatment of London-based Russian mafia. While generally received as an excellent film with a solid screenplay and direction, it is the deep symbolism that it delves into that takes into a level far above most of its crime-drama peers. In particular, Eastern Promises draws us into the world of the tattoo and the complex meaning it can have both a mark of stigma and pride. As one of the major sources for the development of this film, "Mark of Cain"(2000) documents the Russian tradition of tattoos that originate in jail, their relatively strict symbolism and their function as markers of an individual's criminal history, ethnicity and ofcourse identity.  In one of the most memorable scenes of the film, Luzhin (played by Viggo Mortensen) is put under the filmic spotlight in which the tattoo inquisition 'reads' his history on his body. His incorporation into the Vory v Zakone must be the largest sacrifice - he must give himself wholly and in doing so receive the tattoo of the group on his chest and knees.


Ultimately the meaning of the tattoo is inextricably linked to Cronenberg's evolving concern with violence, whether it is ever truly justified but also whether it can ever really be erased from the individual or collective memory. In other words, it is the violent acts that we commit and we experience that remain permanently tattooed onto our psyche and write the history of who we are both as people and as nations. Similarly, the film in all its graphic excess actually features no gun violence - it is with the raping, injecting, stabbing and hacking of victims that Cronenberg creates that extremely intimate link between the victim and perpetrator of the violence - people inscribe their victims like the tattoo artist inscribes bodies.

Eastern Promises certainly has tattooed itself in my brain, and is one for the filmic canon....

Eva, Wong Kar Wai, Galliano & the best perfume in the world

Here's one to dispel the myths! Art can definitely be found in advertising.... The stunning Eva starts in this WKW directed ditty for Midnight Poison: A New Cinderella is Born.

A cool jazz journey to the gallows

A brief mention of the most incredible film-music collaborations of all time. Miles Davis' improvisations on Elevator to the Gallows (Ascenseur pour l'echafaud; Louis Malle, 1957) single handedly bring the unforgettable chilled cerebral loneliness of this classic new-wave film. His music somehow manages to be simultaneously intimate and distant, heartfelt and aloof - so much so that long after you have forgotten the plot, you will remember Jeanne Moreau's detached and desolate walk through the cold night lights of Paris.

The Obscure desires of human porcupines

A number of porcupines huddled together for warmth on a cold day in winter; but, as they began to prick one another with their quills, they were obliged to disperse. However the cold drove them together again, when just the same thing happened . . . In the same way the need of society drives the human porcupines together, only to be mutually repelled by the many prickly and disagreeable qualities of their nature. (Schopenhauer, 1851)

No satirist understands the bizarreness of the human condition better than Luis Buñuel. In his 1977 film That Obscure Object of Desire he hilariously captures the conflicted nature of human relationships - our innate desire to be with another is perfectly opposed by innate desire to get away from them.

Freud, surrealism and crowded house

It's funny how seeing a simple Crowded House music video can start an entire thought process that traces its aesthetic heritage back 110 years. As I watched its dreamy black and white nonlinear narrative, with its doves, sleepwalkers, split images and celestial framing, it made me realize how much modern culture still ripples with Freudian imagery and Surrealist aesthetics.

 

Surrealism owes a substantial artistic debt to Freud, the man who first presented to us the concept of the unconscious, a submerged psychological iceberg full of taboo memories, thoughts and desires that ominously guides the greater part of our behavior. Some decades later, artists working in the surrealist tradition (Magritte, Ernst, De Chirico, Picabia, Dali) harnessed these groundbreaking ideas in realizing that art can be enhanced by the unconscious - both in creating and perceiving it. 

Their greatest technique was in the way that they created works of art that depicted very real objects and images but that became other-worldly through their framing or juxtaposition or immersed in some strange impossible scenery. As the mind cannot make rational sense of it, the unconscious part becomes activated, forcing us into an entire new and very pleasurable state of consciousness. 

Surrealism is dreaming with your eyes wide open. 

Wim Wenders: Wings of Desire (1987)

Who might guess that this oddly constructed film about angels in Berlin could be so incredibly moving, a piece of cinema that is a poem at every level. Wim Wenders, unlike many auteurs both before and after him seems to realize that cinema communicates through all of sounds, words and imagery - in Wings of Desire these components are so meticulously constructed and intricately woven with each other that even the mere simpleton can for a moment experience synaesthesia.

The most notable scenes are those where we drift through public spaces able to hear the innermost thoughts of Berlin's citizens in all their mundanity, isolation and beauty - a collection of unrelated simultaneously occurring inner dialogues, filmed using a continuous take. At some point in time, you realize that this must also be what human consciousness is like - a million simple anonymous thoughts that coexist, unbroken in time.



This film is truly magic.