tobias m. schiel
When, a while ago, the lens artists challenged us to share quiet moments, instead of going through my beach and museum and travel photos, I wondered if, and how, I could show my quiet moments en miniature. Pondering several possibilities, I realized that reading almost always gives me some quiet – and that I can experience this quietness everywhere and anytime.
Today I would like to share a couple of pictures which surprisingly turned into a short story.
When I saw the lens-artists challenge Quiet Moment, this was the first picture that came to mind – it obviously took a while to make it, and a whole series with readers in different moments along with it. This week’s challenge seems a great starting point for sharing: Who says you can’t have a quiet moment when you’re On the Move?
“Going back” is this week’s Lens Artists Challenge; Sofia Alves takes us back to an old doors challenge. In the light of these two ideas I’d like to start this post with some back doors.
As far as toy photography goes, I love to build and photograph doors because of both their architectural and narrative potential. They are simple means of definig a building and evoking an atmosphere – back door or main? Factory or bar? Welcoming or forbidding?
A door is a passageway. This function evokes narrative. The door is closed: what’s happening behind it? The door is open: will someone walk through it? And then, what will happen?
The inside and the outside can stand for a before and an after. Thus, narrative – or the paasing of time – can be hinted at in a single picture.
Happy new year!
Slow down. Relax. Have a merry Christmas.
Lens-artists challenge #329: I am not entirely sure what’s happening in this picture because I was putting the focus on composition rather than narrative. However, the figures’ poses seem to hint at seomething last chance-y..
Kunstpunkte (literally “art spots”) stands for two weekends when more than 100 artists in Düsseldorf invite the public to visit their ateliers. These visits always fascinate me; they are a chance to get very close to art and artists, experiencing the places where the works are acutally made. This is similar to visiting the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (academy of fine arts) which I will cover in a separate post.
You may notice that I barely photograph the art itself, feeling much of it has already been reproduced (the last picture in this post shows part of an art work however). As for the artists themselves, I value their privacy, plus I am not really a portrait photographer. So here are some impressions from four different spots all of which you might not get to see outside of the Kunstpunkte.
Note: The next Kunstpunkte will take place next weekend and the weekend after.
Lens-artists challenge 313: cool colors.
Lens-Artists Challenge 312: Sense of scale. Photographing 1/87 scale (H0) worlds is in itself playing on our sense of scale, maybe even aiming at the viewer questioning her or his sense of scale for a moment. At the same time, most of the elements of a photo are applied in this small world, too: The objects in this picture, along with the camera position, should give a feeling of depth here. By employing these means, I hope to give the picture a real-life immediacy … a touch of streeet photography at best.
“A field day for deconstructivists: Is it really possible to speak of a ‘faceless self portrait’? Isn’t a person’s face what we believe to be the essence of their portrait? And doesn’t – on the other hand – the abstraction called for by a ‘faceless portrait’ defy the purpose? Couldn’t anyone hence claim that this self portrait was more accurately theirs? Must, therefore, any faceless self portrait incoporate some irony? And if so, with all différence lost and some irony thrown into the mix, what does it show? Me? Nah.”
empire of lights 