By Ismail Lagardien
I took these three pictures from more or less the same spot, the Tidal Pool at the Brass Bell near Cape Town, over a 25-year period. The first was taken in September 1986, the second in November 1996 and the third in September 2011.
The first (above) is one of my favourite pictures. I originally used Kodachrome for the shot, and scanned the original slide in 2009. The second (below) was taken quite fortuitously. I went to the Brass Bell for lunch and “saw” the scene again. The sandals were placed in the picture to give it some context. The original, second shot, was also taken with Kodachrome and scanned at about the same time as the first.
I went looking for the third picture. I arrived in Cape Town late in the winter of 2011, and, recalling that I had the two previous images, I went to the Brass Bell. The original pub had been extended, as seen in the third picture (below), and I had to get onto a table, in the now expanded pub/restaurant to make the fourth (bottom), and shoot through a murky windowpane. The latter two pictures were taken with digital equipment.
In a pre-digital age artists and publications alike still found ways to manipulate images through stitching photographs together and other various darkroom techniques.
Follow link for slide show.
By Tom Devriendt – (Sourced from Africa is a Country)
We’ll pretend we did not see Alex Perry’s clichéd description of Liberia (including a reference to Liberian Kreyol as “a patois that is both thuggish and warm”) to a Time LightBox feature on the work of photographer Glenna Gordon, and concentrate on her work instead. Instead we’ll turn to Glenna’s–we interviewed her here about her favorite photographers–own description of her work: “I have now been working in Liberia for the better part of the past three years,” she writes “and while much of the work I do is for publications or organizations, the work I feel most strongly about is my own documentary project which focuses on understanding Liberia’s past and desire to embrace the present.” (Read Further)
The demise of the cheap compact camera was inevitable, and we’re all street photographers now. But given the chance, would Cartier-Bresson have swapped his Leica for a smartphone?
With a camera constantly to hand to capture that decisive moment, we’re all Cartier-Bressons now – but would HCB have used a cameraphone himself? He famously employed a Leica because it was small and, importantly, quiet – he liked to be as unobtrusive as possible when photographing street scenes. Would the artificial mechanical sound of a cameraphone annoy him? Or perhaps we’re so accustomed to people taking photographs all around us today that it just wouldn’t be an issue. (Read Further)
Swedist artist Gunnel Wåhlstrand reinterprets her old family photographs as a link to the father she never knew
By the Window, 2003–2004, by Gunnel Wåhlstrand. Photograph: Björn Larsson/The Michael Storåkers Collection
Old family photo albums are lost worlds. They speak of yesteryear’s styles, bygone ways, and who our parents were long before we were twinkles in their eyes. What Swedish artist Gunnel Wåhlstrand shows us from her family album is no exception. Read Further.
