March 8 - Rainy day flowers

This morning I took the trouble of going downtown for the sake of observing an angry feminist crowd proudly marching through the Second Long Street spraying insults on the walls of three modest sex shops and condemning the whole masculine population of the Earth for genetic inclination for violence against women. A few years ago (still fresh in Sweden and new to the subject) I happened to see them passing by followed by a detachment of mounted police. The absurdity of this concentrated anger was truly fascinating, but I didn’t have any camera with me to document my impressions. I was really reckoning with taking a few nice shots today. Of course, I wouldn’t take risks of approaching this female energy too close, but my 200 mm telephoto could let me keep away at a safe distance.

Alas, today even the most hardcore feminists apparently were defeated by the quiet fury of elements in a form of a nasty cold rain (or maybe tha’s the way the global economic crisis has its impact on spontaneous political engagement of masses). The Second Long Street was spookily empty, sex shops closed and perfectly intact. I am not totally cynical about the feminist cause, but I have never managed to skip irony wherever it justified, even regarding myself. So I fully sincerely hope for the better weather and stronger economy on the next March, 8. As Mao liked to say: “Let hundred flowers bloom…”

March 7 - Gothenburg, Springtime

March 6 - Scary tales

This one I took on my way back home. Some days are overloaded with normality: porridge for breakfast, usual office hours (not that I was on time suddenly), gym, shower (I happened to bring my towel), N3 tram - they even checked my ticket...No, I don't mind the normality, but I mind how its solid and heavy substance keeps rejecting existence of any other parallel galaxies. You need some good scary shit to pulpitate even a tiny crack in this fantom of reality. Korean movies are generally good at it, but one gets used to everything. I guess I just want somebody to tell me an eery fairy tale and carefully put my head on a pillow stuffed with a flock of nice dreadful nightmares. Night mares.

March 5 - Young wine

Shots like this one don't age, they only change in perception. From a simple reflexion of something habitual, fixation of a pleasant but repetitive situation still fresh in memory they turn into an immediate source of our emotion. This sudden change happens when the shot disappears from your eyesight for a year or so or even longer. So in a way they do age, but more like some good scotch single malt.

March 4 - The Mourning Gondola

It's amazing how directly kids can transform their real life impressions (both positive and traumatic) into their games. And these games sometimes are as far from being naive and simplistic as our own adult dreams. Today, I took a day off to stay at home with Olga (she caught cold) and we were taking it very easy talking to each other a bit, doing our own things. I was checking some mails (fixing my coming trips) and put on Arvo Pärt's "Best of". This music, though quiet, at times can stream some extremely powerful subversive undercurrents that you have to learn to handle. A thought just flicked in mind that maybe it was a bit too much for Olga. But, after all, she could ask me to change (as she normally does if the music doesn't suit her).

Half an hour later the music was still on and I noticed that Olga was building some strange structures on our floor carpet. "What is it Olga?" "It is a funeral. Your music is about mourning." I was completely taken aback. While I was immersing myself into typing emails and checking hotel reservations, she built two boats ("gondolas" - I thought to myself) - one for her Barbie-doll, another for Barbie's dog (the smaller one in front). On boats' decks she carefully and solemnly arranged their favourite belongings. She was the one listening.

March 3 - Smorgass bored

My reality reminds me of small, but very thick sandwiches. You know when you have finished your food, but there are some tasty pieces left, being too lazy to throw stuff back into the fridge you design a little very little sandwich consisting of all (meaning - ALL available) sorts of tiny delicious morsels abundantly mounted on top of each other. The next second this tower graciously moves right into your stomach. Looking so small from the above perspective it just... doesn't feel enough. You have to go for another one, and another one ("let's just finish it all, where is wine?") No matter what the doctors say, I love it this way. But right now I feel like some different kind of diet for a change. Some dumplings maybe?

March 1 - New toys for a family man

Yes, I have just gotten myself a second hand Polaroid film back for my Mamiya (60USD from ebay). It only produces one single print for each click, leaves no negative, the film is bloooooody expensive (like 3USD per shot), besides it is ISO 100, which I hate. It's pure fun.

March 2 - What's up

Some days are just like that. Dull and meaningless. You only get what you see, and being severely short-sigted you don't get much. So you have to reach the fuzzy contours with your imagination and fill it up with some colors and lively thrills. Olny, you are obviuosly just fooling yourself again. As Tom York puts it: "just 'cause you feel it, doesn't mean it's there".

February 28 - Dreams come true

There is nothing like sudden insight, instant realization that you have been right ALL THE TIME. You have never made a single mistake, a single wrong choice neither produced a sole insignificant misjudgment. All your pitiful sad moaning about the meaninglessness of life was but a flawless tune full of unearthy grace that you mastered while racking your brains over a match riddle that your smoking classmate challenged you with during the big break.

February 27 - Esperantoplatsen

February 26 - Free as a bird

The more I take casual outdoors pictures the clearer I realize that amateur photography is only very little about fancy Jap cameras. It is not even too much about good German optics or high quality BW film or groovy prints on aquarell paper. The whole set of hardware along with its costly (mostly pirated) software is just a heavy weight convention assisting me in locating and framing an accidential picture. Which in fact is a very simple manipulation that may be easily performed by two hairy hands forming a rectangular (two tumbs against the opposite index fingers). With training it can be reduced to a simple momentary glance followed by shutting of your both eyes for a quick development of the obtained image in the dark room of your memory.

I mean that photography in its essence is a basic mental process. It is also older than the whole oil painting tradition or the ancient Greek tragedy. What made photography, as a separate sort of Art, come out from behind of its well documented predecessors in the beginning of the last century was just a pure technical trick, a kind of a curiosa or hocus pocus. However, it allowed the initiated ones to freeze and copy their mental experiences on paper in exchange for a relatively modest fee (at least in the beginning).

All that gradually developed into several different sorts of commercial photography. The whole concept of "Professional photography" is often assotiated with (if not based on) the assumption of serving specific kind of trade (journalism, medicine, wedding, advertisment etc) or otherwise generating hefty incomes (minimum enough for making a living). The resting majority is an ocean of happy amateurs dominated by countless crowds of curious Japanese tourists and enthusiastic middle class fathers tormenting their families with "cheeses" and painful flashes to produce their red-eye vampire horror shots (been there done that).

What is left is a numerous homeless bunch not daring to call themselves "professionals", but kniting their brows if called "amateurs". Of the three groups the latter one seems to be the closest to the existential essnce of photography. Having entered this group I came to realize the pressing need for a proper self-definition that would spare me the urge of becoming another "professional" plus provide a legitimate space for what I do. And I think have found it. It came kind of out of blue, when I was sipping at my tea this morning: a free soul photographer. I tried to put it on. It feels good.

February 25 - Shanghai

Well, I have just come across this very old poem of mine. I first wrote it in Russian, but it always felt like an awkward translation (maybe it is just awkward), so I have decided to translate it into English to see if it would make it better that way. Well, there we go:

Kirin beer

it's easy to believe that faces multiply
but some soar eyes with familiarity
licking off words from your lips
I wouldn’t bother drinking more Kirin beer

I couldn’t imagine I could ever be with you
and, well, I was almost right
but one’s destiny sometimes hides in a tiny gap
between the reality and a deep breath

a summer day got entangled in sordid autumn linen
and nobody stopped to throw a dime into its hat
bored cops grabbed it and threw it into a lock-up
You were my last chance

February 24 - How I Quit Joking

February 23 - Sky Blue Sky

Staying home for so long has been good for me. A feeling of life continuity has let me indulge myself with a whole range of slightly "whimsical" activities (intensive winter photography, blogging, watching 20 movies on the local film festival, pumping up iron twice a week, reading thick volumes of poetry) that I otherwise wouldn't even have bothered about. I finally feel that my soul has caught up with my body. I know this feeling well, it's when a random selection of music in your iPod all of a sudden makes perfect sense and every old song sounds as fresh as if I have just downloaded it for the first time. But after some time my body is getting more and more restless longing for some long far away trip to Asia in a desperate attempt to get away from its darling soul again. Cool down cool down. The plan is to stay together.

February 22 - Caroline

Let's break the rule. I took this picture on the 31st of December (a day before the beginning of 2009 and therefore formally outside of the project), but somehow it was the picture from which the whole thing began. I have been tempted to included it under a fake date, but finally agreed with my conscience that "honesty is the best policy" and stopped tantilizing myself. So there we go.Caroline is my neighbour. We are of the same age, we listen to the same music (sometimes literary the same, as we tend to raise up the volume so that music becomes almost tangible - thick matter filling up the rooms and kitchen, slowly leaking through all the window and door chinks). We drink Chinese tea and South African wine together, talk about life and death and Jim Morrisson, while our kids play together in another room.

Caroline has just come back from New York and said that NY is an ultimate place to live and die and that it is definetely out of any competition with any other megapolis. One more dream to enjoy. Indeed, I like people who bring me new dreams in present. Happily, I happen to know a few.

The character in the left upper corner stands for "aroma" or "scent". The whole phrase says - 茶禅一味 - "Tea and Zen are of the same scent".