Jante meets megalomania

Non- / Chalance IV
Originally uploaded by TSHolen

I'm not entirely sure whether it is because I've grown up in a small town or if it is something that is particular about me. What I do know is that I am a city-addict. I love the metropolis. I am still wandering around big-eyed, taking in everything about the city, the architecture, the people - the stereotypes. This is the main theme of all my photography this far on the course, just interpreting the city. I believe I see it differently than people who have lived here all their lives. This last project I found this incredibly cool place called the Barbican, and I took loads of pictures there. I noticed that the Londoners were hurrying by seemingly ignorant of the beauty of the place. That inspired me to try and put something into the pictures that would stop this nonchalance. I went back to the same places and took similar pictures with a human figure in them. I wanted it to be an anonymous, iconic figure whose main purpose was to attract attention. I wanted to create a figure that would seem intimidating and puzzling. This was the idea behind my project, which I have now posted to flickr. It has received pretty much attention, so I guess that has to mean that they weren't that rubbish after all.

And about that, I tend to try to and be humble and not have delusions of grandeur. It just so happens that a good friend of mine (Karoline) lives next to a fella called Ian who studies photography at Brooks Institute in California (apparently that's the royal shit within photo education). We started talking, comparing courses (mine= artsy, his= professional), and I explained about my (stupid?) dream of moving to New York to try and make it as a photographer (C L I C H É !). And he (the American) said I ought to do it. And not only that, he couldn't possibly understand why I wouldn't. Americans are known to be a little cocky and arrogant and are always on about their american dream, while europeans are more humble and have less faith in themselves, those who in fact does have ambitions go to america to realize them. I hope I'm not offending anyone.. I'm coming to the point soon. Which of these are right? Talking to lovely Ian, who honestly couldn't understand why I wouldn't have enough faith in myself to try and go for it, I wasn't that sure anymore. We (Karo and me) had to try and explain about the european (scandinavian) culture, and I introduced terms such as 'delusions of grandeur' and the Jante Law. Upon reading the latter Ian reacted saying it was totally crazy. And I did really come to realize that it is. It's totally fucked up actually. The thing is that we've grown up in a society which still very much cherishes that law, even though everyone you ask will deny it. It's deeply imprinted into our culture. It's neither right nor wrong, it's just the way it is in Scandinavia. I'm not suggesting we change it, I'm pointing out that while a lot of you fellow europeans point at americans saying how bold and cocky they are, take a look at yourself (and maybe the distribution of power in the world) and reconsider what the fucking ideal is.

Anyway, back to my project again. I've been bitching quite a lot about the way the idea behind the pictures seem to be more important than the actual pictures. I came to realize that I was a little wrong about that. I think some of my frustration originated from something else; I'm in the first year of a bachelor in photography and everyone is at different levels of skill at this point. Some of us presented what we considered to be finished bodies of work. Others were just messing around trying different stuff. And while the products are difficult to evaluate and compare, I overlooked that it was indeed the progress we were being awarded for.

Yesterday I went through all the pictures of me on facebook. Some two hundred and somethy-something. And besides from giving a rather stunningly complete documentation of a lot of the best parties I've been to, they got me to realize that at 19 years of living I have indeed had a lot of fun already. What also strikes me is that it is the parties where someone carried a camera that you remember the best. I also tend to black out my memory completely when I drink, which is the reason why I was armed with a disposable almost every party throughout a year. Funny thing about this is that you only get the pictures back quite a while later, so some parts of the party would only be rediscovered maybe the next week. My cousin's husband (Paul) have the same memory problem and he said something pretty cool about it:
"When you don't remember anything from the parties you've been to, then you experience them twice. Once when you are there, and once more when people tell you what actually happened". I agree with that to a certain extent, but if no one's there to recap everything to you right away, then it feels kind of useless spending that much money for having a black hole in your consciousness. So I started bringing disposables loaded with slide film, b&w and loads of other stupid stuff, to document the parties. I have to admit that in between the vast ocean of shots of people posing/making faces with their drinks, there are some rather good stuff. In fact some photographers actually do this stuff for real. Seamus Nicholson for one and Jamie Stoker, who is a rather talented british photography student, currently in Brighton I believe. I just happened to come across his blog. Some good, inspiring stuff. In Alex Garland's 'The beach' the (notoriously super cool) main character talks about whether he wants to carry a camera around on his travels. The argument was that you only remember the actual moments in the pictures and nothing else. It's hardly a fair thing to bring up (comparing blacked out parties with international travels and all) but I'd say that I usually manage to connect the dots. I'm gonna start bringing cameras to parties again.

On a completely different note, I have decided that the best way to cross a road is to walk halfway over looking like you own the place, and when you realize the shitload of cars are coming faster than you thought: run like a crazy fella!

Non- / Chalance

Non- / Challance I
Originally uploaded by TSHolen

I presented my project today. A self initiated project we've had for four weeks now.
I focused at interesting places and shapes in London that most of Londoners walk by without even noticing. To emphasize this I placed an anonymous, iconic person in them, trying to make them more noticeable. I.e Nonchalance vs Chalance. 

Upon presenting my work I got the following feedback:

"I like it"

"I like it too"

and then Vince came and helped me loads:

"I think the mask should be black"

Thanks, I'm definitely going to be a much better photographer now. I would really love to have someone be completely honest with me. Rip them apart...

Apparently it's not really about the aesthetics. It's the idea. And it's not enough to have an idea for something aesthetic, the idea has to be based on something like: "The flowers represent how my mother got ill and died" or some other long-shot symbol of a deep feeling, and then if the actual pictures are shit, it doesn't really matter that much. 

In other news, I went to ASDA today, and I realized that the shelves with laundry washers smell more like candy than the actual candy shelves. So much for helping the blind guys. Anyways I went to pick up a package of flour. Obviously I grabbed the ASDA smart price thingy, 68p or something. A guy stopped me just as I grabbed for it, to ask me whether that flour was any good.

For one:

Do I LOOK like a guy that would know the differences between brand-name flour and ASDA smart price flour? (I really don't think I do. I look far too cool and stuff)

Secondly:

Is there REALLY any difference? (Again, I can't possibly imagine that)

The guy was in his mid forties I'd say, and to be fair, I'd suggest that the probability that his flour-experience by far outranged mine is rather large. Anyways, I mumbled something about not really minding and went away.

I haven't been able to write much the last couple of days, which is good seeing as that means that I actually have things to do. Tomorrow I'm gonna try to start my essay once more...

Going postal

As I hinted earlier I'm supposed to write on my essay today. It just so happens that I have not written a single word of it as of yet. I have not really read a single word of research for writing it either. Nevertheless I am writing this. It proves one time for all that it's not the act of writing that is repulsing, it all has to do with what you write about and even more important, what motivates you (or not) to write. This isn't really news, but you remember that smart-ass chick back at school who hated and subsequently failed all the essays she was given, claiming she didn't like to (or actually all together could not) write, while she wrote more text messages than the rest of the class added up as well as being a notorious starter of chain e-mails. While she was unable to write about the history of literature, she could easily think of a couple of hundred things that would happen to you if you do not send the email on to so and so many people. 

Anyway, I bought a russian viewfinder (with meter) for my precious hassie off of ebay. The cool thing about the british postal service is that they bring the packages to your door (that doesn't happen a lot in Norway), the not so cool thing about it is that if you're not there when they try to deliver it you have one week to hit the post office and pick it up. Seems fair enough. Except the post office is open from 7am to 2pm mon-fri and 7am to 1pm on Saturday. I can see how some people might find it troublesome to get there within those times, and if you don't make it..? Well it's all shipped off back to the sender (in my case: Russia). Not so much fun.

I had one thing to do this Saturday, that was getting the package. I was fully aware of the opening hours, but nevertheless I managed to only get out about half past twelve. I found the (rather out of the way) post office at 12.45 (having taken a 90p bus ride some enormous two stops - I was in a hurry!) and I knew it might be ambitious to think that I'd get the package within those 15 minutes. There was a queue. Fucking big one too. Out of the packed post office, out on the parking lot thingy and onto the actual road outside.

Ironically this made me get my hopes up. The mere fact that all those people still bothered to stand there had to mean either that:

the queue was moving fast

or

the nice postal service people would finish the people in the queue even after 1 o'clock.

No such luck. The queue moved fast enough, in fact just fast enough for me to get into the office at pretty exactly 1 o'clock. This was, however, also the time when the guys behind the tills basically just bailed. They turned around and left. I think it is fair to say that people did not particularly care for just this. In fact, one of the bitter old women in the crowd (probably picking up some rubbish mail order stuff that she never in her years alive would even have anywhere near her house, at least without christmas wrappings. And which she intended to give to her closest friends for christmas, while complaining loudly over the rubbish presents she'd get in return) started yelling at a rather generous-figured postal employee. Something along the lines of "If you got of your fat bottom and got behind the tills we would have all gotten our packages today!". As much as I admire her ability to address figures of authority in such a sweet, sensible way, I must admit I was doubtful of the effect it would have had to have another guy behind the tills. I would also suggest that maybe he had being doing something else, maybe even something important.

Then all hell broke lose (not really, maybe some of it though). A guy standing startlingly close to me started pounding his fist into the air shouting "WE WANT SERVICE!" repeatedly in the way they shout slogans in bad movies about strikes from the nineties. The only problem was that at first no one really joined in (I suspect because they were having the same associations as me) but after some three solitary shouts people chimed in, at which point I left. My efforts only brought me there 15 minutes before closing time, and as much as I'd like to join the fist-pounding and repeated shouting thing I had to appreciate that this just wasn't my battle. Best of luck to the others though. The whole situation really made me realize how good the expression 'Going postal' actually is. I was ignorant of the way the postal service really works. Next time I go there (tomorrow probably) I'll bring some spiked bats and a gas mask.

Maybe I'll try writing/reading something about Duchamp now (for my essay), or maybe I'll just skip the ambitiously optimistic pretending and realize that it will indeed not happen today. Whatsoever. 

Gathering Dust

These are my contribution to the Gathering Dust exhibition. Nothing fancy, just some shots i had completely forgotten about, like was the whole idea of the exhibition. 

It's raining badly today, I don't want to step outside the door. I have stuff to do for uni (an essay) but chances are that I'll rather spend more time  writing a proper post here.

"Forgotten portraits of remembered people" :

The Camera Nerd

I'm not really an art knower. I'm expected to be that now, apparently. There's something called modern art and something called contemporary art. I wouldn't know the difference (I'm probably supposed to know it, though), all I know is that normal rules don't apply. It doesn't have to look nice, in fact it doesn't have to be anything remotely art-like at all. Apparently the more spaced out, the better. 

I'm only saying this because we had an exhibition called "Gathering Dust" at Uni today. A good initiative; bring stuff that you've never shown before, - and it could be anything. One of the guys there actually decided to bring himself. I'm not speculating whether he's out a lot, but if I had to comment on that, I'd say that there's a good chance he does not have a whole mountain of friends to chose from. The guy was wearing a skin coloured bath hat, some Ali G-type glasses and a keyboard on his back (if you pressed the right button, allegedly it would detonate a nuclear bomb). In a rather convincing german accent he presented himself as a german techno artist called, appropriately, Techno Spoof (http:/uk.youtube.com/user/Technospoof71, - either he's 37 or there's at least 70 other techno spoofs. I can't decide which is more probable - or pathetic). He was his artwork. I will upload some pictures of him later.

 

The answer applicable for every stupid action in the world: 'It's art'. If it has indeed come to the point where this is art, I'd say we go and push all the buttons on this guys keyboard. Entertaining: yes. Art: no(!).

Well, today I have been in colour darkroom almost continuously from 10 am to 5 pm. A lot of people do not think of this, but there's a big difference between the prints you get from the photo store and the ones you print off of your printer at home. Where as your printer drips small drops of ink onto the paper, the photo store exposes light sensitive photographic paper. The viewable difference is mainly that you can se the lines where the printer have printed each line of information, and you can also make out the tiny drops. In addition, the colours greatly depend on the right light to be rendered correctly.

When you print colour pictures the old fashioned way you do approx. three prints to get the exposure right and three more to get the colours. All the printing is done in pitch black. I spent 5 hours to do three prints. And I only just managed. Think about that next time you pick up a couple of hundred prints from the local photo store!

What is a photograph though? Granted that you say you're holding a photograph in your hand. Are you then:

a: holding a print in your hand

b: holding a original (negative/positive) in your hand

?

And what about digital photographs? You can't really hold them, can you? You can hold the prints, yes. But the actual photograph?

If you say that the print is the photograph, then what happens when you have several prints from the same original. Do you then have several photographs or several prints of the same photograph?

Also consider this:

I: Is a photograph better the bigger it is? No? Pixels don't mean shit then..? When you're considering that 12 Mpix camera, ask yourself this: are you REALLY going to print in skyscraper-wall-poster-size? 

II: How do you really want your pictures to be viewed? Have you considered that maybe the lcd screen of your pc is not the best way to view your pictures? To quote my teacher, Vince, 'Prints are FUCKING cool!"

Cameras. Germany, USA, Russia and Japan. That's what counts. And Japan very much so.

Germany: Schneider Kreuznach, Carl Zeiss, Franke-Heidecke, Leitz.

USA: Kodak.

Russia: Kiev, Zorki, Zenit, Lomo.

Japan: Ricoh, Nikon, Canon, Panasonic, Sony, Pentax, Olympus, Samsung, Bronica, Mamiya, Yashica... the list really does go on.

If there ever was such a thing as a photographic war Japan would, with no great effort, blow everyone else out of the water. Big Time.

Sorry for the techie output, but as it happens I have worked in a photo store for four years and adapted an semi-insane obsession for old cameras and lenses as well as developed an unhealthy relationship to film. It's like candy to me, at least the good films. Anyways, I know the stuff, and I like to talk about it.

I am a camera nerd. But being a nerd is really only a bad thing when that is the only thing you are. I am a photographer too, I think.

Yes, I am alright. Thank you very fucking much!

About a month ago I bought a shit load of vouchers for E6 (slide) processing at this lab out in Guernsey. Of course about a week after I got the vouchers they announced that they were closing down the E6 processing december 1st. No doubt I was pretty happy about that..

This, however, is the reason why I went to London today for no other reason than to shoot four rolls of 120 (medium format) slide film. I'm not very good at exposing my medium format slides, so doing it in a rush is undoubtedly not a good idea. Anyways I went to Canary Wharf, which is this huge collection of skyscrapers and generally new and trendy architecture. Pretty ambitious stuff. Very photogenic. I knew on beforehand that the whole place is actually a private estate and that it is prohibited to photograph there at all (without a permit that is. Wonder what I'd have to go through to get one of those..?). I was photographing with my hasselblad. This camera is of the same size as a semi professional video camera (which I believe is the reason why a lot of people seem to think I am filming with it) or a small machine pistol... well at least it's not very unobtrusive.

When you do street photography you tend to learn some things about people. For one, if the theory that you can know when someone's watching you is true (I very much believe so), then I have a further theory that it is roughly ten times easier for people to feel that you are pointing a camera at them (if not twenty). It's actually almost fascinating the way they seemingly always turns your way that millisecond before the shot. When they do realize that you are pointing a camera at them they react in one of these ways:

1. They jump out of the way, saying that they are terribly sorry (as if I owned the very area they were standing in and had every right to throw them away from there). Often they do the jumping away in a rather clumsy way, which tempts me to actually take the picture anyway. I almost never do.

2. They look at you in a menacing way, kinda saying 'I'll kill you if you take that shot' (or something along the lines of that). I usually just take the shot really quickly and either walk fast in another direction or look distantly past them, making it clear that I was indeed photographing something far behind them (I do this ALOT when I get busted for trying to take someone's picture). It's cool because it also implies that they are rather self centered and arrogant if they argue that I was indeed taking a picture of them (sorry sir, you're not that good looking...).

3. Every now and then someone looks at you and then after some seconds of eye-contact (mine through the lens/viewfinder, but still) they actually go back to what they were doing. In a way saying: 'I'm actually okay with that...'. They may act slightly unnatural, but this is still by far the best response to get. It doesn't happen a lot though. It happened once with a shoemaker in Croatia (he did the posing thing, but a rather handsome one) and it happened today. Some guy were standing in some very handsome light, carrying a several bags of flowers he'd bought in some (I'd guess, rather expensive) flower shop. He saw me, I did the looking past him thing, but he caught my eye and I was slightly at loss of anything to do, and then he just turned back and went back to doing what he was doing before (I imagined looking for the woman to give the load of flowers to). Bless him!

The Croatian Shoemaker

Anyways, back to my 'big camera'-situation (oh don't do that 'perverse association' thing..!). One guy approached me today, saying 'You know they make digital cameras now!' while pointing at my hassie. Apparently, this is, from what I've read on forums and stuff (flickr group threads) a very common thing for people to say when you're carrying an old camera. I've never got one before. I usually get the 'Is that a real Hasselblad?!' continuing with: 'My dad/uncle/brother/mom/granddad was/is a photographer and he used to have/has one of those'. Funny thing is, often they comment on the hasselblad in a 'wow, have you actually got one of those'-sort of way, while completely ignoring my Leica which by all means is worth a lot more. I don't really mind, not wanting to draw attention to the fact that I carry a rather expensive camera (expensive really only for being an analogue camera, dslrs usually cost more).

Second guy to notice my camera was one of the two rather large security guys (it seems I don't mix too well with security guys lately) who could indeed inform me that I was not allowed to take pictures in the building, or even on the whole of Canary Wharf area. Security reasons, they said. I'm sure terrorists carry around hasselblads and wear new era caps when they do their reconnaissance. Stupid stupid stupid... What is really the point in making loads of really cool and photogenic skyscrapers if no one is allowed to photograph them?

Anyways, I upped my scandinavian accent and informed them that I was really sorry and that I was unaware of the fact that it was prohibited to photograph in the area. I believe the fact that I moments earlier had been trying to open a door that was not being used (I accidentally missed the big poster stuck to it) did wonders to make my ignorant state more authentic.

Afterwards I went to an expensive burger place. One of the waitresses seemed fairly new in her job. She dropped a tray (an empty one, luckily) to the floor. And after the noise, startling nearly all of the people in the restaurant, had died out, she did the 'I didn't do anything wrong'-thing rather than apologize. Afterwards she decided to stop me mid-bite to ask if everything was alright. I said a simple, polite: yes, but thought otherwise (Yes, I am alright. Thank you very fucking much!). Good burger though...

Train home. And now I'm writing this while watching pictures on flickr. My girlfriends coming from paris soon. 'til next...

Water Fights and Nicking of Sofas

Yesterday (Monday) we arranged to have a poker night with the class. We've had one before, and if they continue to end up like these I'm not sure that it is justifiable to call them poker nights anymore. On the first one we actually played poker for some generous 10 minutes or something before alcohol took over. This time we didn't even get to take out the cards (this is a metaphor as we actually used them a lot for drinking games).  Of the twenty-something we (I) invited, only 8 showed; Frankie, Michelle and roommate Claire, Matt, Dan (who apparently wasn't even invited.. my bad!), Frankie's 'friend' Zac, Sophie and I. It was at Frankie's. She has a spacious (for london area standards anyways) living room. She was wall-to-wall carpets (do you actually call them that?) in every room besides the kitchen and maybe the bathroom (we have the same situation at our place).

We did:

The Circle of Death/Ring of Fire (Michelle had to drink the jug, which had a serious portion of guinness in it, together with some spirits making it a liquid pukyfier) Due to some unlucky waterfalls Frankie got it worst this round.

The Bus Driver (I can never remember the second half of this game, and seeing as it seems to be norwegian, I'm not getting any help here)

My very own modified "I have never" game. You state that you have done something, people say if they believe you or not. Those who are wrong have to drink. Simple! (and doesn't get the same repercussions the day after as the conventional game does when you, say, spill a bit too much about your bedroom activities and someone (Matt) decides to record the whole shebang on his camera)

Then we did some sort of version of beer pong with my newly acquired ping pong balls (2.90 at Argos!). Boys agains girls. Boys were loosing badly. Zac had to finish something that was mixture of guinness, vodka, whisky, more vodka and maybe some alcopop-mayhem.

Then we started throwing ping pong balls, and after I'd thrown a few at Frankie she decided that throwing a glass of water at me was probably something I'd greatly appreciate. This escalated into a vicious water fight, where Frankie barricaded herself in the bathroom with the shower head, and apparently she was feeling slightly trigger happy. Matt was our team leader, and the fight that did little to encourage further use of 'wall-to-wall carpets' only ended when Matt felt we had to retreat and close the door while my and was holding a class through it. Frankie, a glass shorter and rather wet, went to bed and the rest of us went to trusty Subway and I caught a bus home after an hour of talk by the bus stop.

This morning, my dear girl managed to convince me to come out of bed. I was slightly reluctant, but we have these talks on tuesdays, where professional photographers come and talk to us. Interesting stuff! - Usually that is...

This guy did not find anything even a little bit wrong with talking to a photography class for an hour and a half about psycho analyzation. It did not, by far, seem anywhere near worth it to get up to see that thingy. I was not happy at all.. I was bored and tired, and admittedly slightly hung over. He talked about this Baader-Meinhof german activist group. They are featured in a new film, which I might actually see (hopefully that one won't be about psycho analyzation). 

The photography course have this 'production space'-area at our disposal. Apparently they fought really hard to get it last year. This seems weird because no one really use it. Anyway, they're threatening to take it away if we don't start using it (bastards!), so we started making plans of how to make it more habitable (it's on the 4th floor. ALOT of stairs). Me and Matt have discussed getting a sofa up there. And by encouragement of my crazy-cool teacher (his name is actually Vince) and by inspiration from the talk we decided to start the Sofa Thieves Activist Group (we didn't really, I did now). Anyways we just nicked one that wasn't being used. We did some reconnaissance (damn, I actually managed to spell that correctly on the first go!) first. We checked out the lift and ran into this smart-ass security guard fella. He was digging for info, but we didn't give him any. We went in, got the sofa (our plan was to simply look really important so that no one would stop us. The guard wasn't there so it was all good (except that the sofa was heavy as fuck! and the lift was slightly too small.. didn't stop some art weirdos from insisting to join us in there, though). Finally we had to bring it up some stairs and into the production space. I went down to get the cushions. When I went to the lift the second time, the security guy was there and he was nosy once again. Wanted to know where I'd gotten the cushions. I replied that Vince asked us to get them (as he instructed us to say). He was smirking and looking slightly defeated. Once I got up I sat down there and looked through some photography books for about an hour before Matt came along telling me that we had to take the fucking thing back down again. We decided not to do it today.

You know the feeling when someone seems to be inviting you to punch them in the face? I met the security guy again. Same smirk - this time victorious. He could inform me that we had to take the sofa down again, as he had indeed hinted was going to happen. Punching a security guy is never a good idea, and I'm not the violent type. 

I went home. Made some curry. My girlfriend (Kornelie, if you didn't know it. Here she's called Nell, same way I'm called Theo) was going to London tonight because she's going to Paris tomorrow. She actually managed to forget her passport, so she had to go back, and I had to go to the train station with it, wearing shorts (pretty cold I tell you). When I got back I started this blog, and I felt I had to recap the last months before I started on today. So, there it is. It's beginning...

Now I'm going to bed.

So. What's been happening?

Well, I'm in Kingston Upon Thames for the time being. I'm studying a bachelor of arts in photography. And apparently it has honors as well. I wouldn't know what that means. I've been here since August 18th. Uni only started September 17th, but due to some sloppy reading we landed a long month too soon. Well it could've been worse. We could have decided to stay at a YMCA together with drug addicts and criminals. Oh wait, we did that too..!

Anyways, I have a crazy-cool teacher (I guess they're really called tutors but what the hell...). He is by all means not afraid of using strong language. I can illustrate this with this one situation where he approached me when I was scanning some photographs with my lovely girlfriend at my side. I asked him how he was, and introduced my girlfriend. He said:

"That can't be your girlfriend! You're too fucking ugly to have a girlfriend"

I must admit to being slightly at loss for anything to say at that point, so he continued without any intervention.

"If you have a girlfriend everyone in the world should have one. Everyone's better looking than you!"

I think that I had been there about a week at that time, and while I'd already understood that this was the way this guy was, I'm not too sure that my girlfriend had the same intel. I think she was slightly shocked actually.

Upon another occasion this same teacher was mistaken for another teacher by some students that'd never been in our department before. They were returning some photo-equipment. And when they asked him whether he was indeed Niall (he isn't), he answered the following:

"What?! Dipstick! Are you on drugs?"

"No, I'm not. I just thought you might me Niall"

"I'm not... Sure you're not on drugs?!"

And speaking of which, we had a situation in one seminar, where one of the students (Matt) kept falling asleep. First time this wonderful teacher of mine noticed it, he merely asked him whether he was alright. Matt had allegedly been working so much with his project that he didn't go to sleep until early in the morning (no way I was buying that). Still, we continued. The second time it happened my teacher had this to offer:

"You should take some drugs! That will help you.. Cocaine should do the trick. Or amphetamine... Yeah, amphetamine sulphate, that used to be the shit..."

He went on a bit like that. I don't think it would be an overstatement to say that just about all of us thought we had fallen asleep as well.. This had to be the thing of weird dreams. No such luck.

Well enough about him for now. We've had three projects.

The (somewhat unexpected) summer project was to consider the notion of space in areas around you or in connection to some words (or something like that).

I chose to look at Urban Space and Mindscape.

Second project was called Time Sequence Memory, mine was called "the Journey".

Third was called Transposition and Transformation, where we were supposed to reference some other artists work. I referenced my favourite photographer, Tommy Oshima's "Graffoto" series. These consist of pictures on a wall. I went out and found street art, took pictures of it and put these on a wall making my own street art. Took pictures of these again with a large format camera. Cool stuff.

The one we have now is a Self Initiated Project. And this is twice as long as the others (four, not two weeks). I'm presenting next week, think I'm done taking pictures actually.

Other than my pictures, I'm expected to present research. My problem is that I don't think I really do research. I'm not really sure what they mean by that. What I've picked up is that the idea is as important (if not more) as the actual pictures. This is slightly problematic for me as I usually do street photography. Obviously it's challenging to have a specific idea and get random people to make it happen. I do conscious choices, but I have a hard time explaining them. I'll try some other time. Anyways I'm supposed to look at other photographers, I do this ALL THE TIME, I'm a flickr-addict. But they want me to take notes and do bad prints of everything I look at and stick them in a beat-up book together with a bunch of writing about the idea. I'm just not that type of guy... enough about that.

I realize that if I intend for anyone to actually read through this, I need to write less.. I'm stopping here.

The Blog. An Introduction

I've been debating for quite a while whether or not to take part in this phenomena. I don't really care to much for the way a lot of bloggers publish their lives in what seems to be no more than an effort to get a feeling of those 15 minutes Mr. Warhol was talking about. Another thing that has held me back is that I am a formidable half-asser. That is, I have a tendency to start out with things (ideas, projects and stuff) and not finish them. This is why photography is so good for me. 'Click' and it's done. Well, it's not really that simple, but I guess I'll come back to that some other time. I thought it might be difficult to do it, making the blog (I had a sneaking suspicion that it was indeed fairly easy, but it was another more or less good reason to put it off). I study photography, which I guess could mean that I won't have any problems with putting pictures in this thing. I do all my photography on film and therefore there will be some delay between events actually happening, and me posting pictures of them.

I am in England, away from my land of birth. And several people have suggested blogging as a way of giving updates. For reasons given above I have waited quite a while with this. But it just so happens that I have a lot of time on my hands, and while I do not hope that the blog will become an all-time-consuming thing, I will try to write every now and then. Today was the day to start it. 

Another debate has been whether I'd write in English or Norwegian. I'm fairly sure you'd be able to guess what the outcome of that debate is. Seeing as I gave giving-updates-to-my-Norwegian-friends as a reason for writing this thingy, it would be natural to write in Norwegian. To be honest I've been somewhat bothered with the fact that I know a language that I can speak to 4.5 million people with (and maybe slightly (mis-)understand another 10 m) while I live in a city with more than twice that many people in it. My university has more students than my hometown (incidentally a wicked song by Adele) have inhabitants. Norwegian is simply too limiting. Anyway my mother needs to learn English badly, and if she ever discovers this thing hopefully there'll be so much stuff on it that she won't be able to get someone else to translate it to her.