David Bailey on the Art of Photography

I recently read an interview with David Bailey by Andrew Graham Dixon for The Telegraph, and as always Mr Bailey is interesting, witty and utterly to the point. Here are some quotes I found particularly worth keeping track of

Why am I never drunk in my dreams?

When I’ve had too much to drink and wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, I can still feel the effect of the alcohol as I swagger over to the toilet, yet in the dream I had just before I woke up, I was totally sober.

Who needs vegetarian meat substitutes?

Apparently, vegetarians need meat replacements.

I can understand that meat is a source of certain nutrients that we need in order to stay healthy. And that you have to procure those nutrients from other food sources if you decide to refrain from eating meat. You won’t hear me argumenting against a varied and complete diet. That’s a given. And in that sense, meat replacement certainly is a necessity. But I think the “replacement” concept is being misinterpreted by the food industry. There is no need to replace “meat” as such, you simply need alternative sources for nutrients provided by meat.

However, when I look at the vegetarian section in the supermarkets I frequently shop at, those sections seems to be all about meat.

deviantART Members Prepare to Sell Their Art as Microstock

As reported by Photopreneur: deviantART Members Prepare to Sell Their Art as Microstock.

So after Flickr, deviantART is now also planning to offer a ‘commercial’ outlet for its members to sell their work, by teaming up with Fotolia, a player in the (micro)stock photography market.

The question that came to my mind immediately after reading this is “Why (micro)stock?” It seems like a rather strange choice…

I mean, deviantART is primarily an artists’ community, with its own unique identity and culture, and that culture is totally different from the microstock community. DeviantART is about artistic expression, while microstock is about crunching out lots of stuff in the hope that it will sell in large enough numbers to make a profit. To me those are diametrically opposed goals, one geared to pleasing the creator of the work, the other one geared to pleasing the crowd of cheapskate photography buyers.

And the works themselves also seem to be of a totally different nature. If deviantART members live up to their status as ‘artists’, the work they produce would primarily appeal to art buyers rather than to stock photography buyers. They are created for a different purpose: individual expression vs. large scale utility. Moreover, their very nature as ‘individual works of art’ would seem to warrant a more upmarket price model than what microstock has to offer.

And finally, anyone can sell their work through a stock-house if they want to – including people who are already active on deviantART. The fact that they are artists shouldn’t stop them from also creating and marketing commercial work. So is there really a need to combine the two?

For it seems that mixing two totally different communities creates the danger of  corrupting the individuality of one of them. In the best-case scenario Fotolia will expand its activities to selling art besides commercial stock. In that case the art market will gain a new player, and the combination will create a richer audience for the deviantARTists. In the worst-case scenario however, deviantARTists will start to produce commercial stock and upload and sell it through the deviantART community, flooding the site with work that can harldy be called ‘individual art’. In this scenario there is no enrichment, only a dilution of the artistic identity of deviantART. In the end, deviantART might even become ‘just another stock-site’, not much different from the other players in the market…

I think it would have made a lot more sense had deviantART teamed up with a player that is explicitly targeting the art world instead of the commercial photography market. That would provide its members with an outlet that is geared to their specific needs, so they can remain true to their particular nature and goals as artists.

As it stands however,  it seems one of the two parties will likely have to change in order to make this awkward combination work. And since this is a battle between art and commerce, between individuality and money, I fear history shows us who the likely winner will be…

Traffic 101 – Merging

It’s been a while since I posted something here (I discovered Facebook 😀 ) but I thought it was time for a new post, and it’s going to be a grumpy one, about how people (should (not)) behave in traffic. In particular I want to share a major frustration I regularly experience in my daily ventures on the Belgian roads, which is related to merging behavior.

The Belgian e-ID

A while ago I finally got my very own and totally personal e-ID card from our beloved government 😀 .

For those of you not familiar with Begium, all citizens here have an identity card which contains a number of personal information items (name, address, unique identification number – yes, they have us all neatly numbered over here 😀 – date of birth, gender, etc). We’ve had this for a long time, and it used to be a rather straightforward laminated cardboard card (well, actually a bit more sophisticated than that of course, with the necessary security features etc) which contained all information in plain human-readable form. Nice and simple because you always knew what was on it and everybody you showed it to could easily read the information.

Open Monumenten Dag

Last sunday we had “Open Monumenten Dag” here in Flanders (for those not familiar with Belgium: Flanders is the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium). On “Open Monument Day” sites not normally accessible to the public are opened to visitors (like factories, historic buildings, private gardens/houses of interest etc), and locations which normally charge an entrance fee can be visited for free (like museums etc). Usually this occasion draws a huge crowd, and not being a crowd-person myself, I usually steer well clear of any of the advertised locations on that particular day.

But since it was a sunny and relatively warm day, and I had my son with me for the weekend, I thought it might actually be fun for him, and decided to take part for the first time.

Five o’clock – A One-minute Story

It was five o’clock. He was waiting for the lights to turn green. The window rolled down to let the late afternoon warmth in, he looked around aimlessly at the bustle of evening rush hour traffic. People on foot, on bicycles, in cars, buses and trams, all on their way home from work. A chaotic tangle of people on the move, a busy whirring of bodies with one clear common goal: to get back together with the ones they love after a day’s work.

It had been a hot and sunny day, and everyone was eager to get home quickly. With a good few hours of daylight remaining, the evening promised to be long and lush, and full of beckoning opportunities. And as the sun not only warms the earth but also the hearts of people, that typical mild and laidback atmosphere of summer could be felt throughout the city. Over in the park children were playing in the sun, people were sitting on benches in the shade chatting, and everywhere commuters were wearing their friendly faces.

In the mood for love

The other day I was watching the movie In the Mood for Love by Wong Kar-Wai. It was the second time I saw it, the first was a number of years ago, when late one evening I stumbled upon it while browsing channels on TV.

I remember the movie had a big impact on me the first time I saw it. I was profoundly touched by it, I felt connected to the mood and to the story on a very deep emotional level. It was one of those movie-experiences where you turn off the TV after the movie ends because you don’t want to break the mood it got you in, and you just sit on the couch for a while thinking about what you saw and how it made you feel.

So when I was browsing the DVD section of the supermarket a while ago and came across a box with 2 movies by Wong Kar-Wai (In the Mood for Love and 2046) I bought it because I wanted to see that movie again, to relive the experience and share it with my girlfriend J, who had not yet seen it.

Holiday in Tuscany: 9. What to remember

As a final post in this series about my recent trip to Tuscany, here’s a wrap-up in the form of a list of things that struck me, things I will remember, and things that will make me go back there at some point in the future.

Apart from a ‘conclusion’ to the Holiday in Tuscany series, this post can also be used as a kind of summary if you don’t want to wade through all the other posts, as it provides a more succinct overview of (most of) the main points made in the other posts 🙂 .

In general, our trip to Tuscany was a great vacation and we enjoyed our (short) stay very much, but we had to get used to a few peculiar aspects of Italian life.