Olek Photography

Moonrise over Bieszczady, August 2022

Taken from the porch of the mountain refuge “Koliba”, after a day of walking through the mountains and a compulsory plate of ‘pierogi’ (or is my memory deceiving me and it was a quick double yum-yum Chinese soup?). I remember taking the picture: tripod, 135mm lens and Ilford HP5 ISO 400 film, aperture f5.6 – 8 and about 7 seconds, that usually works out in the night. I just wanted the quietness of that moon hanging over the forest in the mist. Like Ansel Adams’ “Moonrise” photograph I too went on feeling and did not know how it would be printed, funnily enough shortly after returning I discovered the effects of a Lith developer and toning (here a bit of selenium and gold) and the picture forced itself into my enlarger, the blue glow represents the feeling quite well.

My photographs of Poland have to me the most depth. Its the 5th time I come back to my home country with a camera, and an ever firmer conviction that ‘there is something to be done here’ and so I photograph ever more deliberately.

Musing on a title that might be given to this work the first that comes to mind is “earth, skin, spirit” . The symbolic trio, the unending rural landscape, the rugged skin of the farmers and the subtle feeling of a higher presence or providence lingering in the calm landscape - unify the natural, the human and the broadly spiritual aspects which relate to my own quests and questions. Of course, this is not meant to be a series of idyllic photographs or anything which overlooks the hypocrisy unfolding day by day as the church and state forge their toxic friendship. It may however be a look at another side of this country and our own culture in a broader sense.

Without further ado: Part I of the pictures made at the crossroads of where nature, man and spirit bargain for their place.

The darkroom process documented in a few pictures

As the reality and enduring presence of a new conflict in close proximty begins to settle into our daily lives let us not let it become another new-normal, let us strive for unity among ourselves and against the forces of agression and injustice and above all let us keep supporting the victims of meaningless and terryfying war.

Here are a few photographs taken over the last two weeks.

Michaele and Venetia, in the entrance to their home - South Italy (July 2021)

The picture is an important one to me, they are very special people living a life that for most of us is too different to understand. They live on a wild mountain which they also practically own, herding cows and goats, needing little else.

This is the start of my project about South Italy.

contact print from a 9x12cm negative, Zeiss Ikon folding camera.

at the beach

little experiment :)

(old news) Italy wins the EK

The pictures were taken in Olevano, south Italy, an hour after my arrival, after watching the penalties. Immediately after the game everyone got in the cars and the clebration started. I put my 35mm on the F1 and got the flash. The picutres were all taken with the camera in one hand on Bulb and the flash in the other, triggered by the button. ORWO 400 film.

grainy brutal berlin prints

east and west - berlin

a way of photographing the city not so much through the catching the moment but one more focused on composition and detail. pictures from Berlin

I have been lucky to find a better folding camera, a Zeiss Ikon with a very good lens also probably from late 1920s or early 1930s. Still works perfectly.

9x12cm negatives

Carmen a bag of beetroot and potato, a street detail and a failed self portrait

Poland in Spring 2021

The tree where I first read Plato's Symposium at 16, the 1,5 week old horse, the corn field, the countryside, the soil, the vegetables and the people who grow them, the virus and the entrenched catholic devotion, the abanodoned places, all of these things.

i take pictures not because they are good but because they feel in some way important. like this one taken in January and now found scrolling through the files. ... the subtitle could be ommitted, esp. in Berlin but it is what it is

and this is taken during a cigarette break from work, at home of course...

old soft but sharp german lens, contact print from the 9x12cm negative

this is not a perfect picture but I like it a lot, taken with a camera similar to the one Vivian Meyer used and I suppose it also has something of that playful intimacy that characterise her photographs (not saying that I am trying to copy anyone...) but it is interesting how the tool one uses contributes to the feeling of the photograph.

This one I call "crossing the street", taken close to my house with the Twin Lens Reflex Yashica 635 on an old school film, developed in an old school developer and printed on old school paper.

I guess so far this page has not had a very good purpose and I will try to change that a little. Here is a first episode of "What makes it special?" a look at certain photographs which to me stand out as forceful, self-contained, photographic expressions.

We kick off with a photograph from Arthur Fellig, more commonly known as Weegee - the night crime scene photographer of NY city... But first a little introduction about why I think this is interesting.

Pictures are taken by a camera, there is a way of handling it but in the end the process is purely mechanical. It seems that by taking enough pictures anyone may end up with a bunch of good ones. What then gives some images their magic? What makes a photograph special? There are only the 1000 choices that a photographer makes before, during and after snapping the shutter. And sometimes this becomes magic.

So now onto Weegee's "Harry Maxwell shot in his car": I chose this as the first picture for a reason, it is actually quite a paradox, it almost perfectly is NOT a special picture and yet... The composition is perfect, but you might expect there being about eight other photographers with the same cameras (Graflex 4x5 !) at the same time and only inches away from where he is. So what makes THIS picture special?
For one Wegee chose it, he took, processed and presented it, and not some other one. The compostion and the moment are perfect, The policemen walking about calmly as if staged, the dead man in his car theatrically positioned and like a detail in the picture around which the whole show plays out. The parked cars, the streetcorner, the parking meter, the civilian casually walking by and away and of course the policemen looking into the camera. But of course there is also the figure of the photographer obscuring the foreground. In his figure is what to me makes this photograph special, because through this figure the photograph acquires another dimension. It becomes almost a self portrait , Weegee including himself in the photograph and perhaps asking this very question: 'what makes my picture special?" It is a special photograph because it does not pretend to be special, but because of that it happens to be so!

image taken from https://www.moma.org/collection/works/51521

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There is something about making slow pictures with a fragile camera. These are 9 x 12 cm negatives, the emulsion, the camera, the developer could all have existed without significant differences 80 years ago, and yet it still shows such clarity. These are taken on a quiet morning in the industrial terrain of Schoneweide, ironically outside of a photography exhibition I am not able to see.

Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin, two months ago

late

Hallesches Tor, Berlin, last month

hear my train a-comin'

And some pictures / prints from February 2021

Carmen Lafran

9x12cm plates from a 100 year old camera

end of winter pictures

Daan's coat / shopping for four

print from 35mm negative

Some prints from darkroom evenings in January. 😋

Well, you catch the light with the camera and then you somehow recreate it, even play with it, in the darkness months or years later, there is certainly a magic to it. A bit like the famous mr. Feynman explained fire to be the releasing of 'stored sunlight' that once fell on the plant, but that's physics. Photography is more fun.

Flugplatz johannisthal and the nearby forest January 2021

Schoneweide, December 2020/Jan 2021

printing session #2

First printing session with a middle format enlarger. Pictures of my sweet girlfriend Carmen Lafran. Still a lot of darkroom technique to learn.