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DayFour issue 6 The New Constellations
Published 2008
Cover: Afshin Dehkordi
One of the greatest privileges of the twenty-first century is air travel, because it enables us to look at our planet from the angle traditionally reserved for gods: from high above. If you fly over Europe at night, the motorways, towns and cities light up like clusters of stars, man-made stars, below your feet. From astrologers to aviators, mankind has always used the positions of the planets and constellations to predict the future, navigate the globe and find its place in the world. For this issue of d4, we asked our contributors the question: what do you look to today for guidance and answers in the modern world? What, or who, do you depend on to give you direction, to inspire you, or to make sense of your experiences?
Contributors
© All photography and text in Dayfour is copyright the contributors. All rights reserved
The new constellations, part 1
As has become painfully clear over the last decade, humanity still looks for guidance from the stars. Just a slightly less stellar, more celluloid kind of star...
Contributor Hin Chua was born in Malaysia, grew up in Australia and now lives in London. What does he rely on to get through life in the modern world? 'My ability to laugh. To seek out and recognise the ridiculous. To yank myself out of the flow of daily life, to walk slightly out of step. To find beauty in its horrors. But most importantly, to laugh.'
More Hin at www.hinius.net
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Stop/go
I'm intrigued by how the arrangement of the built environment directs our everyday movements. As we commute from space to space, a network of planned elements and constructed barriers dictates our ebb and flow. These are the constellations that influenced my images, a coded language of three-dimensional structures and two-dimensional symbols that together form the fabric of our urban spaces.
Contributor Ben Roberts is based in London. He says, 'As a young freelance photographer I rely on a big support network to keep me going. Ultimately though, the buck stops (and starts!) with my clients. If they weren't commissioning me, I'd no doubt still be working behind a bar.'
More Ben at www.benrobertsphotography.com
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All changed
Sonja, a German artist visiting Iran, wears a headscarf on a roof in Tehran with the Alborz mountains in the background. A lone car driven at night into the belly of a salt desert, where once stood an ancient lake. Esfehan is to Iranians what Florence is to Italians. The locals have a saying: 'Esfehan, nesve jahan', 'Esfehan is half the world'. Tourists from all over Iran take souvenir photographs on the terrace of the Ali Ghapu palace. Iranians are rarely given tourist visas to travel abroad. Eftekhar sits by the pool in her garden in one of the last remaining traditional mud walled houses in the old district of south Tehran. She was born in the house, raised in the house, wedded in the house. After the passing away of her parents and husband she has moved back into the house to raise her three children and nine cats.
Contributor Afshin Dehkordi embarked on a photography career after studies at University College London and Harvard. To get through life in the modern world he depends on 'a sense of humour, hope, good food, and good company.' Afshin is based outside London.
More Afshin at www.dehkordi.co.uk
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Nightlife
It was a clear night in Provence and the stars were ablaze. The concept was taking shape and the narrative was becoming clearer. I wanted to make portraits of these stars. They were to come down and sit for my camera. Maybe Steven Spielberg would interpret The Star of Bethlehem like this. I wonder if Mr Spielberg would use fishing wire like I did...
Contributor Ali Mobasser was born in America to Iranian parents and has lived in London for most of his life. Ali says, 'I'm more interested in the possibilities of photography than the physical act of taking photographs. Photography, like filmmaking and music, is going through a rapid transformation and we are all caught up in the middle of it. New science brings with it new uncertainties, new social issues, and new art. This is an exciting time for photography. Everyone is using the medium. From children using their camera phones to document one another to traffic wardens documenting faulty parking. The west has become one big camera! This mass exploitation of photography holds great surprises ahead.'
More Ali at www.silentpartnercreative/alim
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New York
Tough town. Nine million people and four rats to each. Land of the open wallet. A city that, when it rains, makes its own gravy. Never sleeps, and rarely bathes. Home of Giuliani, Hillary, and Bloomberg. Blackouts, subway strikes and the Yankees. Electrical system from the 20s. Subway even older. Rush hour traffic at four in the morning. Why would you ever come here? More importantly, why would you ever leave? One word...
Contributor Matt Carr is originally from Indiana, spent ten years living and working in Europe, and is now based in New York. What or who do you rely on to get you through life in the modern world? 'Most recently a tyre iron and a wee bit of sour mash.' Matt says he takes photographs 'because I forget things easily'.
More Matt in d4.2, d4.3, d4.4 and at www.mattcarr.com
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Strange days
I was waiting at traffic lights when I noticed the graffiti: 'The end is nigh'. The wall it was painted on was part of a new apartment building. What struck me was the contrast between the pessimistic scrawl and the green clover and new surrounds. It seemed so out of place. This photograph was the beginning of a project, attempting to focus on the peculiar and the eccentric in the everyday. People finding their way in the modern world expressed in their attitudes and ideologies.
Contributor Vikky Wilkes lives and works in Canberra, Australia. She takes photographs 'to capture the inexplicable, the funny, the beautiful, the plain, the absurd, the ugly...'
More Vikky in d4.5 and at www.vikkywilkes.com
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In the flow
The psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, described his Theory of Flow as follows: 'Flow is being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies...Your whole being is involved.' These photographs respond to things in the landscape that simultaneously awaken one's sense of the present, and envelop one within it. They were made on a1960s Polaroid Land Camera. The unique prints, with their flaws, scratches, shifted colours, soft focus and occasionally torn edges, allude to both the distinctiveness and fragility of memories, and introduce an air of nostalgia to the image at the precise moment that the photograph, as an object in itself, reaches its final form...
Contributor Aaron Schuman is an American photographer, lecturer and critic based in the UK. He is the editor of online photography journal www.seesawmagazine.com To get through life in the modern world, Aaron relies on 'Coffee, wonder and a healthy sense of irony.' Why does he take photographs? 'Because if I didn't, it would hurt.'
More Aaron in d4.5 and at www.aaronschuman.com
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Making connections
An old man in the park, a young mother and child, a couple locked in an intimate embrace: I see it, I experience it, and in the here and now I am part of this constellation that can mean everything or nothing to me. I draw my conclusions and assign the constellation a meaning, my own meaning for myself.
Contributors Amelie Weinwurm and Philip Ginthoer are Austrians living in Munich. What or who do you rely on to get you through life in the modern world? 'On each other, our instincts and art and our belief in a better world and the good of mankind.'
More Philip and Amelie in d4.3, d4.4 and at www.weinwurm.eu
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Under African skies
Muizenberg, South Africa, February 2007. The mountain behind our house is on fire. We lie awake in our beds listening to the cracking wrath of nature. In the dark it's too dangerous to be extinguished, the flames feeding off the branches of the hundred year old milkwood trees. In my mind I see miles of red dusty villages, pierced by electric purple jacaranda trees and clusters of thatched Zulu rondavels. All along the roads there are school children walking, sometimes three or five hours to get to their classes. Heading towards the coast, beehive huts lie in the dip of the dunes. Stubby green plants protect sugar-white sand up to the water's edge, where it sinks like a carpet beneath glass-clear water...
Contributor Tina Hillier is based in London and elsewhere when the opportunity arises. 'Under African skies' was produced while working as a travel writer and photographer for The Greenwood Guides to Southern Africa. Asked why she takes photographs, Tina replies, 'I try and take images that represent something I'm drawn to, to translate or understand it. It's like our ancestors painting the animals they hunted on their cave walls!'
More Tina in d4.5 and at www.tinahillier.com
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New stars rising in the east
These 'Stars' are young people in the new Russia whose level of achievement has been possible due to their sheer persistence, determination, and talent. Their strength and willpower prove that nothing is impossible and that the only people who never fail are those who never try. From left: members of Akhe, the Russian Engineering Theatre; Tatiana Anikanova, restaurant manager; Elvira Kazakova, figure skater; Vladimir Rudashevsky, mining company president.
Contributor Katya Evdokimova is from Saint Petersburg, Russia, now based in London. Katya says, 'Photography is a sort of compulsion and "disease" for me. I suffer for it emotionally but have moments of huge relief and absolute satisfaction when the climax, the moral "torture" of idea-searching, has subsided. At times, however, the spur of the moment is more important than looking for a specific idea. And this exact option of choice is what I absolutely love about photography!'
More Katya in d4.5 and at www.begemotfoto.com
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Refuges
The pictures in Refuges are of the 'support houses' that abound in the Portugese countryside. These small artificial places reflect the relationship Man versus Nature and the necessity of a secure structure in Man's dealings with the Environment. These huts can be seen as part of Nature, or totally disconnected from it...
Contributor Bruno Santos is based in Lisbon, Portugal. He takes photographs because 'It's vital.'
More Bruno at www.brunosantos.com.pt
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Radius
After the birth of my son I decided to search for my father, whom I had never got to know. I learned that he had died some years before. I deeply regret that we will never have a chance to embrace but he did exist and therefore I do exist, too. Radius refers to my home, my familiar surroundings. These are photographs of my family and details that are close to me. With them, I am trying to detect the differences between the way things are and how they could be.
Contributor Bettina Koller is based in Munich. She takes photographs, 'To assure my identity and because I love pictures.'
More Bettina at www.bettinakoller.de
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A way
Meditation helps me learning to breathe but it doesn't give me a way. Writing helps me to think but it doesn't give me a way. Sitting under my favourite tree helps me to relax but it doesn't give me a way. Finding a way? Is there a reply for that? I am afraid, if there is a reply, I do not have one.
Contributor Luisa Santos was born in Lisbon and is now based in London. She combines a scholarship from Fabrica (Bennetton's research centre in Italy), with studies at London's Royal College of Art. Luisa says, 'Taking photographs allows me to see the world with different eyes and, possibly, to show a multiplicity of places and realities to people'.
More Luisa at www.luisa-santos.blogspot.com or www.flickr.com/luisa-santos
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Neither here nor there
I have been in the UK for ten years now. Ten years minus seven months, to be precise. These are the seven months I spent in an emotional no-man's-land while working on a short-term contract back in my native Spain. Previous visits to my homeland had been cushioned by the comforting logistics of brief but intense family reunions. These seven months were going to be different...
Contributor Jose Navarro, from Zaragoza, Spain, is now based in Bristol, UK. He says, 'Photography gives me the chance to see what I would normally just look at. Holding a camera puts me in a place where I can have a unique relationship with the world out there.'
More Jose at www.pangeafoto.org
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About a girl
I have been travelling on a regular basis since I was six. From the moment we emigrated to the States, to the last flight I took to LA, I travel mostly by plane, car and instinct. In the twenty years since arriving in the US, I have spent many trips searching the world over for that part of me I always feel I left behind somewhere, only to find I am all here...
Contributor Hellin Kay lives between Los Angeles and New York. She studied Film in Bard College and has spent over a decade working as a fashion editor, stylist and photographer. Hellin says, 'I rely on perseverance and strength to get me through my life... and when that fails, Mom. I take photographs because I can't paint to save my life.'
More Hellin in d4.3, d4.5 and at www.hellinkay.com
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The driving force
In search of answers to life's shortcomings at home, we exchange the familiarity of our immediate surroundings for the path less trodden. Somehow the distant unknown seems to possess a magnetic lure in our search for answers. But how do we feel when we get there? Does life take on a new meaning or have we merely begun a fruitless journey in pursuit of the horizon? Perhaps if we could see ourselves from the outside we would look like the moth in my room, persistently tapping the light bulb, mistakenly thinking it has reached the moon.
Contributor Michael Bodiam lives and works in London. He says, 'Photography allows me to fulfil my desire to record and preserve the beautiful moments that I see present in the everyday, moments that could otherwise pass by unnoticed and become lost in time.'
More Michael in d4.5 and at www.michaelbodiam.com
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The Prayers
I spent the last three years in a relationship with a Christian man (me being a non-Christian man). My understanding of the world welcomed our wishes without any doubt. In contrast his beliefs were very solid and did not conform to our living and loving situation, which made life very difficult for us both as our love was strong tooÉ The Prayers are images of my friends and family, including myself as the photographer, trying to understand and also trying to resolve the issues. It is a move towards bridging gaps between our own beliefs and very different beliefs in order to meet somewhere in between and to come to a compromise.
Contributor Jan von Holleben lives between London, Berlin and Sasbach a.K. in southwest Germany. He is the founder of Photodebut and is currently one of the coordinators of the Europe-wide photography project, Youth in the Countryside. Jan says, 'Usually I do rather funny and happy images. This time I got a few grey hairs and had to be serious, which was very nice for a change (well, maybe not the grey hair!)' Why does he take photographs? 'Because it is so magical and lovely!'
More Jan in d4.3, d4.4 and at www.janvonholleben.com
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The spirit moving over the waters
Stars are far away, unreachable and only limitedly comprehensible. But even though they are so far, we still manage to understand the daily connections and unity we have with the universe as we lie on rooftops or in meadows, meditating, wondering or looking for guidance. So if this relationship exists within these immense proportions, what about the connections we have with the little things that surround us right here on this planet? Deep inside we know that if we move a stone the mountain will never be the same again, but we forget.
Contributor Adela Holmes 'was born in Szczecin, Poland. My family escaped Socialism by fleeing to Berlin in 1981. I was 11 when I was told that we were never to return, nor visit home. Berlin was fun, the 80s were great. As a teenager, you didn't care about nor feel the presence of the wall. There were too many distractions, parties and clubs. And then I married a GI and moved to Savannah, Georgia. After a culture shock, two kids, a college degree and a divorce, I struggled as a single mom to be a full time employee and a half time mother. I decided to quit and start my own business. Raising my kids was more important to me then anything. The business didn't work. In the course of coincidence or fate, whichever you believe in, I became an assistant to the artist Laura DiNello, who handed me her camera as a gift. And that's how this career started...' Adela lives and works in Savannah, Georgia (USA).
More Adela at www.adelaholmes.com
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Inner stations
My photographic journeys lead me to deal with a collective memory, which I embrace
for my personal needs. I go on a physical journey with my camera. An emotional
journey back in time, to the districts of the memory, districts that contain
no comfort; an insane, absurd reality with which we have to deal; to deal with
the present through the past; views, places and objects filled with echoes from
the past; a past that is a present that lives and revives the memories, the
collective traumas, my personal emotions.
Contributor Yaniv Waissa was born in Haifa, Israel, and now works and lives in Jerusalem. Yaniv says, 'For me photography is the best way to translate my thoughts and feelings into something other people can see as well, and maybe relate to in their own way.'
More Yaniv at www.waissa.com
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Another day in another life
My mind keeps drifting back to a particular day travelling in Vietnam. I spent all day wandering aimlessly through the beachside town of Hoi An with my camera. I had nowhere to be, no one to meet, no errands to run, no responsibilities. Immersed in this foreign culture, I experienced a lovely sense of abandon. This freedom allowed me to indulge in an unconscious and almost unidentifiable motivating force that guided me through the hustle and bustle. Part instinct, part curiosity, part dream.
Contributor Stephanie Bradford lives in Melbourne. To get through life in the modern world, Stephanie relies on, 'My cameras! At last count I had over 40!'
More Stephanie at homepage.mac.com/s.photo
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Deciphered interpretation
I stand. I mind. I stray. One eye through a lens my mind in music. I look to be guided. Ink on paper, paper on tile. A gallery arched grotesque. A mistake a bad observation a single word freed from a sentence. A reluctant caption a silent commentary an instruction misplaced. A thought a moment a temporary sales message lost distorted by a zoetrope of train carriages. I move on, ride the black. My thoughts steered, guided fuzzy through perpetual night. Alone.
Contributor Rob Sanders is a commercials director, co-founder of Amarillo Films and digital agency Amarillo Wing. To get through life in the modern world, he depends on, 'My instincts and a small group of close friends whose opinions, differences and views I value. I also rely on a small, black, Muji notebook I carry with me always, in which I collect ideas, thoughts, observations and misunderstandings. It is my diary, my shopping list and, like my photos, a collection of memories. Black coffee, money, the music in my iPod and now my iPhone are also essentials.' Rob is based in London.
More Rob at www.amarillofilms.com
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The science of sleep
Friends are often regarded as the family of the 21st century. Your circle of friends is that which you revolve around. The men and women who you gauge yourself by, laugh and cry with, shout and swing for, travel and live with. In these photographs of reclining groups, there is an overwhelming sense of peace. Whether basking in the sunshine or stretched out on an asphalt roof these individuals are joined together as a single unit. To lie with a person is to recognize a level of trust, to display a vulnerability that we would not present to strangers. These photographs are taken after the event, dormant groups lying together, relaxed. The weary fallout from social exertions. Small constellations burning in the night. Far from home.
Contributor Stephen Ledger-Lomas was born in Liverpool and is now based in London, where he is the Art Buyer at Winkreative. What gets him through life in the modern world? 'Blue sky in the morning, the thrill of travel, The Corrections, the curtains opening on the big screen, the next meal, my brother and sisters, Overheard in New York and of course Howard Moon and Vince Noir.'
More Stephen in d4.5 and at www.stephenledgerlomas.com
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Cracked hearthstones
Cracked Hearthstones revisits the New England landscapes that inspired American authors of the 19th and early 20th centuries, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edith Wharton, and HP Lovecraft. Written at the moment of cultural and ideological self-determination, these texts offer evidence of a nascent psyche and world-view that was distinctly American and has remained profoundly so. These writers describe a land whose vastness exacerbates the remoteness of communities and the feeling of inertia engendered by relentless routine. The hopelessness and melancholia that result from this physical isolation are often dramatized as extreme meteorological events, a sudden rainstorm or a blizzard, that further cut off the protagonists from the rest of the world.
Contributor Stephanie Cardon is from the USA and France in equal parts. She lives in Paris. To get though life in the modern world Stephanie relies on, 'Books! Family and friends, and an ever-perfected mixture of open-mindedness and scepticism.'
More Stephanie in d4.5 and at www.stephaniecardon.com
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The shortest day
The word Hygge does not literally translate into English, but it describes the atmosphere and cosiness of Danish living in the winter. It is evident in design, in peoples' possessions, and in the interiors of peoples' homes. It can also describe a good time, quality company and a feeling of contentment. Hygge could be considered as a national response to long, dark and cold winter months. These images were made over the shortest day of the year, 22 December, 2006, in Aarhus, Denmark.
Contributor Matt Burgess is based in London. What or who do you rely on to get you though life in the modern world? 'My partner Cecilie. Our new daughter Klara, especially when she smiles. Good conversation.'
More Matt at www.mattburgess.co.uk
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The new constellations, part 2 (The plane and the pyramid)
Weren't the pyramids allegedly used for space travel? Here the combination of the old and the new seems to point to the future. But it isn't just the possibility of space travel that is provoked by this image. Thoughts about a world in flux come to mind. A world where in the recent past one wall came down, only to be replaced by another... Which tools do we need to navigate these new constellations?
Contributor Ariane Severin is a German born, London based photographer and artist. She is a member of Photodebut and outsideedge, and is currently studying for a Photography MA at the LCC/University of Arts. Why do you take photographs? 'Why do I sleep, eat, drink'... And what do you rely on to get you through life in the modern world? 'The wisdom of my cat.'
More Ariane at www.photodebut.org
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