Roma: catching up.

Back to Roma. I have a day for myself.

I can look at the books I brought back from Australia (ranging from Salgado pics to contemporary pics of Sydney, from Aboriginal painting to contemporary childbook illustrations). I am not at all the shopaholic type, but I am very bad when it comes to books… The MA will not help on this: I suddenly feel the urge to look at all the pics I did not looks so far and to posses them.

I can also catch up with the class I missed last week, in a very relaxed way (in bed with cups of tea and biscuits: there are positive aspects of an on line courses). Bressons / Evans: the aesthetic of the shutter (the unrepeatable event) vs. aesthetic of the lens (capturing what is more permanent). I am looking back at my notes. I did not capture picture by picture explanation, but rather the comments which stroke me, these that seemed to point at the essence, to the tenets of a style. Many of the comments on the pics of Bressons really resonated, especially these revolving about the capacity of being out there and capturing the extraordinary, the “impossible” coincidences… which instead- a camera reveals - do happen so often in daily life. I really liked the pictures of Bressons, I felt colder about the ones of Evans, I found them less memorable, with the exceptions of some were I could see his capacity to “make inanimate objects live” (like the one of the piano in the hall).

I found interesting the contrast Cartier and Evans. It stroke me that I am naturally more driven to Bressons, to the appreciation of the extraordinary, unrepeatable moments, to the capacity of using a camera as a notebook to capture the quirkiness and at the same time the incredible beauty of moments of everyday life. But I also have a lot to learn from the “Evans approach", from his capacity to experiment with different techniques and kits, around a central idea or theme, and from his capacity of capturing also the dull, the obvious as they are, moment by moment... instead of having to look and wait only for that extraordinary moment in time.

Last but not least I can catch up with the blog and with my "to do" list for the course: links to sort out, many blogs to read and look at, address list to consolidate. I shall put this all together in an internet group and share it with the MAPJ people. I know that a virtual classroom is soon to came, but in its absence I needed to set up one to make the course more real. I also put more time than I had expected in the blogs, in reading others and writing mine. I do not like blogging much. However blogs which do not shame off telling day to day frustrations and achievement re: the course will be key in creating a connection amongst all of us, which I feel is very important.