Stockholm Overlays

The hotel room I've been given this time had nothing good and worth to be remembered. A shower falling apart, no space for my luggage and shoes, three only crutches in the narrowest wall cupboard ever seen, no special view from the window except the glass-panes of a bakery shop and a nice street lamp swinging all the time in front of my window.

Some good reasons for long walks out in the streets before going bed. I'll post a small series about the bakery later on. This one was taken laying on the bed: three nested views of Stockholm. Not bad.

Stockholm Samples - I

My Hotel Room Street Abat Jour

Waiting fro the Ego Queen to come outside

Different life-styles

Two snapshots taken in Milan on the same day with my crippling mobile cam.

Kymlinge

I'll be back in Kista next week, after a couple of years since I last visited Stockholm. I had already been there several times, in the years before but recently my job has led me somewhere else. I still remember as it was yesterday a rainy end of October in year 2008. In a couple of weeks 591 blog was planned to be opened and I had committed with Ulf to take some pictures about the ghost station of Kymlinge, few steps away from Kista. So I got out quickly during a lunch break and made my rush into the wood.

The result of my long walk was put down under form of a report and published on the very first day of 591 life. Later, I turned it into a PDF photobook, which has been reachable so far through one my website pages.

Now, as I've recently discovered that is possible to turn PDF into flippable on-line document, I've made a trial. How ... easy it is! Part of the result is given below: unfortunately only the first pages can be leafed from here. The whole book can be seen entering its Flipsnack page.

Conquering new lands

"Then came the churches then came the schools,
Then came the lawyers then came the rules,
Then came the trains and the trucks with their load,
And the dirty old track was the telegraph road."

Telegraph Road, Dire Straits

The railroad is moving out of the urban areas and swallowing thousands of acres of what once was soil good for corn and wheat fields. I can't understand if it's more the town that needs for new people to get into its maze or its citizens, who are longing to move out one day.

I took these pictures with my proudly-not-an-Apple mobile camera during a bike ride with my son, last January. I'll never be able to make a high resolution print. These are merely considered toy cam pics: matter just good for the web. Yet I do find they're the real challenge technology is offering us today. Not going around with full fledged workstations in our pockets but trying to squeeze the best out of these additional features of a device namely made for talking, that weren't thought for fine art pictures.

Good findings

How strange the world is ...

I've spent this week in Budapest. I've been working, from nine in the morning to six in the evening, closed into a narrow room without a window to look outside at the clear blue sky of these first days of Spring, brainstorming with a group of Swedish and Hungarian colleagues. My ethic and professional principles forbid me to openly express what I feel about these ways of working. It's highs and lows.I would have preferred to walk outside in the streets, among the people of this town, possibly with a camera in the hands. Yet, I wouldn't be here if I hadn't to spend all that time sitting in that room. I can't help it.

It's a pity. This town has so much to be discovered that a week would not be sufficient. I would even like to have the time to meet with three of the 591 "spacers" living in town or in places not far from here. This situation leads me to open my eyes wider than usual when I'm out of office in a foreign country. It's my hunger for experience, a compulsory attitude to sample the world that I'm walking through.

In one of my lonely walks, today, while all my colleagues were diligently queuing up to get their meal at the local canteen, I stepped outside the office and reached a shopping mall not far from our premises. As I was looking for an electronic amenities shop, I spotted a large led screen over the entrance of a big store showing nice photographs. As I got closer to read the letter written aside, I realized that those pictures belonged to one of the three Spacers, Emese Altnoder. I can't describe the emotions I felt. I felt as if those pictures were talking about myself and in some extent it was. So I took a picture with my mobile: just to show it to my 591 pals.

Once out of office, back in my hotel room, I made a quick search on the web and discovered that Emese is right in these days exposing her pictures in a gallery (Harom Hét) that's less that 200 mt far from my work place. I couldn't do anything else but smile. If I only discovered it before I could have made my visit to the gallery and maybe meet Emese. It will certainly be for the next time. This working week will end tomorrow at noon, when I'll grab a taxi to the airport.

ALTNŐDER EMESE

Stockholm, here I am.

I've been in Stockholm last time in April 2010, in the same days when the Icelandic vulcan erupted, stopping all flights accross this side of the world. I was so unlucky, at the time, as I managed to jump on one of the last airplanes that left from Arlanda before the airport was closed. One hour more and I would necessarily had spent a week more in the northern Venice, before getting back to Milan. My wife will certainly have a different opinion.

I can't say exactly why (though it's easy to figure out) I've been missing this town so much that I was planning a trip on my own. With some kind of luck, instead, I managed to enroll to an exhibition in Kista and, defeating all the management reluctancy coming fromthe latest cost reduction campaign that my company has waged, I got the invitation to make a presentation of the work I'm carrying on in Milan. So ... well, now I have my flights and hotel booked. I just need to put down some slides and get ready to meet some old friends there.

There are twenty days to go. I'm crossing my fingers.

Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme ...

I have all the elements, now, to make my favourite song resound with colors and appetizing flavours on my balcony. :-)

Thymus Serpyllum



Four slides before uncertainty

One day the currently running 591 Spring Exhibition will finish and all the selected pictures will be archived. I'm trying to make a little dream come true by asking all the participants to grant me the rights to feature their pictures into a light free document that I'd like to edit to celebrate this event. We could consider it some kind of exhibition catalogue. If possible it should have a resolution good enough to allow a sufficiently high print quality.

I was aiming to this one year ago with last edition of the Spring Exhibition. For some reasons, lack of my time above all, everything fell in the shadow and nothing came to light. Let's see whether this year's event will be a little bit more lucky.

Before I redirect my attention to something else, I'd like to present the four slides I prepared to introduce each of the four exhibition topics. I think I've done better artworks before. Yet, these have a special meaning to me, as I hardly will make some again. My license of the most known picture editing tool is about to expire and the installation will be removed. Again I'll fall in the land of uncertainty. I tried to use a good alternative, Gimp, in the past time but it wasn't exactly the same.

I need to think about this and quickly find a solution.

591 Spring Exhibition 2012: The Four Elements

The long wait has eventually finished.

It's been a tough task. I've never been so active on 591 blog as recently. I committed to take care of the "Earth" section, sending out invitations to all the photographers I know and getting in few weeks more than 100 answers from more than 50 people. This is not bad, provided I had to select 30 photographs from preferably thirty different people.

Now the selection task has finished. We have gathered our selections together and prepared the slideshow. Find a comfortable seat, on a sofa, on a long chair and click on the picture below: there are 120 pictures waiting to be seen. It will be a 10 minutes long break. A cup of tea could help to let you float through the large variety of interpretations that were given to each of the four topics.

I'm very happy to have contributed to this project. Next step should be a free downloadable PDF file collecting all the selected images.