Week 4

Workshop “Somewhere & Something”

The whole workshop was quite surprising to me and I didn’t think that it will go that way. At the  beginning of the workshop we were introduced to the null island. Null Island is an imaginary island located at 0°N, 0°E (hence “Null”) in the South Atlantic Ocean. This point is where the Equator meets the Prime Meridian. Null island is a fictional, non existed island, you can’t find the land, the only thing that is there is a boy and that’s all. But existing and at the same time not existing makes a lot of creative potential. It’s something and nothing at the same time, an open door for creative practice. That’s what I find so interning about this island. 

The second thing that we were introduced to is sweet potato. Sweet potato, something so simple. We did get some interesting facts about sweet potato at the beginning, but that was it we had somewhere and something and nothing more, we had an opportunity to do whatever we want with these materials. The first thing that came into my mind was “what?”, I have an island that doesn’t exist and a sweet potato. But fortunately creative process can take you to quite interesting results. I started by exploring my sweet potato, getting to know him. I did some simple drawings, and I was drawn to the perfect imperfections that are a natural part of him, I stared to draw them, but then I got caught up in photographing it. The close-ups are quite interesting, it looks like something completely different from sweet potato, some different planet, maybe Mars? It’s amazing how from something so simple you can discover something so creative. I was also amazed by ideas of others, every single one of them was different but at the beginning we all had only a sweet potato and everyone chose different creative path and trusted those processes. 

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Street photography – what is it?

Street photography is usually taken as photos that close a fleeting moment in one frame, operating at the same time with a play of motifs, lights or geometric arrangements (or all these elements at the same time), at the same time having an anecdotal character. Although the name indicates the overriding role of the street as the subject of such photographs, in fact it may only be the default element of the image.

Describing street photo, it is often strongly related to the specific philosophy of photography, which consists in capturing the “decisive moment” on photosensitive material, without focusing on finding a specific topic, emphasizing the role of unpredictability and happiness. Attention is also paid to vigilant observation and the ability to abstract the photographed motifs from a given context. A street photographer traverses the city space in search of humour, grotesque, paradox, contrasts or other frames evoking emotions. Street photo is based on spontaneous, unstaged and unplanned situations. Of course, this is a contractual issue and manipulations often occur, which unfortunately affects virtually all genres of photography.

Street photography does not try to tell a story in several frames. It closes the statement in one picture. Even if the photographer presents photos with common elements, the following images do not continue the previous one. In this approach, the word “series” is appropriate (analogous to television productions, where the same characters appear in individual episodes, but the action unfolds anew and does not constitute a continuation of the previous part). Even if the collection of 10 photos creates an image of a given place, e.g. a specific city, the creator of such a set does not try to create a linear story, including the introduction, development and ending.

Street photography- examples

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