This is the medium format film version of the digital test exposure I posted here a couple of weeks ago.
I first met Marcel in 2008 on my second trip to the Lyon area for my Soldbuch book project. This image was taken last week when we met again to be interviewed by the local, Montluel-based newspaper, Journal de la Côtière. Marcel is the only person I have met from the area with first-hand memories of the prisoner of war camp in which my grandfather was held.
I know very little about this book and have purposely avoided finding out more for fear that dissection may destroy its charm. BSRC is a beautifully understated, zine-y production that delivers it's mysterious narrative with vital, rough edges. The images seem to come from a few different sources - aside from original photography - including video and maybe even newspaper clippings. I read somewhere that BSRC was photographed on the island of Madeira, which is apparently the only place you'll find the black scabbardfish, and where its author was born.
The format is A5, comprising 32 pages in an edition of 150 signed and numbered copies. It used to be available from Motto Distribution (10€) but I don't know if they have any left.
Pedro Ramos' website: www.pedroramos.org
A page layout from my unfinished book, Movement.
Because I was shooting the Mamiya on 'bulb' and picking out trees with torchlight I used a digital camera to help gauge exposure. Yves, who had been felling trees nearby, came to see why I was waving a torch about in the middle of the woods.
A few diary camera shots from the last week. Film images to come later . . .
What ever happened to the "one camera, one lens" days?
Thanks Bas! Read the review here.
Going through my Ethiopian contact sheets recently I found some portraits that hadn't previously seen the light of day: the older man was a guard at a church in Lalibela and I think the boy was a monk, living on an island in the middle of Lake Tana; the third chap was a shepherd from the Oromia Region near the Kenyan border. All were taken on Kodak 200 Ultra Colour with a Nikon F100 + 85mm f1.8 that had a pretty weird bokeh when shot wide open. The last image is of the ceiling of the Debre Berhan Sellasie Church near Gondar.
Back in October 2010 I met Harry Watts very briefly at the Brighton Photo Biennial where he gave me a copy of his book, Studio, published by Black Box Press. With an introduction by Aaron Schuman it comprises 17 colour medium format images that turn the tables on the photographers' studio by making it the subject of photographs instead of just a place where photographs are made of other things. Stark and dramatic lighting imbues the tools and detritus of the studio with qualities of the rare or unknown and illuminates them, as if for the first time, like objects found on the floor of a deep ocean. Edition of 500.
Copies, priced £10, are available from here.
