"Life In Blue" Evzen Sobek

 As soon as it becomes December the good old "What should I buy as a present?" question pops up in my mind. One thing I would always be happy about receiving is a Photo Book.

This one shows the series "Life in Blue" from photographer Evžen Sobek. He documented life on the banks of a reservoir in the southern Czech Republic called Nové Mlýny. This manmade recreation area has become a second home to a lot of people, which are staying there in tents and caravans. It became a place where they have spent their vacations for decades. 

Sobek pitched up his tent in 2007 at this artificial lake to observe the life of the local residents. While doing this he asked himself, what the reason was for those people to spend their vacation in this "strange emptiness" - in a place, which is neither luxurious nor perfect.

To get some answers he accompanied the people during their daily spare time activities. The answer he found was that such a community could satisfy the need of living in companionship with each other, which may not be able in a city anymore.

The answer is interesting and the pictures are stunning, especially the blueness.

Monochromatic pictures or paintings have a kind of mesmerizing effect on me. It's something you don't see very often in daily life, which gives the picture a certain kind of specialness.

If you got interested you can find more information about the book here.

(pictures and information taken from http://www.geo.de/GEO/fotografie/fotogalerien/69603.html?p=1)

Colour

Sky Series Video from eric cahan on Vimeo.

Sometimes colour is everything, which makes me feel that a picture or photograph is special. It's one of the main things I think about while taking a picture. I just love the reduction of colour in a picture, because it starts to become abstract. Something more than just the reflexion of reality. Pure beauty.

In the Sky Series taken by photographer Eric Cahan colour is the main subject. That can be explained by his influences, which include Mark Rothko, James Turrell, and the Light and Space movement, a brand of minimalism that originated in Southern California in the 1960s and focused on perceptual phenomena such as light, space, volume and scale. On his website it is stated, that he believes that “light is not so much something that reveals, as it is itself the revelation.”

The photographs in the Sky Seriesm, which I am about to introduce to you, consits of photographs of sunrises or sunsets. Cahan uses as many as four different cameras ranging from 6 x 7 film to digital. While using dozens of graduated filters, which are traditionally used by filmmakers, his aim is "to create a window into a time and a place, and to demonstrate how memories and colors shift and become abstract." Till he gets a result, which is seamless and free of banding or blemish, he produces chromium prints of each image dozens of times. "Beyond technical description, the picture evokes the presence of, and the artist’s reverence for, nature at its most sublime."

He himself says about his art: “My work is meant to capture a moment in nature, asking and empowering the viewer to be fully present, involved, and uplifted. I want the viewer to be drawn in, and be completely absorbed by, rather than separate from, that fleeting moment in time.”

(pictures and information taken from ericcahan.com)

"Am Güterbahnhof" ( DUISBURG - 24. JULI 2010.)

 Last year the Loveparade ended tragically. In commemoration of that Allan Gretzki has collected the leftovers from the parade and published the pictures in an online-galery.