Re-thinking
If it is the struggle along the way what counts the most, I guess I should be happy to be going through this struggle even before I step on the road. Well, I wouldn’t say I am feeling exactly happy but, I comfort myself (re)thinking that this is how it should be.
I gave myself a month to choose a topic for the Re-think project and I spent that time going around several ideas. When the month came to an end, only one of those ideas seemed to have sticked… document my surroundings; try to explore the love/hate relationship I have with this place I was born in, and also, in a way, try to break with the stereotypes that the tourism industry uses to bring people to the island no matter what.
Anochece en El Teide from RosaVerde on Vimeo.
As soon as the decision was made, I got really scared. How am I gonna do that?
Can I look at this place in a different way to what I am used to? I don’t want to just look at the negative side of tourism. I don’t want to stigmatize the poorer, less touristic, areas of the island… so what do I want to do? I just want to show the island as it is, as I see it, and one thing is for sure: the image sold by the tourism industry is not a documentary vision but a commercial one.
Sounds great but… still the same unanswered question: how am I gonna do that? No idea.
The other day, looking at Jocelyn Bain Hogg photos, the first thought that came to my mind was that his series somehow define very well the british society. So, how does he do it? What’s the magic behind his pictures? What can I learn from them and how can they help me find my way through my own project? Is street, candid photography what comes closer to showing the genes of a society? More question to get answers to…
Turistas en Los Roques de García con Teide de fondo from RosaVerde on Vimeo.
In terms of trying new ways of doing things, I’ve started to test a medium format camera, a Bronica SQ-A. It’s not easy to use and it’s terribly expensive. And… well, I just got my first set of negatives developed and I have no to way to scan them, so… after a couple of weeks since the actual shooting, I haven’t seen the photos yet. Not something I am used to. On the other side, in a couple of days I should have in my hands a Fuji X100 which I hope would be less showy than my loved, bulky, D3, and so, it will let me do some more of this candid street photography I am thinking of.
I know, these days, a popular way of presenting documentary work, is doing a multimedia piece, and I guess it is something that we all ought be learning to do given the current industry trends. However, I have a sort of problematic relationship with multimedia: I find 99% of them extremely boring, they don’t retain my attention for more than five seconds. And that remaining 1%, are usually done by extremely good filmmakers. So, I am gonna leave the multimedia to those passionate about it and I’ll try to find some other way to show my work. What that’s gonna be, is yet another un-answered question.