curtain agian
Mar 1, 2012
Feb 25, 2012
Pierwsza nagroda ever dla 7 Rooms :) bardzo sie cieszymy razem z Ania
http://poyi.org/69/48/
"7 Rooms" awarded for the first time :) Ania and me are happy!
http://poyi.org/69/48/
Feb 22, 2012
Feb 21, 2012
:: W samochodzie z R :: Rafał Milach :: czytelnia sztuki from Czytelnia Sztuki on Vimeo.
Dla wszsytkich, którzy nie byli w Czytelni Sztuki! Krotki film który zrobił Michał Łuczak! Było bardzo dobrze! zapraszam do Czytelni do końca marca!
Feb 12, 2012
This World Press Photo of the Year 2011 was taken by Samuel Aranda. There are many categories and as many winners, but there is only one big winner, and Aranda’s photo it was. A post on the New York Times’ Lens blog noted that the image “has the mood of a Renaissance painting” - which, of course, is true. And that’s exactly one of the problems here. Jim Johnson already noted that the image in fact does not just reference Renaissance paintings in general. It assimilates Christian iconography (which was produced before and after the Renaissance as well): The Pietà, “depicting the Virgin Mary cradling the dead body of Jesus” (I’m including just a few examples in this post). If you have followed the news over the past decade even just tangentially, you might realize that using a visual language that could not be more Christian to depict an event in a Muslim country might pose a problem. (more)
These kinds of debates always center on photographs, though, and I think that that’s a problem. As a photograph, Aranda’s image is rather successful. As I said, it mixes Christian iconography with an event in a Muslim country, thus hinting at what should be obvious: Human suffering is independent of religion. But that doesn’t mean that this photograph should be used to illustrate the news, unless efforts are made to educate viewers what they’re actually looking at (there’s much more than “the mood of a Renaissance painting”!).
A viewer has to not only be aware of the iconography behind the image, s/he also has to understand how it was possibly used here to send a message. These kinds of nuances, however, are alien to the world of the news in the 21st Century. Instead, what we typically see in the news are world events seen from our - usually limited - perspective.
Take, for example, Tim Hetherington’s photo of a tired soldier: This is not a photograph about Afghanistan. It’s not a photo about the situation there, it doesn’t say anything about the suffering of people there. Instead, it focuses on a soldier from the West, and the photograph expresses what we all feel: We’re tired of that war (without really understanding what’s going on there).
If you look through the series of winning photographs of World Press Photo (I’m talking about the main winning image here, not the many others in the various categories), pretty much every photograph expresses something very specifically seen through our, Western, eyes. Photographers, of course, do their best to take good photographs. But what we see in the news, in newspapers, magazines, and on websites, is a carefully selected number of photographs conforming to usually very specific messages.
This is not to say that all media are biased (even though in reality many are), but that they are produced from a very specific background, usually our Western one. And it is that background we see reflected in World Press Photo. If we called it Western Press Photo the name would be a bit more accurate.
The World Press Photo 11 gallery says that 5,691 photographers of 125 nationalities submitted work. Doesn’t that show that I’m wrong, that it is in fact a World Press Photo? No, it doesn’t. As I said above, photographs in the news were first taken - by an obviously international group of people. But then they were selected/edited, and that typically involves a small number of people from an even smaller number of countries. You just have to go to, say, Al Jazeera’s website to often see very different images (of course, the narrative here is that they are biased).
So we have a problem, a problem that has actually increased over the past few years. We have seen a great many photographers going to remote places, taking photographs. We have seen the news media, especially online, using more and more images to present events. But we have not seen any efforts to use these images to educate viewers what they are actually looking at. For this flood of images in the news to really make sense - to tell us more about the world - we need more context, we need better explanations, and we also need an increased visual literacy. We need to learn how to question images, to ask what we are actually looking at.
If we don’t get that then we’ll helplessly stare at all these images, to project what we already know onto them. Samuel Aranda’s photograph provides a good opportunity: It’s easy to see the veil, it’s easy to see the pose (the expression of human suffering and of compassion), it’s easy to see (or at least somewhat realize) the very specifically Western visual imagery. But it’s quite a bit harder to put all that together and to then find out what we are really looking at.
And you cannot focus just on one aspect. It’s just not that simple. You have to weigh all the different aspect and find out what your reading says: What does the image depict? What does it say about our own cultural and political background? To what extent do we something because we want to see it that way? In other words, to what extent are we using a photograph to illustrate your own belief system?
Unless we learn how to get beyond our simplistic readings of photography, we’ll simply be stuck with what we might as well call Western Press Photo. We won’t get closer to understanding all those events that we currently grasp only as one-dimensional labels, lacking all context (“The Arab Spring”). We will continue sending soldiers to foreign countries, not really understanding what’s going on there (despite all those photographers going there trying to tell us!), not really asking whether that makes sense, and then pushing those same soldiers to the margins once they come back home.
Copyright © 2002-2012 Jörg M. Colberg
---------------------------------
Dosc idealistyczne podejscie do misji mediow dzisiaj, ale zgadzam sie z autorem.
Pytanie retoryczne: czy mozliwy jest obiektywny przekaz medialny wogole?
Idealistic post by Joerg Colberg but I agree with him. And rhetoric question is
if fully objective approach is possible at all in media message no matter on which side you are?
Feb 5, 2012
Jan 29, 2012
no to jest kolejna książka :)
sam w to trochę nie wierzę, najpierw 9 lat nic a potem wszystko naraz
więc lać olej, jezdzić i cieszyć się jak mowił pewien mechanik
"W samochodzie z R" to moja podróż z Huldarem Breidfjordem na 159 zdjęciach na 160 stronach, z pieknym jak zwykle projektem Ani Nałęckiej / TBD, do tego 4 okładki, plakat,( 2 sygnowane odbitki w edycji specjalnej)
a wszsytko wydane w 450 egzemplarzach po angielsku i 250 po polsku
w tym 50 egzemplarzy (ENG) w edycji specjalnej z 2 sygnowanymi odbitkami
wkrotce dostepne na mojej stronie 
to wszystko inicjatywa Czytelni Sztuki (!) niewiarygodne! kto dzisiaj inwestuje w fotografię? oni napewno tak! moge powiedziec ze jestem dumny ze w rodzinnym mieście tak sie dzieje.
międzyczasie premiera książki i wystawa w Czytelni Sztuki w Gliwicach otwarcie 03.02.2012
zapraszam!!!
so here it comes next book
I'm still shocked that things go so fast . 9 years almost nothing and than... all at the same time. Good!
So here you are "In the car with R" my trip with Huldar Breidfjord around Iceland
159 pictures, 160 pages, 4 covers, poster, ( and additional 2 signed prints in special edition) print-run 450 copies in English, 250 in Polish, including 50 copies (ENG) of special edition... all soon available on my website and the website of Czytelnia Sztuki
Jan 26, 2012
Zapraszam do Ronda Sztuki w Katowicach 28.01.2012 ( sobota) g.17.00
bedzie spotkanie z ksiazka i zupelnie nowe multimedia!
do zobaczenia
wiecej tutaj : http://rondosztuki.pl/wydarzenie.php?id=433
Jan 21, 2012
Jan 16, 2012
7 ROOMS / SPOTKANIA / 20.01.2012 GDAŃSK / 28.01.2012 KATOWICE
7 Rooms book review by Joerg Colberg
Zapraszam serdecznie na spotkania z książką "7 Rooms"
20.01.2012 , g. 17.30 / IS WYSPA / Księgarnia Bookyard / Gdańsk
28.01.2012 , g. 17.00 / Rondo Sztuki / Katowice
Jan 12, 2012
Jan 10, 2012
Jan 8, 2012
Dec 26, 2011
"7 Rooms" wsrod najlepszych ksiazek 2011 wedlog Joerga Colberga
i Roba Hornstry
"7 Rooms" among the best books of the year 2011 by Joerg Colberg and Rob Hornstra :)
Dec 22, 2011
Dec 13, 2011
Nov 28, 2011
Serdecznie wszystkich zapraszam na premierowe spotkanie z książką i
projektem 7 Rooms. Będę opowiadał o całym procesie: od pomysłu do realizacji,
produkcji i wreszcie promocji książki. Będzie o fotografii ale tez o kulisach
powstania tego projektu który pochłonął ostatnie 7 lat mojego życia.
Spotkanie poprowadzi pisarka i dziennikarka Agnieszka Wójcińska.
Po spotkaniu będzie można obejrzeć i kupić książkę którą z chęcią wam podpiszę ;)
Od tego też momentu książka będzie dostępna na mojej stronie internetowej
w wersji specjalnej i podstawowej.
miejsce: Zachęta
czas: 04.12.2011 godzina 18.00
Nov 20, 2011
THE BOOKS I LOVE
Offprint byl ok, ale jeszcze bardziej ok jest pierwszy numer gazety / magazynu THE PHOTOBOOK REVIEW wydanego przez Aperture/Paris Photo a kurowanego przez Jeffreya Ladd'a. Ta gazeta po prostu rzadzi. Wszyscy, ktorzy byli na Paris Photo wiedza o co chodzi a ci co nie byli to powinni tego poszukac i obowiazkowo dotrzec. Nie mam pojecia gdzie mozna ja zdobyc bo bylo to rozdawane za darmo chociaz ze zwyklym darmowym kontententem nie ma NIC wspolnego.
Jezeli kosmita wyladowalby na ziemi i chcialby sie dowiedziec czegos o ksiazkach footgraficznych to ta publikacja powinna byc w jego 1-szej dziesiatce (o ile nie w 5-ce)
Sporo klasyki, np. o procesie powstawania "Raised by Wolfes" Jima Goldberga, rozmowy Aleca sothe z Johnem Gossage'em i Raymondem Meeksem, kupa recenzji ksiazek starych i nowych , mlodych fotografow. Wymiana maili miedzy Charlotte Cotton i Joachimem Schmid'em sporo o samowydawniu i wydawaniu nie samemu. kazda strona to po prostu hit. bardzo duzo dobrego!
Nov 12, 2011
Gala holding a copy of 7 Rooms, we did quite a photo shoot over there
so more pictures coming soon ;)
Thank you everyone who came for both Le Bal and Offprint signings!
was good to see you
Gala ze świerzym egzemplarzem 7 Rooms, na stole odbyla sie calkiem spora sesja
wiec pewnie niedlugo pojawi sie wiecej zdjec ;)
dziekuje wszystkim którzy przyszli na obydwa podpisywania w Le Bal
i na Offprincie. Było fajnie !
Nov 8, 2011
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