Progress With My Project: Portraits From Frankfurt

India, Romania and (the former) East Germany, and Russia represent some of the faces I photographed yesterday in Frankfurt.

Kathy Schaefer organized the Montmartre am Main in Höchst, a village that's part of Frankfurt, Germany. We meet right on the river (Main) - artists from all over come to paint, draw and of course, make photographs. Kathy's idea is a great one - she understands the difficulty and the politics of galleries and the general public's reluctance to visiting an art gallery, let alone interact with the artist. I applaud her, it's a wonderful thing and I'm honored to be a part of it.

The Frankfurter Neue Presse had a journalist there and did a little story about the event. If you can read German, you can read the article here. It's kind of a weird photo they ran, but it's okay. People in Frankfurt are learning that there are alternatives to galleries and that artists aren't a bunch of recluse weirdos (or are we?).

It was beautiful yesterday. Bright blue sky, sun and about 20C (68F) degrees. The breeze from the river keeps that area especially cool - it's very nice. We setup next to the old castle wall and work. Summer came with me and helped out a lot! She setup and kept the workflow going. She also varnished all of the plates (did an excellent job, too!). We started about 2PM. Around 3PM or 4PM, there were a lot of people hanging out and looking at everyone's work. Since I'm working on my project, and I have willing sitters standing in line to have their image made, I draw quit a bit of attention.

It's great to see so many lay people blown away by this process. It excites me and encourages me to "evangelize" the process and photographic history even more. The younger people don't even know what film is, let alone, what Wet Plate Collodion is. There were a lot of them there yesterday just waiting to see the next plate. I thought that was very cool.

I've started making photographs for my project without sharing a lot of information about what I'm doing. Who I choose to photograph, how I position people or compose the image, the props I use (or not), how I execute the process: flaws, no flaws, size of image and even the substrate I use. Yesterday was a testament to that methodology working for me.

I'm seriously considering an entire body of work on 4x5 aluminum. I may experiment next time (2 weeks from now) with the Whole Plate (6.5" x 8.5") size to get some of that vignette I love so much. I had excellent results with aluminum yesterday - I wasn't that excited about using it, but this worked out very well! How much play do you think 30 or 40 small aluminum images would get in a world of 40"x60" color digital prints? It makes me laugh to think about it!

Here are a few plates from Höchst. I don't speak Bengali, Romanian, Russian or even that much German, so you can imagine how difficult this was to do without a head-brace (How do you say "Hold still, don't move, this will take a while). Most of the sitters would walk away after I focused and composed! Just another dimension/difficulty to making plates.

Everything is 4x5 Alumitypes shot with my Derogy (Petzval) Portrait lens wide open against the castle wall.  

"Calcutta, India - Indian Woman" 
Dresden, East Germany
Bucharest, Romania 
Bucharest, Romania 
Romanian Children 
The Frankfurter Neue Presse Article (no, it's not a hot dog) 

Can You Believe It? German Press About My Project!

I don't really believe in coincidences, and every once-in-a-great-while something comes along to remind me why I don't believe in coincidences.

Seligenstat Newspaper article about me working in the Jewish cemetery. Last November 9 (2008), which was the 70th Anniversary of Kristallnacht, I was in Seligenstadt, Germany making glass plate photographs in a Jewish cemetery that was destroyed during that pogrom.  My friend, Jan from Berlin, was there and a journalist named Armin Wronski, from the Offenbach Post was there, too. Jan's mother and step-father live in Seligenstadt. Jan and his family arranged for the paper to be there. As I made plates, Armin shot digital photographs of me and Jan told him all about my Kristallnacht project, auf Deustch, of course. I thought this would be a great piece and a huge accomplishment for me if they actually published it. To be honest with you, I didn't think they would. (You can click on the image to enlarge and read)

You have to think about this; I'm an American, with Jewish heritage, in Germany making photographs of one of the most terrible events in human history perpetrated by this country and its people. This is a very difficult and serious topic. It's hard to talk about, it's hard to think about, and a lot of Germans feel ashamed and powerless over the situation. Would you want to publicize this? Of course the angle is soft in this article, it's the technique, the Wet Plate Collodion process, that's intriguing for people. Also, if you know about Germany and the Germans, you'll know how out of place I look/seem in my dark box next to a cemetery, pouring strange chemicals on glass plates. This is not what I would call, "ordnung" - and Germans need things proper and in order. However, the people of Seligenstadt were very kind and gracious to me. They were interested in what I was doing - and that's a wonderful thing for me. I think the fact that the newspaper ran this piece is a testament to their willingness to talk about this, that's the key.

Anyway, back to coincidences; I didn't hear a word about it for two months. Just last week, it entered my mind, "What did they do with that story? Did they ever publish it?" On Monday, January 5, 2009, I wrote Jan and Armin an email asking what became of the story. Jan immediately wrote back and said, "It's in today's paper!" Are you kidding me? I was beside myself and tripping out. I hadn't really even thought about it until that weekend and the day I send the email, it's published!?! Wow! Like I said, no coincidences. What does that mean? Am I psychic? No, I'm not, but I am connected to this in a bigger way than I even think I know about and it's these kinds of things that prove that to me.

If you ever find yourself in a rut and are bored with life, move to Germany and start an art project about the Holocaust. If you have any German friends, ask them to raise interest in the local media about you and your project. And finally, to really get things going, tell them that you have Jewish heritage. Try it sometime, you'll find that it's both rewarding and challenging. Life will NOT be boring anymore.

Follow up - January 12, 2009: After running this by my German friend for a complete translation, I've got to say that I'm not impressed. There's not one mention of Kristallnacht, or the fact that my entire project deals with that. I'm sure he was censored, or censored himself. I had my hopes up. It's a "fluff" piece, and in the big picture, it means, nothing.