Collodion Workshop: Budapest, Hungary

My head spins a little bit when I think about how to tell the stories and describe the adventures we go on with words and a few still images. It’s a lot like trying to explain how to tie your shoelaces over the phone – impossible, but I’ll try.

Budapest workshop students.

We arrived in Budapest, Hungary Friday afternoon. It was an 8.5 hour drive. It was problem free and beautiful. We drove in four countries in one day; Germany, Austria, Slovakia, and Hungary – 1000 kilometers – averaging 140 kmph – 160 kmph.

In the Budapest Photo House- skylight studio and all!

I have two friends from Budapest named Zoltan. Zoltan F. and Zoltan K. Zoltan F. lives in Jerusalem. And Zoltan K. lives in Budapest and invited me to do a Wet Plate Collodion workshop there.

Zoltan K. has a major exhibition coming up in September and wanted to spend a couple of days working in the process both as a refresher (he attended the workshop in Vienna last year) and to see what it would be like working in his studio with natural and artificial light.

Budapest is split into two very distinct areas; Buda, the “suburban”, mountainous side and Pest, the flat, urban side. The Danube splits the city. It’s a wonderful city. It’s beautiful, interesting and full of diversity. It reminded me of a blend of Paris and Barcelona. The people are very nice and the city is full of art, culture, and history.

One of the most interesting sites we visited was The Great Synagogue on Dohány Street. It’s the second largest synagogue in the world. We also had a wonderful meal at Rosenstein’s Restaurant, an appropriate transition following the synagogue visit.

The Great Synagogue - it lives up to its name - amazing! I have to admit that I was moved by the beauty and size of the synagogue. It still bothers me that they have to have the police guarding synagogues and anything Jewish here. In Berlin, I saw the same thing – they are huge targets for the nut-jobs of the world.

I bought two really cool black velvet kippahs. One has, “The Great Dohany Street Synagogue – Budapest, Hungary” on the inside. I collect kippahs. I have them from Worms, Germany, Prague, Czech Republic, and some other places, and now Budapest. I wanted to be able to collect something from wherever I go that has significant Jewish history; kippahs seem to work for me that way. We picked up some Klezmer music, too. Summer bought a really cool book called, “Beyond the Nose.” All in all, it was a great experience seeing Europe’s largest synagogue and collecting a few items to remember it by.

We visited the Hungarian House of Photography - Manó Mai House, too. The 19th century skylight studio was beautiful. It would be wonderful to setup and make portraits in that space for a day – or even a few hours! The images would be mind-twisting, for sure. It’s beautiful light!

The workshop was successful, too. There were four people in attendance; Zoltan (the host), Walter (from Oslo, Norway), Szabina, and Zolt. Zolt and Szabina are Hungarian and work with Zoltan.

The Great Synagogue - Budapest, Hungary Zoltan has a beautiful studio nestled at the top of a hill on the Buda side of the city. It’s both spacious and high-end. He’s put a lot of time, effort and money into it, for sure. Budapest this time of year is full of UV light – Collodion loves it there! His studio has a lot of windows, too. You can make plates by natural UV or by artificial lights. He had a 3000 Kelvin mono-light we blasted through a scrim – it was perfect. Exposures were between 4 and 8 seconds.

Zoltan has a large exhibition coming up and wants to make photographs of Hungarian Ballerinas in Wet Plate Collodion. I saw the space of his show – it’s mind-blowing huge! It’s an enormous (beyond enormous) atrium and three levels of galleries. It’s really beautiful right in the middle of the city. He made some really nice “test” or example plates during the workshop of one of Budapest’s top ballerinas. He’s going to do very well with the craft and the concept of Wet Plate Collodion.

Walter is from Oslo, Norway. He was going to go to the United States for a workshop, but ended up attending mine. I’m glad he did. He had some great stories and has a real passion for photography. He made a couple of really beautiful images. One of them was a Whole Plate Alumitype of Summer and it looked like it was made by someone who had several years experience in the process. I was impressed.

It was nice to sit and have a beer or two and dinner with him after a long day of Collodion work, too. He stayed in the same hotel as us. There have been a lot of Norwegians in my workshops – this is a good thing. They seem to bring a sense of passion and love for the craft. And they always have great stories about Norway. We hope to make it to Scandinavia in September, our fingers crossed! I just hope we can afford it, it sounds very expensive there.

Walter (left from Oslo) and Zoltan, showing off their "black paws" from the Collodion workshop.Szabina and Zolt both did an outstanding job with the process. They both made wonderful images and seem to really like the process. Szabina is very photogenic. Summer asked her to sit for her. The result was a beautiful little 4x5 Alumitype of Szabina looking like a 1940s American film actress – gorgeous! The portrait of Zolt rocks, too! I really like the backwards, “Lucky’s Auto Parts” on his t-shirt. The whole workshop was a lot of fun! In the end, it was about passionate people working in a process and history that mirrors that passion so well. We had a little (private) exhibition at the end of the workshop on Sunday – wow, the plates all together looked so sweet! It was hard to believe all of that work was created in a couple of days by a handful of people. It made me proud and happy.

Szabina, 1940s Style by Summer Jacobson Europeans, for the most part, seem more intense and more engaged with learning the process than Americans (my apologies to my American brothers and sisters, just trying to be honest). In reality, I’ve taught a lot more Europeans than Americans, so maybe I’ve forgotten what Americans are like in a Wet Plate Collodion workshop. It’s been a while since I’ve been engaged with Americans. Europe has been my classroom for Wet Plate Collodion and I’m honored to have had the opportunity to teach so many here. I hope I can do that all the way to the end (2011?). I also hope that everyone here that I teach will teach 10 more and that they will teach 10 more and so on and so forth. That’s my goal. Unlike so many teaching workshops, I want to give people the tools and knowledge to pass it on to others and support them to do that.

My dream, a Skylight Studio! 

Szabina - Budapest, Hungary
Waler's plate of Summer. 
Zoltan and Zolt working on a plate. 
And once again, The Great Synagogue!
Summer assisting Walter with varnishing.
Zoltan's plate of one of Budapet's top ballerina dancers.
Zoltan's #2 - great images!

Zoltan's image of Zolt. 
Walter's image of Zoltan exposed through the glass (plate in camera backwards).
The Stars of David are amazing - all over the Synagogue
Makeup!
I couldn't resist!

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) 

Some Things That I Can’t Stop Thinking About… Plus A New Portrait

Call It Whatever You Want, Just Make Sure You Lead By Example
There are a couple of things that have really been bothering me lately. Those things that roll around in your head and come back to bug you two or three times a day... you know? Things that make you angry, things that make you want to yell, "What the hell is wrong with you? Don't you get it!?!" really loud.

The first is in reference to understanding art. I will agree (completely) that there is no definitive definition of art. I believe there are all kinds of "art" commercial art, fine art, outsider art, arts and crafts art, etc. And I also believe there's a lot of bad art, loads of mediocre art and very little good art. With that said, there has to be some kind of guideline, something that allows one to distinguish between good, bad and mediocre art (in my mind it's all art if a human being created it). This is where I have a strong opinion about how to do that.

"Art for art's sake" is dead to me. I've made enough pretty pictures for no reason other than to have people say those are pretty, that's cool, can I buy one? Making pretty pictures or emulating someone like Ansel Adams, is a waste of time. It's a waste of the photographer's time and the viewer's time. Why? It's artistic masturbation. It may feel good, but it means nothing. What disturbs me the most, is that this stuff sells. When something sells, it's immediately seen as "successful". You cannot get farther from the truth, but we all believe it.

This type of art is  usually confused with fine art. It's not,  it's called commercial art.

COMMERCIAL ARTIST:

• If you make pictures to sell them (you know, make money/profit), you are a commercial artist.


• If your pictures have no context (other than sales/ego), you're a commercial artist .


• If your pictures have no intention (other than sales/ego), you're a commercial artist.


• If your pictures have no intellectual value (you've done no intellectual work - historical, social, political, etc.), you're a commercial artist.


• If you, "do nudes", you're most likely a commercial artist - porn, erotica, etc. (or something like it).


• If you can't talk about your work, dare I say "defend" your work, you're a commercial artist.


• If you're using a large format camera or using an "alt" process without context or intention, you're probably a comerical aritst (and craftsman if the images are technically sound).

This is not an argument for the title of "artist", this is an argument about distinguishing what kind of art you are looking at (or making) and if it's good, bad or mediocre. I'm ranting about this because it makes it difficult for me to break down the walls of what my work is "supposed" to look like or be. And if it doesn't fit into that "knowable, familar commercial box", I get no time with the viewer. It saddens me that most of the masses can't, or won't, invest the time and energy to "get" my work and the "art world" thinks it's shallow and pedantic (or at least that's the vibe I get).

The other day I received an email from LensWork publishing. They send out podcasts of Brooks Jensen ranting about all things photography. Some of them are okay. Most are painfully shallow and pedantic (snap!), but I still listen. The one that was sent out the other day was called, "Idea and Artifact'. He spoke like this was a new concept to him in photography. In other words, he was saying, "Does your work just look good or does it have meaning beyond the superficial - do you ever think about what you're photographing in profound ways?" Concept and craft, syntax and vocabulary, etc. etc. This spun me up big time. Another paraphrase, "Hey, we might want to think about what we photograph in a meaningful way". He mentions Kendrick's Tintypes and how gorgeous they are to see in real life (this is an example of 'Artifact')  - he has no clue about why artist's, such as myself, choose the craft and it goes way beyond the "beauty" of the image. It's not a balance of idea and artifact Brook, it's a transparent blending of the two. If you lack artifact, you're a theorist, if you lack theory, concept, or as you call it, idea, you're a commercial artist. Do your projects have intellectual meaning? Do you have statements, or can you give context (beyond the technical, modernist babble) about your projects? Because what I see out there today makes me want to yell at the top of my lungs, "What the hell is wrong with you? Don't you get it!?!"

Germany 1933 - 1945: What About the Ordinary Germans?
The other thing that has really been gnawing on me (which is nothing new) is the silence and indifference of history as it relates to the reality of where I live.

I occasionally pickup Daniel Johan Goldhagen's book, "Hitler's Willing Executioners  Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust" and read parts of it. I read the book about 18 months ago, but it's loaded with information and it's easy to forget the details. The details are what Goldhagen talks about, the overlooked or rarely addressed details. The point of view that says, "Hey, what about the ordinary Germans, what were they doing during all of this?" - a great question. And, after moving to Germany over two years ago, there is rarely a day that goes by where I don't ask that question myself.

I've devoted my artistic life to making work about this topic. The project is loosely based on "Kristallnacht" only because that was the "green light" for the Germans to carry out the Holocaust. I'm amazed at the level of hate and anger that the Germans felt toward their own people (other than they were Jewish). It's like chopping off your own hands or even your head! I can't understand it in any context and that's what people that I talk to here want me to do. They want me to understand that the ordinary German people were "brainwashed" and that their own lives were on the line if they didn't hate and shun the Jews. Really? What about the towns and villages boasting that they were "judenrein" (free of Jews). Or the thousands, or tens of thousands, of ordinary Germans that particiapted in "Kristallnacht"? Or the story about the Jewish woman in Stuttgart trying to get a ride on the bus? (read the book - page 103). I'm dubious that 60-70 million Germans were all brainwashed into doing these kinds of things. I agree with the premise of Goldhagen's book; a lot of ordinary Germans wanted to do those things. Why can't we have that discussion?

The silence is what bothers me. The indifference is palpable and painful here. I can't "turn it off", I'm aware, or present to it every time I see a smoke stack or watch a German insolently ignore another human being. The words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were never so true. He said, "We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

Here's a portrait that I made Friday evening - August 1, 2008. Her name is Beatrice. She is from (near) Dresden, Germany. Her great-grandfather was a hardcore Nazi party member (officer).  It was an interesting experience to talk with her and make her portrait.

Beatrice Wank - August 1, 2008 Viernheim, Germany