Neo's Words: Photography

Showing posts with label Photography. Show all posts

Thursday, October 04, 2007

kittens in da house

2 weeks ago my lovely Shanti gave birth to 4 beautiful kids, here some pics:

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Today i was lucky, I was stroling through Antwerpen on my way home, when I found this "eco-shop". It's a second hand shop with all kind of stuff, from second hand kitchen stuff to furniture and everything in between. A quick tour through the shop brought me back to the entrance, when I noticed a small cabinet with some camera's and stuff. The first Camera I noticed was a "Zeis Ikon Box Tengor" with a Goerz Frontar achromat lens. To be more specific it's the first Zeiss Ikon Camera that was prototyped in 1920 and released about 1926, this was the year smaller companies merged into Zeiss Ikon, one of the companies was Goerz, hence the name of the lens. The film format is 120, this means that the size of the pictures taken is 6x9 cm.

It's interesting how those first camera's looked inside. It's a simple box with a film pressure plate in the film housing, keeping the film flat (something quite revolutionairy those days). Furthermore it has 2 shutter speeds, 1/24 and B and to my big suprise it has 3 aperture settings f11, f16 and f22. The aperture is a simple strip of metal with 3 different holes. The camera has 2 simple viewfinders (vertical and horizontal). To operate this type of camera you really need to have good knowledge of photogaphy. On the web are different sites with pictures actually taken with this box. It's one out of three of the Zeiss Ikon cameras in my collection, probably the first model ever released by Zeiss Ikon.

Here is an add for a newer type of the Box Tengor (probably around 1930):

Sunday, June 03, 2007

"50's Pinup style Photography"

On a sunny day at the war museum of Overloon in Holland with a good friend making old style pin ups of her.

Art Freak

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Irina Ionesco

It was 1974, I was about 11 years old. As a boy I always liked to stumble around at the addic of my grandparents. My grandfather was receiving every month a magazine called "Stern". It was a german monthly magazine that was filled with stories about politics, scandals, documentaries, movies, music and now and then also some nudity. As 11 years old boy I was just discovering the secrets of sexuality, the things that parents didn't talk about. The more things were covered up the more I was curious. One day I sneaked up the addic and I found one of the editions of "Stern". On the front page was a picture of a girl, she was rather young but the way she was photographed was highly erotic, at the same time the picture radiated something magical. It turned out that the pictures were made by Irini Ionesco, and the girl in the pictures was her very own daughter Eva.

Irina Ionesco (born on September 3, 1935) is a French photographer born in Paris, France. She was the daughter of Romanian immigrants. She spent her childhood years in Constanţa, Romania before she moved to Paris. She traveled and painted for several years before discovering photography. Her work is described as erotic.In 1974 she exhibited some of her work at the Nikon Gallery in Paris and attracted lots of attention. She was soon published in numerous magazines, books, and featured at galleries across the globe.

I remember the article, because I watched german television I could read german easily. The article mentioned that she was received quite controversial because she was picturing her own daughter in erotic and nude settings. The first pictures she made Eva was just 5. She had her studio just at home in her small appartment. The windows were covered with shutters to keep the light out and the walls and ceiling were painted black. The interior looked like a boudoir and all the accessories gave a magical feeling of a fairytale world. The funny thing about this is that she used really cheap and old fabrics, lace and objects. Nothing of what she used had any value. But it was the magic she made with her lens, and the way how she used the objects and fabrics. What she was doing with old fabrics she was also applying to the models. She like to have an ugly model and then create the magic and turn the model into a mysterious representation of beauty. The way she worked she taught completely herself, her gear consisted of a simple SLR camera with a 50 mm lens. She was actually a painter who by coincedence discovered photography.

Some people were condemning her method regarding the nude pictures of her daughter, others were seeing her as a genius. Nevertheless, I never felt that this was something bad, there was a certain beauty and mystical feeling radiating from her pictures and even now I can remember the strange feelings they stirred up in me. It was not somekind of sexual feeling, it was something deep, untouchable. A longing to melt into the odd scene, this hidden world, this boudoir like atmosphere. I think that these pictures left a mark in my mind that would stay forever. I never saw such beauty in a pictures again, and I can still feel lost looking at them. It took many years that Irina would be acknowledged as an important photographer that had a larger influence. Strange enough she became very liked in Japan, and over the years she traveled many times to Japan and had quite a few expositions in Japan. There are even some limited books published in Japan that cost around $900. Though her role is important for photography she is not known by many people. I think she is one of the rare photographers that knew how to expose the beauty of women in a way that still makes me speechless. I can only stare and wonder. It creates a longing to something unknown, something lost. It's hidden beauty, mysterious, mystical, there is space for guessing and exploring. Especially in these days where nudity and porn are found everywhere her pictures even have more value. My biggest wish is to find one day a copy of one of her books.