Postchristmas goes forth

postchristmas photograph as cover of Anna Smyrk’s single “January makes me sad”.

Is it not delightful to have friends coming from distant quarters? (attributed to Confucius)

Imagine my delight when I received an email by Australian singer Anna Smyrk, asking if she could use one of the photos of my postchristmas series for the cover art of her single “January makes me sad” (2023). Given that the song includes a line about dead christmas trees lining the street, I was more than happy to comply.

Please check it out, for example on spotify.

Reflex reborn

Reflex, new #1.

Reflex is back: In handy DIN A6 format, folded without staples or glue from a single side A3 risograph print, to yield six pages. This first issue contains three photos illustrating the technique of rephotography.

Printed and for sale at nachladen.

Contrasting with reflex’ former incarnation containing 36 photos (published quarterly), the reduced scope of the new form of six pages, allowing either the printing of three horizontal photos or six vertical ones, not only makes the publication more accessible to the viewer, it also makes printing much more economical. Perhaps most important, the brevity allows me to speedily pursue and publish photographic ideas, allowing for new explorations of form, content and approach, to be published in regular intervals.

Corona vs. Kultur in Hamburg

Lately I have been experimenting with rephotography, the precise reproduction of an earlier photo’s perspective to illustrate the effects of passing time. Often, historical photographs are used as the basic material, but of course you can use any photos, even your own.

Shown here are photos of the Morris column advertising “Kultur in Hamburg” in Moorweidenstraße, one taken during the first winter of Corona in early 2021, the other taken in late summer of 2022. They illustrate the effect that the pandemic had on cultural activities in the city.

Alle Jahre wieder

Poster © Tim Reuscher 2022.

Postchristmas again: Mit der Vorweihnachtszeit näherte sich wie immer bereits viel zu früh die Jahresspitze im Weihnachtsbaumverbrauch. Einen kleinen Ausblick auf die Zeit danach (der Vorjahre), und hoffentlich ein kleines Augenzwinkern bot meine Fotoausstellung postchristmas again, die zwischen dem 03.12.2022 und dem 12.01.2023 bei Tim Reuscher im nachladen gezeigt wurde.

15 Fotos von Weihnachtsbäumen nach dem Fest (Riso-Drucke) und 4 Texte von meinem Bruder Frank wurden in der Ausstellung gezeigt, und sind in Form einer kleinen Zine-Akte dokumentiert, die im nachladen verkauft wird.

Postchristmas again — wieder auf der Sternschanze.
Das diesjährige Epizentrum.
Frisch aus China.
Ansicht 1.
Ansicht 2.
Ansicht 3.
Ansicht 4.

Postchristmas again war die zweite Ausstellung zu diesem Thema, die erste fand im Dezember 2019 statt.

Gravity

Yukuhashi, June 2022.

Photo taken without involvement of a photographer: When I bowed down to adjust my shoestrings, the camera belt slipped from my shoulder, sending the camera on a swift descend towards the parking-lot tarmac. On impact, the shutter of the camera fired, resulting in the image above. Luckily the camera shrugged it off, save for a few scratches in the bottom plate.

On air

Diesen Januar war ich zu Gast im podcast von Thomas Winters Fotobuch-Ecke, einem der Anlaufpunkte für Fotobuch-Besprechungen im deutschsprachigen Netz. Ausgehend von meinem Buch “From Pebbles to Boulders”, dessen Entstehung in Japan wir ausgiebig diskutieren, habe ich mit Thomas gute 45 Minuten über meine fotografische Arbeitsweise, Verbindungen zur Sinologie, China, Japan und viele weitere Dinge gesprochen. Hört gern mal rein, entweder direkt über Thomas’ Seite, auf der er auch einige seiner Eindrücke zum Buch veröffentlicht hat, oder z.B. direkt über Spotify.

In print

As already described here and here, the emerging COVID-19 pandemic left my wife and me stranded in her hometown Yukuhashi from March to July 2020 — right after the birth of our son. During that time, I carried a camera wherever I went, resulting in the capture of a large number of scenes of the local landscape, stones, rivers, houses, people, economy, politics, COVID-19, popular mythology and religion … my perspective on Japan “from pebbles to boulders,” so to speak.

Back in Hamburg, work was begun to edit the photos into bookshape. Being a side-project to my research, it took until September of this year to see the publication of the finished book. While 38 cartridges of film were carefully exposed and developed by hand in Yukuhashi, only 96 of the resulting photos were selected and arranged for this book, the layout being handled by Shoko Tanaka.

The book is printed to order by Norderstedt’s finest “Books on Demand” printer-publisher. It can be ordered (in Europe) through any purveyor of books of your choice, i.e. your local brick and mortar bookstore (suggested!), Book on Demand’s own webstore or various online bookshops.

From Pebbles to Boulders : 96 Photos of Small-Town Japan

ISBN 978-3-75349986-4

19,49 €

Shapeshifting

reflex 08, showing the new cover design/process.

Alongside other tectonic shifts happening around the world at the moment, reflex is now produced differently, i.e. using the services of Norderstedt’s Books on Demand GmbH. This is in lieu of printing my photos with a laser printer and binding them by hand into little booklets, which is how it worked until now.

While many appreciated the handmade quality of the old booklets, perhaps their shape somewhat distracted from the content of the photos. If some part of my process could be considered to be handcraft it would be the development of the films. More important, the recent arrival of our baby made it necessary to decide how to allot the sparse time available for photo work. Long story short: handstitching booklets did not make the cut.

(The back issues will continue to be available as handmade booklets from the nachladen.)

As usual, reflex 08 is available from the glorious nachladen as of now.

reflex 05

Reflex 05 is here, with photos from (mostly) Hamburg, Strande and Kiel. And its not just here, now its also there:

I decided to make the new issues of reflex available to the general public in the “nachladen“, Hamburg’s hot spot for self-published magazines and art printing. Drop by if you are in the area and have a look, they have heaps of nice prints and magazines by local artists well worth a visit.

Printing matters: reflex 01 to 04

Reflex issue 04 to 01.

Reflex issues 01 to 04 are finally finished. Each issue contains 36 of my photos taken during one quarter year, printed using electro photographical printing.

It’s been a long time coming: In March of 2018 I wrote that I would concentrate on printing my photos, instead of just publishing them on my homepage. Afterwards it seemed like no progress happened in this regard for well over one year. What can I say? The PhD thesis continues to occupy the largest part of my attention and from last summer onward, curating the exhibition “Negative/Scans” kept me busy as well. As a result, the stream of photos published on the homepage became a mere trickle, while no printed photos appeared.

I continued shooting though, as well as developing films and making proof sheets of the films. When some time was available, I experimented with different ways to print my photos.

The question of printing process

The major reason why the silver bullet – traditional enlargements, chemical development – could not be used: Our apartment lacks the space necessary to set up a darkroom able to handle print development. Turning the bathroom into a darkroom by putting an enlarger onto the toilet seat and some development trays in the shower is nice for some fooling around, but not for producing a reasonable quantity of prints. The throughput rate would be far too low. While I do hope to be able to set up a real darkroom again in the future, for now I will continue to use a hybrid workflow, meaning I take my photos on film, scan them and use the computer to prepare them for printing.

Besides the question of the throughput – or maybe better output – rate, there were further requirements which the printing process would have to meet:

– The prints need to be reasonably archivable (they should not degrade before I do, print durability should be in excess of 60 years)

– The prints should cost as little as possible (a drugstore print of the size 13x18cm costs around 0,40€. Nice for a few quick prints, but too much when having to print a lot)

– Print quality (resolution, tonality, luster) should still be as high as possible

After some experiments with on-demand digital photobook printing, which proved to not be right for me due to reasons of cost and lack of control over the process, I tried to print the photos myself using an inkjet printer. That one did a good job preserving the tonality of the negatives, but I do not print every day (or even week) and the danger of inks drying out in the printer is looming too large. (The printer wasting ink on purpose to flush out its printing heads is also unacceptable for financial reasons.)

I then stumbled upon “xerography” or electro photographical printing. The prints meet common archival standards and are not very costly in production. Their only downside is that tonality is not too good (resolution is reasonable though). Even if electro photographical printing sounds exotic to you, you probably have already encountered the process: It is the same one used in the humble photocopier. Following some deliberations, I figured since exhibition prints would be done through a different process anyway, xerography is the way to go for producing this little ongoing catalog of my work.

The editorial workflow for “reflex”

Reflex no. 3, pages 29 and 30.

After the question of printing process was settled, another decision had to be made on how to edit my photos. Sometimes I work on limited projects, which turn into little portfolios of photos almost by themselves (compare the Greek wedding), but what about the photos I take day-to-day without any connecting thread? These form the bulk of photos I shoot, by a wide margin.

I decided to select 36 out of all the photos I take every quarter year (Jan.-Mar., Apr.-Jun., Jul.-Sept., Oct.-Dec.), purely based on the criterion of which photos I like. These will be printed, presented and archived together. What results over time will be a kind of photographic reflection of the world around me, in the shape of a photographic journal. The focus is smack on the pictures, usually printed one per page with as little captions provided as possible.

My wife Shoko helps me to embed the 36 photos selected into a simple layout using the software InDesign. After printing the pages, I stitch them together between two sheets of packaging paper, resulting in a durable booklet of 21cmx21cm. On the front of this, the most important information about the content is given, as well as the issue’s number.

Let’s see how long I can keep this up.