About my little holiday

I finally found the time to write a little bit. I am back in Bucharest and i can never stop myself from wondering why ... Poland was beyond brilliant. I am not that fond of my series but people seemed to like it, asked questions and generally had a pretty great private view night. It was a lot of hard work but we pulled it off. The city is, as i said, pretty amazing as well, with the lovely Brama Jazz Cafe where i spent half of my days writing and doing various other cvasi-creative stuff. The prices were fairly low and the atmosphere was lovely.





Later on i jumped on the bus and headed for Berlin, where i crashed at Jessie's and Tommi's place for two nights (thanks guys) and had the most amazing time. Berlin is definitely one of the best cities i've ever visited and it would be nice to live there part time. Tommi and i spent a whole day cycling around the city and visiting all the tourist places while hunting a rare item (when the time will come, the item shall be revealed to the general public). All in all, it was a lovely holiday with small exceptions. I reflected a bit on or image in Europe and got to some 1930's Germany suggestions, but that's another post.

A lesson in exhibition lighting

I can now honestly say i've seen my fair share of galleries and gallery spaces throughout Europe. But, in this small Polish gallery, i saw something that i was busy imagining a long time ago. The way lights work in this particular gallery made me rethink all the ideas i had about lighting and shadows in galleries. In the two spaces at the 13 Muz they had a brilliant system of lighting that focused all the energy exactly on the image. Like so:



These are very approximate sizes - i photographed them while they were shuffling images around but the idea still remains. With the aid of a barn door like system, the little lights kept the photographs in full light while keeping the rest of the room pitch black.

Poland: Part I

It's the relaxing morning after a long and hot day. Yesterday i've traveled from Romania to Germany by plane and from there to Poland, by car. The guys at the gallery knew i like off road cars so they arranged to have me picked up in a Grand Cherokee. That just made my day ...
Arriving there, i met Jerzy and we got to talking. Apparently i am to be showing in two galleries in this time, one of which, as i understood is actually a museum room of sorts. Well, that went well anyway.


As we were sitting down having a chat, we got to talking about accommodation and Jerzy said: "Oh, we got you a room in the castle". I thought he was kidding because he tends to make this kind of jokes. But he wasn't. I actually have a room in the castle. Granted, it's not the master bedroom but it's free, it's mine and it's overlooking a brilliant backyard with red brick and stone walls. Just to make things even better, the Castle is home to the Opera House as well. Something must go horribly wrong right about now because it's unnatural for everything to be so spot on.

Debriefing: The first exhibition of the series

So, the first big night was gone. It was quite interesting, to say the least. It had it's ups and downs but all in all it went fairly well. The downside of being me is that i'm never going to be happy with what i do and will get annoyed with pretty much anything that goes wrong. The first thing that made me smile is that we had tickets - literally tickets with the exhibition's name and everything (they were all sold out - i managed to save this one from under one of the seats, after the show ended):



I got pissed off at some things. It was nobody's fault really. It was an experimental evening, as it were, so things were bound to go wrong at some things. Anyways, we had excellent lighting (with small exceptions), and a great movie - everyone loved it.

My girlfriend performed brilliantly, as usual (on some accounts people began crying) so yes, it was very very good, music wise. It took me a while to calm down, as i was paying attention to every little derail that anyone made and i treated it as the end of the damn world. Dana on stage:



We got some good feedback - well, decent, not good. I need people to leave speechless so i have a long day to go. I do wish more people would have walked around to see the images from up close. That was really my biggest regret, that the kind of missed the whole point of the first-private-view-part of the event. Of course, i shall conclude with a small image that feeds my ego:

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Life Begins

I am currently sitting on a tea house in Bucharest and loving every second of it. University is over and done with and this is where life begins. I'm quite contempt with the way things are going now. It's a rough period and i understand that it'll be difficult to get something going the way i want it but i am too proud to give up and too stubborn to admit that it may be impossible.

In this last week, i met some of the most amazing people, through my girlfriend. I met her canto teacher's boyfriend which just happened to love my Ambassadors and thought: "Let's shoot a movie on this!". When i told him i had plans to shoot myself shaving my head, he went ballistic and so the madness began. We met on and off and discussed lighting and setting up the space for the first show. FYI the images will be set up on the music stands they use in opera concerts so ... there's a win. So, we got to talking and that and set the dates for the shoot. My Defender is currently having an open heart surgery over the weekend so i had to get the Toyota. We shot for 40 hours in a 48 hour time frame and were only fueled by ... well ... momentum. Because as soon as things started slowing down, we fell like flies, dead tired.



Anyway, we shot a 90min experimental film which (fuck it, i am ruining the surprise for Monday - just a good heads up to those who read my blog) will be shown in sync with the classicl music. Each aria of the concerto had a frame thought up which pretty much rocks. It includes me almost falling out of a boat a few times, jumping out of trees, getting my head shaved half naked in a poppy field and many other insane ideas that our tired brains managed to duct tape together. The film will then be a full part of the show, and will be traveling around as a whole. Now all we have to do is sit tight and wait to become famous ... This is how things work, right?




Finance wise, student life is not yet over. I am broke beyond belief and am trying to figure out things ... University is gone and so is all the free equipment. This means investment as well as a great big hit in my already precariously balanced budget (strapping a ridiculously expensive camera to the side door of the Land Cruiser and driving around 60mph also put in a new light the idea of bankruptcy in case the camera fell off. No my bankruptcy however - but the faces of the people we overtook - worth every penny). But you need to spend money to make money and i suspect that this is the part where i have to spend ... That's it for now.

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