The Commission

We're experimenting heavily. Stay tuned, something really cool is about to be presented.

Note to self

Master key - Lousy lock.

Becoming a vegetarian

This advert? It doesn't make me want to become a vegetarian. Just makes me feel funny all over.

Shotgun blowjobs, deadlines and art

I've always imagined laying hidden in a bunker after a nuclear bomb has blasted the crap out of everything on this planet. And years after the explosion, i would open the door and smell the fresh air. This is how i feel today. Liberated from the chains of the final paper.

After being one sad song away from deepthroating the barrel of a shotgun for a bit under a month, things are starting to pick up. I've got a shooting lined up, I'm getting to start my printing process and it feels like there's reason to leave my burrow and get out in the world. Not everything is peachy, win some lose some. But for now, we've won a battle. Let's enjoy it like Napoleon. Because just like him, we don't know shit about what's coming.

In other news, i found a guy who does the kind of things that i dream, or somewhat. It's a bit strange and uncomfortable to see the deranged stuff you dream floating on your screen. Kind of makes you want to ... do nothing and stare for hours. Checked. Here's some of his stuff. I'm not a sculptor, but i can say that his stuff is at least worth watching, if not even buying - if i was ridiculously rich. Rankin style rich. He really is something because i think we can all agree I'm not that big on complimenting people.

Kris Kuksi, ladies and gentlemen:

Alter is the new Post

A new modernity is emerging, reconfigured to an age of globalization – understood in its economic, political and cultural aspects.

Increased communication, travel and migration are affecting the way we live

Our daily lives consist of journeys in a chaotic and teeming universe

Multiculturalism and identity is being overtaken by creolisation: Artists are now starting from a globalized state of culture

This new universalism is based on translations, subtitling and generalized dubbing

Today's art explores the bonds that text and image, time and space, weave between themselves

Artists are responding to a new globalized perception. They traverse a cultural landscape saturated with signs and create new pathways between multiple formats of expression and communication.

This is Altermodernism.

Presedinti si senzatii

In perioada alegerilor ziarele se vand ca painea calda. Si ce vinde mai bine in Romania decat senzationalul? Avand in vedere ca prin intermediul blog-ului am fost contactat de cativa jurnalisti de mare calibru, Ovidiu Zara si Madalina Prudea intre altii, va aduc la cunostinta faptul ca scandalurile cu Dl. Traian Basescu nu ma preocupa. Imaginile semnate de mine din campania 2004 nu arata presedintele lovind vreun personaj.

Pe de alta parte, cu doar foarte putina obiectivitate ati realiza ca este inadmisibil pentru un candidat la presedentie sa faca un asemenea gest, in special in public, in fata a zeci de camere si mii de oameni - si deci foarte probabil imposibil. Nu e o acoperire guvernamentala - pur si simplu evenimentul nu a avut loc. Nu gasiti ca este o coincidenta ciudata faptul ca a reaparut dupa 4 ani acest video, intr-un singur loc, la o calitate proasta si dintr-un singur unghi?

Domnule Zara - ce aveti de impartit cu presedintele nu este problema mea, cum nu este nimic din ce se intampla in politica. Inteleg ca vreti sa publicati articole senzationale, dar aparent articolele cu teme inteligente sunt mai bine vazute. Pentru o clarificare, va rog frumos sa lecturati motto-ul propriului Dumneavoastra blog. Poate ati uitat de ce sunteti jurnaist.

Doamna/Domnisoara Prundea - "nu vrei sa afle lumea adevarul? lasi un om ca el sa ne conduca?". Presa este, din ce stiu, o putere in stat. Daca ati aborda subiecte mai importante si/sau interesante, poate ati reusi sa faceti o schimbare adevarata.

Cand a fost ultima data cand ati publicat un articol despre proiectul de transport ecologic de la Londra, actiunile Greenpeace sau expozitia Titian de la Luvru?

Stiu, stiu, doriti sa aratati adevarata fata a tiranului care ne va conduce sau nu in urmatorii ani. Nu va faceti griji - daca la Facultatea de Drept se puteau cumpara voturi pro-Basescu la 50 de lei, la Gara daca nu ma insel se practica aceeasi metoda pro-Geoana.

Cred ca ar fi bine sa va revizuiti pozitia ca jurnalisti integri si obiectivi si sa va dati seama ca aceste stiri de senzatie ar trebui pastrate in gunoiul ce se intituleaza "Libertatea". Ultima data cand am verificat, EVZ avea niste oarecare standarde, dar observ ca se muleaza destul de bine pe segmentul de piata ocupat de publicatia mentionata anterior.

Arhiva de articole si imagini publicate de mine pe care o detine (ilegal de altfel - conform contractului au dreptul sa imi foloseasca materialele pe o perioada de 3 ani, dupa care intervine dreptul de autor - alt mit urban in spatiul mioritic din ce imi dau eu seama) nu va face obiectul nici unor discutii sau dezbateri pro sau contra Traian Basescu. Va rog frumos sa nu ma mai contactati pentru detalii sau marturisiri senzationale pentru ca ele nu vor avea loc. Apucati-va sa scrieti articole mai cu cap, lasand la o parte vedetele de carton, stirile bomba si masinile de lux. Romania merita jurnalisti mai buni decat voi.

Cu stima,
Radu Tudoroiu

19th Century Photography, Theprintspace and Tim Flach

Last week we had a day out in London. Which was absolutely brilliant. We met in victoria, much as usual, and decided to split in groups. I happened to choose the gropu being at Theprintspace at 2 PM so i had plenty of time before that to go and see some new work. I was supposed to go and see the T.W. Portrait Prize displayed at the National Gallery, but in the tube i had an epiphany. It wasn't really an epiphany, it was just a huge poster reading: "Points of View: Photography in the 19th Century"



I will say this: for anyone and everyone who is fond of film photography, that exhibition is a must. Everything i researched for my final work, E.S. Curtis, Duchenne, Talbot, Daguerre, they're all there. Duchenne's first edition book, huge prints from expeditions in Asia and amazing alternative process prints. Not to mention all the cameras, text and fun facts that are all over the place.

www.theprintspace.co.uk (or .com - don't care)

We went there to chat with the guys doing digital C41 printing. They probably have the lowest prices on the market because they have very basic walkthroughs, that teach you how to resize your image so they won't have to pay anyone to do it for you. They also provide a large selection of papers, of which my personal favorite is most certainly the Kodak Metallic...

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Later on, in the evening, we had a talk from one of the photographers who managed to combine art with high end commercial: Tim Flach. See Tim knows people. He knows how people think, what they want and how they react to various things and he's learned to be a people person. He's images for SKY, BBC or any other commercial contract are just as cared for as his artist book Equus. We've been told that a second book is coming out soon and saw some unreleased images. He also told us about how, when he goes and shoots something, he documents very carefully about the topic. Say if he'll shoot a horse, he will research the breed, see what their strong points are, see what they're used for, and other useful information that only a connoisseur would be aware of, so that when he shoots, not only does he know exactly what he wants, but also he shows that he's interested. And he really is. I've rarely seen a man more interested in anything than Tim.

More fashion shoots

for some reason i started enjoying studio work and messing around with lights. It's a tad bleak, concept wise but so is my tutor's work and he's still teaching. I decided i was going to try to work with fashion people and see how that went - and shoot my Canon exclusively.



I tried to use my Ds Mark 2 as little as possible because it's more practical to wear out a uni Hasselblad than my own equipment. Sadly, i have to shoot my camera because it's the only way to start to understand and feel it properly. So most of the stuff here, if not everything was shot on an 85 mm lens or the 70-200. For light i used Bron packs as well as Bowens.




Practice is the best way to understand light and lighting techniques and it always comes as a surprise when i see the final images and figure just how it went. There's still bits and bobs to be sorted out, like proper sync and stuff, but those are details. One of the things i have about my process is that i always do a hit and miss thing before shooting. The intelligent thing would be to use what is otherwise known as an exposure meter rather than fire away 10 useless frames to test the light. I would go so far as to say that it also gets your brain going as well, measuring and imagining. But these are the downsides of digital - commodity.

My Articles

I must admit that, in the last weeks, i began posting too many images and writing too little text. The main reason for that is partly because I've been working on my final research paper and partly because i've been fairly busy publishing some off road articles.

Here's a link to my latest article, in case anyone's interested:

http://www.4x4offroads.com/the-green-giants.html

Photography wise, i am still trying to find my way into the strange but unbelievably interesting world of experimental photography, which I've done quite a bit of - some experiments more successful than others. I've been looking at Warhol and an interesting book by Mark and Doug Starn, "Attracted to light". For now, i am working on linking the work of Duchenne de Boulogne with that of the Starns and that of Warhol perhaps, in what is to be my final work - photography wise, there will be quite a bit of change in the whole thing, as I'm considering building cameras to expose on 8x10 or 9 1/2 x 12 photo paper and then ... surprise ... contact print it on larger papers i coated myself. It's a process and it hasn't got much sense to it now. But it will, mind you.

Books and failures

I started researching. Unbelievable. My room is indeed full of stuff - books, lenses, boxes and camera drawings. I am currently trying to design my own camera for this last project and no - it's not coming out right. I feel a bit like Daguerre. I still don't understand my excitement with using the most rudimentary tools instead of the normal things.

Still, my camera will be built in a very very little while and then it will be an interesting piece of kit.

Until then i researched a guy, Duchenne de Boulogne. He pioneered expressions in phoography, using electricity to stimulate individual muscles. His pictures are quite interesting and his research is odd to say the least. But his peculiar half-half portraits are worth a bit of attention.

For a good essay on him, look up "Ghost in the Shell" by Sobieszek.His book traces portrait photography over a period of 150 years, with three good essays on Duchenne, Warhol and Sherman as styles of photographing and repetitive patterns. Worth having a look.

On a similar note, i will put the Hasselblad Workshop images soon, but unforseen circumstances delayed the posting. Come Saturday will probably put them up!

Alfred at his best

Land Rover Advertising Campaign

I was browsing for a Land Rover image this morning. Not that we didn't have millions of them already on the hard drives. I was looking for one to screen print on a t shirt for my dad.

Somewhere in the underbelly of the internet, i found a Land Rover campaign which left me quite speechless.

It's just fresh, brilliant and simple - also, a fine display of photoshop skills.

Done by a guy called Garry Simpson.

Enjoy

Rememberance

These are few of the shots i took in the walks through the city. The lens is the 45 TS-E, Mk I.

Riots, punks and reggae music

So it's late. Just got home from the G20 protest in London. Tommi and i thought it would be a good idea to check it out and so we did. It was an interesting experience most certainly - taking into account that i have never seen a 40 meter long wall of police move towards me. Still fun.

One thing that fascinated me throughout the day was people throwing beer bottles, glass bottles that is, at the police. We were shut off from all angles, trying to shoot as much as possible and having to deal with the idiocy that most people perceived as normal - thus, there were NO SHOPS TO BUY ANYTHING. No food, no drinks, nothing. Still, people seemed to find empty beer bottles to either throw in the police, or piss in first and then throw in the police. Then run like hell screaming "We want peace"

There was reggae music all day, which seemed to calm some of the people down, frantically dancing and being occupied. Needless to say the area smelled like weed but police didn't seem to mind.

The only actually interesting times were those when the line of police would charge, point at which all the brave protesters would run as fast as possible. In one of those i was in the wrong place and managed to get a baton over my thigh. Looks like traces from a Yorkie. But more towards the purple than blue...ish.

The thing that actually bugged me were the photographers. The nice thing was that there was a representative from all possible camera shapes and sizes known to man. There was even a guy with a large format range finder, those that look like cathodic tubes. But most of them, seemed to be working for The Sun. I don't know what's wrong with them. They would all go in the same place and shoot the same thing. It was dumb. I felt stupid going where everyone who had a camera already was, and snapping the same frames. It's stupid and uncreative.

The interesting things about this is that i started to look back on my press years. And on the train back, i started to question whether i was one of them back then. I kept trying to convince myself that i wasn't but somehow there will always be this doubt. I tried to look around, catch people, not events that sell newspapers. Those have long ceased to interest me. I worked on a series of portraits which seemed fascinating at the time, which i'll probably put up tomorrow. But also i tried to shoot the events, how people behave and what they did. Not in a press way, but in a ... documentary kind of way. Trying to detach from all i used to know. Trying to, incredibly, follow Chris Coekin's advice on trying to shoot in a fresh way.

Enough bla ba for one day. Will process and upload both series tomorrow to get some feedback for whoever is reading this non-sense.

Religion

Today is a sad day in the history of humanity. hypocrisy has reached new levels.

http://www.cafepress.com/objectivemin.50869699

Idiots.

A new age dawns

After a long waiting period I finally got most of the items I needed. The camera obscura project is well on its way now. I am shooting the Wista most likely and have constructed a combination of thin lenses to try and sharpen the images on the wall. This morning I did a test with it where I exposed for about three hours, which came out quite under exposed. I scanned it in Flexcolor and modified what was there to be modified and got a decent image.



The sharpness is really amazing. Now I just hope I will manage to get everything sorted out in time and have good images before the B:fest Arts Festival at the end of May. I will. I guess. I shot it on ISO 100 black and white sheet film at F16 more or less and with 190 minutes exposure. As it turns out it's quite under exposed and thus I would need to have a 6 or even twelve-hour exposure to get it right.


(100% blow up. The color ones will be mind blowing :) )

I am insisting on the closed aperture as I would like to have all of the items in the room in focus and not just the wall. I am still working on it and will have a little bit of a head ache because I am not quite sure that black and white and color films behave in the same fashion at long exposure (i.e.: lose their sensitivity with the increasing of the exposure time) or if there is any way I can manage to get out of the room. I am considering having a pin-up curtain to get out of the rooms I photograph - and not be trapped there for hours and hours.

Regardless of it, the exposure times are going to be horrific and I will need to find people who don't need their room for the whole day. Volunteers?

Mail me at rt@4x4offroads.com (Near London, Paris or Bucharest please)

Creed of the should-be young generation

I was browsing on flickr and found a friend's account and on there this chick at a concert. Her name is Annie Clark a.k.a. St. Vincent and she plays quite well. On her site i found this creed, which i think was quite appropriate to stick here.

I think she has an interesting face.
Strange configuration but there is something quite charming about her eyes. Odd.

Addendum: it clearly states "in order to avoid mere survival". You survive, not live properly. Get a gun and blow your neuron to bits or get a life and make it better. But stop being cunts.

Back to the roots

So it seems lately we've just been doing alot of planning and buying stuff but not alot of photography. Perhaps i kinda got carried away and forgot about the underlying importance of actually making work.

Thanks to Denisa and Petra, who have lately been fiddling around with the large format cameras for their projects, i decided that it is about time to get the films out of the fridge and get the large format camera out for a day of shooting. Or so i think.

Results will probably be posted here if they are a success, so i can brag, or forgotten, if they are failures, so nobody says fuck all about it anymore.

ir lab diena mani dārgie draugi.

Africa 23 Days

And so it begins. The final pain of work has been put aside, at least for now. The 2300 words essay on voyeurism has been drafted and sent to the tutors, which leaves me now with only a few items on my check list. one of the most interesting but also boring things i have done, as a test of patience and because of sheer boredom, was text the whole essay on my phone, which by the way is some sort of Sony Ericsson, not the all new Iphone, which took approximatively 2 hours and a grand todal of 13,562 pushes of the buttons (mistakes weren't counted). That, my friends, is the effect of lack of alcohol, an overactive imagination and probably a new world record.

It's clear sailing all the way from here to January i suppose. Shooting Wednesday, Nan Goldin tutorial Thrusday, research and shootings next week... Come to think about it maybe not so clear. Maybe slightly foggy.

At this point in time i am concentrating all my energy, appart from the one required to read Vice, towards constructing camera obscuras in friend's rooms and intruding in their lives and making them hell for one or two days with the Horseman. Cute plan, useful.

In other news, studies have showed that the rate of sanity in our family has decreased drastically since the aqusition, almost 10 years ago, of the first off road pseudotruck. Which leads us, years, competitions and broken body-parts later to this very day where we are faced with time.

Time until the departing for Africa in the Defender 110 in a small expedition convoy. Fun it should be. Yes and no. My room is about to be quite filled up with anything from Landy magazines (of which the December 2008 issue of Land Rover Monthly presents the winning Open Class team of Transilvania Adventure Trophy 2008, which includes me in the Defender 90 - Mercedes G320 - without - left - front - side combination)to sand boards and prop shafts. More to come as we unveil this wonderful expedition. Publication of the events taking place there will be available in the form of articles in Land Rover Monthly, a number of romanian newspapers, some british ones, this forum and probably National Geographic Traveller as well. Subject to availabillity and terms of the contract :))

That should be about it for the day, nothing more to write, at least now. Will get back to you with details as we watch and participate at the unfolding of the events.

A Statement

Someone once said: "One can choose to study fish or the environment they swim in". One should think at this point that this is precisely what social photography does. Capturing people and their behavior on a certain media, whether it's a digital sensor, a film negative or audio tape, tends to be just the tip of the iceberg, as far as human analysis and documentation is concerned.

In this twenty first century in which photography is available to absolutely anyone, the actions of taking pictures has become much better differentiated from the one of creating photographs. But how is it that one can take images that no one has taken yet, in this context where an images is merely a button away? I might say that observing the "water" in which humans "swim" becomes crucial to photographers and to me in particular. it is not my intention to criticize the action of man, but merely to observe it, and it's effects.

As mass manufacturing has grown to outstanding sizes, the casualness with which we discard of functioning objects for new, better or just different ones has been an constant fascination of mine. An explosion of consumption choices threatens, without a doubt current identity of the individual, forcing him to confine to a standard or perhaps an imaginary much desired social status.

The objects appearing in my still photographs are all, without exception, gathered from the street, undesired discarded items that may still serve their purpose for years to come. In a century of contrasts, where poverty so finely combines with opulence and luxury, the concept of recycling and reusing objects that still function has decreased dramatically to the level of a part-time subject of discussion. Constant fetishism surrounding products and trends offer an illusive sensation of well - being for the ones who can afford it, and nothing for the ones who struggle for a living. In my image i cannot but underline this action which, like in physics, will have an equal and opposite reaction.