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dailykatrina · 3 years

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PART I

The primary purpose of this blog was to publish the picture of my friend Elīna wearing a red beret. First time we interacted was at our coursmates movie night at his place far away in 2010. We didn’t like each other first. I don’t remember how exactly we became friends (as I don’t remember what was the movie we watched that night. Was it a film by Coen brothers? Or something from Clint Eastwood?). Nevertheless, something more important became evident soon after - we were about to embark on a journey of imagination together and enhance the everyday in such ways that no object would be left as ordinary.

PART II

This blog became abandoned. It is true. I moved to France in 2016 and it took me about 3 years to fully settle. I’ve traveled a lot during this time as well. There was a lot happening and a lot of effort was put into learning new language, taking care of seemingly never-ending bureaucratic procedures and money earning activities. I didn’t post much during that time and there’s another reason for that. I’ve got a 35mm vintage Canon camera and it didn’t feel right to mix those well framed shots with random everydayness from my phone camera on the same platform.

I’ve posted some photo series on flickr. There’s only two (or three) that I personally find succesfull and feel the importance of.

PART III

I went to a film and photo developement workshop as a present for my 29th birthday. It’s been a dream coming true. I knew that I want to experiment with developement and to be more in charge of how sensitive my photography is. However, I continued to develop at an external film lab. My Paris apartment was too small to welcome a darkroom.

PART IV

I got my first real* camera when I was 16 or 17. It was a digital Canon EOS 400. I can still summon the feelings of pride about the marketing speech I gave to my father (in order for him to sponsor this lavish desire). I loved taking black and white and low iso pictures with that camera and a few years later I even expanded my lens collection. However, I loved shooting with the basic 18-55mm lens the most. As much as I almost always shoot on Program with my vintage Canon still today.

I had a blog on Blogspot. It was called '1000 airplanes on the roof'. That blog was important. I erased it. I even erased the archive of the images I had on my computer from that time. But it was important and there are images I can still recall in my memory that don’t exist in any other realm anymore. JV was following that blog. He asked me to have one of the pictures in full size and I shared it with him. It’s the only picture left from that blog that has a materiality today.

*I had a point and shoot sony pocket camera before, but my mother lost it a year after I got it.

PART V

I’ve started using instagram when I moved to France as a way to communicate with my friends. A place for everyday randomness and stunning French landscapes. I love taking pictures with my phone. I am not a farmer of a photography who willfully cultivates and constructs his images. I am a hunter. Or rather, outside of these binaries, I'm just perceptive and sensitive towards objects/elements existing outside of me and them falling into certain ‘images’ that pierce me. I feel like things are cinematographic. And I love to archive things. You know by now that I can be manic and a compulsive eraser, having an inner fight between a desire to share and a desire to keep to myself. Not that there ever was an ambition - even after years of (intermittently occasional but ever-present) shooting, I still considered painting as my primary artistic interest. Painting would be the one I would give my time to. Not photography.

PART VI

I am not a painter today. I even developed a fear of a brush. It makes me feel anxious. My last painting teacher criticized my way of being too detail oriented (lack of confidence) and I was vulnerable to that. It made me cry. I am hoping to come back to it one day but for now I need more time for the expression to ripen.

Things happened photography wise, things that I've already mentioned and some other things that I haven't. I got a Ricoh pocket camera (my digital Canon died of being unused a long time ago already). I realized that I lack literacy, awareness and vocabulary about my own pictorial expressions. I realized that most of my photography is not well served by the small digital format (thanks JV!). I realized that I don’t want my pictures (don’t mind about the phone pictures but not the 135 and MF) to be a scroll through in the middle of the instagram garbage and adds (thanks SF!). I realized that I want the images I capture to be tangible (Thanks to both JV and SF).

PART VII

It took time to understand what kind of enlarger woud fit my needs best. I didn’t think I’ll get there on my own. But like with everything - persistence and diligence are likely to take you anywhere you want to get to.

The everyday is important and I am still trying to capture it. Elīna is not here with me but our friendship is a shared book where we both keep writing our experiences. It might not have an immediate visuality. But we'll talk about it and make it alive once we're together. Life continues to be beautiful and ugly and final in both of these expressions as always. I snap this and that and post it here and there. The medium for that is inconstant.

Sometimes I get into the habit of sharing

and sometimes

I get out of it.

But this place,

for now

it’s a place

of memories

of an era.

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dailykatrina · 3 years

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