The Pencil of Nature
- Overture in three parts: allegro, adagio, minuet -
To be in a city at night, with all the lights in the darkness, vague noises, much less people walking in the empty streets has something magical, meditational. it has its own existential music more like blues or jazz. As I have taken the photos in the city my subconcious was singing songs from Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen silently in my mind and meditating about the city life much more louder and faster at day time.
"Like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free"
The first part of the series „The Pencil of Nature“ consists of long time exposures of the city lights whereas the movements of the camera can be seen as the mimicry of the accelerating rapidity of life in the city and the perception the rapidity creates. The photos show the city in an abstract modern manner, reducing the visual impression of night in the city to vibrant light sculptures with an architectural quality.
The second part of the series were photographed in the ancient European forests, in different times of the year, from which the Grimm Brothers have taken their inspiration for „The Snow White“ „The Red Riding Hood“ and many other fairy tales.This time I had classical music in background, mostly Vivaldis „Four Seasons“.
The photos from the forests create a visual contrast to the first part of the series, reducing the forest to form and colour, reflecting the perception of following the trees through the sky, the serenity and when it gets darker the unscanny perception of being in the nature.
The third part of the series follows inspirations from being „on the way“. Nature and urban are wowen together in an impressionist manner creating a bond between the depths of the forests and the urban city life, two life forms shaping me, and let me miss and respect the other. This time it is Doors, Nirvana and Metallica playing in my thoughts.
The project is named after Henry Fox Talbots series of photographs from 1840‘s. He had seen a pencil, in the ability of the camera to draw, to record the light. And my series of photographs can be seen after 170 years as a contemporary counterpart from the dimensions of the digitalised, with acceleration urbanised world.
