For this final assignment, the choice of subject is mine: the only proviso is that the subject should be one from this course – people and/or the places they inhabit.
I must first choose the kind of client (newspaper, magazine, text book publisher, advertising agency, television graphics, etc.), the purpose of the assignment (educational, informational, promotional) and how the images will be used (to illustrate a story, to sell a product etc).
Having assigned myself the brief, I need to submit between 8– 12 photographs and accompany the final images with a short written assessment that should include:
• the ‘client briefing’
• a statement of how I set about planning the photography
• how well I succeeded, including the difficulties and opportunities you encountered that you had not anticipated at the outset.
Thick clouds of smoke were floating in the room while Alain was talking to me with his strong Southern French accent.
He was waving his dark cigar like an orchestra's director could use his stick during the new year's eve concert.
His green eyes were shining and his cheeks blushing due to the wine and the passion he harboured respectively in his stomach and heart.
Our dinner had been fantastic.
French cuisine, the real one, not the one they sell to tourists in the snobbish restaurants in Paris, is just a step far from heaven.
I was satisfied, rather happy and very interested in listen to what Alain defined as "a very good proposal".
After all, a student photographer like me does not have a lot of opportunities to get a photographic project from an editor.
I knew, Alain is a friend, but when he speaks about art he is always very serious.
"Where is poetry, Marco? Nowadays people only speak about money and commercial activities. No more poetry, no more real soul and artistic commitment in our job! The last books I edited showed only how beautiful spending money is in our region. Ok, I admit that I made nice profits with
those commercial books and advertisement, but I am fed up. Now I want poetry, at least a bit. You are not a famous photographer, you are a student, but I would like you to produce a work of art. You must think out of the box!"
I had been in South of France since three days and I was planning a short stay there to meet some old friends like Alain and recover from a very tough winter, full of stress and work.
I had my camera with me, like always, but no intention to work on such a difficult subject.
However, Alain's words were really appealing to me.
Poetry. What a beautiful idea to describe with photos and poetical texts an imaginary trip into the deep and charming belly of Provence.
"I could do a small, very personal photographic journey in Arles, looking for people and places" I suggested shyly.
Alain leaned back on his chair, breathed in a long puff of smoke from his cigar and smiled at me with satisfaction.
"Yes! Do so and I will publish your book".
When I arrived at the train station in Arles the world seemed different.
A world of deafening cicadas and fast moving clouds throbbed incessantly over my head.
My lungs still loaded with sea air, inhaled en route from Marseille, brought rich oxygen to my brain and I could see a new reality.
The search for myself that I set for my French stay had started.
I looked down and I saw the stairs.
It was the start of the trip on which I was about to embark.
Image 1.
f 3.5, 1/500 sec, 800 ISO, 18 mm
Periphery. Magic and cursed place, privileged ghetto of a disparate humanity.
I arrived, confused among the tenements, their distant noises, the deep belly of the Republic.
A hostile world, seemed to surround me, indifferent to my presence, locked up in itself as it had always been imposed.
Finding myself amongst these buildings from the 80s, immersed in the scents of a far away Maghreb, appeared impossible to me.
Image 2.
f 8, 1/750 sec, 200 ISO, 31 mm
I started walking slowly, lazily, almost lulled by the unreal atmosphere of the desert around me.
Suddenly the clouds rushed away and left space for a hot and reassuring summer sun, memories of a Mediterranean childhood.
Among the narrow streets of the maze twisting under my eyes, unsure footsteps led me elsewhere.
Then, for a while, I felt the life in the maze where I found myself.
My faithful camera, perpetually on my shoulder, only confirmed the presence of shadows carved on a secular pavement.
Image 3.
f 8, 1/350 sec, 200 ISO, 18 mm
And the maze led me to a door. It was ajar.
A drop of ice cold sweat beaded on my face and my heart began to beat faster.
The door was in front of me and invited me to look, to open its doors to the curiosity of my eyes.
Was the search over?
The hope of finding someone now seemed certain.
Image 4.
f 8, 1/30 sec, 200 ISO, 20 mm
It was a matter of moments.
The reflection ran away without noise, without a trace among the lanes of Arles.
It remained imprinted on my Pentax sensor, tangible sign of its presence among my innermost thoughts.
The hunt had really started and now it couldn't help but notice!
Image 5.
f 11, 1/60 sec, 200 ISO, 75 mm
Advancing faster and faster I found some tracks.
The fingerprints left by the one who kept escaping me were now clear and indelible.
I was after him; he couldn't escape much longer among the twists and turns of this unknown city. His fingerprints clearly visible were almost a recall left intentionally so as not to get lost, like a thread of Ariadne that only I could follow.
Image 6.
f 6.7, 1/80 sec, 200 ISO, 70 mm
Suddenly an encounter.
My heart jumped into my throat as if peeled out of my chest, like squeezed by an invisible hand.
In the distance I saw a small creature who, like a devil, overtaking me, pushed me away with an unexpected strength.
"Follow me stranger!" shouted the girl running away at breakneck speed.
Image 7.
f 19, 1/125 sec, 200 ISO, 133 mm
And now the race.
Fast, behind her, who was disappearing far away.
My powerful strides couldn't do anything against her unreal speed.
I had arrived.
And they appeared around the corner.
I had found them.
Image 8.
f 19, 1/350 sec, 1600 ISO, 21 mm
"Fais gaffe mec, ici c'est le paradis, ici c'est Macondo" ("Beware friend, this is paradise, this is Macondo").
MACONDO
The time blood wet
crystallises in my thoughts,
goes back,
flips and laughs.
Fearless to say everything,
without reason for what I think
I take the time and without sense
I laugh in front of a book,
I see the world as it is,
I see the world like it is
while others observe it.
I feel it sad the world (this world)
dissolved in its anxieties,
burned by ancestral sicknesses,
a large brothel,
ephemeral and odorous.
And the chestnut tree on the mountain
loses its leaves,
waiting for the season that will come
knowing already, sadly dying inside,
that I will not see me again.
Distant planet is mine,
shining star, loser star,
ridiculous in his movement,
uncertain and cursed tingling.
Yet free ... forever!
Gypsies with colourful dresses,
games of simoniacal magic,
in an incessant succession of voices, sounds,
in a spiral of time
that turns on itself and swallows,
not me, but itself,
returns there, same as before,
and tries, without peace,
to turn against me that I am the time,
myself, as in a mirror.
And in this frenzy of shapes
I think to Macondo,
distant homeland
that I lost without realising it
but that remains inside of me,
stuck in the heart.
Goodbye Macondo ...
Macondo is me!
Image 9.
f 19, 1/350 sec, 1600 ISO, 18 mm
Image 10.
f 19, 1/350 sec, 1600 ISO, 18 mm
Image 11.
f 5.6, 1/350 sec, 200 ISO, 18 mm
As if released from a dream, I woke up drenched in sweat with my camera close against my chest.
On the terraces of the arena in Arles I had found myself.
Image 12.
f 16, 1/60 sec, 200 ISO, 20 mm
COVER - "Photographic I"
Image 13.
f 4.5, 1/10 sec, 1600 ISO, 45 mm
CONCLUSIONS
The project my imaginary friend and editor Alain asked me to develop is a photographic journey in the city of Arles looking for people and places.
My search is not only focused on people and places, but it is also supposed to be a sort introspectional journey looking for myself as a photographer.
That is the reason why the title of the project is "Photographic I".
The aim is indeed to print out a small book as final work of this course and present it to the assessment.
The approach I wanted to have planning the shooting was as "cold" and "neutral" as possible. Even the post production left the photos almost unchanged.
The idea was to depict reality with a sort of crescendo with the twelve images describing my journey.
First the "naked" places of the suburbs of the French town and then their inhabitants, the people.
The apparent lack of poetry in the images should be compensated by the "poetical" text.
This final assignment was a fantastic photographic experience.
I am very satisfied because the work done in Arles helped me to express what I learned during the last year with my tutor and the PaP course.
Indeed I have learned a lot and I really believe I have made good progresses from the beginnings of my first assignment to this final one.
I have to thank my tutor Robert for his advice and patient encouragement throughout this course.
I am particularly proud of my last assignment as it also gave me the chance to experiment a story board and doing what I like most: combining writing with photography.
I am also fully aware that I still have to improve my technique and that my journey is still long.
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