Thursday, November 25, 2010

Duane Michals, on what we feel



"The best part of us is not what we see, it's what we feel. We are what we feel. We are not what we look at. We're not our eyeballs, we're our mind. People believe their eyeballs and they're totally wrong. That's why I consider most photographs extremely boring, just like Muzak, inoffensive, charming, another waterfall, another sunset. This time, colors have been added to protect the innocent. It's just boring. But that whole arena of one's experience, grief, loneliness, how do you photograph lust? I mean, how do you deal with these things? This is what you are, not what you see. It's all sitting up here. I could do all my work sitting in my room. I don't have to go anywhere". Duane Michals

The photographs: Chance Meeting (1970) and self portraits of unknown date

Monday, November 22, 2010

Paris, more thoughts on the Eiffel Tower



I've made my own re-take on a clichéd Eiffel Tower picture postcard, turning the image into my version of Foucault's Pendulum.

Foucault's pendulum is named after the French physicist Léon Foucault, who conceived the device as an experiment to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth. Foucault made his most famous pendulum when he suspended a 28 kg bob with a 67 meter long wire from the dome of the Panthéon in Paris. The plane of the pendulum's swing rotates clockwise 11° per hour, making a full circle in 32.7 hours.

The photographs: My pendulum and Foucault's Pendulum in the Panthéon, Paris