photography
Caption on face mask reads: “Protect the weak”.
A few months ago I asked a bunch of people to produce or give me an example of how they saw this world right at this moment. Some replied, and the next few weeks, their offerings will be posted in an ongoing series.
The 7th one is by Bo Kenneth Sylvest Jakobsen. It is a provocative street art comment on COVID19. If you like this, do engage and leave a comment. We’d l ove to hear from you.
Caption on face mask reads: “I was lonely”.
A few months ago I asked a bunch of people to produce or give me an example of how they saw this world right at this moment. Some replied, and the next few weeks, their offerings will be posted in an ongoing series.
The 6th one is by Niels Fabæk. If you like this, do engage and leave a comment. We’d love to hear from you.
This contribution mainly plays out as a gallery. In 2021 I am planning articles on concert photography - Niels will be one of the contributors.
This post is curated by Zaar Riisberg - the artist sent an entire folder of really good shit. We could have posted more. Make sure to catch Niels Fabæk’s concert photography here in the spring of ‘21.
A few months ago I asked a bunch of people to produce or give me an example of how they saw this world right at this moment. Some replied, and the next few weeks, their offerings will be posted in an ongoing series.
The 5th one is by Martin J. Sabine. If you like this, do engage and leave a comment. We’d love to hear from you.
This is clearly symbol minded, but this time for all the right reasons. One of the best weapons against an adversary, perceived or real, is to bastardise or outright steal their symbols and twist their values. It sows division. But there is a graphic quality at play here that I really like, best described as timeless. Timeless is better than trend and much harder to achieve.
/Z
A few months ago I asked a bunch of people to produce or give me an example of how they saw this world right at this moment. Some replied, and the next few weeks, their offerings will be posted in an ongoing series.
The 4th one is by Ron Rubenstein. If you like this, do engage and leave a comment. We’d love to hear from you. RR is a bit of an enigmatic character who takes the shots none of us do. He hails from the US and has a tv personality president. Not sure where you go to catch RR these days - last I saw, he was on IG. But I cannot confirm that as I deleted my account. It seems to be that people who lend their artworks to AB, do not post a lot of other places. If you want to see something really lush by RR go here (these are some of my favorite photographies in existence).
Feb 9: Where are those happy days…
April 23: The Sadness of the Unseen, Leaving
May 3: Hang In There.
A few months ago I asked a bunch of people to produce or give me an example of how they saw this world right at this moment. Some replied, and the next few weeks, their offerings will be posted in an ongoing series.
The 3rd one is 3 shots by Graham O’Neill. If you like this, do engage and leave a comment. We’d love to hear from you. GO is a father, family man and photographer with a progressively poetic soul. He hails from England and has a clown for a prime minister.
For more on Graham, you can catch his work on 500px, IG and Kujaja.
Edited mobile shot / random tunnel is Aarhus
First two contributions in State of the World Visual Address are out. Apparently, that has inspired others to jump in, so we might have an ongoing thing on our hands. That sounded almost dirty, if not oddly romantic too. There’s a possiblity that we might look into charity. Both me and MJS have a soft spot for youths in dire straits, so, why not?
We are still interested in contributors in general, but we are just not the kind of people to chase after you, beg you or kiss your ass. The idea of a collective and a synergy where we use each others circles to get further out without doing much SOME, is still a sound one. Too much art languishes in the dark because there is too little trust artists between. I am talking about artistry here - other photographers are still ‘a problem’, and unless you are a teacher leading students, I do not understand photo walks. But that is NOT to say artists cannot band together. They should - and we should be honest with each other. Way too many fence sitters concerned with ‘keeping up appearances’ ruin our chances of having a real, fruitful discourse. Just be fucking real instead of always trying to position yourself, or be something you are not.
That is my main grievance with people. Fly your flag, claim your divinity, but back it up with skills. Nobody wants to hear who your friends are, or that you had coffee with the 3rd cousin of Banksy in a London pub only three people know of. Seriously, cancel poser culture. And be interesting - not coy, not reserved, not arrogant etc. - interesting, suspenseful, confrontational, passionate, alive, awake, in love - be those things.
We will try and monetise this a bit, maybe for charity as well as the daily run of it. But there is still a lot of work to be done. I wish you all a nice weekend.
Remember to check the contributions for ‘State…’
A few months ago I asked a bunch of people to produce or give me an example of how they saw this world right at this moment. Some replied, and the next few weeks, their offerings will be posted in an ongoing series.
The second one is a shot by Henrik B. Clausen. If you like this, do engage and leave a comment. We’d love to hear from you. HBC is a film director and videographer from Denmark.
For more on HBC check his Vimeo
Check out #1 here
Imagine if you will Boris and his "Bullingdon Boys" talking of jolly japes guffawing out loud at their outlandish behaviour their collective arses covered by their privilage, trashed restaurants, hotel rooms and pigs heads notwithstanding is this really the acceptable background and remit for someone to run the country.
The characteristics he displayed at Oxford – entitlement, aggression, amorality, lack of concern for others – are still there, dressed up in a contrived, jovial image. It’s a mask to sanitise some ugly features. They "the boys" treated certain types of people with absolute disdain, and referred to them as ‘plebs’ or ‘grockles’, and the police were always called ‘plod’. Their attitude was that women were there for their entertainment, to do with them whatever they wished. Among them was the former Prime Minister David Cameron and George "Austerity" Osbourne a fine bunch of individuals? Well I leave that up to you to decide.
Johnson's total lack of morality and his penchant for lying is excused by those around him as "Oh it's just Boris being Boris" Really!! Portrayal of him as an irrasicable charmer running his hand through his mop of hair like a spoiled child is dangerous as this paints him as harmless when he is anything but. Class to him is the get out of jail card, the product of a privileged background, all grace and favor, the cheque book bailout if all else fails. It's hardly the credentials of an upstanding citizen.
His grotesque portrayal of ethnic minorities is another failure of his "class" upbringing, couched in terms of colonialism his references to black people as "piccaninnies with watermelon smiles" and muslim women in burkhas as nothing more than postboxes is an affront to common decency and downright racist. When challenged about this Johnson characterised it like this "I like to think my instincts, in this respect, are as blameless as those of the average person; and the thing is, I am guilty nonetheless. Not of racism, I hope, but of spasms of incorrectitude, soon over, soon regretted". Well that's fucking alright then! Hand slap to forehead…
He leaves behind him a trail of failed relationships and "bastard" children the number of which is unknown as again the cheque book defence came in handy to keep that tally out of the public domain. His failure to accept responsibility for anything is self-evident in the way he distracts, waffles and bluster's through the present crisis of the pandemic, plausible deniability his weapon of choice. His animated delusional obsession of leaving the EU without a deal is on display everyday, his use of latin phrases used as a warrior would use a shield, to deflect from his inadequacy, his continued use of language which is often a mixture of unexpected metaphors or turns of phrase, hyperbole, and nostalgia, very often with a particularly British twist such as piffle, mugwump and nincompoop.
All the character traits listed here are the sum of the parts of a public facade to absolve Boris Johnson of the reality that he is in fact of a lesser intelligence than he and his entourage would have us believe, personally I blame his parents, siblings and educators who have allowed him to become the person he is today a self obsessed misogynist, a racist and narcissist, a fucking good slap early on in life would have knocked the "braghard" out of him and sending him through a normal educational system would have stood him in better stead than the cloak of privilege which hangs loose upon his rounded shoulders.
So when Boris and his "Classmates" drive us over the Brexit cliff edge all those who voted for him and his cronies will have those immortal words ringing in their collective ears "Well it's just Boris being Boris".....
© M.J. Sabine 2020
Not, it’s not minimalism…
I am currently mooning you with my moonimalism. It's a prop to me, just like to the flat earthers. It is not real you know? The internet is, and everything on it, is for real. You can totally construct a reality online that will hold up- nah, you'll end up writing suicide notes to fickle followers and voyeurs that'll just move on should you and the pill bottle succeed in your anguished cry for help. Don't let them have the satisfaction. Don't bare yourself to the bottom feeders, let them wallow and rot in their own festering mentality. Also, have a nice week.
What? You want more? Yeah - so do I, what do you suppose we do about that?
I did some shots for a band my friend was playing in. Little did I know, that my friend was being fucked over by these twats. My friend is the most gifted guitarist I have ever met - a truly brilliant maverick musician. The band was doing old punk songs - in my opinion, something vastly below the skillset of my friend, but not the rest of the guys in the band - whom I really liked. Turned out they were doucebags. Small men as it were. I have met my share of them, trying to stab me in the back, sully my name in front of others, or just ganging up on you in a really vile manner. Why do the rest of us have to contend with other people’s insecurities?
Most shots were painstakingly done, initially run through Lightroom, Camera Raw, Photoshop and carefully finished with just the right offset - EACH AND EVERY SHOT. On top of this, I payed my own way at a one of their concerts and gave them the shots. Top dollar work, and the best pictures the band had - and they are still using them. It is good work, even though, it was pro bono or payed very little. Why? Because I work passionately for people I like and very professionally for people that pay. I value my personal integrity - after all, I have to live with myself.
So once again, people of mediocre talent are allowed to stifle those of real talent. This is a problem for this world - the envy of the truly bland. ‘I am special’ the individual seems to cry out. It always leaves me with a ‘prove it’ echoing through my brain. Instead, most will scale the body of others, until they reach the shoulders and then stand on them.
It is the same behaviour that made me hide, curtail my output or indeed control it a lot more. I have hated being an inspiration for others, and I have felt exasperated at times, when people more or less said ‘so inspirational, keep it coming’. Fuck you. I would rather not have an output than inspire people that never go out of the box themselves. The excitement for me is creation, exceeding boundaries - I want to look behind the veil, I want to be on the path to the palace of wisdom.
I do not know what path everyday farts like the ones that fucked over my friend are on. All I know is, that when the people of talent have had enough, everyone else is left up shit creek without a paddle but a ton of followers, either payed for or collected under false pretences. I am not even talking about ‘influencers’ - we all know they are a bunch of cock suckers - no, I am talking about people and artists of talent that chose to find a template for success, rather than being true to themselves and let the subconscious grab their aim and steer them in.
With this, I open the floor to others - past and present contributors or indeed readers - to enter this theme ‘I am Special’ - would you like to write part II or III? I have more instalments myself, but I do so love the yumminess of concerted and collaborated efforts.
Well, we have turned About into a sort of splash page which, hopefully, will make for easier navigation for first time visitors. We are looking into self upload on the square space platform, to make it easier for a contributor to autonomously manage their output, making for a more active site, but still curated and debated - this must never become something akin to photo sharing sites - I am pretty sure we all would prefer obscurity to a scenario like that.
But we/I are not funded by anyone or have sources of income. We are basically two contributors at the moment, a number that needs to increase - but we also need to branch out, maybe with a youtube channel. I have personally been slow to do things, but that aspect is nearing an end, as I will put most of my personal shit up on AB and nowhere else.
So we are considering funding, but we do not feel confident that we have enough of a concept yet to start using Patreon for example, or even try and find some start up money. Our branding is reluctant, and it always will be - in short, we do not even want people living on the surface of life to follow the site or contribute.
We want a paradigm shift in how you consume art, popular culture and the like. Do not just scratch the surface, break it instead, stick your arm in and yank something out - anything - be it black, dark and nasty or indeed white, lofty and positive. Real art is not easy, it is fucking hard - it breaks you and kills you only to build you up again, it flies in the face of corruption and never aids it - you want proof? Take Salvador Dali, the only thing that exonerates this fascist asshole (he was a prick of a human being), is his incredible art. Ezra Pound, HP Lovecraft etc - the list is long of people that partially did not know any better, or were just bad apples. That will never keep me from reading them on my terms, or marvel at their output. Such is the power of art.
/Zaar Riisberg
Plastic flowers. What's left unsaid lingers. Untold memories of restraint and ambiguity with a dash of stupidity. The usual suspect everyone knows is never guilty. The character you toss aside. The man you all like, but do not understand. The divider, yet the leader you congregate around. The loser you bar from accepting his defeat. The lover of light and the bringer of darkness, the voice of the silent, the anger of the vocal - the calm AND the storm. It is time to rise again.
(text first published on FB)
I have just shot a confirmation after spending an evening and morning with some adorable kids. I jump on a bus, and after a few stops a group of young people enter. A smell of beer and old cigarettes accompany them, and one guy in particular catches my attention. He sits across from me. He is jittery and not a day past 25 years of age. An infinite sadness starts to build inside me mixed with the sense that I have seen this kid before. They are all in somewhat good spirits, but my eyes still get wet. I see him whip out a small bottle of ‘Hot n’ Sweet’ (sweet, cheap liquor), and he knocks it back one time. I want to scream. I want to cry - I want to take everything he is fighting and put it on me. I am 43 - so fuck me. This kid, and I just know this, will not see 40 - maybe not even 30. My mind screams at him in silence: ‘who abandoned you’? ‘What asshole father left you to drift by yourself’?
They reach their stop, which, of course, is Mølleparken. Lots of people in Aarhus go there, however, you can be sure the drunks and addicts are out as well in the park - every damn day during the summer. As they leave I see his bag is full of ‘Hus Forbi’ - a paper produced by the homeless in Denmark. That is how I know him - he camps out selling them at the place where I used to shop on Vesterbro Torv. I get another flash of his face, and it hits me. I saw him getting harassed by a ‘normal’ woman in the inner city one time. It was classic - she told him to get a job, and he was trying to tell her that it was not that easy, that there were no jobs, and certainly not any for him. He had been begging which pisses people of. And now I know why I remember him so vividly. That day, I walked right up to him, past the woman and pressed a 100kr bill in his hand - he looked at me in total disbelief, I turned, flipped off the woman, gave her a sarcastic smile, and went on my merry way.
But it stings that it has to be this way. It tears at my being and it violates what we are about. We have no dignity if we let our own suffer. How can we fight for a place in the cosmos, when we do not even have the heart to fight for our own - much less animals, nature or the planet.
I wish I did not care. I wish I could care less. I wish, I wish, I wish. I will often question if it is just pretentiousness and subsequently second guess my own apparatus and heart. I will accuse myself of being a manipulative asshole that only feels this way, because it makes me feel righteous, special or good about myself. But I know it is not true. I am an empath and I hate every second of it. It does not make me feel good. A recently acquired friend shoved it in my face ‘oh, you’re an empath, that’s no fun, I mean, it’s lovely, but it’s horrible’. She was spot on. She often is. Unfortunately for her, it is a case of taking one to know one.
Some of us have big hearts. But it may come as a surprise to many of you, that it is a horrible burden. A bird hit the windshield at my parents, and I could not rest before I knew it was ok (80% of small birds die either way). I was passing the corridor in the house, what turns out to be a small moth flies toward me, and in the dark I instinctively swat it softly. When I get the lights on, the small fella is running in circles on the floor. That absolutely destroys me. You see? It is a fucked up way to live.
Do not look for a fight with the enemy. Beg God for peace and security. But if you do end up facing the enemy, then show endurance, and remember that the gates of paradise lie in the shadow of the sword. - Muhammad
Does this sound like a religion that goes looking for a fight to you? It says what every other ideology has spouted, what every national state has imbued in their citizens. Protect your loved ones, seek peace and only fight if you must - and then reminded them that there is honor in defending those that cannot fend for themselves.
Suicide bombers are suicide bombers, terrorism is terrorism and radical is radical - they are not married to one ideology, and are, rather, just examples of how broken we are as a race. We just celebrated Easter, a Christian holiday for a man that Islam recognises as a prophet. So what is the problem really? Same as in what we have just seen in respect to the (former) conflict in Ireland. Some people just want to see the world burn. In Denmark we have an idiot wrapping the Quran in bacon and BBQ’ing it. You can have one guess as to how our media handles it. Exactly, it is all they talk about. A piece of shit provocateur with no following to speak of, but he gets a ton of media coverage.
So here is my message for Easter: pull you head out of media in general and make up your own damn mind - chances are, that you are smarter than journalists anyway. Sod media personalities, journalists and ‘celebs’ - do not let them define your outlook.
Truth is not out there - you have to take life from instance to instance in constant analysis.
I am moving. In so many ways, but also physically. Going through stuff, I come across an old journal. A lot of the entries surprise me, and not only the ones laced with ‘weltschmerz’, but also some moments of clarity mixed in with frustration. In 1997 I wrote, that I still had no idea what life was about.
I still wrestle with that question. But I guess I found some part of the answer - since, for me, it is about being a factor for others and an inspiration. My role is to tell you ‘it is going to be alright’ or ‘I got you, do not worry’. I have been frustrated, because that was taken from me. But I will not -again- examine what that cost me. Rather, I would like to examine what life is about.
Your answer most likely differs from mine, which fits well with Friedrich Nietzsche and Albert Camus’ notion that generally speaking, there is no higher purpose. In this meaninglessness it falls to the individual to create its own meaning in the face of this. It also sits well with the fact that no two living entities experience reality the same way.
For most people that dot the landscape of this amalgamation of rock and dirt their children become what their life is about. Not only due to the feeble nature of our offspring the first years, and the need for constant nurture - but also because life stops being about your choices and what you want. Yet others decide on realising themselves understanding that kids are not an option. There is a blessing in both.
But one thing, I am pretty sure of, and biology backs me up on this one - we are supposed to care for each other, not seek vilification or division or push people in need away. If you agree with this, I am quite sure you also feel like you are constantly repeating yourself when you write or talk to people. I know I do.
And I still wonder, to the point of frustration, why, when life is that easy - when being good or honourable takes less effort than scheming to manipulate, when sharing trumps hoarding and greed, when helping feels better than fucking people over - why be an arse?
I find it ironic that I am going on about honour, but even more so, with my life long resistance to religion - I find it piss funny that I am the one going on about morals.
Kids and animals make it worthwhile for me, and more importantly, the people I love. My thirst for knowledge is what keeps me going and gives me drive.
What about you? What is your answer?
(you can comment as a guest on AB posts, you don’t have to log in)
Come closer, squish your face against the windowpane, and let me trace the pale outline of your cheek with my finger.
Doesn’t it feel safe?
It does for me.
And when you remove your face from the glass you leave behind a greasy stain, and I can continue fingering your outline for hours on end until you return.
Sometimes I pace around my room in the dark while I frantically, and with a harsh jerking of the neck, look at the window to check it every time I pass.
It glows with a cool blue light, and it is filled with outlines of the faces, the faces I caress.
Whenever I lie on my side in the bed, with my legs tugged up under me, resting my head on my stretched out arm, and my hand in a ninety degree angle, I do not surrender willingly to sleep.
I keep my eyes on the glass.
I lie in fear of blinking.
I lie in fear of absence of the light.
When I finally close my eyes there is nothing but an unending parade of rooms.
The faces do not press themselves up against the windows in here, in here I am alone, and I have no outlines to trace. I am separated from the light and the glass by the lids in front of my eyes.
Bathed in sweat I awake.
I keep my mouth open, ready to scream, but nothing ever comes out. My breathing is too shallow to create the explosion, so instead I chew on the air, like a fish lying on shore. Trying to make sure that the mechanics aren’t broken I feel for the rising motion of my chest, resting my hands on my ribs. The sensation of touch confirms that the function is maintained.
The blue window attracts more faces.
Their breaths fog op the glass.
‘Something is not right. Something seems off.’ The thought is fleeting, and even though the feeling lingers longer than the thought it too soon dissolves over the faces in the blue light. I take my hands off my increasingly protruding ribs and press them against the light making two stark silhouettes of something human on top something less than that.
There is something between the face and my hands, something that draws my finger to the cheek every time. It pulls on my elbow, it commands my sinew, and it makes my brain fire its neurons. I slip my tongue over my lips and spread saliva on the dried skin, feeling the rough edges as the organ goes from one end of the orifice to the other.
Nothing else lies outside my room and the surface of the window.
I continue living, forever haunted by the thought that the blue light one day might fade and disappear.
EDITOR’S NOTE
As always with Ron, it is about shapes and geometry. He often portrays stuff that just ‘exist’ when you look at it, if you even look at it - hence HIS interest, I think.
We are about process, art, critique. Critique is needed to create better. We are about video as well as stills, about canvas as well as technique. We hold each other to a higher standard, while we seek to appeal to not only a few. The focus of Artballistics is the ‘worthwhile’, the opposite of thumbing, as it were. Just like sex, art and creation get better and more immersive the more you focus on it.
I have asked some people to participate that bewildered tell me they are not photographers. It was never the intention of AB to be exclusionist in that way, which Eskild Krogh’s contributions show. You have to think of AB as a reaction to ‘the new old world’. We were entering an age of science, arts and reason when it, quite literally, blew up in our faces because we forgot to educate the broad masses - oh, and oops, did not eliminate poverty.
We have entered an age of stupidity and greed instead - the age of the CEO, corporate shells and a system that only sees you as a consumer. To combat that we need charm, art, humor, satire, wit and guile. We need to eliminate the noise and focus.
New stuff includes 2 new blogs coming up and stuff from Rubenstein and Sabine.
X Marks the Spot; This statement conjures up a number of connotations, the most obvious being a treasure map although it’s also used to pinpoint people and objects on maps both paper and electronic and it also alludes to sexual themes and descriptions and a number of other rather obscure situations.
The most common perception for most people is where it is used to mark treasure on pirate maps, but now it is used electronically as a little blue dot rather than a X that tracks our every step on Google maps on our smart- phone, locating each of us at our exact coordinates in time and space at any given moment. We no longer move towards our destinations guided by paper maps, the night sky, compasses or other analogue means. Instead, we are tracked from the sky by satellite. Among the things lost in the switch from analogue to digital wayfinding systems are the joy in the search, the anxiety of losing yourself, the ability to finding yourself again, within your own body, or within the space of the world.
In World War One Army Officers would mark a white X on a piece of black paper and pin it over the heart of a prisoners chest so that when they were executed by firing squad, the marksmen would be able to deliver a clean coup de grace, the command to shoot being X Marks the Spot....Take aim, Fire!
There are several sexual themes and positions tagged with the phrase X Marks the Spot, it's not for me to enlighten you here, you can do the legwork/fingerwork yourselves, I just thought I'd bring it to your attention as some of it is truly “Out there” some of you may already be aware, those who are not, the fun is always in the journey.
Another situation which is pertinent to what we do here on AB is how do you show what cannot be shown? X rated, that marks this spot, the question faces all artists, photographers and filmmakers who work on projects involving sexually explicit material. There are various answers: develop a clever abstract treatment; imply nudity, play peek-a-boo with salacious details; hide offensive details; avoid truly risqué material, but create an atmosphere that evokes the forbidden erotic world; opt for candor and humor; or simply don't do that type of work in the first place.
Why is he using naked female buttocks in support of the narrative I hear you ask? Gratuitous, probably, necessary probably not, but hey I couldn't really use a pirate map now could I, that would be way too boring and obvious.So next time you see an X marking a spot take care you could be a target for being shot or for getting involved in some bacchanalian adventure. Good Luck my friends!.....
I have more flower shots going into this post - and I invite others to contribute to make it grow larger and more beautiful every week. Thank you for being a friend Martin.
