Mysterious Barricades

Can anybody tell me just how cool this moment is???!!!

Yes, that would be me making a selfie while Andy Summers signs a copy of the Rolling Stones magazine for me.

He is here in Milan from L.A. for his photo exhibition 'Mysterious Barricades' at the Leica Italy store in Milan.

I am always very happy to be surprised by an artist or actor or musician who is also a talented photographer.  I hope Andy would forgive me for not knowing of his photographic accomplishments up until now.  idem, Lenny Kravitz and Dennis Hopper and others.   It is becoming something that I am very passionate about... people who can bridge one of their main talents into the visual arts.  Listening to an interview on the Italian radio, great to hear Andy talk about how he has worked so hard on music over the entirety of his career, the fluidity, improvisation, harmonics, balance, levels, etc that I can't begin to do justice to explain and then recreate that again in the photographic sense - for Andy to create a visual sound or picture with a certain harmonic.  Very cool!  I'd say that matches very well the photos of his I saw tonight.  I loved it and would very much like to collect his pictures if such a thing were possible...

I think that I try the same from my engineering and design background - I am always looking to understand the reason for something and then to interpret it in the most simple and relevant way that creates classic and timeless designs and at the same time very innovative and clever to surpass the user's expectations.   In some way I try to relate that to my photography - to create a certain immediacey and closeness in my photos that transcends the act of taking the picture, to relay only the truth of the moment that surprises the expectation of the viewer. 

ha!  I can't believe I just wrote all that.  Well, I think it is true enough.  I want to cut away the camera in the process of taking a photo and just capture what it is I am seeing or feeling that seems special at any moment.  As Robert Doisneau would suggest, I can point my finger at something and in that moment say it is art - and it will be.  An interpretation of Bresson's decisive moment that I much prefer...  Why so often, I will not take the camera to my eye, but just point from a direction - either at my waste or from my extended arm.  I'm not so interested in 'seeing' the image in the viewfinder as I am 'guessing' the content, being intuitive and being in Bresson's 'moment' and Doisneau's 'art'. Fix the focal distance, set the aperture to create the look, know the focal length and distances, understand the light and direction, be in the moment....

Anyway, I am sure it is all a bunch of crap. haha  not sure why I need to lay open all the bones tonight.  Maybe is the outcome of learning the loss of a long lost friend over the weekend.  I've been looking at a lot of stuff in the past 48 hours and putting under the microscope.  Funny, my bank has been pushing a life policy the past few weeks that is in offer.  Go to hell, I say.  I'm not going anywhere soon!!!  :)

Still giggly after meeting Andy Summers tonight.  :)



If you take photographs, don’t speak, don’t write, don’t analyse yourself, and don’t answer any questions. - Robert Doisneau