The Edelweiss Camera: A Bulgarian Holga

A mention of an Edelweiss camera today would make people think of the newly released Diana+ Edelweiss. Ironically, an edelweiss is a small, white, sturdy, very rare alpine flower (see left). And the new Diana+  edition is just a reproduction a of the original Diana+ ; its only difference is the look and the only connection to its name is the color.

But actually, the original Edelweiss was a Bulgarian medium format 120 camera,

Maple Manor (Dallas)

It’s a hidden magical place in the heart of the city that can tell the story of any dream. I was honored to discover it through Margie & Jeff, who invited me to photograph their wedding.

Reliving history

I always wonder if people who reenact historic battles go through the same thoughts, feelings and internal turmoil as people who fight in actual wars. These are from the Battle of Nancy (as reenacted in Waxahachie, TX).

Lady of the Lake

©Ellie Ivanova

She is a Lady from the Arthurian legend and like most mysterious women, an enchantress in both romantic and magical ways. Belonging to a separate realm — like a lake or forest that will never be truly human — is always alluring. So I’ve always felt attraction to many legendary ladies who, in one way or another, belong to water, like La Llorona.

Turns out that White Rock Lake in Dallas  also has such a legend, alhough the lady in question is not a powerful enchantress. According to the tale, a blond woman in her early 20s will appear at night, dripping wet in a 1920s evening dress and will flag a car passing along the road circling the lake. The woman will tell the driver she had an accident and needs to get home. The driver will then drive to the address given, but then the girl is gone, leaving only a puddle on her seat. The driver then knocks on the door of the house and learns that that she was the family’s daughter who died in a boat accident on the lake one night decades ago.

Summer in Black & White

Images from this summer. I included only those that don’t have a sibling in the color series. Click on each thumbnail to view larger image. Ilford film, Pentax 35mm. ©Ellie Ivanova.

Holga Envy: the Hobo large format camera

Dominique and I in a Holga comparison.

While roaming the Tuscan countryside this summer, we happened upon the gallery of a French photographer living in Italy, Dominique Bollanger. While we admired his silver and large platinum prints and joked the old jokes about my Holga whimsicality compared to his high precision contact prints, he whipped out a wooden 8″x10″ box and told us, “This is my Holga”. We didn’t believe him, of course. We thought it was just another Holga joke.

Turned out, it really was his “Holga”, the same camera he used to capture the iconic Italian landscapes and then make beautiful contact prints straight out of it, with no intermediate enlargements. And if you imagine the pain of carrying around a heavy wooden box up and down the idyllic hills, you get my initial reaction. A 4″x5″ large format is inconvenient enough – now 8″x10″ would be a torture. Right?

Elliott Erwitt’s Dogs and other Contemporaries in Bremen

Felix, Gladys and Rover, USA, 1974. Elliott Erwitt, Magnum Photos

I was very pleasantly surprised to see an Elliott Erwitt retrospective at the Focke Museum in Bremen, Germany, a great local culture museum. The connection with Erwitt? I don’t know. It could be because one of the Bremen musicians was a dog, or because dogs are beloved animals here. But we don’t really need a connection. In any case, the retrospective was in the museum’s special exhibition space and was extremely well attended. The museum was outright crowded on a recent Sunday afternoon with lots of interested patrons.

Elliott Erwitt has an unusual background as an artist and photographer. Born in Paris to Russian emigres, raised in Milan and then the US, he has built a tremendous ability to approach a city or a place without assumptions of exoticism. He manages to find universal meaning in different places, some of them traditionally presented to the Western viewer through the exoticizing lens of the outsider, like Brazil or Iran. But not him.

Italy in color (2011)

     

The Governess (1998)

This amazing film by director Sandra Goldbacher is a wonderful piece of visual poetry based on an intriguing story. But beyond its qualities as a film, I see it as a gem metaphor of the age-old conflict between photography as art expression and photography as documentation of reality. A classic must-see if you are even remotely interested in the visual arts.

The curse and blessing of traveling with a camera

©Ellie Ivanova

If you’ve been reading this blog for some time, you know what I think about travel photography - but that’s travel photos as a final product and as an approach. The experience itself though is quite another matter. And I am not talking about traveling to photograph for a project; what I have in mind is traveling for other purposes – even for fun – while being a photographer. As anyone with any level of personal investment in photography has discovered, that can be an exhilarating or an excruciating experience. Here’s why:

1. You see images everywhere. Not just people, places and things, but images with deeper meaning behind them. You enjoy the new sights in a different way. On my flight from Milan to Hamburg last week, I saw the two flight attendants working the aisle with trays in their hands. When they tried to pass each other, they faced in opposite directions and lifted the trays up simultaneously. An instant, beautiful, graceful image that struck me as a lightning – and made me sad since my camera was packed under the seat… You can’t stop being a photographer even if you have something else on your mind!

2. Just like it happens among dog owners, having a camera in hand connects you to other camera-bearers. They start a small talk about your camera and flaunt their own and include you in some sort of an instant camaraderie. You are a part of the tribe

FORMA in Milan

Fondazione FORMA per la fotografia, Milan

We discovered this photography space by chance – or rather, by the recommendation of the Lomography store in Milan (which deserves a separate post). It is a really cool initiative dubbing itself a “photography house”: equal parts conceptual exhibit space, a secondary market gallery of important names and a photography education and promotion venue. One of its coolest features is the location, in the historic former warehouse of the Milan public transportation authority, still headquartered next door.

This kind of architectural reuse makes a huge difference in the contextualization of new venues in established cities. Even as they are born, they already have a memory, an adoptive pedigree. In this case, FORMA symbolically takes on the vital role of urban transport in the building of a community and ultimately, the dissemination of ideas. It also has a tiny restaurant where discussions  bubble, just next to the bookstore, where we found images by photographers I’ve been looking for a long time. You can bet it will be one of my favorite places in Milan when I move there in the future.

Mindful looking

©Ellie Ivanova. Brothers (2011)

The most important reason I believe in photography is its ability to transform the person taking the picture. When you have a camera in your hand, it makes you look harder at the world you are trying to capture. It forces you to notice things,  find beauty in unassuming places and as a side effect, understand the world better, or differently. Love it more. That was in fact the reasoning that gave birth to my idea of the Third Eye Wokshops for Roma kids.

But you don’t need to have a camera in your hand to trigger this process. Actually, the first exercise beginning photographers get is simply bringing a cut out rectangle to their eyes , to practice seeing the world through that for a time. Sometimes we need a created occasion that would make us look. Time set aside for just observing and taking in what we’ve seen.

Taking a few moments out of our busy lives and making an attempt at really seeing is a kind of meditation. I like these moments of intentional mindfulness. This is how I do it.

Photography books (with the privilege of hindsight)

"Music" (1980) by Jan Saudek

A friend of mine received a stash of old books from a retired photographer and invited me to take my pick among them. It was an interesting experience to get a glimpse of what was thought to be the best practices in photography back then and compare what of those old ideas has withstood the test of time. And wow, I’d say that photography and our attitudes towards it surely have changed! If you could have any photo-related book from 30 years ago, would you have gotten any?

If you go to a random Barnes & Noble today and ask for the photography books, you’ll be directed to two disparate sections of the bookstore. One will be labeled “Digital Photography”, the other simply “Photography”. The former will occupy two whole bookshelves and will be located next to the computer manuals; the second one, most probably rather small, will be part of the “Art” area along the wall. This is not retail disarray. It’s an organizational clue to two different philosophies of understanding and using photography.

My silver gelatin prints with photogram elements (Photo+Craft)

© Ellie Ivanova, Playing with the Strings of the Past (2010)

Lightbox Photographic Gallery in Astoria, OR, has made its name promoting film and traditional photographic methods as well as alternative processes. Its upcoming national juried show, Photo+Craft, focuses on works that have a strong conceptual voice balanced with a high level of craftsmanship. Two of my silver gelatin prints with photogram elements will be part of this exciting exhibition.

I realize I haven’t written here about this process that I started working on recently. Since I take exception to the concept of photography as a transparent representation of reality, these recent explorations have led me to ways in which photography tweaks and interprets the world instead of simply registering it.

New Texas Talent XVIII at Craighead Green Gallery (Dallas)

Smoke & Tears (2010) gelatin silver print with photogram elements by Ellie Ivanova

Yes, I do have some news to report. I was invited to participate in this year’s edition of New Texas Talent, the prestigious annual exhibition for emerging artists held at the Craighead Green Gallery in Dallas. It’s an honor to be represented there.

Conceived in 1994, New Texas Talent is designed to introduce and promote emerging visual artists in the commercial gallery market. Each year hundreds of images are submitted for review by a gallery selected independent juror. This year’s juror was Marcie Inman, Director of Exhibitions for the Irving Arts Center.

The exhibition opens on August 13 and will run till September 3, 2011. Craighead Green Gallery is located in the cool Dallas Design District. Hope to see you there!