quote – Page 3 – tom stappers

Mar 14

text 3

By Tom | photography

Tom Stappers’ work in this exhibition represents the aesthetic reflex. The photographer looks at the outside world to see what all of us others no longer see, because we are a little tired and lead our lives absorbed by our own thoughts and sorrows. He rediscovers for us the visible reality and shows us how fascinating and disturbing, how beautiful it can be. To this end he uses an adequate aestheticising imagery which owes a lot to the adventure of modern art. We experience the same urban atmosphere. I’m not surprised to hear that Stappers is also a jazz photographer. The urban atmosphere – and in a way the atmosphere of the artistic live photography of the 1950’s and 1960’s with its graffiti and “la beauté du laid” [the beauty of ugliness].

Mar 13

Winogrand: quotes from 2 tv interviews

By Tom | street photography

“When things move I get interested, I know that much.”……….”I think that there isn’t a photograph in the world that has any narrative ability. Any of them. They do not tell stories, they show you what something looks like. To a camera.”……….”It’s the subject. I think I’m interested in how a lot of things look.”……….

……….Q: You shoot every day? Winogrand: Yeah,sure.

……….”the photograph isn’t what was photographed, it’s something else. It’s about transformation.”……….”there is a transformation [of the banal] , you see, when you just put four edges around it. That changes it. A new world is created.”……….

……….Q: Do you (….) think of yourself as an artist? Winogrand: I probably am. I don’t think about it (……) But, if I have to think, yeah, I guess so.

(quotes edited and selected by Tom Stappers – for more: click red tags below this post)