Words to Images – Page 2 – tom stappers

Mar 14

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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

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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)

Mar 12

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text 2

By Tom | street photography

Photography to me is not just another graphic technique, but an independent medium with its very own iconography and specific means of expression. There is evident mutual influencing by other artforms, but personally I prefer photography in its pure form that in no way tries to imitate or tries to be like other graphic arts. It does not seem very clear to some people, by the way, why some photography is supposed to be art, and some is not. I think what makes it art is defined by both the design (which is often instant and spontaneous, therefore intuitive to a high degree) and by the psychological impact of the photographer’s personal selection from reality. In these aspects photography can be totally autonomous.

(from introduction, graphic arts exhibition containing my photography, The Hague 1997 © Tom Stappers)

Mar 11

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just titles

By Tom | photography

house of plenty

gentlemen’s delight

town ghost

fishnet replay

…or blonde

turn a blind eye

sandwich – Kim, Njusja, Paultje, Katerin, Michael

futur noir

rain clouds & abandoned game

VE EN TE EN

dead end galaxy

el leil

thrown

sea of dreams (for Vali Myers)

healing (=the front page of my new website www.tomstappers.com )

beau métro

Mar 11

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text 1

By Tom | street photography

“Observations, memories, associations, they all merge at the moment you take the picture. You don’t think of it beforehand. Intuition is far more important, since everything happens so fast that often it isn’t until much later, that you realise what it is that made you decide to take the picture. I think interpretation is more important than striving for objectivity or completeness.”

(part of a text accompanying an exhibition of my photographs about Antwerp, Belgium, at the Flemish Cultural Center, Amsterdam, nov./dec.1994 © Tom Stappers)

Mar 10

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performance tonight

By Tom | photography

I just got an email from Jeffrey Shurdut, who will perform tonight with the equally gifted Joe McPhee at The Stone, New York. He must have overlooked that I’m not “in town” so I won’t be able to make it I need not add, in spite of the invitation, but what a pity. I would love to photograph a jazz concert again after a long time, love to hold those sturdy Nikons, use the speedlights and the motordrives, feel the weight around my neck and count the exposed films in my pocket. The game of photography, as Garry Winogrand called it, offers a lot more than just pictures, it is the excitement, being a master of timing, the tactile, the response of mechanical high-end material and being involved in (or at least very close to) the action…

Mar 09

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real street photography

By Tom | street photography

Contrary to what one would conclude after looking at a large number of sites by this name, street photography is about people, not streets. In fact, it is a misleading name if you are not familiar with it.

Mar 09

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limited edition

By Tom | photography

Somebody wants to buy one of my photographs, but only if it is from a limited edition. I tell him I don’t do limited editions, and explain that it’s not in his interest either…
The buyer says he doesn’t want to pay the price if the photograph can be reproduced in theoretically limitless numbers. I explain that it would be absolute horror to me to have to manually produce a really large number of identical first-class prints, repeating every time all the darkroom corrections and retouching afterwards (we are talking about good old gelatin silver prints, archival and all). So suppose I make an edition of say 50 to make sure I have enough stock for the future, since I can’t exceed the limit, once set. Had the buyer not insisted, chances are that I will never ever make more copies of the wanted photograph than maybe 5, if it’s not an absolute superseller! So be honest, what would you prefer if you’re looking for exclusivity?

Mar 08

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forever young

By Tom | photography

When zapping on my tv I saw 3 digital compact cameras being demonstrated to a group of elderly ladies. Out of curiosity I watched and heard a young woman telling them that they all offered a special new feature: the first camera had a built-in program that could digitally remove wrinkles, the second one would only take a picture if the indicated number of persons were visible on the screen, so that someone could join in, and the third would only snap if no one closed his eyes or blinked at the moment of exposure. The first camera was the favorite…

Mar 07

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tourist remover

By Tom | street photography

Only a few days ago I was walking in the icy drizzle of late winter in the beautiful medieval center of the French town of Dinan, Bretagne, paying attention not to slip on its equally picturesque cobblestoned streets. It reminded me of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s book “Les Européens”. There were few people on the streets and only a few families, looking a bit lost while visiting the fairground along the river bank.
I had just bought a postcard of Cartier-Bresson’s man jumping over a puddle, which was almost the only one of interest in the whole Super U shopping mall, apart from some Doisneau cards.
But in this cold and wet town I missed the people to bring it to life. I was holding my Contax in my pocket, but didn’t take anything.
A thought struck me: the Tourist Remover! I had only just recently learned about this program with its ominous name which can remove anything that moves from your digital snaps. You just take a series with some intervals and the program “sees” what moves, removing it and filling the gap with what it perceives as permanent. If only those digitally removed tourists remained floating somewhere in cyberspace…. How happily would I use them to fill my empty streets! A program called “Tourist Adder” for the street photographer? But I’m not a digital photographer. On second thoughts, no thanks, I’ll manage, I’ll deal with reality.