Belfort en zwart-wit

Generally speaking, I’m a color person.

What I mean by this is just that given a choice between monochrome and rich, vivid color, I’m going for the latter every time.

Furniture?

Clothing?

Photography?

Doesn’t really matter, that’s typically what I’m picking.

Most times, if I’m processing monochrome, it’s because I screwed something up. Couldn’t get the white balance right, or multiple light sources, or weird exposures. That kind of thing. It’s very rare that I’d head to B&W as an artistic choice first.

My one big explosion of monochrome was done my first winter in New York – a gnarly one, as first winters inevitably are. I was making instant prints on early experimental Impossible Project film and watching ungodly amounts of the first few seasons of Law & Order. I still think that series contains some of my best works. (God that feels like a thousand lifetimes ago!)

I wonder sometimes if it’s that I can’t see in monochrome that I can’t shoot in monochrome.

The beauty of a long-term hobby is that you’ve tried nearly everything once or twice over the years. My early scratching attempts at photography, though fraught with egregious dutching that makes my head spin, provided opportunities to give nearly any and all techniques a go.

In those early explorations I did go through an Alphaville (Godard, not the synth band) phase that I think sucked out all future inclinations towards moody contrasty abstracty discomforting B&Ws.

All that to say that I couldn’t for the life of me put a finger on why a monochrome treatment made so much sense to me as I was processing photos of the Ghent Bell Tower, but here we are!

Laisse les filles tomber.

For this autumn Polaroid Week, I’ve been using the new Polaroid Lab to make prints from the trip I took last February. I usually have a fairly good sense of what works within the confines of the medium: it’s not just aspect ratio and framing, but really the overall makeup of the image, whether contrast, levels, colors, or tones. Nothing isn’t taken into consideration.

I so badly wanted this image to print nicely. I’m obsessed with the interplay of dark and light – the woman in the middle could be cropped into a perfect chiaroscuro portrait. I’m also partial to the shadows on the green coat in the right foreground.

The resulting instant image? Off. Wonky. Wrong. It’s a good reminder that every now and then you’ll hit a dud, but when it comes to the artistic process that’s probably a feature and not a bug.

Three Hours in Tirana

The traffic ringing Tiranë was just about what you’d expect: back ups, confusing street signs, shouting drivers, horns, diesel fumes. My cabbie decided that he’d had enough – and I can’t blame him: what with a drive back across the border to Macedonia and all, it had turned into a 5-6 hour adventure. He found a relatively safe street and dropped me off, luggage and all, and told me to be very careful and to take an “Albania taxi,” but being who I am I chose to walk into town instead.

Not the best plan I ever had. 

In truth, I felt very safe the entire time. My sketch-o-meter is highly highly attuned from my years in the Mission District, and nothing about Tiranë set it off. However, my arms were about ready to fall off after 20 minutes (the joys of lugging camera gear around?), and I stopped at Parku Rinia for a quick snack and some light sunbathing. It felt amazing in the sunshine after some chilly time in Macedonia. After a quick respite, I gritted my teeth and made for a luggage storage facility I had found with some quick googling at the hotel.

Luggage storage nearly always seems to be a trial, even in a good-sized city like Tiranë. I’ve had so many ridiculous run-ins over the years (dragging a rollaboard across the sand in Viareggio is a standout) that I suppose it’s no surprise I moved to backpack-exclusive travel for the vast majority of my adventuring.

Given this illustrious track record, I was surprised and pleased to find an excellent solution in the simply named Luggage Storage Tirana. It was having a soft opening of sorts (lucky me!), and I was able to leave my bags for a nominal fee. I got doubly lucky in that the proprietor, who first apologized for his command of English, saw my surname and asked, “ma non parli italiano per caso? - you don’t happen to speak Italian, do you?”

What I learned later that day is this was not a particularly unique occurrence – Italian is still the most widely spoken foreign language in Albania, a remnant of fascist invasion and communist-era pirated Italian television – but this was still a remarkably welcomed turn of events. And should you ever have need to find luggage storage in Tiranë, I would highly recommend you do the same. Bags safely deposited, I made my way to the center square.

I was greeted by a busy fun fair and Christmas market in Sheshi Skënderbej – the aforementioned center square, named for the Albanian national hero Skanderbeg. It seemed slightly smaller than it actually is with all the goings on of the day, but was massive nonetheless.

The square is gorgeous: pure pedestrian paradise, ringed with key civic and cultural buildings including the brilliant old Et’hem Bey mosque which was unfortunately (for me) undergoing renovation. The majority of the architecture is no doubt a relic of the Hoxha regime… decidedly socialist, but somehow lighter or less imposing than some of the heavy-handed brutalist relics one might encounter in, say, Podgorica or Zagreb (which, incidentally, I adore, but the beauty of Tiranë’s buildings felt more universally accessible).

I was absolutely enthralled with that contrast of harsh architecture and the palpable warmth radiating off the people I encountered. The square rang with laughs and shouts as it sparkled and gleamed in the surprisingly bright sunshine. There was something to be said for the incongruity of a massive and hideous conical Christmas “tree” with – I kid you not – “Feliz Navidad” emanating from one of the many food stalls in a majority-Muslim country. (Proving, as always, that we can all just get along, should we so choose.)

The building I was most looking forward to seeing in my quick tour was the Piramida, a UFO-looking thing from the end of the communist era, originally built in memory of Hoxha, now abandoned and decaying.

If decrepit communist ruins and discussion of photography aren’t your thing, you can probably skip to the end of the post. In fact, I probably could make this its own post, but what’s the fun of that?

There have been plans to rebuild the thing for years, but here it sits, all broken windows and garbage and graffiti.

While the sunshine had at first been a welcome antidote to all the cold, it did lead to some photographic challenges. What’s the fun of an endless blue sky and harsh midday shadows? I’m not sure how I would have liked to have shot the pyramid, but what I got certainly didn’t capture much of what I was hoping for. At the time I remember being frustrated I had nothing wider than the Q’s 28mm, though I’m wondering if that would really have given me what I wanted.

Black and white didn’t seem to absolve the images of their sins either, and it’s all a bit frustrating in reflection. All the same, it was exactly as impressive in person as I’d hoped – something I should probably try to keep in mind.

The most delightful part was just how accessible it was: 10 minutes south of the square on foot, just across the river. Something like this in the states would be fenced in, boarded up, inaccessible (I mean, relatively inaccessible), but here people climbed freely up the sloping concrete sides for the view over the city.

I wanted terribly to join in, but my footwear was suspect and tumbling off a building to crack a tooth or worse hours before an international flight seemed like a bad plan, even for me.

It may finally be time to give up the ghost and admit that I’m an adult.

All too soon, my time was up, and I cut a quick path back to the luggage storage to grab my bags. Across the street was a cab stand, and after some quick haggling in Italian (The best kind of haggling, if I do say so myself. That language was made for furiously fast negotiation.) I was on my way to the airport.

My quick Albanian tour felt almost like a gift with all the hassle it took to get there. I’m glad I toughed out the trip in, and am thoroughly looking forward to return visit some time in the future. Faleminderit, Shqipnia – thanks, Albania!

Havana Ooh Na Na

On a bit of a whim, I decided to participate in 2019’s first Roll Film Week, which you can learn more about here or explore on Instagram here. The quick rundown: RFW is a semiannual event that’s all about sharing photos made on—you guessed it—roll film, i.e. 120 and 135 film.

I still shoot film for so many reasons – primarily, as a way to cheat due to the fact that I simply like the look of film – but I am even worse about analyzing my analog work than my digital. The same can be said for roll film vs. instant film. And I even shoot reversal more than negative (meaning no need to scan to see what’s what, really)… and cut down entirely on monochromatic negative when I left my ersatz darkroom in California a good 5-6 years ago. There’s no excuse, but scanning is tedious, and I’m fairly certain I lost my loupe or left it with the darkroom gear.

I tumbled into analog photography fairly early in my journey and delighted in the weird and wonderful: light leaks, toy cameras, sprocket holes, cross-processing, I wanted it all. Somewhere along the way as my aesthetic matured it seemed logical to mirror my digital process, and Canon 35mm SLRs were a near like-for-like translation. I started with an inherited Rebel S, graduated to the EOS-1N (which came with to Cuba), and now typically use an EOS-1V. It’s nice to have the option to pivot to a digital back while maintaining a shared set of lenses.

Since switching to the Leica Q in November, I haven’t brought a 35mm on travels and am not certain what might make the most sense. Perhaps my old workhorse Yashica Electro 35? (Rangefinder for rangefinder?) At the same time, I adore the 1V in ways I’ve never loved my DSLR, but half of the switch to the Q was prompted by a desire to travel with less bulk altogether. It will be a bit of an experimental process, I imagine.

On the topic of Havana. I can’t remember any place I’ve wanted to visit as much and for as long as I wanted to visit Cuba, and it was glorious beyond my expectations. The people were so lovely and so interesting to talk to (President Obama was at the time moving toward normalizing relations, which made for fascinating conversation.), and so forgiving of my broken, sometimes-bordering-on-accented-Italian Spanish.

Cuba was also a revelation in as much as I had passing privilege, oddly enough. There are only two places in the world I’ve yet been where I’m not instantly physically other: Hawaiʻi (which is absurdly obvious, given that my family is from there) and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. Even my name could be mistaken for either (and I do go by Micaela in PR to make things easier). Of course, it’s all for naught the second I open my mouth to speak, but one can try.

One cannot rightly discuss Cuba without mention of the ever-present specters of Che and Fidel (at that time in his twilight). Castro, as so many “Marxists” have in truth, incited middle-class-led revolution and presided over a regime built on fear and suspicion with an iron grip. There are many positive outcomes of his rule (take the Cuban medical practice, for one), but the same can be said of any dictator. The hero worship by certain segments of left-leaning, middle-class, white Americans (albeit primarily in Che t-shirt activism format) I find repugnant, and this as a nearly life-long socialist. I say this not to overly politicize a highly non-political trip, but because it is an indelible imprint on the fabric of the country and these quaint, idyllic, Buena Vista Social Club fairytale notions of Cuba are highly sanitized, somewhat patronizing, and belie a natural depth of human existence. The narrative is too pat.

What I’ve found everywhere I’ve been is that some degree of “people are people” is true: sometimes it’s the good in people, the ability to make connections despite widely disparate realities, but sometimes it’s the ugliness in humanity which is equally true, if impossible to romanticize. We’re all just trying to make it out there at the end of the day, and to that we all deserve the same chances to enjoy health, happiness, and togetherness.

And with that, I’ll step away from my soapbox and get back to the photos.

All photos made with a Canon EOS-1N on Fujichrome Provia 100F or Velvia 100.

Post-Processing, the spectacular crutch.

Is it a digression if you start from that point? Post-processing is one of those lovely photographic terms that serves as both an analog holdover and a misleading descriptor of digital workflow. Originally, it happened after processing (i.e. developing) the film. Today, it could be argued that taking a digital raw file and finalizing settings is in fact the processing; in that sense, one could deem Lightroom/ACR/etc. the processing and Photoshop the post.

It seems to me so often the pretentious gearhead semi-novices who argue for and pedestalize a platonic ideal of a photograph that come in critical of manipulation. The type of people that – if I’m being catty – produce technically perfect, soulless, story-less images. You’ll see the judgment thrown in hashtags like #SOOC or #nofilter.

Is it important to learn how to use your tools? Yes

Is it important to maintain some rigid orthodoxy around what the tools produce? No

By the same token, I disdain a “fuck it, I’ll fix it in post” mentality as well. My feelings are this: become a master of the camera you use, digital or analog. (You will miss photos if you don’t.) Craft images that tell stories. As long as you’re not a photojournalist or selling a product – two areas where realism and fidelity are key – the world is your oyster in that quest.

Why does any of this matter? Well, because I hit bad weather in Sofia, of course.

More to come on Sofia itself, but as a quick fly by: the city is a marvel of Byzantine Revival churches sprinkled amongst a mishmash of rote 19th century neoclassical bores and Eastern Bloc bulky brutalist monsters, with surprising Secessionist and Ottoman turns here and there. I was instantly in love.

Pictured here is the view from my hotel (the shockingly charming Sofia Balkan) of the church Света Неделя – Sveta Nedelya – a name which refers either to the term “Holy Sunday” or Saint Kyriaki but is somewhat debated.

This is what my brain goes through when I’m dissecting an image. There are a million and one things to consider when getting to the final image. My first concern was the final aspect ratio (more thoughts on ratios here) as I’d decided a crop was necessary, given the excavations and cars in the foreground. I also wanted to brighten the church without losing the definition in the clouds, particularly since the clouds above the church weren’t much to look at in the first place. Finally, I knew that way-too-modern logo would get in the way.

After some quick cropping and some equally quick exposure adjustments, I had a fairly workable subject and thought first that I’d try monochrome. This would both hide the Huawei logo and allow me to bring down the blues to have more cloud definition. The resulting image is fine, but I missed the hallmark green of the domes.

I returned to color and played with the greens. Is it an exaggerated image? Quite. At the end of the day, it was a much more interesting composition than the original image and as one of many pieces in a tale of the architectural identity of Sofia, it would do the job. However, that bright dab of red kept drawing my eye away.

A quick pop into the shop and voilà, a finished image. It was all about removing distractions to focus on what actually mattered: this gorgeous, storied edifice.

Snakes + Funerals

In Mexico City (and in returning from Mexico City), I felt an urgency to create. A rush of frustrated energy. A rebirth of a part of my soul I'd thought I'd lost for good.

(No one said I wasn't dramatic.)

I returned to digital photography in the latter half of 2014 for purely documentary purposes. Film stocks were vanishing right and left, and I'd moved 2,500 miles from my C-41 lab, just to add a layer of complication. It never felt quite like art. It still feels like studio work or stock.

Digital photography without introspection, without focus, and without process is easily soulless. Sterile, perfect, real images of real things. In truth, the medium is limited only in what you allow yourself to do with it, and adherence to supposed orthodoxy seems unnecessary at a time when producing any work is a struggle itself.

In seeking satisfaction for these urges, this energy, I thought – for whatever reason – of Fritz Lang in Le mépris giving his commentary on CinemaScope and went instantly to that aspect ratio. And much to my surprise, it worked. It worked for crowds. It worked for small, self-contained scenes. It worked for the lush tableaus of the Icelandic countryside, to the surprise of no one. Had the opportunity presented itself, I’ve no doubt it would have worked for snakes – and funerals.

You can take a look at the full gallery below or here.