View allAll Photos Tagged tangible
The tangible melancholy of this scene seemed to match my mood at the time, so it seemed only apt that I hauled out the tripod from the car & made what I could of it.
If you are ever on Mull, driving north-west through Salen towards Tobermory, then you can't fail to spot this sad picture. Just yards from the road, it also has a handy lay-by from which to ponder the inevitable demise of all things.
Oakland Cemetery
Atlanta, Georgia
The cemetery is maintained by the city and the Historic Oakland Foundation as a cultural resource and Atlanta's "most tangible link to the past." It includes the grave sites of nearly 7,000 Civil War soldiers and Atlanta residents of many different statuses.
This mausoleum was built by Jasper Newton Smith (a.k.a. "Jack"), a brickyard owner and real estate developer who became one of Atlanta's richest men. He posed for his statue when he was 73 years old and had it placed on the mausoleum before his death. He made sure that it faced the cemetery's entrance. He wanted to be in a position to "watch" the people who came into the cemetery.
Here is a portrait of the exquisite custom 7-string guitar, handmade by legendary Sonoma county luthier Taku Sakashta, completed in 2009. Sadly, this gifted artist was murdered in 2010 while working late in his shop.
The intense thought and musical craft that Taku applied to his work elevated his instruments to a completely different level.
This is my personal custom guitar that took Taku 2-1/2 years to complete. When the guitar was finished, Taku said he would need to hear the guitar in my practice room through my own amp rig so he could complete the set up. He and his charming wife showed up at my house, Taku holding his bag of tools. He immediately went to work making tweaks here and there while I played the guitar. Together, we dialed in just the right voice through the amp and it sounded amazing. I felt like I had purchased a high-end custom suit and the master tailor was making his final critical adjustments.
On that evening I could also see the spark in Taku's eye as he watched his creation come alive in the hands of its new owner. It had taken years of planning, building, and refinement in his hands for countless hours; now he would be leaving it behind at a new home, and I could sense his love and attachment for the instrument.
Shortly after, I was crushed to hear the news of Taku's death at the hands of a violent offender. I will skip over those details but you can search them online to learn more.
The guitar is a tangible record of Taku's contribution, however brief, to the world of music. Every time I hold the instrument, I replay in my mind some very fond memories of a friend and artist who touched my soul.
Rest in peace, Taku Sakashta (1966-2010)
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Lens is the A120mm f/4 macro on the 645Z. Overhead lighting is a Priolite MBX500HS strobe through a ParaPop 38" octabox. Focus stacking applied.
Continuing my Astro Projection vision...
Just when the sunset was closing to the end I felt that spontaneous urge to have an out-of-body and lens experience on vast Toronto cityscapes... And through my camera I saw these fluid almost tangible waves of sun particles flowing through the city as the growing mist of the blue dreams engulfed everything in sight...
...all brought to you by my manual zoom and ICM magic :-)
*Added a thin layer of textures to reinforce the feel, but other than that it's a SOOC image, manual zooming & intentional camera movement during long exposure, no other processing involved.
You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I, you can never be --
I had a mother who read to me.
- Strickland Gillilan (1869-1954)
Immersing myself in the veiled mysteries of the Serra do Corvo Branco, the largest rock-cut in Brazil nestled in Serra Catarinense, I found a world beyond the tangible. The fog enveloped everything, casting a spell of mystique over the landscape. Towering trees stood shrouded in mist, their enormity humbled. The vegetation came alive, every leaf and twig adorned with dew drops like glittering ornaments. Pines bore the weight of the water, their resilience echoing in the silence.
Vehicles appeared like phantom ships drifting down the foggy slopes, dwarfed by the majesty of the Serra. Small figures wandered, engulfed in the ethereal landscape – their insignificance amidst nature's grandeur was a lovely sight. Amid them, a woman, a fellow photographer, seeking to capture the elusive beauty of this world, just as I was.
The scene before my eyes was a testament to nature's unending surprises. The fog would surrender to the snow the next day, but I couldn't witness that transformation. What I did capture, however, were these fleeting moments before the snowfall, the calm before the storm.
This was one of Brazil's coldest days, but the chill in the air did not dampen my spirits. Instead, it amplified the experience, etching it in my memory. I hope these photographs do justice to that unforgettable day at Serra do Corvo Branco – a day that will always resonate in my heart.
In the early morning calm, the Alpe di Siusi in the Dolomites awakens with quiet grace. Cabins are scattered across the rolling hills, each one tucked gently into the landscape as if placed there by nature itself. A soft light stretches over the dewy grass, casting a golden glow across the meadows and reaching up to touch the rugged mountain tops. The stillness here is almost tangible—inviting you to pause, breathe, and take in the serene beauty that surrounds you.
This is a place where simplicity feels profound. The untouched charm of the hills, the delicate play of light, and the grandeur of the Dolomite peaks combine to create a view that lingers in your memory. To stand here is to be reminded of how powerful stillness can be, and how deeply moving the quiet beauty of nature truly is.
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In the Ottawa-Gatineau region, the ice has broken on the rivers and there's a tangible feeling that spring has finally arrived. In the past, this was also the time when the loggers began floating an almost infinite supply of logs down rivers in the hinterland to make their way to the city where the saw mills were located. Scenes like the one I've portrayed could be seen for over a hundred kilometers along the Gatineau and Ottawa Rivers. The loggers worked hard from sunrise to sunset and operated in sometimes very dangerous conditions. My painting was inspired by an old one-dollar bill (see below) and other photos from the past.
Dans la région d'Ottawa-Gatineau, la glace s'est brisée sur les rivières et on sent bien que le printemps est enfin arrivé. Dans le passé, c'était aussi l'époque où les bûcherons commençaient à flotter une quantité presque infinie de grumes sur les rivières de l'arrière-pays pour se rendre à la ville où se trouvaient les scieries. Des scènes comme celle que j'ai dépeinte pouvaient être vues à plus d'une centaine de kilomètres le long des rivières Gatineau et des Outaouais. Les bûcherons ont travaillé dur du lever au coucher du soleil et ont opéré dans des conditions parfois très dangereuses. Ma peinture a été inspirée par un vieux billet d'un dollar (voir ci-dessous) et d'autres photos du passé.
Polaroid SLR 680se
PX 680 Color Shade Film
For the Tangible Project's April theme of "New Beginnings." This one goes to Maritza. Enjoy!
Thanks for Dimdon 's free overlay.
An image to strengthen the female self portrait artist's voice - that its not a lack of self esteem, that makes me want to create images like this.
The P.S.S. Wingfield Castle stands proudly in Jackson Dock at Hartlepool's Maritime Experience, offering a tangible connection to a bygone era of maritime history. Formerly a Humber Estuary ferry, this remarkable vessel has been transformed into a museum ship, allowing visitors to step back in time and explore the rich maritime heritage of County Durham, England.
The Wingfield Castle's history is steeped in the tradition of ferrying passengers across the Humber Estuary. Originally launched in 1934, the ship served its purpose faithfully for several decades, navigating the waters with a grace that defined the maritime landscape of its time. Eventually, as technological advancements in transportation emerged, the Wingfield Castle found itself retired from active service.
However, rather than fading into obscurity, the Wingfield Castle was given a new lease on life as a museum ship. The decision to preserve this vessel speaks to the commitment of Hartlepool's Maritime Experience to safeguarding and celebrating the maritime history of the region. It serves as a floating testament to the importance of preserving our cultural heritage, allowing future generations to gain a firsthand understanding of the maritime industry's evolution.
Nestled in Jackson Dock, the ship becomes a living museum, inviting visitors to explore its decks and cabins. Stepping aboard the Wingfield Castle is like stepping into the past, with each creak of the wooden planks and rustle of the sails telling tales of a bygone era. The ship's restored interiors provide a glimpse into the daily lives of those who sailed on her, with exhibits showcasing the crew's quarters, the captain's cabin, and the engine room.
The museum ship offers a comprehensive educational experience, with guided tours and interactive exhibits that delve into the ship's history and the broader maritime context of the region. Visitors can learn about the challenges faced by sailors, the technological innovations that shaped the industry, and the economic significance of maritime trade. The Wingfield Castle becomes a portal through which the maritime past of County Durham comes alive, fostering a deeper appreciation for the sacrifices and achievements of those who contributed to the area's maritime legacy.
Hartlepool's Maritime Experience, with the P.S.S. Wingfield Castle as its centerpiece, stands as a testament to the community's dedication to preserving and sharing its maritime heritage. The experience allows visitors to not only witness history but to immerse themselves in it, fostering a sense of connection to the individuals who once sailed the waters aboard this iconic vessel. As the Wingfield Castle continues to grace Jackson Dock, it serves as a reminder of the enduring spirit of exploration and adventure that has defined the maritime history of County Durham, England.
History was never written in female. It was the man who stood on two feet, went hunting and fought in wars. They dominated power, they became kings of the tangible and the intangible, they invented weapons and money, they learned to write and told their story. Where was the woman during all those centuries? Where did all those men come from if it wasn't from the pain of a woman? In 1929, Virginia Woolf published her article Women and Fiction, where she raised the following question: what is more important, the woman who writes or what is written about women? And it is that not even the streets of the cities have been written with the name of a woman. Currently, only 7% of the roads have female names.
Seeing that at that time, being a widow, she raised her children, encouraged her companions not to let themselves be exploited and that being 63 years old, being taken away and killed makes me feel very honored
For a few days, the name of a woman who played a fundamental role in the trade union struggle during the first decades of the 19th century has been added to the street map of the Cadiz capital. Many will not know who Micaela de Castro was or why she deserves such recognition. She was born in Cádiz in 1873 and, together with her sister Ángela de Ella, worked at the Tobacco Factory where both developed an enormous union and associative action. " This activity began in 1918 when some 200 workers met, on June 16, at the Center of Workers' Societies, to found the Society of Cigarettes. The work of the Castro sisters was valued by their companions in the election of the Board of Directors, naming Ángela president and Micaela vice president. From that moment on, the cigar companies fought to achieve labor improvements and recognition of their society by the company", as historian Rubén Benítez relates.
In 1918 these workers declared a sit-down strike in support of some fired colleagues in Coruña. The following year, Micaela travelled to Madrid to try to solve company conflicts. Upon her return, she offered a meeting for her companions at the Comic Theatre where she came to express the following words: "Comrades: you all know that I have three little ones and I only count on the product of my work. However, I will be in my position, and if I lack bread for my little ones, I will go looking for a ranch in the barracks, I will ask from door to door to feed them, before going back to work to be mocked and stripped of my rights.
According to Benítez, "during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, the cigarette companies took the opportunity to demand economic and social improvements for the working class", but after not achieving what was expected, Micaela disappeared from secretary life until the proclamation of the Second Republic. She and she does it by being close to the communist edge, in an act where she "took the opportunity to request that women's suffrage, approved by the Constitution, come into force immediately." The woman finally voted in 1933, the year in which Micaela de Castro appeared on the list of the Single Revolutionary Front. "In this way, Micaela became the only woman candidate for Congress. Her work in defense of workers throughout her life served the coup plotters so that a 63-year-old woman was imprisoned in the Cadiz Prison on 4 September 1936, and the following day taken to the Puerto de Santa María prison. However, there is no record of his entry into the Puerto de Santa María prison". De Castro disappeared on the way, so it is very likely that the fascists killed her. Today her remains are unaccounted for.
Text courtesy and translated from andaluciainformacion.es/cadiz
The insomnia derives from angst. Anxiety. Life. Direction. Well-being. The existential experience. Connectivity. Tangibility. Transience. Authenticity. Don't think about it. It doesn't exist. You're not there. I'm not here. I don't miss you. I choose not to miss you. Together. We are all alone. In the darkness and silence of the night, our minds are each our own. The electricity that fires each pulse and fueling each breath arises autonomously. You decide how to live and when to die. You decided.
Seems like an appropriate image for a week in which Jessops & HMV (two of the biggest UK high street chains) have both gone under. The physical world that we all grew up with – the solid, tangible world of shops and objects – seems to be vanishing by the day. Go back only a few years, and think about all the things that have disappeared from the world… How do you feel about it?
As someone who loves books, I miss being able to go to Borders or Ottakers and browse through their shelves… As someone who loves records, I miss Tower and HMV… and as a photographer, I already miss Jessops and Jacobs…
We’re not only living through the biggest technological revolution in living memory, we’re also living through the worst economic depression. Is it possible that they’re connected? Could digital forms be eradicating what we might call analogue forms without creating equivalent amounts of money, opportunity, and so on? I suspect they might be. The film-maker Jem Cohen has some very interesting thoughts on these questions.
He believes that if we want the things we love (such as art) to continue existing, we need to understand that they don’t just generate themselves. We need to support their makers financially, so they can make a living. If we like books, this means buying them, even when it seems easier to download them. Equally, if we like being able to browse them in a bookshop, this means buying them from bookshops, even if that costs more than it would online. The extra cost represents the price of keeping something in existence that does not and cannot exist online.
How many times have you seen people browsing things in shops, then scanning their barcodes and going away to buy the item online? That kind of behaviour shows an astounding ability to prioritise a small short-term gain over a massive long-term loss. Do that enough, and there will be no more shops for us to browse! The fact that people continue to browse in the real world suggests that they like doing so; if online browsing was all they needed, they would not be browsing in the real world.
So that’s my new years’ resolution. Where I have money to spend, I’m spending on the art that I love, and I’m spending it in shops, in the real world, because I want those shops and that art to continue to exist. I know I’m just one consumer. But I’m making my choice and I’m drawing the line here.
Gathering the treasures of fields, forbidden fruit
With a tangible visions inside
Consuming the dreamscapes
Burst trough your fragile shields
Take you for a ride
We came to the woods, to a latent feast
Dancing on moss-grown soil
Hiding away from the rational world
Dancing on moss grown-soil
The odour of harvest time
The immense sky turns grey
The sun softly shines
Until it slumbers away
One with land's decay
We came to the woods, to a latent feast
Dancing on moss green-soil
Hiding away from the rational world
Dancing on moss green-soil
Summer's End
Soaked by perception
Summer's end
Truth and deception
Witness the madness, watching the splendour
Cover your eyes to sink in the deep
Witness the madness, watching the splendour
Dreaming in a dream in your sleep
And smother the sun for a while
Touching your own beauty and vile
Embrace the gloom that stares in your eyes
On the edge where reality dies
Autumn
Summer's End
The body rests, vulnerable, stretched upon a surface that seems both tangible and unreal. Yet this tranquility is disrupted by the emergence of a geometric structure—cold, sharp, slicing the space into fragments of reflections and shadows. These polished metal frames are not merely obstacles; they are remnants of a ghostly architecture, a barrier between flesh and world, between intimacy and mechanics.
The contrast between organic softness and artificial rigidity creates an almost palpable tension. The body does not struggle—it surrenders to this symbolic entrapment, or perhaps it is in the process of passing through these limits, mutating in contact with these structures. A spectral light grazes the scene, bathing it in a glow that oscillates between comfort and strangeness.
The fragmentation of reality, the intrusion of cold mechanics into intimate space. These straight, unyielding lines evoke the invisible constraints that imprison us, whether they be digital, societal, or psychological. The naked skin becomes a battleground, a porous boundary between humanity and abstraction, between memory and erasure.
The beauty of big skies and endless grasslands brings a great sense of freedom, but that liberation shares a certain vulnerability. It can be a lonely place where everything is laid bare and exposed to the elements. There is little, if any, protection from storms charged with winds, rain, hail and lightning. The sun will beat down to the earth and scorch all that is unsheltered. Even way-finding can be a dizzying feat with so few landmarks. So, what makes this place intriguing even if itâs seemingly filled with nothing? Sometimes a destination does not contain a tangible object of which to confront, but instead a feeling that comes from within.
Embedded within a dramatic landscape at the meeting point between the Peruvian Andes and the Amazon Basin, the Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu is among the greatest artistic, architectural and land use achievements anywhere and the most significant tangible legacy of the Inca civilization. Recognized for outstanding cultural and natural values, the mixed World Heritage property covers 32,592 hectares of mountain slopes, peaks and valleys surrounding its heart, the spectacular archaeological monument of “La Ciudadela” (the Citadel) at more than 2,400 meters above sea level. Built in the fifteenth century Machu Picchu was abandoned when the Inca Empire was conquered by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century. It was not until 1911 that the archaeological complex was made known to the outside world. whc.unesco.org/en/list/274
Puedes conocer más sobre Perú entrando a mi álbum Peruvian Marvels
An ocean of Love. An angel of Light. A symphony of wings. A conscious awareness. An infinite peace. Eyes which see rightly. A flowering blessing. An unearned grace. An open mind. A compassionate heart. A natural knowing. A grateful acceptance. A luminous emptiness. A child’s laughter. An old man’s tears. A purified spirit. A sustaining joy. A quiet generosity. A free flowing radiance. A tangible star.
LBM July 17, 2019
Carvings of devatas inside the inner sanctuary of the ancient temple. Preah Khan was a large temple city built in the 12th century, with a Buddhist university and close to 100,000 people dedicated to serve the temple city, with officials, rice farmers, dancers and monks.
Perishable materials have long disappeared, now only the stone walls remain, richly decorated with devatas and dancing apsaras. The enigmatic beauty of the carvings is tangible even now, many centuries after the city was reclaimed and swallowed by the jungle.
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This is not mine. By chance, a couple of years ago I stumbled upon this photo on someone’s individual web site. The guy who posted it was a self-proclaimed "dumpster diver" and he had successfully rescued this fine photo from the trash during a then recent haul. I got in touch with the dumpster diver to see if perhaps he would consider selling this piece. It would have made a nice addition to my personal collection. Even though he saw enough value in it to save this photo from almost certain destruction, he was somewhat surprised at my offer to purchase it. Unfortunately, the dumpster diver had just recently changed residences at the time and he apparently discarded this photo while packing.
He's still looking.
I'm still looking also.
Some things are just not meant to be.
Alas, even though it is not for me to keep, I thought I would share nonetheless. I checked with the dumpster diver to get his approval. He thought it was a great idea. Oh, and if you happen to come across this photo someday, I’m still interested.
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flickr friends please note: I inadvertently marked this photo as "private" after many of you had already been kind enough to have saved this as a favorite. If you marked this photo as a favorite prior to this faux pas , your favorite was removed by the flickr system. It really wasn’t me that removed your favorite. It was them. I swear! Please feel free to mark as a favorite again if you were one of the people who were affected by this. Sorry, it won’t happen again if I can help it.
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Sometimes there are moments so beautiful that it would simply be impossible to express them with words. It’s at these times when photography can empower us to capture these moments and transform them into something more tangible - a single image that embodies the soul of our experience.
Though we had exceptional weather throughout our entire Italy Photo Tour in May, this was by far my favorite sunset of the trip, and quite possibly one of the most spectacular sunsets I’ve ever seen in Rome. The colors seemed to last forever as the slow moving clouds twisted and transformed into interesting shapes.
Let’s hope that the weather gods are on our side for our next Italy Photo Tour as well. :)
If you're interested in my work, feel free to drop me a line on Instagram or my website www.elialocardi.com.
The air is sweet, tangible, and warm against bare skin. I half close my eyes and the world blurs; an array of pinks, blues, yellows, colour, life.
It's been so long. 80 days this year alone, before the first blossom, but it's here. Pink like childhood; a faint taste of vanilla, strawberry, sweet candyfloss. Minuscule petals drift, faintly falling to my hair, like little love heart sweets. 'Be mine?'. I raise my arms and swirl in the light, because I can, because I feel alive.
Almost able to breathe the summer air. So close.
Today, as I was walking home from school, I saw next door's tree in blossom. Finally. Yes, it made me very excited; hopefully our garden is next. But I had to take a photo, so I stood and swirled with my camera beneath the tree, just hidden from window view. Unfortunately not from the keen sense of their dog's smell - the crazy thing started having a minor fit at me so I upped and left. I swear that dog is evil.
So little time, so much to do.
An undercover Greenpeace investigation released on Tuesday suggests that fossil fuel companies secretly funnel money into prominent scientists' pockets to manufacture doubt about mainstream climate change science.Greenpeace UK took an unconventional approach to the research: Members of the environmentalist group posed as representatives of fake oil and coal companies and asked two climate change skeptics to write papers promoting the benefits of carbon dioxide and coal in developing countries. The two academics the group approached -- Frank Clemente of Pennsylvania State University and William Happer of Princeton University -- reportedly agreed to pen the reports and not to reveal their funding source.The group's expose follows revelations from The New York Times earlier this year that Willie Soon, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, accepted donations from fossil fuel companies and anonymous donors to write papers that challenged the consensus on climate science -- without saying where his funding came from.This academics-for-hire tactic has "materially changed the debate about climate change,"said Jesse Coleman, a Greenpeace activist who participated in the probe. "You could say that one of the reasons we're facing such dire climate change risks is because these fossil fuel companies are funding climate change denial." "It's the exact same playbook" tobacco companies once used to "convince people of something that is just not true," Coleman added.For decades, tobacco corporations deceived consumers about the dangers of smoking by covertly funding contrarian research. Manufactured data, concealed conflicts of interest and misleading conclusions, as The Huffington Post has previously reported, are also evident in influential research on vaccination, organic food, secondhand smoke, lead paint and chemical flame retardants. But perhaps no environmental or public health issue is as high-stake as global warming.Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that if the Greenpeace findings were true, they were "deeply, deeply disconcerting." He emphasized that while accepting money from industry to do research is not itself a breach of ethics, taking money from any source without transparency is "totally unacceptable."
www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/undercover-greenpeace-invest...
Great, so is there anything I can do?
Yes! It’s important for our leaders to know that we want real and tangible action on climate now. That’s why hundreds of thousands of people will be marching for the climate in cities around the world on 29 November. Find out how to join the march in London or elsewhere.Want to know more?There is lots more detail about what is being discussed at COP.The most significant thing has got to be the historic China-US climate agreement announced last November, in which the world’s two biggest carbon emitters and global superpowers indicated their commitment to moving away from fossil fuels.Obama has made a global climate deal a priority for his legacy while the G7 – Canada, France, Germany, UK, Italy, Japan and US – have agreed to decarbonise over the course of the century, aiming for zero emissions by 2100.Meanwhile, countries that were previously seen as barriers to a global agreement, including China and India are driving renewable energy in a big way (though India also wants to double coal production by 2020).
www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/5-things-you-need-know...
Thanks to these two young women (who preferred to be identified by their initials) for joining in the dot painting this week. One of the most meaningful aspects of this project for me has been how it expresses–at least in a small, but nevertheless tangible way–the building of community: with Temma (perhaps as a kind of stand-in for the "least" of this world) at the center of that action. These two cousins brought a sisterly affection to the project that I felt honored to experience.
This piece, Without Moving (after Guy Chase), is currently on exhibit in the student union of Northeastern Illinois University in conjunction with my exhibition re. Rainbow Girl which is in the university's gallery. If there are people there to join me I will be doing dot painting on this project on the following days and times. If you are in the Chicago area and would like to come paint dots during those times I welcome your participation.
Tuesday, Sept. 8 from 4 – 6 pm
Wednesday, Sept. 9 from 1 – 3 pm
Thursday, Sept. 10 from 4 – 6 pm
Tuesday, Sept. 15 from 4 – 6 pm
Wednesday, Sept. 16 from 1 – 3 pm
Thursday, Sept. 17 - perhaps from 1:15 - 3:15 (If you are interested in joining please message me to confirm time.)
Here are some other events related to the exhibition re. Rainbow Girl. All are open to the public.
Tuesday, September 8 at 7:30 pm - There will be a live performance by Baby Mountain in the NEIU gallery. Baby Mountain is a music project I direct which, like my painting, takes as it's conceptual guide my daughter Temma. The resulting for-the-most-part acoustic music tends to be ethereal, soulful, playful and poetic. This performance will feature NIEU faculty member, clarinetist (and one of my long-time musical collaborators) Christie Miller.
Wednesday, September 16 at noon I will be doing a talk in the gallery.
Friday, September 18, from 6 - 9 pm there will be the
CLOSING RECEPTION.
Two years ago, I wrote a short caption to one of my photographs containing some thoughts on being half-Chinese. It ended up becoming one of the most-read things I’ve written on my Flickr, and - thanks to Flickr Stats - I know that it continues to receive dozens of views each day as a direct result of people Googling terms like “half-chinese”, "half-asian girls" and even “what will a half-chinese baby look like.” (one example of an answer to this question can be seen in this photograph: my little cousin Lewis.)
Last month Ankur, a Glasgow-based production company which nurtures Minority Ethnic talent in Scotland, invited me to give a talk and be a part of a panel discussion at their festival Where Are You Really From? The following is a transcript of the talk I gave there, with additions to what I had prepared added as best I can remember. (The bullet points denote a moment where I moved the slideshow along: disregard these.)
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Researching and writing this talk has been a revelatory experience for me in many ways. I started with the title I had been given - "From Ethnography to Intercultural Practice" - and imagined I should prepare something quite scholarly. I looked out my old university notes, I scanned my bookcases for all I could find on cultural studies, art history, critical theory. I was getting excited because, since I graduated, I don't very often have reasons to engage that kind of deep, rigorous study, and I realised I had missed it.
But then it occurred to me that I've been invited here as an artist and not as an academic. I thought then that I should give a more personal response to the theme. "Is your own cultural heritage an influence on your work as an artist?" Whether I think of "cultural heritage" as artefacts, objects and places, or a collection of less tangible properties like language, lore and traditions, it seems that the ways in which I understand or interpret that heritage has everything to do with family. Add to that my "work as an artist" and it doesn't get much more personal. Thinking along these lines had me looking through old family photographs and retracing lots of my childhood in my mind, and in the end I thought 'this isn't right either. This isn't for an a public talk, it's for my psychoanalyst!'
So I struggled to find the right voice, wavering between the academic and the personal, the scholarly and the confessional. I think what would be best is if I explain the dry facts about my cultural heritage, about the work I do as an "artist", and then examine and analyse the points at which they intersect.
My Dad left Hong Kong in 1982 and came to Scotland to study • . His sister had arrived here a few years prior to that, and Dad worked nights in the Chinese takeaway she had set up in Ayr. A couple of years later, that's where he met my mother, who would pop in at the end of a night out for some food. •
Fifteen years after that, my parents gave me my first camera, and I took it everywhere with me, photographing everything and everyone that interested me. When I was seventeen I went to Glasgow University to study English Literature, and by then I had a fully manual camera, but I had never taken a course in or read a book about photography. I hadn't even read the instruction manual for the camera. I learned how to use it through practise, through trial and error. I knew that if this number was higher then this would happen, but it meant that this other number had to be lower, and if that number was lower than I had to do so and so.
In my second year I entered an essay competition and won a place on a student exchange to Pakistan. • When I returned and the university saw the photographs I'd taken there, I started to work for them, but it wasn't until I was in my final year that I'd developed the confidence to consider a career in it. When I graduated, I turned down the offer of a traineeship at a law firm to pursue photography, scraping by by working part-time as an administrator in the law firm and doing photography jobs of any kind whenever they came up. In my social life I was making friends with lots of people in the arts, and through an actor friend I met the theatre maker Stewart Laing, who commissioned me to photograph one of his shows. • I'll be eternally grateful to Stewart for that, for the leap of faith involved in asking me, at that time so young and inexperienced, to photograph something I'd never photographed before, because it turned out to be my first real break. When other theatre companies saw what I'd done for Stewart, I began to get a lot more emails from people in theatre and, now, I work regularly for almost every Scottish theatre company I've heard of. • • •
So that's more or less where I came from and where I am, but I've never really been comfortable with describing myself as an "artist". In my professional life I mostly document the art that other people have made - actors, directors, set designers and lighting designers. But I think the closest thing to art I make comes from my personal work, which is contained in my Flickr stream • - www.flickr.com/tgkw - a collection of 3000 images which I add to most days and which comprises a document of my life over the past seven years: all the friends I've ever made, all the interesting things and people I've ever seen as I passed them in the street, all the different cities I've ever visited. • • • The reason for my hesitation to call myself an artist - the reason that I've never held an artist residency, the reason I rarely exhibit - is that this work doesn't directly or intentionally question or challenge anything: it's documentary, it's portraiture, its only thematic link being that I saw it: it says nothing more than "Here is a person, in a place, doing what they're doing. Make of it what you will." Despite my background in literary studies, I've never been comfortable deconstructing or intellectualising my work. The photographs I like best stand on their own as images, and don't need an essay of text to explain what they're "really" "about". Susan Sontag writes in her collection of essays about photography that "The ultimate wisdom of the photographic image is to say: There is the surface. Now think - or rather feel, intuit what is beyond it, what the reality must be like if it looks this way." This is the only text that should accompany my work. •
So to return to the theme, I ask myself how these two aspects - my photography, such as it is, and my family, my upbringing, my culture, my heritage - are related. This involves quite a lot of self-analysis and family background, which I hope I can make interesting and not too self-indulgent, but I'm going to go ahead with it and see where it takes us.
My day-to-day upbringing wasn't much different from that of most children brought up in working-class Scottish families. • Mum took care of the house and raised the children, Dad worked. The main difference may be that, like many Chinese fathers, Dad really worked. Fourteen to sixteen hours a day, six days a week. He never took holidays - we went on family holidays without him - and he never took sick days, even when he was very ill. •
My Chinese name is Ga-Ken. It's quite common for the first part of a Chinese man's name to be Ga - it can translate as "most" - followed by an adjective. For example, Li Ka-Shing, the name of Asia's richest man: sing means honest, so whoever named him "most honest" believed that honesty was the most important quality, the quality they wanted him to have. When I was 11, I got my first report card from secondary school and it described me as "an industrious pupil". Dad didn't know what industrious meant, so he looked out his English-Chinese dictionary, and was overjoyed to discover that I had been described by the name he had given me: "most industrious, most hard-working." •
Another school report card leads me to my point. By the time I was fifteen, my reports reached the consensus that "Tommy excels only in those subjects in which he is interested. If he is not interested, he will not work hard." I've read that children often don't take after their parents with regard to attitudes to money. If a child sees her parents arguing or worrying about money, she may resolve never to be like that herself, to be careful and sensible with her money. Conversely, if her parents are constantly telling her "no, we can't have that, it costs too much" she may resolve never to be like that herself, to be liberal and carefree with her money. I can relate to that when I think about Dad's work ethic. I'm not saying I can't be hardworking, but, as my teachers noted, only if it's something I care about. Dad's kind of hard work - on his feet for fourteen hours a day in a small, overheated kitchen doing repetitive tasks to cook takeaway food - is not something anyone is interested in. He did it to provide for his family. Now, as an adult, I see that, and have so much respect for it - I think it's heroic - but I hated it as a child, simply because I missed him. Dad's weekly day off was something I would get excited about two days beforehand, like a mini-Christmas every week. Although he retired when I was seventeen - he wasn't even forty - his absence throughout my childhood resulted in a tense relationship between us throughout my teenage years and for much of my adult life. It was only three years ago that I began to get to know him as a person - to understand his likes, his dislikes, his hopes and fears. And perhaps that explains why I felt I had to do something I loved: I didn't want to be like him. Because, when I do work and work hard, it doesn't feel like work because I love it. I went to university to study something I love, and ended up making a career of something that began as a hobby and became a passion, even an obsession. •
I studied English Literature because I found that I could learn more about life and about what it means to be a human being by reading fiction than by studying psychology or history or philosophy directly. This aspect of my personality was encouraged by Mum from the youngest age. Although she herself had left school at sixteen with hardly any qualifications, she taught me to read, and bought me novels so I'd keep doing it; she bought me pencils and paper to draw with. While she watched her soaps, I would lie on the living room carpet filling out pages of paper with stories that came out of my head, and when she saw this she bought me a typewriter. My love of stories began with playing video games with strong characters and storylines before moving to novels and, eventually, to a degree in Literature. They also paved the way for a love of photography. • When I tell people I studied literature and that I'm a photographer, they typically say "oh, completely different, then!" but I don't believe that. I was once in an interview with a graphic designer, and when I told him about my studies he asked "do you take photographs in an English literature kind of way?" At first I didn't know what he meant, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised that I do. I'm interested in stories, and in the work I do I'm interested in how we tell a story by capturing the light and colour of a single moment and placing it in that space.
My Mum told me a story about a time when I was four years old, and the two of us were walking down Ayr High Street to meet my Dad as he finished work. When I saw him outside the takeaway, I screamed "Daddy!" and ran towards him. Two passing women observed this and one said to the other "That's no a chinky's wean." I'm not sure if I just constructed a false memory around the story as my Mum told it, but I feel like I remember that, like I remember not knowing what it meant. But before I was even old enough to realise I was mixed race, I believe it had begun to influence the creative work I do now. I first visited Hong Kong when I was two years old, but I don't remember anything of it and wouldn't have understood where we were going and why. • But by the time I was in my first year of primary school, Hong Kong had become very important to me. One of my earliest and happiest memories - a memory I know I really do possess - is the day Dad returned from a trip to Hong Kong. From that day on, I spent my childhood trying to understand where he had been - what Hong Kong was - but I didn't look at informational books or documentaries; I experienced Hong Kong through the sweets • and toys • and comics • and films he brought back with him. They were so exciting to me, so unlike anything I'd seen before, and I couldn't get enough. I spent hours looking through comics that I couldn't understand, drawing the characters in stories of my own. While my friends wanted to be Power Rangers, I wanted to be a vampire-fighting Taoist priest. • I wanted to speak the language, and would imitate the lines spoken by my favourite characters in Chinese films, whether I knew what they meant or not. I wanted to eat with chopsticks all the time, and they were the first items I took in to "Show and Tell"; the same day that one of my classmates pulled his eyes into slits and imitated the sounds of Chinese dialiects at me. This first encounter with playground racism wasn't enough to dampen my enthusiasm for my Chinese heritage, or to "play it down", an option which my Mum's red hair and fair skin has sometimes left open to me. • Some people I meet are surprised to find out I'm anything but “white", whereas to others it's obvious from the start that I'm half-Chinese. But I remember as a child wishing to look, if not be, fully Chinese. I remember being jealous of my cousins, also half-Chinese, who were and are darker-skinned and more obviously Chinese. I've always been surprised that my sister never shared an interest in Chinese culture, language, food, thought, art: she is, I think, largely indifferent to the fact of her mixed race.
But, for me, Hong Kong pervaded my imagination and almost every aspect of my inner life long before I ever went there as anything but a baby. In my mind, it was a magical and lively place filled with colour, excitement and happiness. The reality, which I discovered when I was sixteen and have returned to almost every year since, was, for me, exactly that. Hong Kong is where I have taken most of the photographs I consider to be my best, whether these are portraits • , street scenes • or professional commissions • . But could it have been anything else? Even if I had found it a dull, drab and boring place, would I have taken everything I'd imagined for so long and projected it there? Have I? Do I still?
I was approached a couple of years ago by a directing and writing team who were in the development stages of a television production. My role was to be a visual consultant, but I ended up working as a cinematographer for the first time when we produced a trailer. • • • When the trailer was shown for the first time at a development weekend run by The Playwright's Studio, the visuals were described as showing Glasgow in a new way: not its usual portrayal as a dark, gray place, but colourful and vibrant: it evokes Bladerunner, they said. It doesn't take a great leap of the imagination to see in Ridley Scott's futuristic imagining of LA, Hong Kong in the present day. • And so it occurred to me that the image, the myth of Hong Kong I had created in my mind as a child: I took that and projected it not only onto the real Hong Kong, but to my home in Glasgow, and to everywhere. I photograph the night, whether in Glasgow or Lisbon, in shades of blue with flashes of neon; I photograph the sky and the grass in the same cartoonish, vivid hues as I had seen in Japanese animation. •
I have rarely been influenced by photographers. Frank O'Hara once remarked that, other than his own, he didn't really like poetry unless it was so good it forced him to admire it. I feel more or less the same about photography: photography books take up only a small corner of my bookcase, and I don't make much effort to go to photography exhibitions. I do however, spend lots of time watching films, and analysing and appreciating their cinematography taught me much more about light and colour and composition and feeling and storytelling than any photography has. The single biggest influence on my work and my visual taste has been the films of the Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-Wai and his cinematographer Chris Doyle. • I was lucky enough to meet and work - and mostly drink -with Chris Doyle while he was in Glasgow earlier this year, and again some months later when I visited Hong Kong. • I watched many of Wong and Doyle's films in my early teens, during my quest to create Hong Kong in my mind, and it was then that I first fell in love with the image, first realised its power. • Wong's films often deal with urban alienation, • with protagonists who inhabit a city with an identity crisis, a city which moves and changes so quickly that they turn inward; they daydream, they sleepwalk. And, in my portrait work, I am attracted to these same qualities: • whether a candid portrait I've taken on the underground or through the window of a bar, or whether someone is sitting for me, I am looking for an arrangement of elements: light, lines, colour and most of all an expression which suggests an inner world. • In my photographs, people tend not to be doing anything: they're thinking, reflecting. The films of Michael Mann have appealed to me for the same reason: they tend to be about deep and lonely men in dark and lonely places. I'm often told that what is most distinctive aspect my style is my colour palette, and it's no surprise that Wong's and Mann's films, Doyle's cinematography, are notable for the same reasons, using washes of colour to reflect an emotional state. • •
The identity crisis that afflicts modern Hong Kong comes largely from its history as a British colony and then a transfer of power to Beijing, under which Hong Kong exists as a "Special Administrative Region" with its own devolved government. • Dad told me that, growing up, he felt confused and unsure about where he was really from. Was he British? Chinese? Which flag should he wave, which national anthem should he sing? There is in Hong Kong now a growing tension between Hong Kongers and Mainlanders, and a growing movement for the city's independence. • The parallels with Scotland's situation are obvious: "Hong Kongese, not Chinese", "Scottish, not British." I support both Scottish independence and Hong Kong independence, but for pragmatic, political reasons: reasons of governance, and nothing to do with flagwaving or patriotism. I think that to be mixed race predisposes one to being a "world citizen": I'm reminded of Thomas Paine's remark that "The world is my country: my religion, to do good."
My conclusion was to summarise the ways in which I consider being mixed race to have been a blessing - and I’ll still read it, because it’s still true - but having seen the short films Arpita has shown us, I see how much it relates only to my own experience. As one of the characters in the second film said: “It isn’t even about being from Britain or not: it’s about the colour of your skin.” I’m a big fan of the X-Men comics, which tell the story of people with genetic mutations which grant them superhuman abilities or gifts, and who are consequently ostracised and persecuted. They are an excellent allegory for all kinds of minorities. In one storyline, a cure for these mutations is developed, and many mutants want to take it, to be “normal”. In one scene where some of the X-Men are questioning how people could betray their beings, their natures, in this way, an X-Man called Beast, who as one consequence of his mutation is covered in blue fur, says “that’s easy for you to say”, or something to that effect. And I realise that it may be easy for me to say, to call it a blessing to be mixed race. Because, unlike the Nigerian girl we saw in the first of Arpita’s films - who doesn’t feel at home either in Scotland or in Nigeria, who doesn’t feel fully accepted in either culture - I have often “passed” for being Scottish, for being white, without comment or question.
My case, then, is a happy one. I hope it is clear from everything I've talked about that being mixed race is a huge part of who I am: it has, if subtly, affected every aspect of my life. I don't say I'm proud of it - I think it's foolish to be proud of something that was merely an accident of birth - but I consider it to have been a blessing: to have been exposed to an entirely different culture, language, cuisine, philosophy; to have had my imagination stimulated by knowing that my origins were as much in a distant land as here where I was born and raised. The mixed race person can travel without travelling, and if Mark Twain is right when he says that "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness", then to mix races and cultures is to spread tolerance, understanding and open-mindedness.
Thank you.
Glasgow, 2013.