Sunday: Putin and company

I dialed many times before something clicked in enigmatic telecom spaces and voice told: �Privet!�

It is always miracle to hear sounds of your own tongue as if after morning cup of Sunday coffee over �der Standard� you make amazing blitz-trip in your past

My Austrian acquaintances demonstrating common competence often talk about countries of former Soviet Union and their politics, economics and history.
Strange is they are deaf for live evidences and try to feed me with superficial knowledge they obtained from TV.

As if sporadic brainwashing can reveal ultimate truth. As if they possess final set of facts about part of the world they never lived in
O, these long distance calls!

I could hear noise in the receiver, as if somebody manipulated with recorder, and told as before during our student times in Moscow: �Hey, sergeant, not so loud please!� addressing imaginary secret service operator who struggled through spy process with old Soviet equipment.
How it goes with elections, I asked. What is the matter who, they replied me, Putin or Medvedev, or tsar Ivan the Terrible? Such surface political events do not form the flow of life.

Elections everywhere are more of performance, of show. And show must go on.
There is always major piece of reality not reachable for facade interpretations.
It lies in underwater parts of iceberg, tiny tip of which exploited as der Platz for mass media crackle. The genuine material of reality stays unknowable and unreachable for explanation
You cannot perceive it looking through newspaper and drinking beer in Lugner City.

As members of consumer society we can not be sure who originated thoughts we have in our head. Whatever we say is conditioned by chewing gum we consume every day.

You can not be sure you know truth unless you percept it in realm of your own life

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As I already wrote before its always major part of life negativities unavoidable. Oddly enough all my depressing experiences concentrated in sphere of relations. It is like sado-maso games with your own gastronomic perceptiveness. When being invited to occasional restaurant I am hardly appreciative, though never complain, perceiving product freshness and also hygienic conditions it was cooked in. Far from praising Vienna restaurants. It was not rare case to be ill after dinner together with gent who wanted to get in my pants. Felt literally ill eating greasy food and necessity to resist male stupidity.
I percept imnnermost layers of humans when communicate, including those who obtain official power (more…)

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I grew more and more dissatisfied with possibilities Nikon D200 provides fo shooting indoors.

Sometimes I feel completely desperate looking through dark and unclear shots I made in cafe. From one side big professional camera can not suit spy and voyeuristic tendencies I have, from the other side small camera compromises quality especially in poor light conditions

After 7 months of my lonely life in Vienna and some disappointing meetings in WAFF, organizations and newspapers I become less optimistic about my professional journalistic future in Austria.

This country has very good social security system, that reduces earning and career possibilities for freelancers

Austrians value stability and security, that often compromises originality, initiation and enterprise

Unless you are not included in social system, you cannot survive

When you are included, you have boring work and one topic that you constantly discuss with your collegues is

how many years you need yet to reach commonly desirable pension age

I had head opinions of Austrians who used to work for American organizations for some time and
being detached from their own national environment

realized that cautiousness, lack of enterprise, tendency to be polite and cover problems,

laziness and deep down despise for foreigners are inborn Austrian qualities

I can not say I prefer Russians, French, British or Swedes

About every of these nationalities I also have opinions based at intimacy

experiences with their male representatives

I only want to say there is always day and night, dark and light,

moon and other side of the moon.

And how to come through next stripe of complete darkness and preserve
integrity of your own personality?

Normally people don’t like their own photos even of high quality. Portrait photography is the special art of flattery. Everybody has own vision of himself that can be broken by cruel frankness of digital camera vision. Image we perceive with our eyes is processed by multiple filters of our brain. People don’t like their own portraits, unless these portraits compensate lack of human filtering with blur and� improvement of irregularities. I believe it is close to impossibility to earn something in portrait photography unless photographer invests fortune in his own studio light.

If life were ever joyful, it would be very hard to become old and die.

We know that everyday and every hour we become a little more dead than before, we do exactly this - we approach slowly but surely our individual border of physical existence and non-existence.

Good news is that there are many things in life that are simply awful and they are unavoidable. Perhaps especially keen pain reality gives when you are young and extremely perceptive, full of dreams and expectations.

With age you become a little bit more indifferent and realize that literally nothing in the world has so superior importance in journey through eternity. I often think about endless circles of life and other reborns.

You can hardly make all your aspirations true in space of one short life, nature constantly makes new sketches out of human material - more or less successful they are

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I wanted to photograph book window, but occasionally made a few shots of this blind elderly man accompanied by black dog today in vicinity of Michaelaplatz,

it looked symbolic that he decided to take rest in place where bookshop with big window was situated.

Blue globes and black dog are metaphoric

Picture occurred to be very heavy because of many different colors and I reduced quality a little bit.

Shot was made with Nikon D200 and Sigma 50-150mm f2.8 lens

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Usually I start my everyday street hunt with great enthusiasm. But gradually becoming tired, struggling forward and finding nothing interesting to shoot, frozen, hungry, I feel misery.� Shoulder with camera bag aches. It is not so easy to find original face in the street at all. After so many months of search, perhaps nobody knows that better than me. People tend to hide their peculiarities. But not only. Often they don�t hide anything. They have standard appearance that reflects standard attitude, by other words, I dare say, people prefer not to burden themselves to be original. Therefore they look alike. They move from underground station till shop and back and have fewer differences in their looks than ants or autumn leaves. Only sometimes I am lucky to spot somebody standing aside from crowd, even if they have criminal aura like these two young gypsies. Woman is looking at me aggressively. I know that in criminal world women often are more ruthless and bold than men

When pink morning light transits to yellow luminosity of midday, and wind blowing from Schmelz stops bringing meditative tunes of kukus bird, I start my everyday journey.
Mirror in my small flat is the gateway. I step behind it and as invisible clot of energy roll outside. Together with gust of wind I move along streets of Vienna
and touch cheeks of passers-by with cool breathing of fog.

I witness street life, its secrets and its drama.
Sometimes I occur to be that small beggar girl sitting at the corner of main street. She has cheap plastic doll in her pocket she wants very much to play with. For a while, I was also that woman in furs gazing at jewelry in window of fashionable shop. She seemed seized with anticipation to purchase precious thing.
I could be that invalid who crawled on his knees along Mariahilfer strasse and roared �Bitter!� with low hoarse voice. He had only one thought that after reaching the corner of Neubaugasse, he would make a break.
I participate in life of everybody at whom I look.
Observing street life, I contemplate that many live creatures have collective intellect. Behavior of bees and ants, for example, reveals uncommunicative cooperation. Every tiny ant is inseparable fraction of whole commune tired to it by invisible bonds.
Every unit of this world has its own play that perfectly fits in melodies of universal orchestra.
Do we feel ourselves inseparable with all humankind? Do we feel ourselves in literal sense participating in life of every person we meet in the street? Perhaps, not.
We see ourselves as alienated competitors in the life race. Reality is contest of winners and losers, and participate in it means to assert our superiority or inferiority.
Feeling of isolation and loneliness is inevitable consequence of this race. It is common ingredient of any unhappiness.
I would often observe one poor homeless drunkard at the benches of Westbahnhof,
tortured by cold and thirst.
I could enter his dumb world, where he swam alone in dark waters of mental coma. Anybody around would feel himself superior to him.
But I knew that his essential human core, that is common in all humans and not definable by social labels, in spite of ideas of decency and prosperity, this human core stayed in him pure and untouched. He was potentially capable of great things he never suspected about.
Humiliated and downtrodden outcasts do not know how powerful and superior they are!
There precious human depths stay forever unrevealed.
For me as for photographer all human being have basic inner equality.
What I value in street life and its spontaneous depiction is sincerity and innocence.
And those who don�t care much about their social mask often have these qualities.

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If you start doing anything seriously, soon you will realize that problems of any contemporary occupation arise mostly at promotion level.

If you cannot market yourself, you can do nothing. In such arts, as cinematography and photography, the more gifted you are the less chances you have to maneuver smoothly
through troublesome process of advertising.

Artistic talent is often about creative originality and helplessness in practical things.

Contemporary society is one absurd limitless marketplace. Wherever you go, you turn to be potential buyer with whom they talk in terms of sale. Internet is paranoia store of advertising spam and initiated purchases, not mentioning already radio and TV. (more…)