Travelog: Where each of a series of pictures impacts the next: "Days and Nights in the Forrest"

[Mitch Alland]

Where each of a series of pictures impacts the next: "Days and Nights in the Forrest"

I've just put together a series of photographs called Days and Nights in the Forest. The title comes from the masterpiece of the same name by the great Bengali film maker, Satyajit Ray, about which his biographer, Andrew Robinson, in Satyajit Ray: The inner Eye writes: "The theme of Days and Nights might be said to be the way in which urban living cuts us off from each other and from our true environment and blunts our moral sense, though it is never stated as openly as this". You can see the series by clicking here.

This series currently had 26 photographs some of which I may eventually cut and and I may add others. I am aiming for about 60 photographs, if that doesn't make the series too boring. All 26 pictures were taken with the GXR, of which 18 were with the M-Module — all with the Elmarit-21 ASPH lens except one that was taken with the Zeiss 4/18mm.

—Mitch/Chiang Mai
Days and Nights in the Forest

 

[Asher Kelman]

I've just put together a series of photographs called Days and Nights in the Forest. The title comes from the masterpiece of the same name by the great Bengali film maker, Satyajit Ray, about which his biographer, Andrew Robinson, in Satyajit Ray: The inner Eye writes: "The theme of Days and Nights might be said to be the way in which urban living cuts us off from each other and from our true environment and blunts our moral sense, though it is never stated as openly as this". You can see the series by clicking here.

This series currently had 26 photographs some of which I may eventually cut and and I may add others. I am aiming for about 60 photographs, if that doesn't make the series too boring. All 26 pictures were taken with the GXR, of which 18 were with the M-Module — all with the Elmarit-21 ASPH lens except one that was taken with the Zeiss 4/18mm.

—Mitch/Chiang Mai
Days and Nights in the Forest

Mitch,

I find your photographic essay, "The theme of Days and Nights in the Forrest " continues your painting pictures of life with multiple adroitly juxtaposed images. It's quite the opposite of fine surgery, where things are taken apart. Your pictures work by the very order in which different scenes taken in another order are placed together in a way where one quite scene might give the mood and sense of humidity and the next might show some choice a person is making or avoiding. The reading of the pictures is not merely by the content of each picture but also by the relationships you have imposed between scenes.

Asher

 

[Mitch Alland]

...Your pictures work by the very order in which different scenes taken in another order are placed together...The reading of the pictures is not merely by the content of each picture but also by the relationships you have imposed between scenes...

Asher, that is really the intent. I became interested in organizing series of photographs this way when I saw some of the early books of Ralph Gibson, such as Déjà vu and Days at Sea, whose organization and the thread running through them is poetic rather than narrative. I don't mean that my series is "poetic": that would be too pretentious, but that the connections of the pictures work in the way poetry does, through the form of the sequence, with a relation between form and meaning — that also means I'm not really developing a narrative or telling a story.

—Mitch/Chiang Mai
Days and Nights in the Forest

 

[Mitch Alland]

And here are a few pictures from Days and Nights in the Forest:

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—Mitch/Chiang Mai
Days and Nights in the Forest (WIP)

 

[Asher Kelman]

And here are a few pictures from Days and Nights in the Forest:

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Mitch,

I can't believe I missed this set of pictures from Thailand! The sequence takes us to quick changes as if we're peering into the life of a young person. First, leisurely getting a bite to eat, then outfitted to attract a mate, putting the extra touch to make up and so on. At the end, we are left with the thought that she might also play classical music! stunning and stressful!

It's a special way of imparting to us the pulse of the city and the pressure on the folk there to manage.

Asher