Smiling at me.  In a fairytale momentum.

Photo by lilypenelope

Photo by lilypenelope

Photo by lilypenelope

Photo by lilypenelope

Photo by lilypenelope

I first started to shoot the serie "Unvulnerable Grounds" years ago. My goal was not only to recreate an invented-populated landscape but to capture a moment in which a story was written/told. The story of a life that only exist within the frame of the picture (an in my mind that is continuously in search for a new chapter in this fabricated landscape-[s]). An unvulnerable life, an unvulnerable ground.
This part of the serie, subtitled "Walking on History" wants to be a analysis/experimentation with a (litterally) historic ground. We walk in history, everyday: monuments, streets, trees. Time passes, and, as we walk, the past is right a second behind us. The ground we set our feet on is a past fabrication. If our brain is in the present (most of the time!) well, our feet are on a different plan! "Walking on History" tries to challenge or, better, create a parallel world where the only present is the moment we instantly look at the picture. The set for this framed moment of invented landscape is as litteral as it can be: a miniature figure placed on top of different (original) drawings dated from 1837 to1886.

For more photos of the "Unvulnerable Grounds / Walking on History" on Flickr just click HERE
Photos by lilypenelope

These are part of the section "Unvulnerable Grounds: in motion". I just love them!

So, the other day I was really bumped! No energy, no creativity...just too much coffee! Now I am back! I was up late the other night trying to figure out how to put some of my work together. I've started a long time ago a serie called "Unvulnerable Grounds". Then I got stucked. Now I guess, shooting the very last pieces of it (yesterday!) I finally have it all down. Now it is just a matter of laying it all down, printing, adding some text and then who knows... What do you think about it? I will put some images in different posts since the serie is divided in parts ("Stillness", "In Motion" and so on).

A long time ago, while attending SCI-Arc, I came across a quote that suddently challenged all my world. "We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are". A quote that for some probably would not mean a thing since, it's easier in life, to just see what's there without really putting imagination, interpretation, feelings to it. Images are constantly presented to us (and thank god!!!) but we are almost being sucked in , absorbed in a daily routine to just see deeper than what is there. Somebody once said that advertising is the best art form of the 20th century (or something like that!) which is not all wrong ( do not take me wrong! I adore going to museums and galleries too, but I believe our everyday is sometimes a parallel gallery). When I look at a visually beautiful ads I look at what's behind the image. Obviously there is marketing, strategic thinking that ultimately will drag people into buying whatever the ads is publicizing! It's a little like what I said in my previous post (yes I know! Keith Loutit rocked my world today!). He looked deeper at the world that sourrounds him/us and re-presented it back to us in a total different way. The way he saw it! I do not remember when I shot these pictures. I do not even know what they want to represent if not the part of something that I thought was interesting! I saw it the way I am!

I love miniatures! I bought so many in the last couple of years that it's not even funny! I then use them to reproduce worlds that do not exist outside the frame of my photos. But they are in a way real, just because they are there. I did couple of series and some of them are in few posts of this blog (a book's funeral). Shooting them in a particular layout gives them a life of their own. They become human in a shot. They belong to the "unvulnerable ground"(as I called one of my series) a parallel world.
Today I found soemthing really beautiful on the net while doing my daily dose of net-surfing! I was introduced to this amazing photograph named Keith Loutit. He did something that cannot be explained in words simply because it's impossible. You have to watch his work to feel it! If I have to interpret with my personal reading of his work I would say that he did the opposite of my miniature shots. What he does is basically shooting photos of real people in a real context (s) with a tilt-shift camera lens. The shooting I believe lasts hours if not days. Then It assembles them all together and what comes out is simply magnificent. I felt a real "miniaturized" world. To some extent even a fake one. But it's not! It completely changes the way we perceive a place, an action, an urban context. Just watch it!



The North Wind Blew South from Keith Loutit on Vimeo

I am still playing with my camera, still playing with my figurines, still creating what in a previous serie I called "Unvulnerable Grounds".

This time they are travelling through oceans, ads and who knows!

So, this friend of mine had a brilliant idea. And a brilliant idea should not be shared with the public right away! Still the idea got me really excited and extremely happy. I guess good ideas always make people happy!

As I said I have a really bad flu, but since I got involved in "the idea" I suddently felt better, creative, thoughtful, imaginative, delirious, rythmical, asymmetrical, and completely insane! I feel like all the noises around me transformed themselves into a beautiful sound. Voices became sounds. And I just let the musicscape relax me!

Did I take too many medications?? Ah ah ah

The other day I found this book in a trash can. Do not take me wrong! I do not usually get stuff from trash cans but this ... I couldn't let it there!

It's a french version of "The Godfather", Mario Puzo's awesome book dated 1970 (year of the translation). It's very nice, it's cover is all thorned and it gives the book a sense of maturity! The cover is designed as many pieces of articles from an old newspaper. So, I took it home and today, as I was already playing with my camera and my little figurines, I decided to recreate the scene of a funeral. Mario Puzo's french book's funeral. Amen!

I put more images on facebook.

Today there isn't much to do since I am waiting for my associate to move his ass and start digging the hole for our new building I am playing around with my camera. I decided to put back in action my little figures I bought ages ago and let them create a new scape around the room.
A trip with a fictitious vespa inside an improbable super flat architecture.

How hard it is to relax lately!

You relax one minute and the next you freak out! You wake up in the morning all pumped up and you discover that internet isn't working! You restart the computer and the fax machine gets into a coma! Fix that and...something else cause you a problem that transform your life into a huge inferno! Technology is a beautiful thing...when everything works out perfectly. If that doesn't happen it just drives your nerves into the jammest freeway you have ever taken! But still, technology allows you to create (obviusly when your damn PC works!!!) virtual objects, virtual realities that do not really exist. They exist in a screen in front of your tired face!!! But they are there. And from your chair your can imagine yourself laying down in a virtual beach locatd somewhere in the technological world!