Pete Brook writing his Raw File blog for Wired magazine often comes up with some interesting work that’s new to me, and a couple of recent posts are worth a look.
I like the long exposure night images of Alnis Stakle in Ghostly Photos Reveal Subzero Shortcuts Through Post-Soviet Cities (that’s almost an essay rather than a title), made with exposures of several minutes on film in a Hassleblad. The lengthy exposures lose much of the feeling of night but produce some strange effects (with the peculiarities of Fuji Reala 100 and Kodak Ektar 100 doubtless adding their contribution.)
It’s also worth looking at Stakle’s own web site and the other projects there, a reminder of the great interest and depth of photography in central and eastern Europe, perhaps rather more vital now than the west. I was reminded at times of the book ‘Lab East’ whose launch I photographed at Paris Photo in 2010.
Another recent post I enjoyed on Raw File was by German photographer Gesche Würfel, a set of images of the basements of apartment buildings in New York made while hunting for a flat there with her husband with another typically long title, Photographer Finds Cockatiels, Jesus in NYC Basements. Among the other projects on her web site is a set of pictures by Würfel taken around the London Olympic site, Go for Gold!, covering areas I’ve myself documented over 35 years, some work from which is on my River Lea/Lea Valley site and in my book Before the Olympics.
One of my pictures from Before the Olympics – on Waterden Rd, Hackney Wick in 2005