Scottish photographer living in the US Sandy Carson.
Photography, design, thoughts on presence, conscious decisions, products
Got interested in design.Watched Objectified.
Thinking about design and photography and what is so attractive.To me that is the different way of observing the world.I am in my head most of the day, paying attention to the observable world around me. To people, yes, bit not to what the world looks like.Design and photography make me see the world totally differently.What it claims, is that looking at the world through the eyes of design could make the world better. In terms of quality of what humans produce, longevity, sustainability. But also in term of personal life.
Living with designed artifacts seems to improve your presence, make you more present when making buying decisions.
Erwin Olaf in het Gemeentemuseum
Vandaag voor de tweede keer naar het Gemeentemuseum om de overzichtstentoonstelling van Erwin Olaf te bekijken. Ter ere van zijn zestigste verjaardag is in het Fotomuseum Den Haag en het Gemeentemuseum een gecombineerde overzichtstentoonstelling ingericht.
Vorige keer begonnen we in het Fotomuseum. Hier zijn de vroege foto's van Olaf te zien. Dit is over het algemeen het rauwere werk, in meerderheid zwart-wit. In het Gemeentemuseum is het meer gestileerde werk van de oudere Erwin Olaf tentoongesteld. Top-werk dat gerelateerd is aan Jeff Wall en Gregory Crewdson.
Erwin Olaf, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag 
Erwin Olaf, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag 
Erwin Olaf, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag
Bechers in Huis Marseille
The station is enormously crowded. Walking over the heads down the escalator. Maybe normal for a Saturday afternoon, maybe extra busy because of the beautiful weather. We take the streetcar, also to avoid the crowds of the Damrak. At the Keizersgracht we leave the streetcar and I walk the wrong way, as it is pre-programmed towards FOAM, but for Huis Marseille we must of course go the other way.
At Huis Marseille we are overtaken by three people who are busily discussing their way into the museum before us. One of them turns out to be the speaker for a lecture at Huis Marseille that afternoon: Stefan Gronert. He wrote The Düsseldorf School of Photography.
But we haven't come for the lecture (which is held in an overly warm room on the second floor of the House). In the halls hang the works of the Bechers' students - in the room near the reception a number of works by the Bechers themselves. The down-to-earth documentary style appeals to me very much but I find the larger formats of the students such as Gursky and Struth even more telling, with their overwhelming detail.
The Bechers' new business acumen, with its almost scientific slant, has been an inspiration for the younger generation of photographers hanging here. The industrial landscapes of Gursky and the church interiors of Struth: vacation photo of church attendance on steroids, Ruff with experimental night shots, library landscapes of Candida Höfer, Hütte's empty cityscapes and landscapes portraying a lonely civilization. I find the works of the younger (I think) generation Sasse, Nieweg and Clement less powerful.
We walk back through the city. At the Atheneum we go inside but the excess is overwhelming. Back along the Jordaan and another terrace.
