Hedgehog in the Park

Every year, an ice sculpture/slide is erected in Stadsparken (the town park) opposite Stadshotellet (the town hotel), always in the shape of some animal. This year, they decided on a hedgehog and of course I had to have a look at it.

When I came, three guys were still working on the slide, it looked like they were shaping the ice with a power saw. During the few minutes I stopped and took my photos, four others did the same. It really is a popular feature and I hope many kids will enjoy it!

One Munro a Week

Last week I got started with my one New Year´s Resolution: to read one of Alice Munro´s short stories every week. Yep, that´s how great I think she is. I started with the collection "The Moons of Jupiter" from 1982 and the first story, "Chaddeleys and Flemings". It´s actually in two parts: "The Connection" and "The Stone in the Field", the first focused on the storyteller´s distaff side and the other on the male line of the family.

The Chaddeleys are represented by the mother´s cousins, four unmarried women, who all come visiting when the storyteller is still a little girl. This visit then becomes part of the family mythology, beginning with a grandfather from England who, everyone admits, was a bit of a posh and haughty jerk, but still someone whom everyone is rather proud of, speculating in what fancy origins he might have had before he fell upon hard times (he seems to have been a bit of a slacker, taking early retirement as soon as his children could support him).

When the storyteller is grownup and has a family of her own, one of the cousins come visiting, and we get a slightly different perspective on the childhood visit.

I was married to Richard then. 

She doesn´t have to write more than that to say that the marriage is bad. The theme of this story is, to me anyway, how strong the desire to magnify one´s own importance can be, and how tempting it is to set aside normal decency and step on others to elevate oneself.

The other story is about the father´s family, the Flemings, which also consists of a group of unmarried women, the aunts, who live in an old farmhouse in the country, completely cut out from the modern world and impossible to communicate with. Their silence provokes the idea that they have secrets, and there is speculation that an Austrian immigrant who died on their property had been one of the sister´s lover. But as the storyteller grows older she starts doubting:

Now I no longer believe that people´s secrets are defined and communicable, or their feelings full-blown and easy to recognize. 

A few days after I finish the story, I also realize that these two families, united by the marriage of the storyteller´s parents, represent the mentality of two kinds of immigrants to Canada: the adventurers, or those who wanted possibilities they weren´t allowed in the old country because of their place in a more rigid society; and those who left their homeland because the only option was to starve to death.

Munro was in 1982 already so skilled at those dense sentences that express so much.

...my mother drove. That made the whole expedition feel uncertain, the weight wrongly distributed. 

Yes, there is enough on these few pages for another author to write two novels. And those of my friends who didn´t much enjoy her latest collection, "Dear Life", I think would enjoy this better, as it is more of a traditional story.

Winter Chill

Real winter is finally upon us and it´s minus 28 degrees Celsius outside today. I read in the papers that it´s the polar vortex that shifted and the coldspell that was over North America is now over us. Isn´t it usually over us? Feels like it... It´s Sunday, so we are staying indoors. The sky has that frosty pink tint.

Inspiring Music!

Still watching the concert in Royal Albert Hall. Flags are waving in the audience while everyone sings "Land of Hope and Glory". We see the German and the Swedish flags in there. It seems, in the Royal Albert Hall, every country on earth is part of the British Commonwealth!

I´d be waving too if I were there. In fact, the husband is waving next to me...

Oh, and the conductor and solist are Americans. Marin Alsop! First woman to conduct the Proms!

From 2012:

A Symphony for the Eye

Stunning photographs from New York´s Central Park. Niels Oesingmann is the photograper and it´s a good demonstration of the art of composition.

This goes very well with what we are watching (or rather, listening to) on television right now, which is "Last night of the Proms" from the Royal Albert Hall in London. Joyce DiDonato is just now performing something of Rossini´s, a real treat! We have just brought mum-in-law home from a week in hospital and I´m enjoying a well-deserved G&T.

Hope you are all having a great weekend!

Laugh of the Day

I don´t know if there is such a thing as a national sense of humour. Probably there is, since what you find funny is tightly bound to your frame of reference and your values. This is why the young laugh at other things than their elders, and why the working classes laugh at other things than academics or the affluent.

Comic strip creators, and married couple, Jan and Maria Berglin must represent some of the best middle age, middle class humour in Sweden. They are expertly pointing their fingers at absurdities in the way we live and think. This week, I love this:

Translation: There is an abundance of coaches urging us to great achievements, but who is teaching us the fine art of giving up?
She says: Blabla... work... blabla...marriage hell...blabla...blood pressure...blabla...the trailer...blabla...nights sleep...blabla...aquarium fish...bla...roof tiles...bla...I´m trying and trying...
He says: But let go of the oars, silly! And have a chocolate. You didn´t ask for this... you were tricked into life just like the rest of us. Coffee?
And the hanging on the wall says: Teach me, you forest, to wither happily!

It´s that last bit that cracked me up. Perhaps this is particularly Swedish, having grown up with grandmother´s embroidered mottos.

Oh, and have a look at this! Hilarious! And creepy...

Great Mentor

 ...one of the most important keys to the successful art life is to understand the nature of disappointment, and to recognize it as something that can provide either disincentive or encouragement. Disappointment is a disincentive if it leads to frustration and sense of failure. It’s possible, however, to recognize disappointment as a form of success: as has often been said, “Even the person who falls flat on their face is at least moving forward.”

I have spent a month, or more, slowly getting through Brooks Jensen´s "The Creative Life in Photography". This time, I haven´t had that high feeling of enlightenment while reading, but then, after devouring his "Letting Go of The Camera", I am fairly familiar with his basic ideas; perhaps the reading has been slow because I have been really thinking more about my own photography projects, implementing Jensen´s teaching. I see also that friends with a keen interest in photography, with Expensive Gear, are loosing interest because they are not thinking enough about what kinds of photos they want to make. It just doesn´t seem to be enough, in the long run, to want to "go out on a fine day and shoot some great pictures". It gets boring and disappointing if you come home with the same thing, over and over.

As Jensen says:

A project does not need to take a long time. There is nothing wrong with a project that develops slowly, and there may even be some virtues. But, more “spontaneous” projects, conceived and completed quickly, have their place in creative photography, too. 

...and I have taken this to heart. Whenever I bring the camera, I try to formulate an idea about what I want to do differently this time. Sometimes I do it, sometimes I don´t. I had this idea about doing some proper, old-fashioned group photos for Christmas, but for some reason I didn´t think the mood was right. Or perhaps my mood wasn´t right. I am planning to give it another go, though. I suppose what I´m after is involving my friends and family in my creative process, and perhaps I need to think some more about how to make that a fun thing to do - for all of us. You know, how to make use of their creativity and make it a real collaboration. It´s very much trying to go beyond my comfort zone.

Another quote that caught my attention was this:

Figuratively and scientifically, a photograph is a slice of time, frozen for us to look at and see more intently than is possible at the speed of life. It is a “now” that is removed from the flow of time. Such language brings to mind what the Buddhist meditators call the “eternal now” — but in photography we have the ability to capture that eternal now and freeze its image — at least for a while, at least as long as the medium remains coherent. Indeed, no other media does this as well as photography.

I have observed for some time that for me, the process of photography seem to anchor me to the present and give me more energy rather than tire me. I often hear the complaint about amateur photographers that they "hide" behind the lens, or that they are somehow not "there" in the moment, but just recording it or collecting it. It is true that some people can be said to photograph like scalp-hunters; I had an uncle once who would put my aunt in front of the Thing of Interest, take a snap and then go back to sit in the car and wait for the rest of us. But sometimes, this complaint means something else; it means: I want you to talk to me, be with me, instead of taking your photographs. This can be a valid complaint if you are often inaccessible to your loved ones, but more often than not, the conversation offered is more about other moments than the one we´re in right now, so conversation can be just another form of escaping the present moment.

Having Jensen as a kind of mentor is doing me good, I feel, both in my photography and in my writing. In my living, probably, as well. I am so happy about him that I have subscribed to Lenswork this year. I hope that will give me even more insight and inspiration!