The Jonah's experience

I have found this image somewhere in the mess on my desktop and it perfectly depicts how we feel at the moment - like I was being sucked into the vortex!

Image for today's post comes from a beautiful installation by Pipilotti Rist (I luuuuuv this woman) shown at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh this summer, that I have sneakily taken on my old Olympus camera with Simon being lit just enough to be glimpsed in the botton of the frame!

December link love

About work of Taryn Simon which I am still not being fond of after seeing in the TM:

http://m.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/may/22/taryn-simon-tate-modern-interview?cat=artanddesign&type=article

What Makes British People Happy:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2011/12/what-makes-british-people-happy-sex-exercise-going-to-the-theatre.html

Great mistakes with 8x10 film:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/photobooth/2011/11/great-mistakes-richard-mosse.html

A discovery at the V&A:
http://www.vam.ac.uk/users/node/6643

Gavin Evans officially opens the Institute

...and we were invited.

Gavin Evans, one of the top Scottish photographers decided to give up (at least for a moment) the photography rat race and venture into the calmer waters of artisan tea and cafe culture and he opened his cafe the Institute couple of months ago with an idea of creating a hub for all photographers and people interested in photography.

We have discovered the place just a moment after it was opened and soon we hailed it as one of our favourite places in Edinburgh to meet, chat and maybe even work a little (Simon loves working in the cafes while I prefer my home set up but I am not impartial to an odd cake and a coffee).

A lot depends on the space - there are just places which are full of light (always in demand in Scotland) and the Institute is a place like that with its huge windows and airy, calm and minimalistic interior .

However even more depends on the person behind the counter and Gavin is definitely a person who you would like to meet while having a free moment to sit in a cafe. He has loads of photographic experience and wisdom but also something that makes people to try be the better versions of themselves - in his company one relaxes, one cracks better jokes than usual (at least I do), one exchanges oppinions without dividing world into only black and white, one sees...a bigger picture (and supports The Big Issue vendor Kat).

It is a real honour to have this talented, welcoming and firendly man to put some optimism into you (and the photographers need a lot of that especially from their more successful, more experienced colleagues) and let him recommend some tea. I do not know what is the name of the tea that I am always having there but it really makes my brain ping a little brighter. I have to ask Gavin and promptly make a note in my iP.

Thank you Gavin for creating this space and long live the Institute. It has officially opened last Staurday with the exhibition of Gavin portraits of musicians ( called 'Silenced' with portraits of David Bowie, Dusty Springfield, Bjork, Tricky and...Wu-Tang Clan guys among lots of others) which will last until 18th January and then a programme of other photo exhibitions will follow.

And see you for coffee (or tea) and a good chat very soon!

Pictures courtesy of Sejin who came to see us (with John) at the opening in the most spectacular dress I have seen for a while. Go girl!  Others featured are Stripy Simon, Claudine (you know her from my 'renaissance style' portrait, she is another ubertalented photographer and my stepdaughter Liska, who we hope will venture into something more sensible than photography...).

Instagram or the world through a yellow filter

Like the world does not have enough images already: follow me @sylwiassta

Mrs Brown

I think that my Irish friends have the wickediest sense of humour, and the best accents:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAA2OVRx1wA&feature=relmfu

In Rzepa between Wieteska and Milach

I am featured in the latest Rempex Warsaw photography auction right between my two favourite photographers! The list of everyone featured is presented in the Rzeczpospolita magazine on line gallery:

http://www.rp.pl/galeria/0,3,746409.html

^ link obrained thanks to Krzysztof Jurecki. So go and BUY ME!

One knows that Winter is comming when seals start swimming upside down

Why the Scottish seal pup is shown upside down I have no idea.
All images from the natural history exposition at the National Museums of Scotland.

Into the void

So I have finally succumbed and just after I got back from my two weeks in Poland, Simon dragged me kicking and screaming (not really but let's say I was reluctant) to exchange my old, wobbly and unreliable mobile into a smart iPhone.

The whole operation was relatively painless (lady sorting my mess out was Polish too), though reminded me strangely about these scenes in a Hollywood movies where a savage is being washed for the very first time by servants but actually likes his/hers new, fresh self before parading in front of the lady fo the mansion.

I have survived 3 generations of Apple's invention but the whole point really was about not surrending into this particular lifestyle where people are stalking each other on Face Book, are obliged to reply to a stranger's email the moment they received it and instead of having a nice chat while they have a relaxing afternoon in the restaurant, they obsessively check their emails under the table or even worse - put their dinky mobile devices on the table straight away after sitting down to their meal with their girlfriends. Who do exactly the same anyway so nobody really minds all that rudeness.

However on the other hand when I watch my children so fearlessly dipping into the technology, being as old as Face Book themselves and not knowing the times before its invention, pros started to overwhelm the cons and here we are. I got the white one. Let the games begin.

I might even now get on Face Book, who knows.

P.S. Actually the picture was taken with Simon's iPhone. In black btw.

P.S.2 A quick message to all the people whe were trying to get in touch on my mobile throughout last several days - my sincere apollogies, the old one died on my last day in Poland and I was not ready with the new phone until this afternoon.

The Zombie Boy no longer

I can only assume that lots of people wonder (me included) how Rick Genest looks like under all these elaborate embellishments. Here is the answer thanks to Dermablend concealer. So? Well, he looks like...Michael Ackerman.

http://www.rickgenest.com/index.php/home/item/78-go-beyond-the-cover.html




Lots of love, still from Poland where tatoos are considered a taboo and for serial offenders only but where airpilots are the best in the world ( long live and fly captain Tadeusz Wrona!).

The commentary is the most important

After visiting my friends in Krakow I have picked up this gem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r5VMkZFC-Y




Agata Bozynska and her real voice as an off commentary - unfortunately only for Poles...

Ceremonials

New Florence +The Machine album is coming out on 31st of October. Will it bring me in the goosebumps as her first achievement?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbTdezXhgBE

Link love

The first one is a link to a virtual tour of the Neues Museum in Berlin (I was threatening that I would finally come to Berlin just for several days of meeting my friends finally and doing a serious museum inspiration tour, the same would be for London, but with a different Monika!):

http://www.neues-museum.de/nm/index.html?r=vestibuel

The other is to a very weird blog that I came accross my research for my eyesight project:

http://artofmourning.com/miniatures.html

I was particularly into these little pins with eye miniatures, there has to be a picture in there for my project!

Bridges Walk

Yesterday we invited Monica to visit with us a venue where we will be working soon (and thus some reconnaissance was necessary).

One thing led to another and we ended up walking almost 10 miles towards South Queensferry from the Dalmeny estete, in a mixture of lashing rain and sunshine peeking through the clouds. The walk ended with a meal in the famous Hawes Inn (it is featured in novel 'Kidnapped' by Robert Louis Stevenson) just by the Forth Rail Bridge. The pies were on a small side I thought, but after several hours of intense walking (and talking, it is always good to have deep conversations about meaning of life with longknown friends) this kind of food was very welcomed. We demolished some profiteroles, apple crumble and pecan pie too. We have returned home on a completely empty Edinburgh bus and we slept like babies.

Can you imagine that someone tried to saw off the bronze horse that stands in front of the Dalmeny House?! I though that these kind of things happen only in my homeland...

Indian Summer

The autumnal mood is officially on in Edinburgh and after the coldest summer in last two decades (with temperatures averaging +12 degrees...) we have entered the period of so called Indian Summer. The images to illustrate it come from a birthday party of our friend Michelle that actually happened a while ago but that setting sun view from a kitchen window perfectly illustrate the feeling of an end of summer.

Monica is back with us from her visit up in the North of Scotland and Sky (and she summed her experience with stating that she would be happy to move there tomorrow if she could!) so watch this space for some new images as we will be doing some more visiting!

Visual communication fail

Don't don't don't grill the babies... we sang with Simon when we spotted this sign in one of the Edinburgh eateries in the Royal Mile. Someone got it all horribly wrong!

Murder by Music

Some bastard in the flat above ours got himself an electric guitar and his girlfriend is now jumping up and down to the sound of his sad plonking. You might soon be sending me parcels to jail...

London rush and riots

Last week I dragged my poor husband all the way down to London to work on a portrait commission for The Photographers Gallery. I have managed to wriggle in the Victoria and Albert museum as my photoshoot's location (hence we spent most of our time in West London though I went on a brief venture into the East end of the town, still troubled with the recent riots - I had to pick up studio keys for the second part of the working day and on my way in the underground I heard an annoucnment about Brixton station being on fire...).

It was a great stay though (this time we booked a room with a window, a permanently sealed one but let's not be picky) a bit stressfull (it was a work trip after all but as one fellow photographer friend commented London is always good to go to for work reason) and rushed (so not time to meet family or friends - sorry guys!) but I met many friendly and helpful people (special kudos to a lovely press officer from V&A and my charming subject who proved to be extremely photogenic and patient and I seldom work with complete strangers so it was an enigma how the cooperation is going to look like).

I had at least 3 passers by asking me if I need any help when I was flicking thourgh my London A-Z outside of the Euston and Hoxton underground stations trying to arrange map along East to West directions thus shattering a myth of uncooperative Londoners.

And of course it would not have been all possible without Simon's help and support. He is not just a voice activated light stand (as we jokingly call his duties patiently executed during working with me on my portraits) or just my London guide. His presence and encouragement are sometimes the only things that stop me from running away screaming with utter fear from the photoshoot that took several weeks to arrange! It would simply not be possible without him.

It was lovely to come back to our smaller in scale, calmer and slower in pace Scottish capital. Especially after waiting for 40 minutes at King's Cross train station's mail hall right in the middle of the rush hour. The sheer amount of passing faces can make one dizzy.

So here is the visual material. Oh, if you would like to know - I have just picked up my negatives from processing and they are all waiting to be scanned. So far at least they look correctly exposed and some of them look like they have some potential...

An authentic notice on a house railing in one of the main streets in Kensington. I hope it comes from the 1940s (judging by the font):

We have spotted this plaque on a house in Cromwell Road on our way to hotel. Is says that Albert Hitchcock lived in the house! Poor chap, no wonder that our hotel window was sealed completely, this road is extremely busy!

My better profile at the V& A's outrageously decorated cafe:

I hope I will one day have enough time and money to actually go to London for a couple of days just to dive in the richness of its museums collections (we have managed to squeeze in a couple of photo exhibitions - one in Tate Modern and one in Purdy-Hicks gallery nearby, as V&A was visited mainly for scouting best locations at the Hintze sculpture gallery).

So when are you coming, Monika?

Friends and survivors

I did not feel like bore you, my dear friends with descriptions of my life in recent weeks (well, not exactly living, more like functioning for work...) but since some nice things happened, I decided to make a post about these nice things. We all have times when we do not feel like crawling out of bed (especially when nobody is offering these tens thousands of $$$) especially in face of another working day to finish at 4 am but I hope that we got into grips with our working lives now and life is back to normal again: cups of tea, watching The Hour, reading books and more regular working and bedtime hours. Certainly no travelling (during the weeks of my absence on the blog we went on assignments to Leith AND London and Simon was sent to Ukraine for almost a week) and feverish email and textmessages exchange while hopping in and out of underground amidst recent London riots...

I have even managed to visit a performance during Edinburgh Festival! Sejin very kindly offered to take me to a new Ruby Wax's performance ('Losing It') and I have enjoyed every minute of it. I think only in Britain it is possible to do a comedy show about depression and get it genuinely funny. Thank you Sejin, it was not only a big laugh but also a big eye opener, especially for someone like me, who comes from a culture that treates depression as something one can just shake off within several days and if you are not able to do that you are just being silly. More about Ruby and her preformance here.

Which leads me to another dear friend Monica who is now visiting from Germany! Last time we saw each other when she very kindly agreed to be my vitness at my Oxford nuptials. Since then lots of dramatic things has happened in her life so when I have finally met her at the Edinburgh airport I gave her a big, well deserved hug for survivors. It is good to see her healthy again, bubbling with her usual sense of humour and to have again these long discussions about the meaning of life, the Universe and everything. She will be back with us again in couple of weeks after her horseriding holidays in the north of Scotland.

Both ladies presented me with some lovely and usefull gifts - the body weight monitor is from Sejin (ok, now I happy as I have cut out the fluffy, British bread and I am consuming Vasa aka Ryvita here instead which made a substantial difference in the size of my bum and waist) and the sleeping mask is from Monica and is a bliss during light summer nights in Scotland when it gets dark about 10 pm and light at 3 am again. When all this melatoning was suppose to be produced by my exhausted body? Last two nights contained the deepest sleep I have ever had in our southfacing flat! Thank you!

Stripes

Our favourite pattern - stripes! The obsession continues with a purchase of a stripy rug from the Habitat's closing down sale (yes, they went into administration poor sods). I have to actually give it a good hoovering when I finally have some spare time! So far the dishes are winning in the urgency stakes as they actually start to stink when left too long to their own devices...

Afternoon in the countryside

Yesterday we had a REAL summer day in  Scotland (yes, like a summer for reeelz!) so we decided to do some work on the sunny early afternoon and visit one of the venues where we will be soon working taking pictures. We had all the lovely bits within one day - sunshine, baby ducklings and lots of history. A very pleasant afternoon indeed and now we are back to the usual Scottish summer which means rain all day and temperature hovering not much above +15 degrees...Luckily I have to sit all day at home and process images for clients!

House for An Art Lover Picture Heavy

House for An Art Lover

Some of you who know me might recall that I am a big fan of Charles Rennie Mackintosh work. To the extent that when I got a scholarship in Paris (in a very prestigeous ESAG design school) instead of Glasgow School of Art, I was very disappointed (well, untill I went to Paris that is, where I had the most inspiring time of my life). However my sentiments to Charles Rennie's work remain the same.

Last weekend we have managed to visit a reconstructed Mackintosh project (the house was originally designed by Mackintosh and his wife, just on paper for a competition and never been executed in real life) - a House for Art Lover in Glasgow. One can get there by a 10 minutes ride on a train from the Glasgow Central which lands one in a very affluent neighbourhood. It looks like a perfect location for a property for an art enthousiast.

House was built with community funds overs several years in the 1990s and seems to be pretty accurate reconstruction of Mackintosh architectural utopian idea though I could not help but notice that sometimes the particular for Mackintosh work proportions were lost (understandably though as the idealised drawings had to be translated into real building with all its ingeneering and construction demands) and council put some weird art works (not at all connected with architect's work style and quite frankly ugly) in the garden. The groundfloor cafe had some peculiar objects for sale (like a comic about the architect's life and lots of silver jewellery better or worse inspired by his work) but it was full of people willing to spend an afternoon in this still very eye pleasing place with good vibes of a coherent concept. It is a clever combination of old architectural forms (the main hall remaining a medieval castle) with some naval forms and 17th century houses windows proportions (Simon remarked that one of the facades really looks like his old family house which was a building from mid 17th century), all incorporated in an unique form of a very modern looking building.

I wonder if Charles Rennie and Margaret would like how their idea was translated into real life (maybe minus weird, starck white, health-and-safety railings protecting one from falling off some 5 cm high steps in the garden...) or being perfectionists, they would be slightly dissapointed by financial and aesthetical compromises that had to be made in the final execution of the project. I rather think that they woud be jolly glad that finally someone in Scotland realised that they were unique artists. And now Glasgow can cash on the architects whose work was considered too sophisticated and he was not able to make a living out of it.

White bull-terriers

Lucien Freud dissapeared quietly in his home on 20th of July 2011, reaching a satisfying age of 88.

He is undobtedly on of my favourite painters, with whose work I can relate to as I do not especially flatter my subjects or myself either. Though I still have to take a picture of myself with a black eye as he once famously did (after a fight with a taxi driver when he was in his 60s). When I first came accross his work (in 2000, when in Paris I immediately bought a huge album with his nudes and lugged it bravely on the plane home) it was a love at first sight. I like how he is painting but at the same time the distortion is very photographic and the shapes drawn just like with a pencil (that is why I also like Hockney so much because it it not much of a painter but more of a drawing man).

Or I simply like clear outlines because I have enough of blurriness in my life when I take my lenses out...

Or actually it was a white bull-terrier in one of his portraits, the very fist one reproduced in my Paris-bought album. In the painting Freud's first wife Kitty (he was married several times and is said to father at least 20 children! Dan Farson famously said about the painter that 'like Svengali, he mesmerised women into capitulation') has her leg trapped by a cosying white bull-terrier:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucian_Freud

Coincidentally I am reading now Dodie Smith's I capture the Castle . I went and got the book after seeing a picture of Romola Garai who plays the main character in the film adaptation of the novel, sitting next to a white bull-terier in a crowded London cafe. (The name of the dog is not mentioned in the film at all, so to learn that she is called Heloise, you will have to read this excellent book.)

This is how white bul-terriers lead you with their slanty eyes and wet noses into some of the most favourite things in life.

Cows and seaside

A nice, SUNNY day that we spent in St Andrews, what an exception this summer, but note my canvas coat still being with me! I am finding cows to be rather intimidating but these were friendly and nostalgic, sending longing looks towards the sea, probably dreaming about sailing tall ships towards foreign, distant lands. I have always thought that after a long day in the field cows go home for a nice cuppa but no, they are being left on the field overnight, what a shame, missing so many great programmes on tv (BBC2 The Hour with Romola Garai and Ben Wishaw is on this week!).