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DayFour issue 9 Modern Love
Published 2011
Cover: Diana Pappas
To most of us, love is a fundamental emotional need. We want to love and be loved. Love is the universal subject of musicians and artists, and the stock-in-trade of gossip columns.
In Western society, the importance of love, and indeed the definition of love, has changed throughout history. Once upon a time homosexuality was prosecuted, and now we celebrate gay weddings. Once upon a time, love meant a private relationship between a man and a woman, leading to a life-long marriage, children, and the founding of a family. Now, marriage is optional, divorce is normal, and privacy is almost impossible. We look for love on Internet dating sites, and hook up with strangers. At the same time, in the modern world different ideas of love are leading to increasing cultural conflict. Loving who you want, or expressing your love, can incur violence and punishment.
Modern love applies to more than our intimate relationships. Once upon a time, the idea of loving your job would have been unimaginable, and not loving your country would be a treasonable offence. Now we love our football team, or The X-Factor, or Justin Bieber, and express that love in ways our parents never imagined.
For this issue, DayFour contributors considered what, who and how we love. While many of the subjects are timeless – the family, falling in love – the way we approach those subjects – defining family, finding a mate – are pure 21st-century.
Contributors
© All photography and text in Dayfour is copyright the contributors. All rights reserved
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Love Letters
I often wonder and worry that our human behaviours will be warped beyond repair by access to social media and constant connectivity. Will it become the norm to pursue a connection with someone you have met through social media, only to finally meet in person and find that the spark you thought you had exists only in cyberspace? Are we slowly unlearning how to strike up a conversation with someone we like in everyday life and see that blossom (or not) into a romance? I keep an eye open for the answers on the streets of London but I’m not sure if these two photographs I took of heartfelt scribbles give me hope that all is not lost and there is still some very real human love out there, or that we’re already finding it hard to communicate in person, putting our feelings out there on the walls for all to see.
Contributor London-based Tom Bland says, 'I shoot rural and urban landscapes, street photography, abstracts, design subjects, documentary work, portraits, music jobs, and the good food that finds its way onto my plate.’
tombland.co.uk
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Call Snapshot 13
A miracle doesn't cover the loss..
Contributors Aleksander Bochenek is a freelance documentary photographer based in Krakow, Poland. With an MBA in Economics, he turned to photography full-time in 2005. Since then he has travelled extensively, covered various stories and engaged in long-term photographic projects. Grzegorz Ostrega is also based in Krakow. He travels when possible, photographing and writing as he goes. Grzegorz is currently working on a local project focused on collecting sights of a vanishing city district. More Aleksander in d4.7
aaleksander.com
ostrega.tumblr.com
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Love's Lost Highway
Nothing except sand, stones, sky and tombs. The Panamericana runs for hundreds of kilometres across the Atacama desert in Chile on its way from Alaska to Patagonia. The Atacama is the driest desert in the world and very sparsely populated. Still, every hundred metres one passes a grave... Most of the people were killed by falling asleep while driving. Loved ones and family members design the tombs, which show a huge range of variety. This way they express their love beyond death.
Contributor Felix Brandl studied photography in Munich, Germany, where he is currently based. He combines commercial work for magazines including German Vogue and GQ, with personal work. Felix recently became a father to twin daughters. More Felix in d4.7 and d4.8
felix-brandl.de
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She Said
She sits and stirs tea leaves and draws me a bath. Told me she would become a tall ship if she could, sailing the widest of the ocean’s waves.
I told her I would be an old book sitting on an end table: unread, unkept and illegible.
Contributor Rebecca Cairns was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. She says, 'I’ve been shooting a body of work that mostly consists of self-portraiture for about three years now – trying my best to shoot at least one new image every day.’ Her work has been featured on Photoboite’s 30 under 30 online exhibition of emerging female artists, and has also appeared in Shots magazine, Sova magazine, and other publications.
rebeccacairns.com
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Notebooks
Not long ago, when my little family disintegrated from a sturdy triangle into a sort of tentative hyphen, I stopped all commissioned work and lost interest in ‘proper’ photography altogether. Instead, I became an amateur again, just shooting what was around me, mostly while on holiday with my son. My family had changed. My notion of love had changed. My reasons for working had changed.
Contributor Robin Cracknell was born in India, grew up in America, and started his career as a fashion photographer in Milan before moving to London. His photography has appeared on the Saatchi website, nominated by Marc Quinn as one of the top ten artists (out of 12,000) in a show curated by readers of The Guardian, gallery owners, critics and artists. His solo show, The Camera Suture, took place at The Whitecross Gallery, London. Robin's photographs have been exhibited in the leading London photography gallery, Michael Hoppen Contemporary, and are held in various private collections internationally as well as Fundacion Privada Sorigue, a museum of contemporary art in Lleida, Spain.
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A Piece of My Mind
James (left): The song is ‘Like a Hurricane’ by Neil Young and it’s always made my hair stand on end. A girlfriend of mine had it on one day when I came home after work. She says it was coincidental. I say she did it on purpose to impress me. Either way, I decided to immortalise that memory.
Harry (right): From an early age I’ve always found myself in the strangest of places. Thanks to my parents travelling across Europe I never had a fixed abode, but I was always looking for a home.
Contributor Katie Ell is a London-based photographer of people, food and reportage. She is also a big fan of Kentish Town City Farm where she can sometimes be found mucking out her favourite farm animals – goats.
katieell.com
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Postcards from Kalisz
I couldn’t speak Polish. I had no connection with Kalisz and no understanding of what it meant to be an economic migrant. So I began to send Monika’s family my postcards with photos of their life and of Kalisz city in the hope that they would produce an intimate and revealing insight into their lives and thoughts, where leaving is never easy but coming home is often harder.
Contributor Kirk Ellingham divides his time between Kalisz and Warsaw in Poland and Oxford in the UK. He says, ‘As time passes I am continuously and often desperately trying to fathom the hard facts of life: love, despair, anxieties and hopes through small [photographic] stories, both intimate and distant, both foreign and domestic – here on my own doorstep.’ A graduate with Distinction of the University of Wales Newport Documentary Photography & Photojournalism course, with an MA from London College of Communication, Kirk’s photography has been exhibited in the UK, Europe, and South America.
kellingham.viewbook.com
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The Touch
Irene, the foundry manager (left): As manager of the Royal College of Art’s foundry for many years, Irene is acutely aware of the different attitudes of students passing through the school. ‘There is a tendency just to want to copy objects today,’ she told me. ‘Many students don’t take time to really understand materials and processes. The ones that do produce more interesting work.’
Alessia, the bee keeper (right): Born in a small rural Italian village, Alessia loves living in London. She is passionate about bees and works seven days a week on rooftops, in allotments, and city farms tending hives and teaching others about beekeeping. Alessia brings to her life in London a desire to support and sustain these often overlooked city dwellers.
Contributor Kelly Hill studied at Warwick University and Central Saint Martins and recently completed a Masters in Photography at London College of Communication. Based in London she combines commissions with personal work for exhibition and publication. Kelly was recently shortlisted for the prestigious Terry O’Neill Award, the Deutsche Bank Award 2011 with Zoe Grace Fletcher, and received an Arts Council/Rhubarb Rhubarb Bursary. More Kelly in d4.7 and d4.8
kellyhill.co.uk
kellyhillphotography.blogspot.com
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Perfect Strangers
Most of us fear each other, strangers we fear the most. There are many reasons why but that’s beside the point. The point is, wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t fear each other? If we could just walk up to each other without preconceived notions, open ourselves to each other’s presence and with respect and love embrace the situation as an encounter without intent. No matter the difference, without any expectations, simply engage in a step into the unknown by making a human connection.
Modern love, for me, is about the strangers we’re drawn to for whatever reason, and I feel that if we don’t explore that reason it becomes a missed opportunity for enriching our lives. Here are snapshots of my perfect strangers, with whom, on an intimate level and in my own shy way I was able to make a connection with by shooting their portraits. The mystery behind the nagging question, ‘Who are you?’ is my fascination.
Contributor Adela Holmes was born in Poland. Aged 11 she and her family escaped to West Berlin. At 21 she moved to the US.’ In 2009 Adela moved to Miami, where she and four other artists have founded a non-profit artists organization, EXPOSED: the Art Project. Adela says she now intends to move to different cities frequently as the ‘vagabonda’ in her is calling. More Adela in d4.6 and d4.7
adelaholmes.com
adelaholmes.tumblr.com
exposedtheartproject.org
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Shine Silently
It was summer when I made these. I was thinking about protection, creating totems – my own sites of personal spirituality. They adorned a handmade cave of scavenged wood, out in the wilderness, and I sat inside and thought about how to be more tender, to make things better, how to wrap my humanity up, make it golden..
Contributor Kirsty Hulm is an artist based between Melbourne, Australia and San Francisco, USA. She says, 'I create personal mythologies to absorb the effects of traumatic experience. To re-energise memory as a positive and malleable material, able to be re-woven, manipulated, re-packaged as objects and experiences which directly refer to the past. I re-make the present to direct an often rudderless future. Times where we failed to find happiness evolve to become the blueprint for future joy to be stamped upon.’ More Kirsty in d4.5
kirstyhulm.wordpress.com
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Silent Neighbours
Miki lives in Tokyo and Shen lives in Shanghai. How do their daily lives compare? What do they have for breakfast? What do they think about in the shower? What does Miki look like? And what does Shen look like? Will they ever meet? Carrying the thought a bit further... what would happen if I connected a photo-booth in Shanghai with one in Tokyo?
Contributor Nica Junker is a photographer and photography and film lecturer based in London. She studied Directing for Film at Die Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen Konrad Wolf in Potsdam-Babelsberg, graduating with a Distinction, and went on to study Photography at Central Saint Martins, London. Nica won the Deutsche Bank Pyramid Photography Award in 2008. She is also winner of the Littlemore/BCCKS Jurys Award, Tokyo, 2009.
nicajunker.de
silentneighbours.com
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Perhaps in Another Life
Some days you wake up and you have to have a plan for the day. Today it is St Valentine’s Day. Ouch! It is like Christmas or New Year’s Eve. Even if you don’t want to celebrate it, you will be reminded of that emblematic date in some way or the other. Whether you have a partner or not.
Contributor Hernan Martin was born in Salamanca, Spain, and has lived for nearly seven years in the UK. He studied Photography at Blake College, London. Currently back in Salamanca working as a photojournalist, Hernán says he ‘would like to develop my own career somewhere between documentary and fine art photography. I would like to show people real issues and at the same time, make them think about their own opinion.’ He also loves portraiture as it gives him ‘the chance to meet people and to remember their story with a single image of them.’
flickr.com/photos/hernanmartingonzalez
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Somewhere Out There
These images are about my love for journeys, the actual physical act of traveling from A to B. A journey is full of visual pleasure, with views to discover and plots to unravel, like watching a film. While the pace and viewpoints are determined by the chosen mode of transport and trip particulars, there are no boundaries for plots to unfold beyond one’s imagination. I love how the physical feeling of moving – and also of simply staying put for a duration of time – facilitates a journey within oneself, with one’s thoughts going on a journey of their own.
Contributor Elke Meitzel is a portrait and fashion photographer based in London. A photography graduate of the University of Westminster, she shoots for editorial clients in the UK and Europe. Elke is currently working on a personal project examining perceptions of ageing.
elkemeitzel.co.uk
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Two Hearts
I am a photographer in search of stories. I am infatuated with the notion that fantasy is constantly a part of our reality. With wanderlust forever a part of me, I travel near and far in search of the spectacular. In my work, I seek to document the temporary moments in life that are at once simple yet fleeting. These photographs stand as small representations of defining moments in my life. In terms of love, I am a big believer in it. I am a hopeless romantic at heart and I believe that my photography reflects that side of me. I choose to find the beauty and the serendipity in life. I believe that ‘Modern Love’ can be seen in many ways. Although humans’ ways of showing affection may look different or happen under different circumstances today, at the end of the day love is love. My images represent my idea of ‘Modern Love’ because they show that love is the constant in life, whether it be between siblings, a lasting love, found love, or even lost love – love will continue. I feel my photographs show the essence of love in its most basic form. Timeless.
Contributor Based out of Boston, MA, with a BFA from The Art Institute of Boston, Kati Mennett works in both documentary and constructed photography. Kati’s work has appeared in publications including Lenscratch and Another Man, and been exhbited across the US.
katimennett.com
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The Modern Lovers
A surprise day trip to Malmö and Copenhagen, organised by my partner Per. 9am: just got up, getting ready for a shower at the Radisson Hotel in Malmö ... 8pm: back at the hotel. Made love. Fell asleep...
Contributor German born Ralf Obergfell is a London College of Printing graduate and a founding member of Photodebut. In 2007 he was nominated for the Paris Photography (PX3) Award. In 2008 he published Last Stop, which was nominated for the London And/Or Photography Book Prize. Also that year Ralf was a semi finalist in the Hasselbald Masters Awards. In 2009 Ralf launched his solo show Beautiful Freaks at London’s Dalston Superstore Gallery. In 2010, the Beautiful Freaks show and installation was reprised at the Royal College of Art in London as part of the Gender & Performance group show. He is currently working on various new projects including a photography retrospective which will be shown in 2012. A co-founder of iconic London club night GutterSlut, Ralf lives and works in Berlin and London.
ralfobergfell.com
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25 Seconds
Contributor Diana Pappas describes herself as ‘a photographer, gardener and cook in New Jersey, USA,’ though she also spends time in London. Diana studied art history at Duke University and started her career working on feature films in New York. Her photography has appeared in publications including The New York Times and in the set decoration of both Sex and the City films. Her photographic prints are in private collections in north America and Europe. Diana also writes the real food blog Eat More Butter.
dianapappas.com
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Revelations
Modern love is... A brief history of dis-encounters. A long-distance affair. A summer romance. Ephemeral. Fickle. A stolen kiss on a drunken night out. The comfort of friends. A complete surprise.
Contributor Julieta Sans comes from Buenos Aires and is mostly based in London, ‘after flirting with Paris, Istanbul, Los Angeles and spending a longer stint in Barcelona.’ She says, ‘I recently moved to a beautiful studio in Clapton where I am working on my first book about these comings and goings (and love, and life.)’ More Julieta in d4.5 and d4.7
julietasans.com
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Big Love
Modern love is... the love with which a mother tries to protect her child from the rain, travelling by boat on the Amazonas river to the small village of Hipolito Unanue....
Contributor Marco Simola says, ‘I’m Italian and since 2007 I live happily – but really, really happily – in Lima, Peru. I’m a photographer and I generally work for big companies who develop social responsibility projects. I also do a lot of pro bono work with NGOs such as Un Techo para mi PaÍs and Doctores Bola Roja. I am one of the owners of the first photo-booth for events in Peru, Enfokate!’ More Marco in d4.8
marcosimola.jimdo.com
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Hold Me
In this series of photographs, my intention is to capture how gender dynamics are transformed into ‘appearances’ which my subjects seem to have to uphold. These dynamics are preserved as they are passed down from one generation to the next. ‘You have to look good.’ ‘You have to be a man.’ ‘You have to look young if you are old, and old if you are young.’ ‘You need to find a partner, or you will be alone forever.’ All coming down to: you need people to love you, for you to love yourself.
Contributor Paris Visone is a documentary photographer based in Boston, MA. She graduated from the Art Institute of Boston where she currently teaches. Paris was chosen as a 2010 Getty Images Editorial Photography Grant recipient for her series Gender Roles and Appearance. She recently finished touring with and photographing the legendary punk/new wave band, Blondie. Paris is best known for her ever-continuing documentary work on her family and friends. She has been featured in publications including Fiasco magazine, F-stop magazine, and Performer magazine. She is currently working on an ongoing series that follows a group of people through their lives.
parisvisone.com
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Little Things
I’m not going to deny that I have kids but I sometimes feel being a female photographer I have to hide the fact so I can get on in this male dominated industry. This isn’t a criticism of the industry, it probably says more about my internal conflict: trying to work as a photographer and also be a good mum to two small children. I do however try to move away from traditional images of children and families. Humour is a great part of my life. Before I had kids I underestimated how much it would change my view of the world and how it would change other people’s opinions of me. I feel I know more now but along with my kids I’m pretty sure it will continue to change.
Contributor Jenny Wicks is a fine art and commercial photographer. Her Root Ginger project was exhibited in London in 2009 and received national press coverage. She says, ‘It looks at the genetic lottery we all play and was in support of the Cystic Fibrosis Trust. Cystic Fibrosis is in my family and, like red hair, is the result of a recessive gene trait. The series of portraits takes on an ethereal quality with a touch of almost scientific sampling which echoes the biological aspect of the work.’ After spending the last 13 years in London Jenny now lives in Glasgow with her partner and two young children.
jennywicksphotography.co.uk
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It's Complicated
Parents’ love for their children is often measured by society in terms of the achievement of various goals. Loving children is wanting the best for them. Raising an autonomous, self-confident and socially competent human being is considered an important educational aim. So it can be observed that the relationships often tend towards a more cooperative interaction between child and adult. The once primarily hierarchical connection seems to have lessened. Especially if the mother goes back to work after maternity leave, the educational responsibility is spread among many persons so that the social and emotional network of children has become more complex as traditional gender-related role models are challenged. Fulfilling all the modern social requirements of education doesn’t seem to be easy for all parties concerned. Love for children today perhaps means finding a balance between personal and social requirements, between making demands and granting them, and sometimes even between heart and mind.
Contributor Susanne Willuhn says, ‘I was born and raised in a small town in Germany and I live in Cologne. I am a self-taught artist. I began to take photos a few years ago as both a way to express and explore myself and to live out my creativity outside the daily routine of my job. Since then, photography has become my passion. My photographic approach is mostly intuitive and I am basically using analogue medium format cameras.’ Susanne’s work has appeared in print and online magazines including Invisible City, F-Stop, Descry, and Unless You Will. Her photography has been exhibited in Grenoble, Paris and Berlin. She is currently preparing for a solo show in Cologne.
susanne-willuhn.de
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© All photography and text in Dayfour is copyright the contributors. All rights reserved.