“The night is a wonderful, mysterious and peaceful place.”
To photographer Larrie Thomson it became a welcome break from his daily life. When it’s full moon he gathers his photo equipment, gets into his car and heads out into the night ending up at some of the most desolate and unexpected spots, like an abandoned factory, eery rock formations or a car wreck in front of a demolished house.
Usually he takes pictures with the available moonlight using long exposures, like 5 minutes or even longer. He also deploys colored strobes (external flash lights) to fill in the dark spots or simply to create special effects out of the ordinary (light painting).
Even though a lot of people who see his pictures think they are heavily manipulated with software like Photoshop, they are not. The images are surreal and intriguing, paintings of a world that’s out there but not usually visible to ordinary mortals.
His nocturnal escapades bring some adventure into his life as well: “You never know what you run into and sometimes you have to follow your instincts and just get the hell out!”
On Thursday the 16th yours truly went to the opening of the W. Eugene Smith exposition in FOAM. You can visit this all B&W visual treat until the 16th of March.
The photographer W. Eugene Smith, born in 1918 in Tucson, USA, is widely recognized as the originator of the photo essay. His work was published in several magazines including the famous American Life.
Eugene was a socially and politically engaged man and his pictures reflected his emotions and vision. He was also a perfectionist and workaholic, seldom satisfied with the results of his work and was often disappointed by the way it was published, parts being omitted and changed by the editors. Working as a war photojournalist he was wounded in the Pacific and after World War II used and abused amphetamine and drink on a regular base.
After leaving his job at Life in 1954, he joined the well known photographers cooperative Magnum. He was commissioned to make a reportage about Pittsburgh. This turned out to be a very involved project and resulted in more than 11.000 negatives.
One of his most impressive projects was without doubt the Minamata project in Japan.
Check out these two brilliant videos made by Robert Foster from The JuiceMedia, an Australian indymedia collective. Painting a thorough and accurate picture of the Wikileaks controversy and all the forces that are at work.
Daan de Wit, a Dutch research journalist, has just published his book “Dossier Mexicaanse griep” (The Swine Flu Files). While the pharmaceutical industry made huge profits, most vaccines bought by governments all over the world have been thrown in the garbage bins. Also the vaccine was never tested extensively and could be harmful to people, e.g. it contains mercury which takes a long time to leave the human body.
There’s a website about the book (in Dutch) found here
More about Daan de Wit and his work: http://www.deepjournal.com/ where you can also sign up for his newsletter.
