Well done Stewart Richardson...

Shashin said:

I was not sure to post it here or the Leica forum, but he does use an S2.

https://www.theguardian.com/artandd.../iceland-winter-in-pictures-stuart-richardson

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When Steward wrote--->>>"The more I photographed the streetlights, the more anthropomorphic they seemed to me, like automatons sent out to colonise the landscape"<<<

When he said that, along with his accompanied image, I immediately thought of the spaceships from "War of the Worlds" :bugeyes: They'd feel right at home!

Dave (D&A)

A well deserved recognition of Stuart by The Guardian for his unique perspective on Iceland!

When I received the M9 I bought from Stuart last year I was surprised and so thankful that he included a copy of his "Sodium Sun" book. I have a lot of photo books, but this one is very special. We are lucky to have so many talented photographers and members like Stuart here at GetDPI.

Gary

Thank you guys! Very kind of you to notice. I was pretty surprised by it. They contacted me out of the blue. I am not sure where they saw the work. The only thing I can think of was that it was in relation to the Icelandic Photography Festival, which is this weekend. I am part of a group show that is opening at the Reykjavík Museum of Photography.

Gary, your M9 was used to make the photo of the streetlights on the green hill. The one where I said they look like automatons! The rest were taken with the S2. It is incredibly good for low light photography as long as you can give it long exposure and as long as there is some light from the moon or streetlights. I got much better quality files than I did from the A7RII or other CMOS cameras I tried...

Stuart Richardson said:

I am part of a group show that is opening at the Reykjavík Museum of Photography.

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The Guardian write-up mentioned this recent work and referred to at it as "Undercurrent". I didn't find a project on your website with that name, but perhaps the photos are part of some of your projects such as "In a Narrow Fjord". I see it is the group exhibition called "This Island Earth".

THIS ISLAND EARTH | Reykjavík City Museum

Is there any place online where we can see some of your "Undercurrent" photos which will be in this exhibition?

Gary

bensonga said:

The Guardian write-up mentioned this recent work and referred to at it as "Undercurrent". I didn't find a project on your website with that name, but perhaps the photos are part of some of your projects such as "In a Narrow Fjord". I see it is the group exhibition called "This Island Earth".

THIS ISLAND EARTH | Reykjavík City Museum

Is there any place online where we can see some of your "Undercurrent" photos which will be in this exhibition?

Gary

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I am currently doing an MFA and not putting much online until I am finished with the degree (since the work changes a lot, and it is also better to hold the work until it is ready before releasing it), but I will attach a picture of the show. I have an instagram that is private, but it is only really private to prevent spammers and to keep it from being an "official" account of my work. It is more casual. If you are instagram and want to look, you can add me at /stuartrichardsonphotography. I more often post personal photographs there than my best work, so it is not always as interesting as it might be, but I recently put up some installation shots up. The photo on the front page of my website (of the small pond at night shot with flash). The video is the second video on my website under the motion section...the one of the nighttime landscapes with the lighthouse light. The pictures in the show were all shot with 4x5 black and white film, but one of them is a composite image of three photos together to build a conceptual landscape...it looks like a real mountain, but it is actually three different mountains combined to make one photo. The idea was to celebrate the beauty of the mountain, but also to obscure it and protect it. Iceland has been so overrun by tourism in the last few years, I am doing my best to celebrate the nature, but I am also jealous and protective of it! The tension in that duality is part of my thesis work. P.S. Will, you might be interested to know that I am linking part of my work to Heian/Kamakura poetry, particularly to Saigyo. I love the way that the Buddhist aesthetics viewed nature with love and sadness. It is a feeling that I think I share.

Great work Stuart, well done on the article!

Mat

Stuart

How long does your show last at the museum? Will it still be there for the Festival of Lights in February? I’ll be in Reykjavik Feb 1-4th so hopefully I can do the museum tour on the 2nd and see it.

Stuart Richardson said:

P.S. Will, you might be interested to know that I am linking part of my work to Heian/Kamakura poetry, particularly to Saigyo. I love the way that the Buddhist aesthetics viewed nature with love and sadness. It is a feeling that I think I share.

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I find the Japanese view of nature very appealing. The Japanese mixed Buddhism with their own religion Shinto. One product is the folk religion Shugendo--it is the mountain religion of Japan. This dual nature of the scared and profane is very striking in the Japanese landscape. It is hard to climb a mountain in Japan and not find a shine or Buddhist image. And they have a lot of mountains.

If you like Saigyo, then a later poet Ryokan, a Zen monk, may also appeal to you.

I hope you are enjoying your MFA. The focus on the photographic book makes your program very attractive. I also enjoy Colberg's blog. He is one of the few that discusses the book in an intelligent way, even within the narrow confines of what he describe as "photoland."

I don't know how much Japanese photography you follow, but you may enjoy the work of Naoya Hakakeyama. I reviewed one of his books: Kesengawa: Naoya Hatakeyama | Hakusan Creation But there is other work that is not quite so personal you may enjoy.

I sometimes miss Japan very much...

GrahamWelland said:

Stuart

How long does your show last at the museum? Will it still be there for the Festival of Lights in February? I’ll be in Reykjavik Feb 1-4th so hopefully I can do the museum tour on the 2nd and see it.

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The show opens today Graham, so I imagine Stuart is very busy. Per info in this link, it ends on May 6th.

http://borgarsogusafn.is/en/reykjavik-museum-of-photography/exhibitions/island-earth

Gary

When I read the information about the exhibit more closely, I realized the reference in The Guardian to "Undercurrent" was about Stuart's video that he mentioned in his earlier post.

"In the video series Undercurrent, Stuart Richardson records the landscape of a narrow fjord in the East, the only light source being the narrow beam from a lighthouse that sweeps across the deserted ground and exposes to us momentary glimpses that keep us in suspense of the unknown."

It is a visually interesting video made even more so to me because there is no audio.

Gary

Sorry for the late response guys. Yes, Gary was right...I was swamped this weekend because of the festival. It all went very well though, I am happy to say.

GrahamWelland said:

Stuart

How long does your show last at the museum? Will it still be there for the Festival of Lights in February? I’ll be in Reykjavik Feb 1-4th so hopefully I can do the museum tour on the 2nd and see it.

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Hi Graham,
Yes, it will be up. You are also welcome to come by the studio at some point if you like. Just send me an email if you have the time, and I am happy to meet up for a coffee. There is always a chance that I might be out of town shooting or busy, but if I am around and have time, I am usually up for meeting other forum members and photographers.
Stuart

Gary -- The lack of audio was both practical and by intention in the video. At time time I shot some of the videos, I did not have an appropriate microphone. The wind in the area is often very high, and getting good audio in that kind of environment is very challenging and requires a lot of specialized wind noise reduction equipment. I nearly always tend to work alone, and need to carry all my gear. Managing both the video and the audio was a bit more than I could handle, at least in heavy winds. For the second part of the series I did have a small audiotechnica stereo shotgun mic that sits in the hotshoe. The audio quality is quite decent (for my uses), so I started using that later. It comes with a wind protector, but it is only useful in moderate breezes. The wind here requires extreme measures, which I have not taken! In general, the focus of the videos is in the interaction of the light with the land, not the actual landscape or environment, so the audio is unnecessary, and to a certain extent distracting to that purpose.

Will -- Thank you very much for the recommendations for Ryokan and Naoya Hakakeyama. I will check them out. I know what you mean about missing Japan. I spent about six months total in Sapporo, but have not been back since 2005. I really would like to go back, especially now that I am a better photographer!