Bubblegum Club

Tag: analogue photography

  • Cross Continental Collaboration – A Spontaneous Fashion Lens

    Cross Continental Collaboration – A Spontaneous Fashion Lens

    Natural beauty accentuated with minimal makeup and loose-fitting silhouettes. Nostalgia evoked through analogue photography. Traditional framing and spontaneous emotion. Free collaboration.

    Four creatives shared a mutual goal – to collaborate on a shoot during their time spent in Cape Town. A per chance meeting with Makeup and Hairstylist Patricia Piatke led the stylist for this shoot, Shukrie Joel to get in touch with her while hunting for a good photographer to put heads together with. And so, a collaboration was formed between photographer, hair and makeup artist, stylist and model. Their amalgamated team includes Detlef Honigstein, Shukrie Joel, Lolita Kupper and Patricia Piatke.

    The project was approached using analogue photography as the medium to speak through given Detlef’s affinity to the format. Colour and black and white film are employed evoking both a classical feeling and becoming more modern as colour is gradually introduced.

    For the team, this shoot was about a spontaneous get together before each of them set out to different countries. An opportunity for collaboration done with more impulse and spontaneity than vigorous planning. Their images come across as raw, beautiful and an impromptu moment captured on the emulsion of a film roll, breathed life into in its positive final form.

    Speaking to stylist Shukrie, he explains that his idea was for the clothing to look comfortable on the model’s frame, effortless and easy. Despite there being minimal planning the team made stylistic choices for which thought was given.

    Patricia and the team aimed to break away from the high-end street styles that Shukrie is known for with their makeup and hair styling decisions. With an artistic haute couture hairstyle giving off a sense of ease and natural makeup, the team did not want these elements to over shadow the colours of the clothing that Lolita wears. A fun selection of images resulted from their creative collaboration.

     

    Credits:

    Photography: Detlef Honigstein

    Fashion & styling: Shukrie Joel
    Hair & Makeup: Patricia Piatke

    Model: Lolita Kupper

  •  Anaka– The Healing Energies of Creative Expression

     Anaka– The Healing Energies of Creative Expression

    Anaka is a creative with a magnetic portfolio and project repertoire to her name. The visual impression of her work is one of sublime distinctiveness. In her photographic world, off-centeredness reigns, non-traditional cropping (such as the metaphorical decapitating of heads) takes prevalence, and where there seems to be a thought given to the rule of thirds – the edges of the images bleed – a clear and intentional stylistic choice.

    Other defining factors to Anaka’s photographic work are the layering of imagery as well as the selection of models that draw on one another, strengthening each image that make up her selections. Her portfolio currently features work for Refinery 29, Ossé, Tony Gum, images of Cape Town based photographer and creative director Imraan Christian as well as images of musician Luca Williams, to name a few.

    Describing herself, Anaka states on her website that “I channel through the mediums of analogue and digital photography, film direction & editing; choreography and movement meditation; collage; & archival documentation in order to contribute to the healing energies that creation brings into this realm.”

    Identifying as a healer first, she expresses that she is a dancer second and a visual artist third. Utilizing her creative virtues in order to sustain the way in which Spirit lives within the creative process. With a multitude of clients and impressive likenesses captured by her lens, Anaka continues her message of healing in other ways with projects such as the ‘Silient Zine’ –  a physical and online archive of artists and their creations within a specific moment intended towards healing.

    Looking at Spirit and healing energies it is easy to mentally create an image of Anaka practicing meditational movement – and she does – for not only personal healing but for communal healing. A dancing child grew into the healer, dancer and artist Anaka is at present. Movement is an integral part of her being. It is a source of positive energy that she pours out onto the world, into her art and into her vision.

    Anaka’s portraits of artists such as Luca Williams and Imraan Christian indicate another interest – to archive African artists and artists working within the African Diaspora. An act that reminds me of an argument made by Susan Sontag in ‘On Photography’ where she proclaims that photographing anyone makes them important and lends celebrity status onto them. She contests that every person photographed is as important as any other person photographed regardless of their social standing – to photograph someone is to monumentalize them (Sontag 1977:31).

    Anaka wishes to highlight the importance of these individuals and their creative pursuits which is accomplished by the mere fact that she created an object from their likeness (a photograph sometimes altered by intervention into a collage). This has a deeper purpose however; the archival material hopes to decolonise the meaning of being an artist within a societal system of violence and oppression against people of colour.

    As her website states “Imagery is infinite” and outlives human mortality. Imagery created by her and her collaborators are put under the ‘Imagery is Infinite™ Ar(t)chives’ title and serves to hold physical and digital space in the world. This also promotes the idea of creating consciously. The title acts as a means to “document how artists are creating now in the face of colonization”.

    Anaka’s work can thus be regarded as a practice of inner healing as well as a broader healing practice towards the community she situates herself within. Her positive energy oozes from her intervention with already documented imagery as well as the power of her future and current vision is of evident prevalence.

  • An assemblage of 35mm photographs on South East Asia as seen by Duran Levinson

    A number of months ago, browsing the Internet I was moved by analogue images that I found of South East Asian street culture. It was a very specific image that had mesmerized me: an image of a topless young woman with dark hair and haunting eyes. A lizard shaped tattoo crawling up her neck, she was fashioned in gold loop earrings and a peach coloured cap. In her one hand she holds a bucket of noodles and in the other, chopsticks with noodles pinched tight. Behind her a cityscape. Inspired by the striking image I immediately saved it to my phone without looking into who the creator was. As I started my research for this article I found the image again and was delighted to know that it in fact, it belonged to a South African creative, Duran Levinson.

    Image from ‘Backchat Boys Volume 1 – all image no spinach’

    Traveling on work holidays, the Capetonian filmmaker and photographer, Duran Levinson has captured the people and places he has encountered while globetrotting. Today I would like to focus on his work put together in Hong Kong consisting of architectural shots, portraiture and street photography.

    In 2016 Duran teamed up with two other South African photographers, Dustin Holmes
 and Gideon de Kock and brought out Backchat Boys Volume 1 – All image no spinach. This book was a collaborative project between the three friends and features imagery of street photography and venues in Hong Kong, captured on 35mm film.

    The aim of the project according to Duran was to document the street culture that he witnessed in the area and what I find the most intriguing is that the entire project was documented on a single point and shoot camera. Duran navigated the streets and was essentially perceived as a tourist with a little flimsy point and shoot camera and because of this, I believe that the result of his photographic documentation was influenced. The work that Duran produced in this project was obtained as a result of his unobtrusive tool to document with and this caused people to come across in a more authentic and natural way, as they were not necessarily posing.

    Image by Duran Levinson. ‘Hong Kong Forever’ series

    Duran has been known for working on expired film and the only changing factor in his project was changing between colour and black and white film. Expressing that the expired film he used during this collaborative project was between 5-10 years old, he believes that it leaves more room for experimentation and keeps the medium alive for him. The expired film creates a cool, subtle feeling to the images and the entire concept is captivating as not many photographers using the analogue medium opt to shoot that way. Duran however, adores the film stock and expresses that in Asia, expired film is cheaper than water.

    The images that Duran captured for this project are justly some of the most intriguing images I have seen of South East Asia and I believe that they show a different look into the culture that I have not been exposed to before. The imagery is fresh and honest documentation yet simultaneously, upon viewing them I feel like I can see Duran’s own sentiments towards the subjects that he is capturing. It is documentation, yet at the same time it exudes emotive expression.

    Image by Duran Levinson. ‘Hong Kong Forever’ series

    Duran has said before in conversations about this self-published book that it was a poor attempt at documenting human nature but I must say I disagree, the work speaks of a humanist approach. When I think of the documentation that I see in Backchat Boys Volume 1 – All image no spinach, I cannot say that it shares similarities with the kind of photographic documentation you would see in any National Geographic. Perhaps this collaborative project that Duran worked on with Dustin Holmes
 and Gideon de Kock, can be regarded as a new way of executing documentary photography.

    “Travelling is the only way to understand a big part of the ‘human condition’ and how you fit into this world in whatever way you perceive it.”

    Image by Duran Levinson. ‘Hong Kong Forever’ series
    Image from ‘Backchat Boys Volume 1 – all image no spinach’