personal

page 218

as a nonphotojournalist it is hard for me to relate to certain things. as the such, i do not get excited at the prospect of a shoot of a traffic reck, i have no sentiments about what pictures i might be able to take or what impact they might have on me or the nation. when rolling out after the pager anounces that your dinner is over, and that something may or may not happen but - "the photojournalist" must be there in case it does happen and take pictures of it, or take pictures of whatever never happend. the news desk is fast asleep when the pager comes in and so all the information you have is broken and not very usfull. we pack up our dinner and send our guests on their way, with a small but unmistakably common and already known and expected to happen, "sorry, the work you konw..." and what we actualy mean is this is the life of the photojournalist and we see it as a calling more then a way to make ends meat. after that we get locked and loaded and roll out in to the cold, moist drizzley night. the slippery road means we are extra cautios and move along slower then we normaly would in a situation like this but i already know what gonna happen and how its gonna take place.

victims of a bus rolled over in jordan are beeing transeferred to israel for medical treatment.

the bus rolled over at 2PM and the call for the shoot was out at 8PM. get shots of the injured ariving at the hospital.

not an urgent thing, unless ofcourse they are almost there. but lucky (or not) for us, jordan is a while away, and there is a border crossing in the between us and them. there are also 3 hospitals in jerusalem, so where do we go? mount scoupus is the answer, we arrive there after a brisk ride and find a few more photojournalists there. one of them gets a ride to the border crossing. and we stay at the entrance to the ER. now starts the real work.

as a non photojournalist i couldent care less about those poeple arriving to the hospital, or the actual event that got them there. i have no sentiments for tragredy, especialy when it interfears with my plans or my life. as a non photojournalist i have no need to try and make the best image for the news desk for tommorows newspaper. i have no approach to this kind of photography, i dont get revved up, i dont loose my mind in it. maybe i would even be able to take a picture of somthing like that if i really want to and put my mind to it, but in the end i never really get excited about taking pictures i dont want to take and usualy i dont even take my camera out of the bag unless there is somthing i want to shoot. and when i do, usualy one shot is enough for me (this beeing an expection to that rule, but ofcourse this is free picture taking). at no time did i have any illusins of this making print, and even if this was a more relevant event that i would say might actualy see some ink on paper it wouldent really make much of diffarence to me.

as we were driving there and especialy after we got there i knew this would not be of any intrest to any news intrument in the whole wide world. but it is still part of the job of the non photojournalist who follows the photojournalist. the first conversation at the back of the ER between all the photojournalist is about work bussiness - are the victims jews? or are they arabs? if they are jews, are they real jews or arab jews? how can one tell if they are jewish? a reporter calls a photographer at a helipad at another hospital who shot victims comming out of an air froce hellicopter and said "they look jewish enough" maybe he could smell them, or maybe it was the size of the noses. in any case this is a long conversation, and is streched out to the end of the cognitive capabilites of all attending, this is mostly dew to the fact that the victims are far from arriving at the mount scoupus ER. the guy who said that photography is 99% beeing at the right place at the right time was absolutly right. but being at the right place in the right time usualy means a photojournalist must wait for the time to come in the right place. so we know that ambulances will roll in to the ER doors and unload poeple on streachers, but now there is a wait. waiting is the real job here. and with this extreme waiting, often lasting hours, and over a whole night, always comes mindless chatter. the "photo talk" usualy covers the same areas and follows a predetermined structure. first comes the family talk, who got married, who had babies and who is on vaction, who met who and where in the past 6 hours since the last time this conversation was held followed shortly with a few social\racial remarks on the present\absent topics of discussion. after that comes the "previuosly at the (fill in the blank for location\item) shooting" with comments and observations of each photojournalist present. this is intrrupted every few sentances to add short\long stories of days past, glory stories of heroes, injuries sufferd by freinds of freinds and things that happened in previuos work places. the "gear talk" may come before or after this stage and will cover the latetsts news and roumors about the wourld of consumer electronics\photo gear.

after photo war time stories ineveteibly it is time for army stories as with any meeting of a group of veterans of israeli upbringing. weather attendants present have been in the army or not everyone has a story to tell. this passes a few more minutes of the wait, and then there is silence.

if the shoot has not yet happened by this time there will be a few moments of silence and the whole thing will start over again, with romours about censored stories or headlines.

this is the real work of a photojournalist. one can assume that whenever colleagues of the same work place or field meet they make some small talk about whats what and whos where and so on. and even in an office situation, you can imagine that poeple will catch up socialy after a long weekend. but in this case you will find this talk at every meeting, be it 4 times a day. if photos actualy need to be taken it takes a few seconds, a second devided by 125 or 60 means it dosent take long to make.....

as a non photojournalist with a cool vantage point of a lightning storm over south east jerusalem, i took the time to make some lightning pictures.

after 8 or so hours worth of waiting we got home, showered and wind down. as i had no illusions as to what i am doing wiht my life and time of choice i felt cheated only slightly out of my friday night and in any case i sepnt it with tess (well in the same general vicinity).

the paper used an archive image.

for what its worth (less then 0$...).

pretty girls make all the diffarence.

first come first serve or fights of passion

november 30th. first real rain. same place same rain. same camera. no ouria tadmor but i still feel like shit. beer still makes me feel bad. it was back exactly 2 years ago -

http://krifartida.blogspot.com/2007/11/street-of-pure-souls.html

when ouria got me convineced of the surplus value of diffarent things. he was wrong and i was stupid to follow in that way. he made me think that a childhood dream like beeing a pilot or a later one of beeing a photojournlist was wourth while sacrificing everything and not a bad idea to disallusion ones self. it made me feel stupid about my self then and has since put me in a position i have yet find my way out of. once, i wanted to be like ouria tadmor, i felt i can throw everything away and be as free as a kite. that beeing a creator and not a vendor is a good idea that it means somthing. it probably does, but not for me, for lack of talent, lack of meaning, or a grand understanding of the bigger picture what real is, where it is and how to do it. non of that has any value with no passion. and i had all the passion in to world to make this change to be something, but i couldent then and i cant now. i am a nothing and cant realize what i want. i cant even write it down and explain it over these black pages as i once could. there should be no comments of this nonsense. i have made little progress since that november 2 years ago, now i have less focus, less camera, less understading, less motivation - no creation, wich on its own is not a bad thing. making stuff makes me sad. i wonder how much mroe sad i can get.

there is no forgiveness for crimes of passion.

PS, the last image is called "three fat asses."

sense and responasability

i have porbably said this more then once, and will porbably bring it up again in the future - responsability is the key. in a direct connection to the title there can be a no there understanding of how society can function. it was once a commonly known derogatory way to refer to tribal and primitivst aspects of imigrants culture - it is unburdoning of responsability. other then beeing primitive in every western way, they also are not capable of maintining any kind of responsability. this is clearly seen in every african nation transferd from white european control to local indiginous governing and imansipation. sheding responsability for any reason is bad, sheding for social reasons is even worse. the saying tha "ones culture" permit him to behave in a way that is reckless and removes any burdon responsability from him due to that fact is dangouress. responsability is the key, acountability for ones actions is the only factor that determines his place in society. israelis, more then jews as they israelis are the new "new jews" of the modern era live in their own world of lack of responsability, this can be seen latley ( or historacly as well) in leaders gone awry, but is better pronounced by the cry of the deprived kosak. in israel no one is responsible for anything. not for the noise, the mess the death the endless sufforing of countless millions. with hitler it was simple - blame national socialism. or like Jhon Vorcheck\john goodman\Walter Sobchak would put it -

"Say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos."

it is easy to show how Naziesm is bad thing and is responsible for the horrors that are the our come of the actions of the german nation during the second world war.

in israel, the ethos has long been forgotten, the pathos is also dead, and any other social structures have failed long ago. and so there is no more room for petty things like personal responsability.

personal responsability is the key. it is gone or never was, and it makes me more angry every day.

materials

instroments

tools

new cameras, new materials, more pictures makes it happen for me. less pictures make me feel worse then i already do. cos they moslty suck.

the private life of ... ( a tribute to David Attenborough)

my private life is better kept private. no lengthy sermons on blogs or captions. no endless emails of pointless banter. my efforts are better used when they promote my wants to be a rich, aimless selfish person, preferably extremely rich. my blog is boring. my daily frames are worse. read emil salmans blog.

http://emil1369.wordpress.com/

he is talented. he writes about things.

expect less and enjoy.

whicks

cords

strings

wires

survivul

ways

sizes

pushing

playings

waring

looks

landings

troika (the russian one, not the english)

sideways

books

initiative

shorts and ends

levels

cander

keys

end of de werld, left (turn left at the end of the world, tribute to A. Nesher)

actioneer