Guča/Serbia Aug-2007: Black and white images, part 2/5.

Here is the "digital contact sheet" with all the photographs from the 2nd film (from which the photos of this post are coming from).

Guča/Serbia Aug-2007: Black and white images, part 1/5.

In the previous post we saw an article about Guča brass band festival. In this post and in the following 4 posts we will see photos from the 5 black & white films that I shot during the festival. All the films that I have used where ILFORD HP5 (400 ASA) and pushed at 1600 ASA. All the pictures has been shot using natural light (without flash).

Part of the "photographic art" is the ability of the photographer to choose his best photos. These are the photos that I have selected from the 1st film. The "digital contact sheet" of this film is:

Guča/Serbia Aug-2007: Balkan Brass Band Music Festival.

More about the Guča balkan brass band music festival you can find in the links:

• Guca festival at en.wikipedia.org
• http://www.guca.co.yu/

During the festival is interesting to see the bands playing on the streets:

Most visitors during the festival are sleeping either to their cars or the are camping (there are also few rooms if you book ahead). In the photo you can see some French jugglers in the camping out of the school (the teachers of the school were renting the playground of the school for camping (10€ per person for the days of the festival)). In France is famous the gypsy music and "the gypsy way" of living, so most of the tourists in Guča are French! (all these remind me the French film Gadjo Dilo (1997) from Tony Gatlif where the story is about a French who travels in Romanian and trying to find original gypsy music.. may-be the French people in Guča are imitating the hero of that movie) ;-).

Serbia has interesting local kitchen. During the festival you can taste roasted meat and traditional soups. Generally speaking the food in a restaurant in Serbia is cheap (ie. with 15€ 3 people can eat) but in the festival the food has European prices (=expensive). Something that I didn't like is the nationalistic character of the festival. In the following photo we see t-shirts with extremist/racist character. You can see in the t-shirts the face of Ratko Mladic how is resposible for genocides in the war in Bosnia. The person how was selling the t-shirts when he saw that I want to take a photo he didn't allow me to take pictures: "I don't want to have problems.. I don't want photos of my t-shirts" he said, and I replied "then why you sell them?" but I didn't receive an answer). The following photo I took it covertly. During the concerts we can see Serbs dancing with Serbian flags (some of them wearing t-shirts as the above).Lately Montenegro got its independence, and today the situation in Kosovo is unstable (soon it will get also its independence). Despite these facts the Serbs during this festival are expressing nationalism. I don't think that an Albanian (ie. from Kosovo) will like to attend Guča festival, with this nationalistic character. During the festival the president of Serbia visited the festival (I saw him walking on the streets) and I suppose that he is aware about this nationalistic character.

Aug-2007: Sarajevo Film Festival: "j'aime le cinema! et j'aime sarajevo!".

A few days ago I visited Sarajevo and I was impressed by the posters of the Sarajevo film festival which takes place these days (Sarajevo Film Festival 17-25/8/2007) but also the image of the 4 girls in a central coffee house in the city. In the poster of the film festival the slogan is in French: j'aime le cinema! et j'aime sarajevo! = I love cinema! and I love sarajevo. Sarajevo (and Bosnia i Hertegovina) is a very interesting place for a visit. Many buildings that has been destroyed during the war in Bosnia has been renovated/reconstructed and Sarajevo is again a touristic attraction (I visited Sarajevo first time in 1997, one year after the end of war, where big part of the city was destroyed).

Let's see some details from the above photograph:You can say that Sarajevo is the Prague of the Balkans.

27-May-2007: Abandoned house in Agridia (Tepeköy ), Gökçeada, Turkey. Form and content in photography, Nikos Economopoulos.

Lately I was discussing with a friend what is form in the photography and what is a formalistic photograph. These two photos are examples of formalistic photographs. These photos are from an abandoned house in Agridia (Tepeköy), in Gökçeada island, Turkey. Let's see the aesthetics of this photographs:

Form:

The interesting point in that photographs are the shadows/lights, the general composition and the texture of the abandoned house. So you say that the content in these photos is missing and they are interesting mostly for their form.

Angle:

Both photographs has been shot from the same point but with a different lens. In the first photo a 24mm (wide-angle) lens has been used and in the second photograph a 50mm (normal) lens. We can see the different aesthetic result. Personally in my pictures I like a lot the aesthetics of the 50mm (normal) lens, but here I think that is more interesting the composition made with the 24mm lens.

Form + Content:

Probably a good photo should have good form with content (and of course shot from a good angle). A good formalist photographs can be impressive only in first views. The next photograph is from the Greek magnum photographer Niko Economopoulo (shot in 1993 in Epirus). This photo combines both good form and interesting content (= it is an excellent photo ;).

When I look in good photos like this one you realize how average photos I make ;-). More about the photographer you can find in the link: http://www.ontheroad.gr/ and to the link http://www.magnumphotos.com.

Aug-2005/Aug-2006: Documentary movie "Traditional Oil Wrestling in Rodope: Chilia and Alantepe".

All these photographs are screen shots from the next videos. In these videos there is a remake of the videos of the previous post and I added also videos from Chilia oil wrestling.

Part 1/3: Aug-2005 Chilia.

Part 2/3: Aug-2006 Alantepe.

Part 3/3: Aug-2006 Alantepe.

The next days I will be traveling in the Balkans (Former Yugoslavia: Macedonia, Serbia and Bosnia) and when I will be back I will try to give a link with the full DVD version of the above videos if somebody wants to download it (here the quality of the video within the youtube is bad). As you see, in the videos everything is in Greek language ;-). When I will find some time I will add also English subtitles for the non-Greek audience of this blog ;-).

7-Aug-2005, 26-Aug-2006: Traditional oil wrestling, Rodopi, Greece.

The first photo is from 7-Aug-2005 from the traditional oil wrestling in the region of "Chilia" in Rodopi. The rest of the photos are from the traditional oil wrestling in the region "Alan-tepe" in Rodopi 26-Aug-2006. During August in the region of Rodope, there are 2 events of wrestling.. the first in the beginning of August in the region of "Chilia" and the other, at the end of August in the region of "Alan-Tepe".

It is not a turistic attraction and mostly people for the near-by villages are visiting these events.

26-Aug-2006: Traditional oil wrestling, Rodopi, Greece.

These photos are from the oil wrestling tradition that that takes place in north of Greece in the mountain region of Ropodi. In this wrestling the tradition is that wrestlers are daubed with oil. In this spectacle there are participants not only from Greece but from many countries of the Balkans (ie. Turkey, Bulgaria etc). In the next post I will publish some photos from the wrestlers, wrestling.