To do the following
To take one picture at a time.
To take very few pictures in general.
To take them with natural light.
To take them with a mechanical camera (without battery).
To not take living humans.
If taking humans, take only their representation in paintings, drawings or other images.
To focus on empty places.
To focus on composition, texture, printing, framing.
To use classical geometry (euclidean) - lines, squares, rectangles - to shapes spaces.
The shaping of space should not crush the elements in focus.
The shaping of space should contribute to their existence.
Geometry is otherwise a total obturation of the gaze (might as well not look and go for total annihilation of what is being pictured).
Total annihilation of what is pictured is always at stake in picture composition (starting with framing).
Resist the temptation of annihilation by using it against itself.
Knowing it is impossible to resist this temptation.
To close and open space simultaneously.
Space is open and closed in all directions at the same time.
No single point of focus.
Stability has to be established to be bent.
To bend space once it is established by geometry.
The bending must not be violent nor obvious.
The tilting of space must not lead to distortion of space.
The bending should create a small visual imbalance.
Focus on the small and focus on the smallness of the imbalance.
By doing so it will become not big but more intense regardless of its size.
Use classical rules of composition and do not shy away from them.
They are the backbone and the dynamic features of the picture.
Do not set-up a photographic scene.
Do not work on artifacts.
Base the shooting on what exists in front of the camera.
The mechanical camera will know what it is facing and it will enter into a confrontation.
This confrontation is mainly frontal but can also go oblique.
It is also static as nothing is moving per se.
Shoot what is there, and do it quickly (remember: only one picture, with more loss of intensity).
Respect what is there.
Pictures should be first degree.
No irony, social or historical commentary, documentary.
Space and time should be undefined in the pictures.
Pictures should not be anecdotal nor pretty.
Pictures can be logical theorems.
Mystery is the driving force.
Shoot for madness.
Do not focus on the neurotic.
Madness increases the gaze (mystery).
Neurotic is the self looking at & into itself.
When doing so the picture is lost into the self.
Stillness in focus.
Also avoid representation of movement.
Photography is stillness.
In stillness is madness.
Madness is the exploration of what is there.
This exploration has different levels of intensity.
A picture is the interaction of the different levels of intensity.
This interaction is not the viewer.
The viewer is both absent and present inside and outside the picture.
This dual presence participates to the intensity of the picture.
The impossibility of the integration of the viewer into the picture should increases intensity.
There is no movement of life in a picture.
There is no time.
There is no life.
Focus on madness and stillness.
Stillness and madness go hand in hand.
Pictures are taken with the hand: is this correct?
Perhaps focus on moving from the hand and back to the eye, to see what is at stake.
What is at stake is the possibility of looking.
Not of seeing, nor of watching, these are of second degree, and forget to look at.
Make it possible to look at something, anything.
Next explanation
Slab focuses on honoring dead and empty places, that seemingly have no purpose.
It opens and saturates spaces, to allow raw substances to emerge from beneath.
Raw photography may be spooky. Celebrate the broken and the cracks.
Slab operates with defined rules:
1. positive rules
∞ black & white photographs
∞ high contrasts
∞ grainy
∞ pushing the boundaries of underexposure
2. negative rules
∞ no humans
∞ no space-time references
3. technical rules
∞ mechanical camera (Leica MP, no battery)
∞ sensitive films (Kodak 3200)
∞ prints are platinum-palladium by Salto Ulbeek (Belgium), who has developed a unique technique in traditional printing which dates from the mid XIX century. Platinum-palladium prints are among the most permanent objects produced by man. They produce deeper blacks, an unmatched scale of greys and nuances, a deep and velvety feel. Salto Ulbeek is specialised in the printing and preservation of photographic archives. https://salto-ulbeek.com/about/history/
∞ photographs are framed in Düsseldorf (Germany) in natural wood individually chosen from cuts of trees (usually German oak).
The origins of Slab lie in the first years of photography, the silent movie era (in particular the movies of Feuillade), ‘films noirs’, Albator (Legi Matsumoto), crime novels of Edogawa Ranpo, poems of Francis Ponge and Henri Michaux, American abstract expressionism.
