I came across the work of this photographer Dayanita Singh recently, and I'm feeling really inspired by her work. I love the way she fills the frame (square format frame!) and the way she achieves such a lush, dense black and white quality.
It gets me thinking about two things: one, how I will go about photographing in Istanbul this summer. I know that I'll need something compact and light-weight if we're to be traipsing up and down steep, cobblestone streets all day long, and through dense, urban areas where pick-pocketing and purse-snatching is somewhat common. Although I'm tempted to take along my Rollei square format that I used in Hawaii and loved so much. I will also need to use a fast film speed most of the time (if not all of the time) I am there so that I can photograph in low-light situations at night and in the mosques. And two, a project I'm about to embark on that I wont be able to talk about quite yet, just because it hasnt fully materialized in my brain. But, suffice it to say that it involves significant past memories and explores how we remember imagery (at least, how I remember imagery) from moments in our past. Stay tuned on that one...
