me studio

an extremely busy day ‘out of the office’ yesterday also involved an afternoon in a daylight photo studio with photographer / friend / amateur pool player & ‘april fool’s’ victim ‘lukas göbel’ shooting the latest poster image for the dutch national ballet

the idea is to recreate a famous vintage portrait of ballet-legend ‘nijinski’ for the upcoming programe devoted to him: ‘dancer, clown, god’ we spent the day in a bare, white space using a variety of old cameras (including an old-school 8×10" technical camera & sheet-film) the execution involved lots of natural sunlight, which only showed itself every few minutes, very briefly during the whole day…

the second half of the process will involve quite a bit of digital manipulation and effects, looking forward to working on this one next week and especially seeing the end result… the dancer ‘cedric’ was great to work with as usual and actually looks very very similar to ‘nijinski’ at the age he was when the original was made in 1916, which was not planned but very fortunate… more news soon

trendy geometric triangle patterns in transparent vibrant colours are going to feel very ‘passé’ soon…in fact they already do but they do look good & also did way back in 1971 groovy colours!

yesterday evening was the 19th PANL awards ceremony, as i’m a board member i guess i need to be careful about what i say but not all of the prizes were really and truly justified in my opinion…

the book (for which i was the client) was also presented, the fact that the book was to be ‘red’ was a given so the theme i gave the designers (mattmo) was ‘crisis’ a fairly appropriate guide for the past 12 months in dutch commercial photography and one which they interpreted smartly by making the book half of it’s normal size… it works very well despite the compactness of the images and somehow just feels right, it was good to see lots of old friends and have a beer (the ‘awards’ image i borrowed from mattmo’s flickr page, thanks)

the new ‘dutch heights’ book which i mentioned last week also arrived yesterday in the post, it’s beautifully made and has a very cute format but… somehow it just feels like a big back-slapping exercise for the cultural elite and a chance to make yet another book celebrating how ‘fantastic’ dutch design really is… for me it’s more like a confirmation that ‘dutch design’ is becoming more and more bloated, self-congratulatory and less easy to comprehend or feel part of… still, as i said the book is kind of ‘cute’ and besides the fact that i’m english will always place me outside of real ‘dutch design’, which is a good thing if this is what it represents

this charming handmade sign would certainly get my attention

my friend nathalie and i were in the dungeons of the city archives early yesterday, putting the finishing touches to our mini exhibition (all hung at kid height) with the ‘amsterdam things’ pictures and ‘moveable words’ on little stands, which we put together this week, the glue & paint was barely dry before the space was invaded by a hoard of kids who unwittingly became a consumer test-panel… it seemed to go down well, although kids are always a fickle audience… go have a see for yourself (open daily till late july & free)