Networkweek

It is again the time of the year when we photo students have the opportunity to visit photographers in their studios, homes, and galleries. I have so far been to visit Stefanie Grätz, who was a lovely lovely person and really wanted to give us her time and helpful advise, and Willem Poelstra, who was also very impressive and surprisingly new in photography (he only graduated in 2005, but I thought he was an old star or something).

Will add links later. Am exhausted, a long muggy day in Amsterdam and tomorrow a long workday also in Amsterdam.

Pierre Faure: Japan

I noticed Pierre Faure’s photobook Japan while browsing in the bookstore today. I love the feel of the thing; the juxtaposition of japanscapes and people. I’ve done something similar when I was there. Only much more by chance and not by assignment.

Some of the photos can be seen here, only sadly in a really small size.

I don’t really know what to think of the concept, though. Isn’t it a bit National Geographic to have a book titled only “Japan”? Could you also have “Germany”, or perhaps “Denmark”? Or would that be boring, while Japan for us westerners is exciting and exotic?

For me, almost everything that has to do with Japan is dear, so… I could not buy the book at the bookstore – it was €60 – but managed to order it used via Amazon. €20 with shipping, not bad..

Long time no see, eh?

Here I am again. What has happened during the summer: I was almost forced to quit the Academy but happily managed to continue. I was in Finland for a few weeks. I went to Russia with my family. I went to Japan again. My husband got a job from Germany and I returned to the Netherlands. Now I’m back to school, or have been for almost two months, and this semester is busy as ever. Which is nice. Also stressful.

Untitled

Untitled is the title (heh, heh) of our upcoming exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art.

Very nice to finally have an exhibition, although I must admit I am feeling exhausted after the collective evaluations. I did not sleep properly in a long while; am now definitely in need of a vacation… But first the exhibition + helping the fourth year students with their examination exhibition!

Welcome!

Welcome to the 2008-09 diary of Tuuli Saarikoski Fvt 2R, a photo student far from home!

Finding your way will hopefully prove to be easy. You can read the blog chronologically and in publishing order; most recent things are here first and then in the bottom of each page there is a link called “Previous” which will take you back in time. Or you can use categories to browse posts about different subjects; clicking on Photography, for example, will show you all my posts under that category. You can also use Tags to find even more detailed categorizations. The frame you see in the right hand side has a so-called “tag cloud” which shows you different tags. The larger the tag name, the more it contains posts. As you can see, Photography is definitely the largest tag, followed by Politics and Photojournalism. In a way, the tag cloud, besides helping with navigation, shows you which things and issues have interested me most…

I would recommend looking through the diary first chronologically. As this is a blog, it also has the possibility of commenting. Comments are welcome in all posts. Besides diary posts, there is a conclusion and an explanation about my methods of keeping this diary. Just follow the links and you’ll get right to them.

This will stay as the first post on the top page until the diary project has been evaluated. After that, the blog will continue!

Street Art, Street Life

I ordered a new photo book, Street Art, Street Life. It’s supposed to have work from 30 different street oriented photographers from the 1950’s to the present time (and was on sale at the American Book Center).

Racism and homophobia in F-land

Two news items today:

An 8-year-old ethnically Somalian girl was pushed out of a train on the platform by an adult Finnish male, who also called her “a monkey” and told her to get out of his way.

The discussion following this on the newspaper website concentrated on calling the story “a probable lie”, blamed the girl herself for some invented bad behavior “since that’s how they are” and called the news story propaganda since it told of an act of violence towards the Somalian minority. And, oh yes, someone managed to disparage the girl and her family and of course many times they were told to go back to Somalia.

In the Finnish parliament, a parliament member compared gay and lesbian families to “someone marrying a dog”. The discussion following this on the newspaper website lauded him for his “values”.

Sometimes I do not miss Northeast Europe at all.

STS-125

As a kiddo in the eighties I was sooooo fascinated with the NASA space shuttle program. Still am, of course, although the shuttles are pretty old by now. One thing I could not have imagined as a child was that one day I’d be sitting at my own kitchen table, watching a shuttle launch live on my very own computer.

NASA TV is VERY cool for us space geeks. STS-125, the Atlantis mission to service Hubble, is about to launch and here I watch. (And comment on the launch on the phone to Henri, who cannot watch because he is on the train from the Copenhagen airport to Lund.)

A Many-Body Problem

In physics, the many-body problem has to do with quantum mechanics and studying the effects of interaction in complex systems. In science politics, it sometimes refers to the problems scientist couples face when they try to follow their careers in science and at the same time keep their family together. It can be pretty darn difficult to find proper grants or tenures at the same time in the same area.

Our current situation is related to this problem. When we moved to the Netherlands four years ago, we were following my husband’s career in theoretical physics. He got a two-year postdoctoral position at the Technical University of Delft. I was at that time doing pretty well with my own career, which was in systems administration. I applied for a two-year leave, was granted that, and off we went to Delft.

After two years Henri tried to apply for positions back home in Finland but there were none available at the time. So he decided to continue in Delft, where his contract was extended with one year, and I decided to stay with him, at the same time waving bye bye to my own career. I then decided to try to make one of my dreams come true and applied to study photography at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, and to my complete surprise, was accepted.

One year passed and suddenly Henri did not have work in Delft anymore. He got a temporary position as a visiting professor at the university of Lund, Sweden, and went there “just for a little while”. Well, the little while ended up being a year, and during this year we’ve effectively lived separately, with him working in Lund and me following my studies in Delft.

Now the situation gets even more complicated. This month Henri’s job in Sweden will be done. He applied to continue his career in Finland, but that is still not going to happen. At the same time, I have applied to move my studies to universities either in Sweden or in Finland, as the strain of living separately (both emotionally and financially) is getting to be a bit too much. Well, the Swedish photoschool I applied to is not interested, and one of the Finnish ones invited me for the entrance exams, but again – Henri has no work in Finland, at least not in theoretical physics. So this seems to be the situation now:

1. Henri might have work in Sweden but I have no way to continue my studies there.

2. I might have a way to continue my studies in Finland but Henri has no work there.

3. If we stay in the Netherlands I can continue my studies here but Henri has no physics work here and we have no support mechanism as I am not eligible for study financing (being overage).

To make matters even more complicated, I effectively have to decide now, since the entrance exams to the possible Finnish universities take place on our individual evaluation week and our collective evaluation week. Which would mean that attending those entrance exams would screw up my otherwise pretty OK semester at the Royal Academy.

Whee.

Carolyn Drake

Carolyn Drake is a Turkish-based American photographer with lots of projects in the ’stans; Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan etc. But also a very nice suburbia series.