Binary Bonsai

I love books. And I amass books. So much so, that between the two of us — Rikke and I — there is no doubt who is in charge of the appropriation and storage of dead trees, which might not have been so paradoxical, had Rikke not been a librarian…

In fact, bringing home new books has stopped being a monetary concern and turned into a volumetric one. Yet, against all odds, I brave both the imminent collapse of this 17th century building at the hands of ‘just one more Gibson, there’s good in him still, I can sense it!’¹ and such worldly concerns as where to store these damned things, and one-click-buy like there was no tomorrow and I had a fallout shelter to stock.

A few ‘art of’ books, a sci-fi romp here and there — which I usually find boring and long-winded, being rather hard to please — the occasional ‘real’ novel — which I inevitably find much more rewarding, and spend twice the time reading — some Alan Moore comics, a batch of Star Wars books — because I can’t be stopped — anything by Michael Herr, a stack of director biographies, some books on writing books — keeping the dream alive since 1978 — and the occasional technical manual of sorts, preferably ‘the definitive guide’ to something.

I wish I went wider. Insightful political commentaries or something similarly serious. Hell, even a self-help book here and there. But I don’t go wide, I go deep. No, not in the ‘4am-drunk-philosophy-deep’-sense. Rather, the completist-deep.

It’s not exactly new to rave against such utterances, but still; in spite of what Steve² might think, some people do read (you go Khoi!). You probably know a few of them. You might be one of them. I sure wish I was.

This is the real paradox, since I love reading as much as I love the books themselves. But in the cold hard light of day, I simply have too many other ‘things’ that creep up and peck away at my time, so that when night-time rolls around, I strip down and crawl under the covers, I either have no time at all or no scarcely 20-30 minutes for a small chunk of whatever book I’m currently deluding myself that I’ll eventually finish.

Insane! Because as much as I love the books themselves — the design, the layout, the type and all of that, which the American publishers do so much better than we Europeans can ever hope for — I love to read just as much! Hell, our trip to the summer house a few weeks back was literally all about reading books and watching films. That’s what we did, and that was all we did, and I loved every minute of it, finishing several books³ and thinking to myself these very thoughts: Gee, I know what? I should really put some effort into reading more.

But it’s one of those annoying things that is apparently easier said than done, which is evidenced by the fact that on this perfectly readable sunday evening, half-past nine, instead of reading Blindness or Citizen Spielberg two books on my active reading list — I’ll let the ones I’m ‘passively’ reading go uncounted for now — I’m writing an entry on my blog about not being able to find the time for reading…

How about that.

1. Spook Country. I can’t read that thing, it just feels so… irrelevant. ↩


2. “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.” # ↩


3. The Pixar Story by David A Price, The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster, Skywalking by Dale Pollock — which I wrote about — and The Galactic Pot-Healer by Philip K Dick. Oh, and some comics, but they don’t really count for this. ↩

A quickie from my burgeoning Sony 50mm ƒ/1.4 flickr set.

Even as an experienced photography-enthusiast, people remain the hardest subject for me to capture. Not only do I rarely find myself in a situation where I’ve brought my DSLR¹, the social conditions have to be right as well, for me not to be considered borderline rude. And when the stars align, I pop out the camera and…

Well, we’re all a ‘cheese’‐conditioned lot, who look into the camera, smile and wait for the ‘I release you from this spell’‐click. Sure, you get people drunk, it’s another story — rabbit-ear-fingers, cheek licking and funny hats — but the basic premise remains the same; namely ‘acting’ for the camera. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it yields nice in-focus photos of happy people who’re willing to hold still long enough for me to adjust the focal length and take it up an f-stop or two to get the shot right.

But the ones I really want and the ones that stay with me, are the stolen ones. And I don’t mean paparazzi-style 1500mm gyro-mounted zoom objectives from a hilltop 2 clicks away and down into your garden where you frolic around in your birthday suit. Just friends and family being themselves, unaware of the CCD ready to reach out and snatch away their soul.

Those shots are elusive. Real life doesn’t stop while I switch from auto to manual focus; which in turn means that when they once in a blue moon do happen, they’re that much better. In fact, out-of-focus snapshots are often even better than cheese-shots by pure virtue of the intimacy of the subject(s).

When people know they’re being photographed they stiffen up somehow, suck in what can be sucked in, squint, go from ‘listening’ to ‘listening, intellectually’² and lose that spark of the unexpected, the serendipitous. You could go so far as to say that they lose their ‘soul’. But that’s just silly, so I won’t do that.

Then again, maybe it’s really the other way around. By virtue of my understanding of the construction of ‘cheese-shots’; that little else is happening between the portrayed than what meets the eye, which is what makes even the most pedestrian stolen shot unexplored and unexplained territory.

What I’m driving at, is that in the end, when all else fails, a chimp will never give you the cheese-look and that’s why chimps always work.

1. Let’s face it, it isn’t really photography if it isn’t an SLR. In my case, it’s a Sony α100, usually with my favorite Sony 50mm ƒ/1.4 lens or the all-around Sigma 17-70mm ƒ/2.8-4.5. And every once in a while, when I can be bothered lugging it around, my Konica Minolta 75-300mm ƒ/4.5-5.6 ‘you can run, but you can’t hide’-lens. ↩


2. I do all of the above. I have checklists for it. And procedures. ↩

Copenhagen is a treasure trove of street art, with its hip and healthy anti-everything sub-cultures. A living mosaic created in unison by hundreds of more or less talented people, some of whom take great pride in their work and then of course a large following who are satisfied leaving their mark across the city, in much the same manner as a dog would. We’re lucky, in that living in the heart of Copenhagen, we often come across some pretty interesting pieces, some of which I’ve documented. And amongst them, the above, rather obscure and easily overlooked one, is a favorite of mine.

Also check out the Little Brother project.