In the middle of Copenhagen there is a rather posh photo store. Often, when I pass by, I see a small mountain of Holgas in the shop window, sitting between Leicas and Linhofs. FYI the Holga is a Chinese toy camera, known for its cheap plastic lens, false light, heavy vignetting and unpredictable colour rendering – all contributing to its cult-status in some circles.

Another gadget in somewhat the same ballpark is the Lensbaby. It’s a lens, made up by a single piece of glass in a plastic tube, intended for mounting on a SLR. By squeezing the plastic tube, you can not only adjust focus, but also shift the axis relative to the sensor. The latter means that while some part of the picture will be in focus, other parts even in the same plane will be completely unsharp.

I think the cult of creating photos with technically inferior and/or unpredictable equipment is a little too much. However, I can relate to the fascination of not giving a damn about technical perfection and just start playing with pictures. I have considered buying a Lensbaby, but its a little to expensive for something, that might just be a short lived fancy. So, I decided to build my own trash lens. Of a certain class though: no less than a Leica.

At first I stripped most of the inner parts from an old Pentax SMC-A zoom optic. Then I took the optic from a Leica slide projector, and stuffed it into the remains of the SMC and secured it with some foam rubber. The result is a Leica Hektor with a Pentax K mount. It can be focused by sliding the Hektor back and forth inside the SMC – and the focal plane can be tilted much like the Lensbaby.

The last effect is used for this portrait: one eye is (almost) sharp while the other is completely unsharp, even though they are in the same plane. Since the original photo had dull colours and low contrast, I decided to desaturate it but raise the contrast.

If you don’t tilt the lens, it’s just not very sharp and have a very small depth of field – and a very blurry bokeh. The photo of the puppies has had the colours saturated quite a bit in post processing.

As a true photo-geek I had a couple of hours of fun from de- and re-constructing these old lenses. Does the result have any practical use? I doubt it….

På en måde dør i sidste ende også østtyskernes historie. Jeg føler sommetider, at der dårligt nok eksisterer nogen østtysk historie i dag. DDR bliver kogt ned til to datoer. Etableringen af muren og murens fald. 1961 og 1989. Isolation og revolution. Landet står tilbage som nogle organisationer og forkortelser: FDJ, SED, Stasi, NVA.

Jochen Martin Gutsch
Journalist ved Der Spiegel – opvokset i DDR

På dagen i dag, hvor vi med rette kan glæde os over murens fald, må det være på sin plads at anbefale Ostzeit – geschichten aus einem vergangenen land. Her viser fem forskellige fotografer biller af livet i DDR, sådan som det tog sig ud bag forkortelserne. Vi er meget langt fra den ukritiske “ostalgi”. Men vi får et bredt udvalg af hverdagen i DDR, primært fra 1980′erne: gadebilleder fra Berlin. Reportage fra en ydmyg danserestaurant. Eksempler på, hvor forskelligt man kunne bo i element-byggeriet. Modefotos. En forunderlig serie om det, at leve sammen. Første maj reportage. Fodboldfans, dissidenter, kunstnere og minearbejdere. De spektakulære billeder fra “die wende”. Men først og fremmest billeder som viser, at livet også i DDR kunne leves på mange måder – og blev det.

Det er paradoksalt, at jo mere vi bekræfter hinanden i hvor skelsættende en historisk begivende det var, at muren faldt, jo mere synes historien om de der levede bag muren at blive reduceret til stereotypier. Ostzeit er først fremmest en fremragende fotobog. Dernæst er den et bidrag til at holde fast i historiens mangfoldighed.

En stor del af bogen kan faktisk opleves på nettet hos Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (ja, sådan en findes). Men billederne kommer altså betydeligt bedre til deres ret på tryk.

Fotoagenturet Ostkreuz: Ostzeit – Geschichten aus einem vergangenen Land.
Hantje Cantz, 2009. 288 sider, tekst på tysk og engelsk, 190 fotos i duotone. 29,60 x 26,70 cm.

Do you remember the scene from “The Graduate”, where the main character get’s a serious piece of advice from a friend of the family: “Plastics! Its the future!”. If not, see it here:

Now fast forward to the future, which in the mean time has become the present:

Photograph © Chris Jordan

The picture shows an Albatros chick which has been killed by the bits of plastic its parents has fead to it, apparently believing it was food. Its not the only one. In the Pacific, an area the size of the state of Texas is filled with plastic waste. Se the rest of Chris Jordans photo-essay on the web-site of The Guardian.

7.2 millions. That is the number of people who emigrated by boat from Bremerhaven in Germany to USA and other destinations between 1830 and 1974.

It is only about 4 years ago, that Deutsches Auswandererhaus was opened as a museum of emigration, in the port of Bremerhaven. A visit to the museum allows you to follow in the footsteps of the emigrants: from the impressive re-creation of a pier with steamship ready to be boarded, through the steerages and cabins of the ships to the landing at Ellis Island, New York.

With the use of an active ticket you will also be able to follow the destiny of a selected emigrant. And in the beautiful “archive-room” you will learn about reasons for emigration in different periods, as well as be able to look into the file cabinets for histories of real emigrants.

Should you happen to be in the vicinity, the emigration museum is definitely worth a detour.

The Adobe Lightroom Beta 3 has been released for download. I’ve been playing around with it for an hour or so, and my first impression is: no revolutionary changes, by a lot of minor improvements. Just to mention a few:

• More intuitive import function
• Publishing directly to Flickr – not with all the features of Jeffrey Friedl’s Export to Flickr plugin, but very well integrated into Lightroom itself
• Improved noise reduction
• New film-grain effect
• More flexible layout of prints
• Better performance in some areas, especially the adjustment brush

No revolutionary changes on the surface of Lightroom 3.
But lots of small improvements.

For a very enthusiastic video-presentation of every new feature, take a look at photoshopuser.com. But be prepared, that these guys seems to think that every little improvement is the greatest news since Niépce….

Kære kursusdeltagere

Hermed som lovet mine noter til dagens oplæg: Slaget på Fælleden -forhistorie og virkning

Gimle-programmet, som der henvises til, kan findes på Arbejdermuseets web-side
Herman Bang citaterne stammer fra samlingen Reportager, København 1983.

Håber I er i stand til at omsætte en smule af dette til noget der kan interessere dagens folkeskoleelever

Tak for opmærksomheden
Lars

PS til udenforstående: Noterne er til et oplæg holdt i regi af museernes Skoletjeneste om slaget på Fælleden – et punkt i den af Bertel Haarder vedtagne kanon for historieundervisning i folkeskolen