I’ve known Dr. Karanka for a few years now after meeting him through HCSP.  In addition to editing the regular feature Children of Weegee Fortnight, he’s the mastermind behind Dr. Karanka’s Print Stravaganza and a founding member of Mindfist. We had a conversation about his work as well as his various photogrpahy activities.

Where does the name Dr. Karanka come from? Is it true that you have a PHD? Are you a Dr. of photography?

Well, back in the day I had been travelling with Julian, a Scottish mate of mien after a conference. I was going to stick the pictures somewhere, so I needed a name for my account on flickr (don’t remember where I heard about it), so that was it. Many of the people I knew where Dr’s, and I was going to be one, so I stack with the Mr till I eventually got my degree towards the end of last year. So, I was Mr Karanka for years on flickr, but I always knew it would one day change. And I’m not a doctor in Photography, but on Psychology. All my research is on visual perception, so I guess that it does relate in a way…

What came first, the interest in visual perception or the interest in photography? And how do the two relate to each other?

Well, they were very different things for a long time. I used to photograph with my father when I was a kid, but back then I wanted to be a scientist when I grew up. Then I grew up, quitted photography in my teens and became a scientist. During that time I rediscovered photography in a more personal way. When I was a kid most of what I shot were assignments for a magazine, so I had to stick to topic. When you grow up like a precocious editorial photographer you sort of don’t see it having any other purpose. But once I was on my tracks as a researcher, I could sort of see how you could do the same in photography. You explore visual areas… like when you get a flash for the first time and shoot the heck out of it… it opens a unique visual landscape with it’s unique aesthetics… and when you produce/find something interesting you try to further your knowledge of it by testing ideas. For example, you might have this crazy idea that what makes a photograph interesting is the inclusion of biologically meaningful things in unexpected parts of the frame, like eyes, faces, hands, then you shoot a group of photographs that are driven by that idea, and you might be right or wrong. I think that being trained as a researcher makes you methodical. Doesn’t mean that you can’t be mad or produce stuff that you have no control over, but you approach the work in a way in which there is always a way to further the work and keep it coherent.

The battle between form and chaos seems to be an important idea in your work. It’s like, when you’re out shooting in the pub, you kind of react and put the pieces of together as best you can, but of course you can never really know what’s going to come out when you develop the film.  Whereas when you’re shooting a landscape with nice light and color, you kind of have a decent idea of what it’s going to look like. What is it about motion that’s so attractive to photographers?  Is there really some hidden idea or message in those small, random moments? Or do we simply assign meaning to them after the fact?

I think my photographs don’t have anything to do with motion itself.  They’re as still as any other, so to say. Photographying them, well, I find it more interesting to try to produce a still rich composition out of things that move. There’s just much more visual excitement around you in a way. When you go out to shoot a landscape, you have to walk a lot to get the slightest change in perspective, and often you can predict what things will look like. In an enclosed space with lots of people moving constantly, somebody moving a few steps closer or further away from you completely changes the visual landscape. It’s not that somebody’s closer, but now that person has a lot more weight on the final frame relative to the amount they’ve moved. I guess it’s shooting the chaos, as the river is ever changing.

On messages, there are little things here and there. I I like a photograph when you sort of don’t get the content, but after seeing it you have taken something with you that you didn’t have before. You’re sort of unaware that you’ve got the photograph, but after seeing a few you’re obviously more in the know than when you started. When I’ve been shooting Last Orders, none of the photographs summarizes the series, but each photograph works with the others to convey the meaning. Some of the photographs are very deliberately fragmentary, like the photograph of a man walking over a wall and the photograph of a big splash of drink. If you saw one on their own, they could belong to an infinite amount of essays or series, and for sure, they don’t have a single explanation to their meaning. When you see them in the context of the series, you might make a mind of your own on what they mean.

You’ve been working on “Last Orders” for a few years now.  Do you see the light at the end of the tunnel, or do you envision this project going on for years?  Do you think most photography projects need to be long term projects?

I’ve often joked that I’ll finish when I get a good photograph with a snowfall in it. I’m only half joking on that one, I’d really like to have it in. The problem is that over here it only snows some years, and chances are that you’re not out shooting if it happens (although I would kick my butt if I happened to be abroad again when it snows in Cardiff). It’s one of those images that shocked me when I moved over. All these guys going out into the snowfall and taking their shirts off singing. In a way that means that yes, there’s light at the end of the tunnel, and I’m hoping to finish the series next year. I was expecting to be done by now; I gave myself a three year deadline to do it, but I’m not satisfied yet. I guess that these small details, those last meaningful images that you think will put the project together are what make the difference between a one month shootout that can be good but not necessarily that meaningful, and something longer with which you’re fully sure about. That doesn’t mean that everybody would love it, though. Most people will just not get it. In the end it’s all about the full term obsession. It’s something I’ve seen in Japanese photography quite a lot. A photographer is so obsessed with a topic or series, that it just comes through the pages. You might not like the photographs at all, but there is this eerie amount of time that somebody has spent into putting the big picture together and fill it with cryptic statements here and there. It’s like a short term project is something good to look at, while a long term one is something good to think about. It’s permeated with intention and choices. You just know that a photograph is not there because there wasn’t a better one; it’s there because it is the photograph that the author wanted to be there.

How did Dr. Karanka’s Print Stravaganza come about? It’s a rather cool idea that seems to be building.

Out of nowhere! I must have told you that I was thinking about something cheap and cheerful that would be both something to hold a party around my birthday and a good way to put up a show. I went to bed with the idea and sketched the group the morning after. Less than a week later I was receiving prints and that rough sketch had been getting character by comments on the flickr group. Things like that it wouldn’t be a one off show but carry on, finding organizers for those shows, some basic donation system, etc. The only way that ideas seem to work online is by the snowball method. You can’t come up with something too elaborate and hoping it catches up.

Speaking of something not too elaborate, what is Mindfist and how is it coming along?

Pretty raw in every sense of the word! Calling it a community makes it sound too large and a collective maybe too formal. We’re just a bunch of people who ended up photographing and trying to do something with it, and out of those, the ones that sort of came along to the same place. Mindfist is full of drifters, so it’s hard to catch anybody, but that’s the way it goes. It wouldn’t exist without them, and I guess that that sense of dislocation sometimes comes accross in the images. There is a sort of extended Mindfist network, all those places where we have a tentacle or a friend, and that’s pretty powerful. In a way the Print Stravaganza is a tentacle of Mindfist too; we get pretty involved in it. Now we’re trying to get our own imagery sorted and then we can put it up on a wall somewhere.

All Photographs ©Joni Karanka

INFO

You can view an edit of ‘Last Orders’ on Burn Magazine.
Joni Karanka [Website]
Joni Karanka on Flickr

Curated by Olivier Marcel.

Submissions via Flickr or email – editors at lapuravidagallery.com

All photographs ©Missy Prince

Missy Prince [Flickr]

©Tony Marciante

©Tom Meadows

One complaint you often here about Flickr is that the noise to signal ratio makes it impossible to find the quality work that’s being presented.  While this is true for the most part, members who have participated in the various communities over the years have adapted ways to filter through the noise.  One method that I rely on is to watch what some of my trusted contacts are ‘Favoriting.’ For those not familiar with Flickr, a ‘Favorite’ is basically what it says, a collection of photographs you’ve bookmarked to remember.  These are collected for anyone to view.  Right now I have about 10 different people’s Favs hooked up to Google Reader which makes it easy to cruise Flickr on a daily basis. I do the same for Group pools but that tends to be a bit more chaotic.

I recently added the very talented Nils Jorgensen to my list after I put his Favs on slideshow and found some incredible photographs that I hadn’t seen before.  Of course it didn’t surprise me that he has great taste in photography, and I was bit perplexed with myself for not having him on my list already. So I contacted Nils with an idea to feature some of his Favorites from his Favorites here on LPV, and lucky for us he agreed.

©Vicky Slater

©Didier DERIEN

INFO
Contract Killers [Flickr]
Contract Killers on LPV

©Dimitri Karakostas

INFO
Inverse Parallels [LPV]

Jeff Lucker [Website]

We want to remind you that the deadline to apply to Jen Bekman Projects’ international photography competition, Hey, Hot Shot! is upcoming on Friday, October 23rd @ 8 p.m (EDT).

Hey, Hot Shot! offers photographers at all stages of their careers unrivaled opportunities for exposure and advancement. All entrants have their work reviewed by top-shelf panelists and enjoy the potential to be promoted online, selected for 20×200, and exhibited in our New York gallery. Now in its fifth year, the competition has been acclaimed by curators, critics, educators and journalists alike.

The guidelines are simple: contenders submit three photographs from a single body of work using an online upload tool, with an entry fee of $60.

Incomparable Exposure:

Our panel will select five Hot Shots for inclusion in a two-week group show at Jen Bekman Gallery in New York City. In conjunction with the exhibition, editions of each photographer’s work will be released on 20×200, Jen Bekman Projects’ acclaimed online endeavor, which offers limited edition prints at affordable prices.

Additional Benefits:

Each Hot Shot is awarded a $500 honorarium.

At year’s end, two Ultras will be selected from 2009’s ten Hot Shots. The Ultras are represented by Jen Bekman Gallery and slated for solo exhibitions.

All entrants are reviewed for participation in 20×200; entering the competition is the only opportunity for photographers to have their work considered. In addition, as always, our writers will select contenders to feature daily on the Hey, Hot Shot! blogthroughout the entry period.

Apply now:

We only accept submissions online, via this website.

The deadline for entries is Friday, October 23, 2009 @ 8 p.m (EDT).

Hot Shots will be announced on Monday, November 30, 2009.

There is a $60 handling fee for your entry.

Submissions are open to everyone, from anywhere in the world!

Questions?:

Check out our informative FAQ, follow us on Twitter or find us on Facebook.

Interested in seeing work from previous Hot Shots? Check out the index for all previous Hot Shots, visit the Hey, Hot Shot! blog or look at our photo sets on Flickr.

Apply Now!

Curated by James Luckett

Contributors: Annette Pehrsson, Mikel Aramendia, callie b, Jelena Martinovic, Michela Heim, Lina Scheynius, Fenkee Zhang, Andreea Anghel, tobsucht., Chambershines, Nastya Tailakova, Gustaf Eriksson, Kasia Wozniak, tani., Annie Stephens, Marta Macha, sleep carefully., Federico Forlani , Veronica Ibarra

VIEW SHOW

The story of Vivian Maier and her recently discovered work has been circulating for a few days now ever since photographer John Maloof posted about his discovery over at HCSP.  Paul Russell and K. Praslowiscz have written up nice posts about the discovery.  Of course, it’s one of those feel good stories for all photographers, but what instantly came to my mind while I was looking through the work was, how many more Vivian Maier’s are out there?

Another question that came to my mind was the role the internet plays in these type of discoveries.  Without the internet, this work likely wouldn’t find much of an audience.  It’s another way the web is changing photography.  There’s no doubt that a discovery will be made that will likely send shock waves through the photography world. What if someone of Eggleston’s caliber has been out there for years photographing but not showing anyone?  Or maybe I’m wrong, maybe the web has made everyone too jaded and we’ll just give these discoveries a week of blogging and buzz before we move onto the next thing. I hope not.

I’ve no doubt there are countless other artists are out there because I know photographers.  They tend to be a bit introverted and shy about their work.  It’s much easier to stuff the negatives and prints under the bed than making an effort to show them to people who will understand.

It’s a great time to be a photography fan. I can’t wait until the next Vivian Maier comes around, but I do feel sorry for poor John Maloof who has in one purchase, literally doubled the amount of scanning and editing he needs to do.

Vivian Maier – Her Discovered Work

UPDATE

Robert Bergman is another example.

‘The Man Who Waited’ [WSJ]
Robert Bergman WITH JOHN YAU