Hello everyone, here is Gabriele Lopez with one of the few yearly newsletters I send along each year.
Since there are always newcomers, I hope you’ll be interested in keeping getting these messages in a bottle, but you can easily stop doing so with a click at the end of the page if you don’t :)
Questioning
I’ve asked myself about this newsletters several times since the beginning. First, if they can be useful in some way: for other people and for a good use of my limited time.
Along the years I managed to deepen some friendship with far people starting from here and I just hope this can be the most true and deep sense of all this. World is full of social media noise of all sort and for sure I don’t want to add some more but at least this goes in a one-to-one way rather than a rock in the ocean…and regarding this, just get in touch replying directly here directly for anything…I will always reply everyone as soon as I can!
Keep going
2024 has been a good but hard year, as for many of us.
Working as a photographer is a strange thing, it looks like there’s a wide amount of noise everywhere, and if you’re not careful enough you’ll end up losing balance and doing a hard slam, that can be in the form of not working, or having to do too much boring stuff…being overwhelmed by assignments to finish, taxes, expenses, troubles to solve and all things that makes you hate to even think of a camera.
All these kind of periods still have a sense, they toughens us up and create space for decisions and new spaces and, hopefully, changes.
A sort of balance is in my plan for next year, as an idea(L). If you work too much the next year you should repeat it and as years lapse on urgencies are going elsewhere.
In this sense I started again to wander around with a small camera recording what’s around me, and my daily life. I questioned a lot about what this act means for me, and I came to a conclusion that is just a proof of my existence in the present time, or a way to understand the perspective, just like placing a little flag of existence on a personal map from a long trip.
Martin EsslLe bateau ivre Paris 2019–2023
As usual as I look for Inspiration and try to get back to camera works, books are a big help for starting again… In the next newsletters I will point to books that I consider of high value for photographers looking for new discoveries.
The Martin Essle “Bateau Ivre” book can be considered a book about street photography, but not in the strict, classical or trending way we usually think, it’s a deep and questioning way to look at the world and the streets around us, on how the light and magic happens with all the fascination while people, sometime, maybe will pass by in front of us.
It reminds me a sunny relaxed day, as you sit with a cup of tea as a foreigner in a new city as people pass by.
Definitely fresh air and inspiring as I resurface from a long year of assignments and archive/darkroom work and finally go back to recording.
You should really check it out…
Tokyo
Finally after planning a lot I managed to organise a Tokyo trip with the Newoldcamera staff. I will be there from 13 to 22 May 2025 with a group of photographers trying to build a collective body of work that we will condense into a self-published book at the end. Them I will spend there other 5 days on my own.
I hear a lot of stories about how the city flow changed with tourism in the last years, it’s not that hard to imagine it based on what’s happening in other cities. Milan has a similar situation after all.
I will search for less touristic situations and areas and will really look forward to some chance of meeting some friends there, but can’t wait to immerse myself in the rhythm of that giant city. If you are there during that period, just get in touch!!!
Red Room darkroom
Incredibly, 3 years have lapsed fast since I opened the red room space in October 2021.
In these years, a lot of of things happened in that room, that is a sort of 2.0 darkroom.
As I write this, a new book from a personal project is being finalised for the final print process.
I always tried to keep a friendly and open approach, and give people a chance to DO THINGS. As a result, so many interesting people passed by to create something.
Time is hard to manage and recently I had to slow down one to one workshops and darkroom activities and tried to use it as a place to meet, a drop of water in the ocean for sure but still something. I have transported there almost 500 photo books that people can browse there during meeting and activities and in 2025 a serie of dedicated evenings and meetings will take place to try to build a kind of opportunity for locals.
The idea is that projects may be made by this chance and a place to work together on ideas.
Our DIY#13 was a proof of how something pure and good may open some door in a world that tries to eat the soul too often.
If I may just have some hope for the next year is to have a sort of balance to spend my time in a more meaningful way without entering again the rat race.
Read, see close friends and loved ones, go back to experiences and my records zen archive.
Enough is enough, see you around. Will be back in a few months.
Take care, Gabriele
Final words
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
— Emily Dickinson, “Hope”