what one has is all one needs
End of summer
Hell there this is Gabriele Lopez with one of the few yearly newsletters I like to send to keep a sort of direct relation with a few people out there. I keep these going as I believe it makes some sort of sense, but just in case you can easily unsubscribe at the bottom, of course I hope you will not…
It’s been taking a while more than usual to send one of these letters.
I simply had not time to do so, and concentrated on other things.
I’ve learned about a Japanese quote: “Ware tada taru wo shiru.” [what one has is all one needs] that made me think a lot to many aspects of our daily life, and how much resizing is something that is absolutely needed in my present time.
As usual looking at thing in perspective can give us a different view, zooming out lot of thing become less important. We all get tested by daily life: project fails, people let us down in the middle, different sort of little or serious disasters may happen to any of us.
The real issue is how we can react.
In the last year for the first time since the beginning I have mostly stopped to take new photos, except something here and there, and focused a lot on printing the old works, organising the archive and find new meaningful reasons.
This even ended up in organising my website in a cleaner way and rather than scrolling for new content going back to a massive list of “read later” pages I was saving in my browser, full of interesting resources waiting. This is true not only for web resources, today, for many of us.
It’s been totally a good thing to stop adding, in many ways.
The city pressure got heavy to manage, so just casually I started to go around the mountains here in Italy. It’s a place that gave the noise a break and inspired new directions.
We planted some little pines in a woodland there and we now go back to check them regularly…the first is actually growing up strong.
Connection to nature is something most of us have lost, but it’s working really well for keeping a balance and move in new unexpected roads, even with photography but not only limited to that aspect.
This simple act has been stronger and more meaningful than many other things experienced so far.
Time will tell.
Persistence
As I was browsing my saved pages in the read later tab I came back to the Akio Nagasawa one where Daido is browsing a maquette of his last “records” book. You can like his work or not, but it’s a clear example of how creativity must be pursued, even scheduled sometime. It’s probably called “work” for a reason. I don’t believe it comes without efforts.
Seeing a project like this going on and on gives me hope, inspiration and admiration.
Persistence is one of the keys, for sure.
Does anyone knows a way I could see the new Daido documentary ? I have been waiting a lot for this, but probably is still screened in Japan cinemas someway…
Red room
It looks yesterday since I was getting a wasted basement to transform it into a darkroom in Milan during the pandemic but this 8 October will be 3 years away….sorry the page is in Italian but browser can translate easily everything today.
So many things happened there, all different kind of people passed by to use printers and enlargers, create printed DIY project or just passing by for an event…
We even shared some photography movies and photography books to inspire people and build a sort of community.
This winter with a local reality I will start to offer a few free darkroom use days to people starting that want to learn.
The materials can be expensive and we are looking to a way of financing them selling ‘zines and so on.
From my archive work I have made this cheap Blurb ‘zine that together with the old “Homography” issue is a diary that I kept doing since the beginning from instinctive fragments of my life in a city, mostly Milano, where I live.
Together with more dedicated project, these diaries are something I continued to do in a natural way. They are not about great pictures, but daily experience…a sort of draft and diary.
All the sales from this little ‘zines are saved for chemicals and papers for this winter project.
So here we are at the end of this newsletter.
In my studio I have met really interesting people this year, in a range from 16 to 74 age and they exposed me to different personal projects that I loved to look at. Personal stuffs, they often have no social media or anything, just a free and private use of photography…daily life, family.
Love this, is totally inspiring lack of any form of desire for recognition.
I am working on 3 titles with my Broken Poems label. Sort of handmade stuffs books, but I will talk about that when we will wear jackets, this one has been long enough.
Just be free to get back in touch, I will reply everyone.
G
"One of my favorite byproducts of growing up...is that I've learned to have a really big silo in my life called 'That's Just Not for Me.'” – Merlin Mann