Henri Cartier-Bresson : Learn To See

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Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again. We cannot develop and print a memory.

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I'm not responsible for my photographs. Photography is not documentary, but intuition, a poetic experience. It's drowning yourself, dissolving yourself, and then sniff, sniff, sniff – being sensitive to coincidence. You can't go looking for it; you can't want it, or you want get it. First you must lose your self. Then it happens.

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Photography is nothing--it's life that interests me.

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Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.

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There is no closed figure in nature. Every shape participates with another. No one thing is independent of another, and one thing rhymes with another, and light gives them shape.

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As time passes by and you look at portraits, the people come back to you like a silent echo. A photograph is a vestige of a face, a face in transit. Photography has something to do with death. It's a trace.

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I cannot take portraits of actors because they pose.

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What I am trying to do more than anything else is to obseve life.

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There is one domain which photography has won away from painting – or so it is claimed – and that is portraiture. Faced with the camera, people proffer their best “profile” to posterity. It is their hope, blended with a certain magic fear, to outlive themselves in this portrait, and here they give us a hold. The first impression we have of a face is frequently correct; if to this first impression others are added by further acquaintance, the better we know the person the harder it becomes to pick out the essential qualities. One of the touching features of portraiture is that it reveals the permanence of mankind, even if only in the family album. We must respect the surroundings which provide the subject’s true setting, while avoiding all artifice which destroys the authentic image. The mere presence of the photographer and his camera affects the behavior of the “victim”. Massive apparatus and flash bulbs prevent the subject from being himself.

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In photography is the evocation. Some photographs are like a Chekhov short story or a Maupassant story. They’re a quick thing, and there’s a whole world in them. But one is unconscious of that while shooting. That’s a wonderful thing with a camera. It jumps out of you.

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Taking photographs is a means of understanding which cannot be separated from other means of visual expression. It is a way of shouting, of freeing oneself, not of proving or asserting one`s own originality. It is a way of life. 

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Photography appears to be a simple matter, but it demands powers of concentration combined with mental enthusiasm and discipline. It is by strict economy of means that simplicity of expression is achieved.

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It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera… they are made with the eye, heart and head.

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You just have to live and life will give you pictures.

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Quotes & Photographs :

~ Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908~2004)

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The Politics Of Survival : An Invite

CAN WE SURVIVE CAREER ? 
CAN WE SURVIVE WORK ?

CAN WE SURVIVE CIVILIZATION ? 

~ By Anhilaal 

                        
                                                            

1. Can We Survive Career? 

In1950s, children were heroes if they secured 50% of marks in the final high school and secondary exams. In 1980s children were heroes if they secured 80% in the final high school and secondary exams. In 2000s securing 100% has no meaning at all and children are in a state of hopelessness. Number of children committing suicide in India is growing at a rate of 30% every year. If not increasing knowledge load and increasing time poverty: what else explains this collective madness? If not the fear of fall in the social hierarchy and fear of remaining unemployed: what else explains the driving force behind the economy? What else than the accumulated pressure over decades and centuries to out-compete Others in the job market has turned the generation of parents and teachers into natural enemies of the younger generation ?

2. Can We Survive Work?  

In 1950s, one male member with 8-10 hours of a day job was somehow able to provide for a family of 4 to 5 children and extended family members. In 2012, both spouse work 12+12 = 22 to 24 hours each day. (Not-so) Old-age parents, if possible, work 3 to 4 hours x 2 = 4 to 8 hours everyday. In total, our shrunken domestic unit spends 28 to 34 hours working. We slog three to four times more at the workplace today. Still, the ruling ideology and consensus is never tired of telling us how much more hard working and motivated we should be! Welcome to new hierarchy from old hierarchy! What else but our being worker or wage-worker explains our misery? The more we work, more it turns against us and and robs us of our humanness in our relationships in our family, community, society and with ourselves. Real time-thief is the workplace, or, our friends, relatives and community members?

3. Can We Survive Civilization? 

What the elites call civilization is always work for us. Without any exception; what else were Civilizations for the nature and for the majority of population other than being death-machines out of control and labour camps? If we want to become normal with ourselves, with other members of our species and share the planet with other living beings together: the abolition of our existence as workers and wage-workers is its precondition. This is one of most central questions that should be raised and discussed together. We want to have relationship with nature, human beings and other living beings at the centre of our life. Not career and work.

We want to live our life not just spend it!

  

ANHILAAL : An Introduction

The question is not of misuse of power and power relations. It is the question of abolition of power. It is not the question of value-based politics versus corrupt politics. It is the question of abolition of politics. It is not the question of ideal job versus poorly paid job. It is the question of abolition of work and career. All the politics and governments till now have only redistributed power and work but they have not abolished it. In reality, civilization, power, work and state: they are one and the same.

Meaning of the Term

At the centre of the term hilaal is the infinitive: hilaanaa . In many South Asian languages it means to move, to shake something. An, the prefix, stands for negation.

The name is based on a belief about some tribal groups from eastern India. Early morning before going to work at the field of moneylender or landlord, s/he shakes haandi with her toe. If the haandi refuses to move s/he also refuses to move. So long there is rice in the haandi, s/he shall not move to work. So we are.

Primary aim of dominating social cultural norms, civilization, state, market and revolution is to bring two poles of work and worker together. If society and state have to function normally, then they have to be Brought Together. However, like two north poles of different magnets they get away from each other more easily than coming together.

The Distinction between Work and Human Activity

Singing, dancing, playing, hospitality are simple human activities. As soon as these activities turn into source of our livelihood, they become work. Instead of playing a game it becomes our career. It becomes potentially a part of Sports Industry. Singing and dancing become Entertainment Industry. Hospitality becomes Hospitality Management. History of Civilization is the history of turning more and more human activities into work (-flows).

When it is about celebrating festivals and communal activities, like the tribal communities, our energy knows no bounds. At the end of the day what elites called civilization was work for ( in the true sense, against ) us. What else is the impersonal, organized power and violence other than impersonal, oorganized control over our work and its products ? We are against all work-pyramids covertly operating in the name of countries, companies, parties, families and identities. We are for self-determined human activities which is not possible without abolition of our existence as wage-workers or serfs. We are for non-hijackable, non-hierarchical and coercion-free communities.

Hence the name Coalition Against Work, Representation and Civilization in South Asia: anhilaal (CAWRC).

Courtesy : http://www.anhilaal.com/

Visit the above website of Anhilaal for further details.