say goodbye to my bad girl meat

because she's gonna be writing essays till the days turn golden and warm again.

cette photographie qu'on appelle humaniste

"... la photographie est un langage compréhensible pour tous."
- Laure Beaumont-Maillet.

Specific needs

There are things we need in life. Sometimes logical, sometimes necessary. Necessity changes between individuals. Primordial needs.

In 2007 I needed to see the retrospective of Lousie Bourgeois work at the Tate Modern in London, UK. and I did. with much ecstatic pleasure.

In 2010 I need to see "The Inexhaustible Image...image epuiser" an exhibition of photographs and installations by Angela Grauerholz at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON until september 26.

Not only is Grauerholz a photography, the medium that captures me and turns my insides backwards, with its liquid intensity, melancholic reality mixed with fictious scents, but she focuses her lense on memories and the ever important archive and collection. These four little words - photography, memory, archive, collection - make my stomach flip and my mouth water like the smell of vinager in a fish and chip shop. Does anything more capturing really exist?

Brief bio: Grauerholz was born in Germany, studied literature at university and then came to Canada to pursue an M.A in photography at Concordia university.
Documentary style photography highly influenced her work immediately and her oeuvre is laced with a nostalgic sense of this still en vogue style of image capturing.

What is most captiviating about her images though is the sad, empty, and familiar feeling behind the hazey way she manipulates her images.

Two very interesting projects to check out = SENTENTIA I-LXII and an infinite sized archive, "Reading room for the working artist" (check it out here).

overhaul part deux

I haven't fully reflected on my 'overhaul' of this blog.
But what I have thought about is a vision for it.

Like I said in 'Overhaul part uno' - originally I came to this blog conflicted by technology in regards to the photograph and our monotonous capturing of every day life (of which I am guilty too) (thanks to the digital camera). I dabbled for a year in medium format holga and polaroid photographs, until funds ran low for such costly films (Polaroid being nearly extinct, being reprinted now at extrodinary prices).

Then, I moved away, to Drummondville QC and into sequestered land. and neglected this blog for a year. Moved, and shifted visions.

Now I'm back in internet blog land, for awhile, and I need to sort out what I'm doing here.

What is this blog about and why?

I've decided it's about the things I love in life, which are photography, art, travelling, cooking, music.

And thus, this is what I'm going to blog about. and have been, too. mostly.

I suspect in the coming months my vision will change again as I embark on a new journey - graduate studies at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal (imagine appropriate accents over e's and a's as necessary).

And I, as always, hope you will continue to read.

wish list

In my langor of this unemployed summer I am wishing for a few things:

- Ice cream and Creamier: two monographs on curating featuring international curators who choose emerging artists. Phaidon never lets me down.

-
Rotterdam Dialouges: The Critics, the curators, the artists. Newly published and based on three symposia held at Witte de with in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, this book brings together what happened at these three symposia. mmmmmmmm.


- While in Toronto with Angie last week we walked into a splendidly delicious bike shop on Bloor St and in the window was an Abici purple cruiser . Yes purple. Yes Italian. and One day when I have a job and can afford to drop 900 big ones on a bicycle (yikes!) it shall be my new wheels. Until then, we stay steady with the trusty steed Rashleigh Peugeot. Let's not be too Bike Snobby though, Peugeot are nothing to sniff at.
Anyway, check out this cool blog.
and then... swoooooooooooooooon!

- Becoming a ludite (I like to think i'm becoming a ludite with my use of typewriters and analog cameras etc) means that you really like retro/vintage type technologies. And thus I have become obsessed with the vinyl record. My mom already has a pretty awesome collection of jazz, as well as classical, my kind of thing. I'm working on the contemporary collection. Thus to add to my collection next will be Blue by Joni Mitchell and The Goldberg Variations by J.S. Bach (possibly my favourite composer of all time) performed by the infamous Glenn Gould. I do now have in my possession (sort of) (thanks to my mom) a master works collection of Bach performed by Glenn Gould as well as the Well Tempered Clavier. This will make for some good listening in my st-urbain pad in downtown MTL.

- taking this course might help make my dreams of speaking German come true. This has been a dream unsuccessfully pursued as of yet, due to my lack of immersion in the German language. I don't know who really thinks learning a language is easy, becuase I certainly don't. I worked my butt off to get to where I am in French now, that means constant everyday working on it, and then some. even night time working, and in my dreams working on it.

- to help with this German learning wish would be to do another one of my wishes, to work at a gallery in Vienna. oh yes. Vienna is my dream city. I love it and I want to be there. So perhaps I can find an internship opportunity at a gallery such as this .
Photography, art + german + vienna = maeva very happy!

- I might settle for an intership in London, UK as well, or even MTL. But I think Europe next summer might be all but essentail.

Thus concludes my wish list. for the moment.

photo booth

*let's all take a moment to reflect on photography*

Impermenance.
Permenance.
Instanaity.
Print vs. digital.

There are two kinds of photograhpy (that i'm aware of) that involve instanaity and print. One is the Polaroid, which is now coming back thanks to the Impossible Project (see side bar Impossible Project link). The other is the photo booth.

The film Amelie probably made the photobooth infamous and instantly desireable.

Anyway. that is my short reflection on Photography. I'll have you all know right now I am not a fan of digital photography, and when your computers crash and you loose all your photos, you will know why. (this has never happened to me, I'm just highly wary of trusting technology so much. It's not as trustworthy as we might think.)

Lastly, photo booth photos from my adventures in Toronto last night.
Me and Angie. At Union Station.



These photos make me happy and sad. Being in a photo booth is so fun and usually painful due to the tiny seat. But it makes me sad to think that Angie is far away in Saskatchewan.

It's a lesson in understanding the vastness of our land.

overhaul

Inspired by Julie. Julie who is going for the Jugular.
Good call, and I think it has been a good wake up call for me too.

Since reading Julie's Jugular post I've been thinking a lot about my blog. I often feel very torn about blogs and the internet. It is true that you can reach anybody you want through the intenet, yet the internet is so vast, unending even, that how does anyone ever come across my blog anyway? and what would draw it to them. So I think I started to recline into a comfortable maeva zone of musing on my own love affairs in life.

But what are those anyway?
When I started this blog after returning from Corsica I needed to reflect on technology and art, photography and technology, as well as my life. Some seriously amazing changes happened at that moment - new job, new home, new people. Things were changing. But now this idea (for this blog) has been in a lull for well over a year. and I neglected it for well over a year as well. But this (the neglect part) could also be interesting.

Anyway, I'm starting to feel like an internet flake. During the time at home, baking tons of cookies and lolligaging about at home, in the garden, knitting, watching movies, reading, playing music (to listen to and to play) is all fine and dandy, but where are my thoughts these days? where are my inspirations and desires?

So, this is an overhaul baby.
And Maeva is going for the Mother load (sounds better than Maeva and the Jugular, unless you folk out there in internet land can come up with something even better!)

More to come in part deux of overhaul mania.

spring winter autumn summer holgafied

Life through the eyes of Ms Holga.
Home edition.


Home is where the sun shines in golden rays


and shadows on pink flowers


home is mini paintings made with light


home is a corner of frutta


home is precious objects, anthropological collections and delicacies all in one room



home is the familliar
where you walk your dog
tunnels, new views


etheral lighthouses on the lake


looking up instead of straight ahead

bell jars and gardenia

i love the smell of summer in my house, and the sunlight that streams through the linen curtains, the breeze ruffling and bringing them to life, and the sun setting through the locust tree.

I've travelled far, across many borders but this is the lovliest corner i know of.



pin hole photograph, four minute exposure.