2010 Summer - 29 Soura Magazine | Issue AED 35 QR/SR 35 KD/BD/OR 3.5 LBP 15,000 USD 10.00 UK 6.99 EURO 7.99
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CONTENT | ISSUE 29 Photographer of the Month 14 Maria Thulin Featured Photographers 18 Sven Fennema 28 Marko Beslac 38 Slawomir Kmiecik 46 Miguel Angel de Arriba Cuadrado 54 Jean-Christophe Roux Exclusive Feature 62 Chernobyl and its Forbidden Spaces By Thierry Buysse Book Reviews 74 Relics of the Cold War By Martin Roemers 78 Transitions: The Dresden Project By Frederik Marsh Special Events 82 Blue Skie’d and Clear By Jamie Baldridge and Hazem Mahdy 86 Iraq: Transition to Peace By Tina Hager 88 Diary of the Future By Lara Baladi Field Guide 90 Abandoned Interiors in HDR By Alessandro Maggi Product Review 94 Capture stunning stills and HD video with Canon EOS 550D
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Photographer of the Month | Maria Thulin
Maria Thulin
Starting Out Now
Twenty-four year-old Swedish photographer Maria grew up in a small town called Nyköping. At the age of 22, in the summer of 2007, Thulin moved to the capital, Stockholm to attend a two-year program that provided vocational training in digital imaging at Stockholm’s photography school. Of 200 applicants, 14 were selected, one of who was Thulin. During her schooling, Thulin then trained in photography and imaging for 6 weeks at Bohman & Sjöstrand image agency. Now nearing the end of her program, Thulin has just put on an exhibition of her graduation project. She has acquired a new job in photography and imaging at one of Stockholm’s leading advertising agencies. For Thulin, her career in photography and imaging begins now, “School and my whole journey until now have been really interesting and fun. But this is where it starts for real and I know that the future will be at least as good,” she says.
Nyheter 1 This image hints to how the media controls people through commercialism. What kind of music you must listen to, what clothes you should wear and what you should do on the weekend. The man in the photo is colorfully dressed, holding a fun magazine with Iggy Pop on the cover. The man looks even somewhat indifferently into the camera. Why? It is up to the viewer to come up with his or her own answer. Nyheter 2 This image is black and white to convey that the media represents things in black and white. Because we can’t see any expression in the reader’s face, the message is blurred. We have the ability to hide behind other people’s thoughts and ideals in order to avoid taking any position. Because we do not want to feel left out, we take on other people’s ideals, so are we still individual or like everyone else? Nyheter 1
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Nyheter 2
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Photographer of the Month | Maria Thulin
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Critical News I am a perfectionist both on the personal and professional levels. I’m a perfectionist when retouching a photograph of a perfume bottle for an advertising campaign, as much as I am when working on a photo for publishing on my personal blog. It is incredibly rewarding and fun for my professional job to also be my personal hobby. More so because what I do is heavily reliant on conveying messages and emotions, whether in commercial work or noncommercial work.
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We have the ability to hide behind other people’s thoughts and ideals in order to avoid taking any position. The photographs in the series Nyheter (news) reflect different ideas through the three different images even though they are all quite similar to each other. The common theme I meant to convey through Nyheter is that the media governs our society.
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The common theme I meant to convey through Nyheter is that the media governs our societ. © All images courtesy of Maria Thulin www.MariaThulin.com
Nyheter 3 This picture is darker, and the man is holding up a pair of eyes. With this, I wanted to show that what you read and see on the news or in the papers is through the eyes of others and that it is up to you to further research the news you read and see. We have to be more critical of the news today before passing judgment. Nyheter 3
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The Beauty of Decay | Sven Fennema
Sven Fennema
The Beauty of Decay
Walls of Wine
Sven Fennema was born in Xanten, Germany in 1981. Currently, Fennema lives in Krefeld (near Düsseldorf) where he works his day job at an international software company. Fennema began experimenting with photography and exploring digital processing in 2007; he has since developed his own photographic style. Fennema is a self-educated photographer whose photographic and post processing skills are entirely self-taught. He was never enticed to copy someone’s style, but was driven by his passion for photography to freely evolve his creativity. Fennema’s work has been published in several publications, he has also worked in stage design for the theatre, and his work was featured on a book cover. In September of 2010, Fennema will be publishing his photography book Anderswelten (loosely translates to ‘Exceptional and Different Worlds’), which he worked on together with his close friend, photographer Bjørn Pretzel. This book is, “dedicated to the beauty of decay,” says Fennema, “and will show some of the lost places we’ve journeyed to.” Fennema also plans to hold exhibitions to accompany the book launch. Cristallerie 18 Soura Issue 29
Deadly Experiments
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The Beauty of Decay | Sven Fennema
The Silent Audience
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Education Lost
Bygone Studies
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The Beauty of Decay | Sven Fennema
40 Years of Silence
Conserved in Spiderwebs
View of the Old Lady
Untouched Memories
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The Boundless Mind I have been quite curious about deserted places now for several years, and the theme of abandoned places and spaces is a close personal favorite of mine. My second favorite topic to address through my photography is the evolution of modern architecture. I don’t know if it is the haunting atmosphere of abandoned spaces or the stories behind them that draw me to this topic. With modern architecture the appeal is different for me. In that case, I am more attracted to seeing a building from different perspectives and different angles, thus creating an entirely new and individual image of that building, one that is individual to me. Creative photo-art has now long since become a vital and elementary part of my life. I pay meticulous attention to using atmosphere, light and mood in my compositions. I also like the play of light and forms.
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When asked to describe my photos, I usually do so using just one word: alive. A lot of time is invested into taking just one photo. I first like to observe and be in the place for a while, letting it influence me, I see this as collecting its mood and history. I think about it for a while, and eventually, the picture I want to express slowly forms in my head. The decayrelated motifs in my work are full of stories I want to tell, good as well as bad ones. They are told through the picture, and are always a little different depending on the viewer. But the common story with all the viewers is, that the once abandoned space has been revived, and is alive again once more.
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I don’t want to have my ideas controlled by rules, reality and limitations but to realize everything like I see it in my mind. I am often driven to break rules of reality through my compositions; I like to use unconventional camera angles as stylistic tools. This is also the reason behind the working title of my website boundless mind. I don’t want to have my ideas controlled by rules, reality and limitations but to realize everything like I see it in my mind. © All images courtesy of Sven Fennema www.boundlessmind.net
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The Beauty of Decay | Sven Fennema
Mysteries of the Attic
Intrappolato Anime
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Cattedra Di Orrore
Asylum of the Silent Screams
Everlasting Peace
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The Beauty of Decay | Sven Fennema
Forgotten Tragedy
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Old Memories
The Pastors Chair
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Bizarrely Delicate | Marko Beslac
Marko Beslac
Bizarrely Delicate
Marko Beslac was born in 1978 in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, where he lives today. He began his journey into photography four years ago. Encouraged by positive feedback on his efforts, Beslac continued to pursue photography and was able to set up a web gallery. He has so far had several group exhibitions including ones in Italy, and Colombia among other places. Beslac’s work has been distinguished with several accolades on many domestic and international web sites dedicated to photography and other kinds of art. He won the KADAR award as the best photographer in the generated images category in Croatia in 2008. Beslac’s work has been published in numerous national specialized magazines for photography, inlcuding Livingstone, Jutarnji List, Blur Magazine, Click, Digital Photo, Fratturascomposta, Fotoritim, and Photographize to name a few. Beslac is represented by two galleries specialized in fine arts photography, ARCANGEL IMAGES and ALLTO1. Behind the Story Line
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Bizarrely Delicate | Marko Beslac
Big Things - Little Things
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Butterfly Effect
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Bizarrely Delicate | Marko Beslac
My Private War
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Through the Valve I pursue photography to satisfy my natural urge to create. My work often represents my inner state at the time as well as how I see the world around me. Photography for me is like a valve through which I can share my happiness, love, anger, sadness and frustration with people I know and do not know.
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Photography for me is like a valve through which I can share my happiness, love, anger, sadness and frustration. When a viewer looks at any of my photographs, he/she is seeing a part of me, and my feelings at the moment of creation, as well as at the time of image processing because a large part of the creation process is spent in post-production. Since other photographers have exhausted all topics, I try to present something new and authentic in the visual creation.
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Some people have described my work as ‘bizarre’ and ‘delicate’. Some people have described my work as “ bizarre” and “delicate”, my objective is usually to keep the viewer looking at my photograph for as long as possible. Artists of all kinds, not only photographers, inspire me, as do ordinary people and their views on life. There are many souls on this planet, and my wish is to reach to them. © All images courtesy of Marko Beslac www.fotoblur.com/people/MarkoBeslac
Shadows
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Bizarrely Delicate | Marko Beslac
Fake Memories
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Fade In
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Bizarrely Delicate | Marko Beslac
Wish You Were Here Series
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Spots of Space | Slawomir Kmiecik
Slawomir Kmiecik
Spots of Space
Slawomir Kmiecik has worked under the pseudonym Camereon. He is 36 and lives in Walbrzych, Poland. Kmiecik took up photography two years ago when he bought a camera; it was a Nikon D 60. Since then, photography has become his great passion. He is a selftaught amateur who takes advantage of any free time to explore the world of photography. Kmiecik features his work on local and international photography websites. Recently, Kmiecik has tried to find interesting spots to take photos and organize open-air workshops there. The spots are usually abandoned factories, hospitals and old deserted palaces. He is also interested in working factories characterized by unusual 19th century architecture, and luckily southern Poland is full of such buildings, so it was no surprise to him that such places became of particular interest to him. Kmiecik was particularly inspired by an inactive mine in Walbrzych, called Julia. Professionally, Kmiecik is an electric appliances salesman, and he likes music and football. He is a University educated sociologist and holds a masters degree in management. When it comes to his private life, Kmiecik is a self-professed “happy husband and father of two children”.
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I’ll Fate Summer 2010 39
Spots of Space | Slawomir Kmiecik
Bloody Bath
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Altar of Madness
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Spots of Space | Slawomir Kmiecik
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Urban Explorer My projects often revolve around deserted places, abandoned or working factories characterised by interesting industrial architecture. I’ve never tried just to present the places that I shoot, but rather tell a story through them. I often experience unusual auras in these spaces, I think this is what attracts many people to such places: an otherworldly aura. My photos also try to tell the stories of the people who are not present in the pictures but whose connection to these spaces is felt. The people who built these spaces, or occupied them and once used the objects now left behind are a crucial part of the story. I want the viewer to wonder about who used that phone, or who sat on that chair, etc. I sometimes wonder, whether those people are immaterially present in places where they left their objects.
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My photos also try to tell the stories of the people who are not present in the pictures but whose connection to these spaces is felt.
The use of HDR technique strengthens the message of the photo. It also detaches the photographed places from reality, but at the same time makes the photos more threatening and more climatic. I also take advantage of colours, which when subdued, enrich the final effect. My main tool is a wide-angle lens that causes a distortion of the image. I try not to focus on details but try to present certain objects in the broader context of the space/room where it is present.
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I’ve never tried just to present the places that I shoot, but rather tell a story through them.
Apart from the objects, I also photograph the interiors of factories characterized by an unusual climate and architecture. My works are often compared with post apocalyptic computer games like Fallout or Half-life. The places presented in games are invented, unreal; my photos present real life places that can be visited by everyone. I find the source of my inspiration in deserted places; they allow unlimited creativity. The scenery in such places is better than any arranged scenery. However, I quite often change something in the scenery in order to enhance artistic expression. Other Polish photographers interested in the same theme inspire me as well. We meet and share our creative activity. It is referred to as Urban Exploration, however our meetings are far from the standard meaning of Urban Exploration because they are not only of documentary value but are connected with creating images, what can be treated in terms of artistic category. © All images courtesy of Slawomir Kmiecik www.camereon.digart.pl Train to Nowhere
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Spots of Space | Slawomir Kmiecik
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A Villa with Swimming Pool
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Personal Perspectives | Miguel Angel de Arriba Cuadrado
Miguel Angel de Arriba Cuadrado Personal Perspectives
Miguel Angel de Arriba Cuadrado is 45 years old and lives in Liencres, a little seaside village in Cantabria, a region in the north of Spain. He’s been an amateur photographer for more than 25 years until the year 2004, when photography became his profession. Cuadrado consider himself lucky to have a career in what are both his passion and his hobby. His work as photographer for Cantabria’s Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Sport. Over the years, Cuadrado has been published in magazines all around the world, he’s held exhibitions and won national as well as international photography awards, and he is currently preparing what will be his first book of photography. Cuadrado has always tried not to limit himself to only one photographic discipline; he has often worked on macro images, portraits, social photography as well as nature photography. He is continuously striving to reflect his personal perspectives in his work. Cuadrado believes that the key to obtaining good photographs is a well trained eye, a correct interpretation of light and a good knowledge of the tools, either the camera as main object or some skills on post processing.
Palacio de Festivales
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Personal Perspectives | Miguel Angel de Arriba Cuadrado
Sobrellano
Pontificia
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Palombera
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Personal Perspectives | Miguel Angel de Arriba Cuadrado
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Feel the Light Photography to me is a way of surviving and living life. My eyes observe and process scenes I see before me and if there’s something to photograph, it often leaps out at me urging me to capture that moment. When I think about how ephemeral life is and how every second eludes our grasp I consider it a magical privilege to be able to freeze a moment, it is like stopping time. When I see special light conditions like sunset or dawn, or a backlight outlining a subject or even window through which light is flooding, I do not think, I just feel and let go. A few years ago, I was heading to the South of Spain for a job with another photographer friend of mine. I remember a young many travelling with us who was studying photography at one of the best photography schools in the country. He was talking about all the new advances in techniques and how they can now calculate exposure with fraction formulas. While listening to him, I remember looking through the car window and, in the distance, over the mountain edge, there was a digger working. The light illuminated the scenery behind it as it was kicking up dust, it looked to me like a monster in a world of lights and shadows. I turned back and said to the young man, “Look over there, do you think it is possible to measure that scene with fractions? Why don’t they teach you instead to feel the light?” To this day, every time I see that young man he reminds me of that moment, and how he brought up what I had said to him to his teachers when he went back to class after that trip.
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I consider it a magical privilege to be able to freeze a moment, it is like stopping time. Presently my job entails taking pictures of my land, which is a pleasure for me to try to make other people see it the way I do, as beautifully as possible. That’s why I feel privileged; I don’t know of any other profession that would fulfil me both, as a person and as an artist. I am deeply grateful for the trust placed in me by the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Sport of the Government of Cantabria, and its Minister Francisco Javier López Marcano without whom I wouldn’t have had this great opportunity. © All images courtesy of Miguel Angel de Arriba Cuadrado www.MigueldeArriba.es
Vacio
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Personal Perspectives | Miguel Angel de Arriba Cuadrado
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El Viejo Lavabo Summer 2010  53
Magic Transfer | Jean-Christophe Roux
Jean-Christophe Roux Magic Transfer
JC Roux’s path has been quite eclectic thus far. The life choices he has been making since his twenties revolved around his professional career goals, which he feels he has achieved with “more or less happiness,” as he says. The single common theme that ran through all of his life’s accomplishments is ‘creation’. Whether it was drawing, painting, sculpting, or photography, Roux has used creativity to break the monotony of the daily grind, and infuse beauty into his life. Roux has been working with elders and seniors for the past ten years, accompanying them during their final days. This emotional experience fueled his photographic work, which was a reliable witness of these emotional moments. Roux prefers the black and white medium and uses it without restriction, as if his vision was truly built that way. To him black and white enhances the feeling of nostalgia, highlights binaries and complexities. Roux often uses color however as he finds that it appeals to and attracts viewers, it is also intimately linked to his perception of black and white and to the chemical process of photo-treatment. To Roux, photography is an extremely selfish activity until the moment when, as if by magic, he is able to transfer a little emotion to others.
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Magic Transfer | Jean-Christophe Roux
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Magic Transfer | Jean-Christophe Roux
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Mortal Characteristic How to hold and protect our intimate moments, our life trails? How not to fear time that passes by and leads us harshly towards death? How to transcend the moment, this already passed present?
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The image is really the expression of our inability to hold time, it takes us back to our mortality and fragility, and it is the fleeting witness of a unique moment forever lost. The need of leaving a trail explains itself; it’s ridiculous, futile and pathetic. Pursuing the moment, then capturing it materializes the memory, making the emotion tangible in order to be assured that you have it. This is, in my humble opinion, the deep quest of each creator, at least for me. As Madeleine of Marcel Proust is the icon of lost time, photography is the witness of our mortal characteristic. I am going to die and do not accept it, I assure myself by recording my life in photos or objects, a contradictory step as photos take me back to an incomplete past.
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I am going to die and do not accept it, I assure myself by recording my life in photos.
Photography, and the close–up in particular, are a good means to express the desire of sticking to the present. The photo album is a little like the modern counterpart of renaissance marvel chambers. They give no choice to the spectator, they enclose him/ her in a small space, without an alternative, they oblige him to consider his status of being unique and mortal. Relics have always fascinated me; they are the illustration of a memory, the materialization of a thought, the object that takes you back to a particular memory. The photo is a relic; it is the trail of our past, the witness of the ongoing time, of the flowing life, of the coming death, just a little basic ridiculous and decaying happiness. © All images courtesy of Jean-Christophe Roux www.azram.deviantart.com
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Magic Transfer | Jean-Christophe Roux
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Chernobyl and Its Forbidden Spaces | Thierry Buysse
Thierry Buysse
Chernobyl and Its Forbidden Spaces
Thierry Buysse was born in April 1983, and grew up in Bruges, Belgium. As a young boy, Buysse often explored different artistic outlets, until he discovered photography through his aunt Greta Buysse (www.gretabuysse.be). Greta Buysse is a well-known international female photographer who has a predilection for artistic nudity. Years later his interest in photography increased under the watchful eye of his parents who pushed him to succeed. At the age of 21, in 2004, Buysse bought his first DSLR camera, a Canon 10D. At the beginning of 2005, after one year of trying to get it right, Buysse discovered Urban Exploration. His pictures left a major impression. As a result, Sharpoord in Knokke, Belgium contacted him for his first solo exposition. The continuous and growing interest and the unexpected success instantly garnered Buysse two more expositions, with almost 9 more exhibitions planned for the near future including two substantial ones in 2011 and 2012. Inspired, Buysse decided to make an adventurous trip with his girlfriend to a heavily radioactive area, Chernobyl in Ukraine. There, the couple stayed 2 days and spent the night so that Buysse could take some extreme pictures. One year later, in October 2009, he went back to the forbidden zone of Chernobyl. This time for 5 days and 4 nights! Today you still find him at work in abandoned locations and he is still hoping for an international breakthrough with his work. His first exposition outside Belgium will be held in Germany. Freaky doll with her teddybear friend in a Pripyat kindergarden
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Sketch of Reality I don’t like to be called a photographer because the term ‘photographer’ refers to someone who is a professional and who is academically trained. I am a self-taught man and I like to consider myself a photographic artist rather than a photographer. The decision as to weather I am a real photographer or not I leave to people who view my work.
Some doll in one of the 3 kindergardens in Pripy
As a photographic artist I look in abandoned locations for areas or objects that want to tell something to the world, the story they have lived. I search along the border of life and death, existence and decease, vulnerability and reencounter. I’m still searching for a sketch of reality, something that shows real facts. When I enter an abandoned place, it’s like a step back into the past. It makes you realize that eternal life doesn’t exist. All life suffers under the pain of desperate attempts to escape to it. I mainly work with black and white because it makes reality come to life. I want viewers who look at my work to find something unexpected, the longer you look at an image, study the elements, the more you discover. I hope my work intrigues and gives rise to deep thinking.
The Story Behind the Greatness of the Abandoned
A broken doll face in one of the 3 kindergardens in Pripyat
Something that captured my attention at the site of the nuclear disaster of Chernobyl was mainly the greatness of the abandoned. This time it wasn’t an abandoned house or an empty factory but an entire landmass where time had stopped for 24 years and counting. The enormity of the city where someday almost 50000 civilians lived was now completely abandoned; it is a phenomenon indescribable with words. In the case of Chernobyl it wasn’t just the characteristic of being deserted that appealed to me, but also the consequences of a gigantic nuclear catastrophe. Nuclear power is a worldwide hot topic, and Chernobyl is an example of how it can go wrong because of an abuse of this immense power. The theme is a huge source of inspiration for me along with the idea of a now gone glory. When I first walked into a space in Pripyat I became overwhelmed with so much inspiration that made it more difficult to express myself. Out every corner there came so many stories that you could easily create thousands of pictures in only one space. The result was major overloading through which it was difficult to produce one good image.
2 child bikes in one of the 3 kindergardens in Pripyat
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Chernobyl and Its Forbidden Spaces | Thierry Buysse
Excerpt from Thierry Buysse’s Journey Log The First Trip - 2008 2 September 2008 - day 1: 8.45 - We are waiting for our driver at the entrance of our hotel in Independence Square in Kiev. Ten minutes later he appears, but unfortunately, he turned out not to speak or understand English. By means of signs and gestures we manage to load our luggage and leave. Moving through the busy morning peak-hour traffic, it turns out that we have to pick up one more couple. Our driver’s crazy driving skills made for two tense hours to Dytyatky, the first checkpoint in the Zone of Exclusion. On the way we get to know our two companions better and they turn out to be an older Dutch couple. After a half hour ride we’re finally out of the centre of Kiev on the motorway where, to our astonishment, we see a number of cyclists riding in the opposite direction in the middle lane. A bit further our driver makes an emergency brake stop because there is someone with some 250 giant watermelons on the side of the road. Our driver buys one for the kitchen of the Chernobyl Interinform. Halfway through our trip we notice that our driver is dozing off, which is really worrying since the roads are in bad condition and we’re driving a rickety van. We keep him awake by tapping his shoulder every time we see his head hanging down and eventually, we let him stop at a gas station and we offer him a RedBull, which he refuses to our surprise. We’re still half an hour away from the first checkpoint Dytyatky. 11.30 - We arrive at the first checkpoint Dytyatky, and a robust military man with a typical Russian look comes walking to our ramshackle van. He opens the door and asks for our documents. We have to take off our caps to prove that we look like the pictures in our passports. I asked whether we could take pictures of the checkpoint and he nodded curtly. The average radiation dose on my Terra-P (radiation reader) is 0,08 µSv/h. After 5 minutes the barrier goes up... 11.45 - We arrive at the Chernobyl Interinform Agency and meet Yuri who will accompany us in the two coming days. Yuri has already been working as a guide for 10 years and he stays alternately two weeks in the zone and two weeks at home.
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12.00 - Since we’re more than an hour late due to the late arrival of our fellow travelers and the stopover at the gas station, we have to skip the informative part and start right away with the guided tour. But before we can start with it, we have to sign a contract stating that we consciously enter the zone and are aware of all the possible consequences. The first stop is at a famous monument (set up in 1988) to the firemen who took part in the fire-fighting operations and the cleanup shortly after the disaster; virtually all of them have died because due to radiation overdose. We arrive in Lelev, the second checkpoint that blocks the access to the 10km-zone. A clearly frustrated military man opens the door of the van and orders us to present our passports. He inspects us from head to toe to make sure that we’re really the same people as in the photos. Finally, he returns our documents and gives a short nod to his colleague. The barrier goes up. Yuri tells us that there are wild boars here and that we should watch out for them. But he says that the chance that we will see them is pretty slim because he himself has only seen them only twice in the past 10 years. Nothing was further from the truth: he has barely finished speaking when our driver had to brake abruptly for a horde of wild boars with some 20 cubs. We had a hairbreadth escape from a collision with 2 heavy boars that stood in front of our van. I was just in time to take a picture of the fleeing boars before they ran into the high grass again. A bit later we stopped in the village Kopatsji. This village is the closest one to the nuclear power station and had 1114 inhabitants all of whom were evacuated on 3 May 1986. The houses have been demolished and simply covered with a thin layer of earth, a typical disappearing act of the communist regime? My Terra-P shows 0.30 µSv/h at the roadside. Unfortunately, we cannot enter the village because the slopes are densely wooded and this is a wonderful hiding place for the wild boars. While we’re going back to the van, we see a humongous latticework on the horizon. Yuri explains that this used to be an anti-rocket system put by the Russians against the Americans. We are moving in the direction of the cooling towers. There we see the unfinished cooling towers of reactor 5 and 6 that were under construction at the moment of the accident. A bit further, in front of reactors 5 and 6, there is a building under construction. The works were stopped immediately after the disaster and have never been resumed. This is made very clear by
the half open construction and the prehistoric Soviet tower cranes that have been standing there lifeless for 22 years. Here the value shown by my Terra-P goes up to 0.87 µSv/h, a bit over the natural threshold, but Yuri says that several days after the accident the values went up to 1 million above the permitted value. Behind us, there is a new concrete bunker built and managed by the Americans, where the nuclear waste is stored. We get back into the van and continue our trip in the direction of the core of the disaster, reactor 4! In the meantime Yuri tells us that an investigation into the consequences for the environment was conducted in 1995 that has shown that nature had recovered and that this area was a habitat for hundreds of different animal species. Biological mutation is no longer an issue, this only happened in the first generation after the disaster but these animals had no chance of survival. Worldwide there are only 1500 Mongol horses, 100 of which live in the free nature of the Zone of Exclusion. In the photo made in the Chernobyl Museum in Kiev, you can see a wild boar cub with 2 heads and 8 paws. We approach the elongated buildings of reactors 1, 2, 3 and 4 but before we go to number 4 on the other side, we stop at the bridge for a moment. There, Yuri shows us the giant catfish, which come in swarms to polish off the bread that we throw them. At reactor 4 with its famous sarcophagus only the reactor building itself could be photographed. We could come as close as 50 meters, which gave a very intense feeling. My Terra-P indicated +/- 5.00 µSv/h. Yuri tells us that 70% of the construction has been made open to the public (on condition of severe safety regulations). Daily works are still needed for the maintenance of the sarcophagus. These works are extremely difficult because each workman can stay inside the building only several minutes per day. 18 countries have already given donations for the maintenance and repair of the sarcophagus, the sum amounting to almost 2 billion USD. We proceed in the direction of Pripyat. There we come to a fork with a monument that was constructed in 1970 on the occasion of the beginning of construction of Pripyat and the nuclear power plant. We arrive at the last checkpoint. We can finally enter Pripyat! Pripyat had 50,000 inhabitants and was evacuated using 2000 buses in 20 hours. We stop here and there at some buildings and get the necessary explanations.
A piano in the music school of Pripyat
A piano in the music school of Pripyat
Detail of a piano in the music school of Pripyat
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Chernobyl and Its Forbidden Spaces | Thierry Buysse
On deck of a half sunken boat at the wreckyard near Chernobyl
Inside a half sunken boat at the wreckyard near Chernobyl
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A boatwreck at the wreckyard near Chernobyl
The swimming pool has only been deserted since 1996: for 10 years it was still used as a form of recreation by the workers who were clearing the town. On the way back I ask Yuri about the red forest and the square with vehicles and helicopters. Unfortunately, the helicopters and vehicles were dismantled in 2006 due to the great demand for metal in the world. Meanwhile, the radioactivity level shown by my Terra-P went up to 10.00 µSv/h when we were driving through the red forest. Since I didn’t see any red forest around, Yuri told us that it had been cut down ten years ago. We return to the 10 km checkpoint where a military man examines our van with a Geiger counter. A bit later his thumb goes up and the barrier is opened. On the way to the last stop of day 1 we stop at a lake with half sunk boats. Unfortunately, we could only see them from one side... 15.30 - a meal prepared by the friendly people of the Chernobyl Interinform is the last item on today’s program. Before we are allowed to sit at the table, we have to wash our hands and then stand on a prehistoric radiation counter that checks our hands and shoe soles for infected substances. The light goes green so we can go to the table. There we are treated to a sumptuous five-course meal that consists of 75% vegetables, 10% pasta and 15% very fat meat. Alas, our western stomachs cannot manage such a quantity of food and fat and we have to leave most of our food on our plates. During the meal Yuri tells us that at the moment there are approximately 250 elderly persons who still live in the 30 km zone, all those who didn’t want to leave their houses after the accident. They’ve been living there illegally for 6 years and were legalized only in 1992. Nobody lives in the 10 km zone and it is prohibited for anyone to enter the zone at night, exclusion zone employees included. Our meal is finished and we take leave of our Dutch fellow travelers. They go back to Kiev but we stay for the night to have one more day in one of the most special places on Earth. 17.00 - Yuri goes with us to our hotel where we get a simple but clean spacious room. Tired but satisfied, we immediately flop into a sofa and take some rest. One hour later Yuri comes to fetch us and offers us 2 extra hours in the zone, which we just cannot refuse. This time we go with his personal car, a blue Lada. We drive along deserted and dilapidated roads and occasionally he tells us about the things we see and stops so that we can enjoy the silence. Finally, we arrive in Yampol, a deserted village with some 30 wooden houses, all of them ramshackle and totally covered by wild overgrowth. The road is also covered by wild overgrowth, in some places we can barely pass. There is no church; it was
destroyed during the Second World War. We stop at some houses and go shortly inside where we still find a bed, some books and calendar leaves. When we come out of one of the houses, we hear some grunting and rush to the car: the wild boars followed our heels. Here and there you could see traces of large herds of boars. We still stop at the only bus stop of the village and have to make a U-turn since a fallen tree has blocked the road. It’s getting late so we go back to Chernobyl while Yuri tells us that there is a curfew and we cannot go out after 8 pm. Not only because this is a rule but also for our own safety. A lot of military men have little to do after their daily duties and go to the local supermarket to get their daily dose of alcohol. We’re dropped off at our hotel and agree to meet at 8 o’clock tomorrow morning at the restaurant across the street. Overnight in Chernobyl: 20.00 – Once in our room, we take turns in the shower as instructed by the safety regulations that we received in Belgium. When finally in bed, we can enjoy a good night’s rest. 3 September 2008 - day 2: 8.00 - During breakfast Yuri told us again about the town of Chernobyl. All the people living here, about 4000 of them, are here on a temporary basis. They all have a function in the framework of the clearing and maintenance works at the reactor building or in the infected zones in the 30 km zone. A lot of buildings in Chernobyl are still being used, mostly as accommodation for the 4000 persons. There are also some office buildings and a clinic. The pipeline that runs through the whole city was reinstalled after the accident because the old one was contaminated. The biggest part of the city consists of the usual small houses but all of them are abandoned and rundown. While we are driving around, the average radiation level on my Terra-P is 0.12 µSv/h. We stop once again at reactor 4 and drive straight to Pripyat where we want to have a closer look and go inside the buildings. We ask Yuri to show us the highest building in Pripyat and we get to see a 16-storey building. Unfortunately, the lift is broken. After an exhausting climb up we were rewarded by a wonderful view of the skyline of Pripyat with reactor 4 on the horizon as the icing on the cake. We both wondered what it must have looked like from here 22 years ago when reactor 4 turned into an inferno. We received 20 minutes but finally stayed there for an hour. The buildings are built in the typical prefab Soviet style and are full of shortcomings. Yuri tells us that these defects don’t only come as a result of the natural dilapidation but are also due to the bad and cheap architecture. Harsh winters also give a hand in this: here the temperatures can go down to -40°C.
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Chernobyl and Its Forbidden Spaces | Thierry Buysse
In the sports hall of Pripyat we can still see the traces of use as if they were still playing football here. On the wall there are still football pictures that bear witness to the life before the accident. Outside we see the world-famous Ferris wheel and the bumper cars. We’ve already seen them a lot on the Internet but being there in person gives quite a particular feeling. Near the Ferris wheel there is one square meter of moss and there we measure the highest radiation level in the past two days: my Terra-P registers 16.22 µSv/h. Pripyat hides more dangerous situations than just dangerous substances. It’s full of manholes whose metal lids disappeared two years ago thanks to the metal dealers who received free play. The pits are treacherously hidden among the overgrowth are about 80 cm wide and 15 meters deep. You can’t make it out of there alive. One of our stops was at a hospital, which gave us an eerie feeling, to say the least. There definitely was some strange energy in that place, a door slammed not far from us and next to us a door opened by some 30 cm while there was no draft in the building. We step into the car again and drive to the famous swimming pool. It became even more famous after it was used in detail in the Playstation 3 game ‘Call of Duty 4’. 15.30 - The day is nearly finished and we’re driving for the last time through the main street of Pripyat to leave the city through the checkpoint. A bit later we leave the 10 km zone for the last time through the checkpoint Lelev. We arrive in Chernobyl and get through our last Chernobyl meal of this terrific trip. Once again we receive the same type of food as yesterday, a huge amount of vegetables with pasta and very fatty meat. We take leave from Yuri and thank him for the two fantastic days and our driver takes us back to Kiev.
A clock at a school in Pripyat, stands still at the time of the accident
17.00 - We arrive at the last checkpoint at Dytyatky where our car is thoroughly examined for dangerous substances. We have to present our documents once again and, after a careful inspection we are being told in straightforward Ukrainian that we have to go into the building. There is a big control device there that you have to enter. It gives us a complete body check for contaminated material but luckily the light flashes green and we can get back to the car. Unfortunately, it’s prohibited to take photos here (you can find them on the Internet posted by other exclusion zone tourists). The barrier opens, the driver floors the accelerator and we look back for the last time: the barrier comes down and this puts an end to our terrific two days in this very special place.
The Second Trip 2009
Some medication in a hospital
5 October 2009 - day 1: 15.40 - Just like last year, we are back in the Ukraine on a pre-planned trip, at the airport our driver was waiting for us. I was amazed and surprised that this driver looked exactly the same as the one who drove us around last year, and even the mini-bus looked quiet familiar, as it was the same wreck as last year. I wondered if I had made the wrong decision by coming back. I might be punished for this sooner or later. While driving, my first impression was positive, the driver was driving calmly. 18.00 - We arrive at the first checkpoint Dytyatky. 19.00 - We arrive in Chernobyl, with the table set for us. The menu is identical to last year’s, as we recognize the cabbage structures and fatty textured meat again. 22.30 - We try to catch some sleep. And of course, as we had the same driver, mini-bus and food as last time, the bedroom was also the same, room number 16. It felt a bit like coming home again. A log at the hospital of Pripyat 68 Soura Issue 29
6 October 2009 - day 2: 07.30 - I’m already awake when the alarm is buzzing, it was extremely cold last night. Temperatures are already in minus, while the heating system is only allowed to work from October 15 on. 09.00 - Sergei, our assigned guide, is picking us up after a distasteful breakfast. We quickly set off for the first trip, passing the 10 km checkpoint in less than 15 minutes. This checkpoint will be a recognizable landmark when passing in the coming days. While approaching the towers of the nuclear plant, we are gladly enjoying our freshly received special permission, giving us the authorization to approach the towers closer than ever allowed. We begin to enter them while Sergei explains the technical function of these towers. Quite spectacular is the echo sound around, hurling from wall to wall. The outer boundary of the biggest tower is the place where I picked up a small stone, as big as a fist, on which my Terra-P was freaking out. A measured value of 352,3 µSv/h was the result, which was the equivalent of 1175 times the maximum natural radiation.
Some items in the hospital of Pripyat
09.35 - We pass the storage bunkers positioned next to the cooling water canal. The view is similar; the story is different this time. These bunkers were not constructed by the American government but by the French government, who paid millions of dollars for something, which was of no use, why? The bunkers would house concrete containers custom-built to store nuclear waste, but unfortunately these bunkers were 5 cm too small, so totally of no use at all. 09.45 - We arrive in the epicenter of the disaster, Reacor 4. All preparations are still going on to place the new sarcophagus over the heart of the reactor. New construction is installed on the outside of the reactor, raising new problems to cope with. Directly after the disaster, around the reactor a 6m thick layer of clay has been added to cover the contaminated surface from radiation. Underneath this layer, you’ll probably find the most infected, festering and putrid earth on the globe. This causes dangerous conditions for labor, as workmen are only allowed to work for a maximum of 5 minutes a day in this area. All operations are under supervision of Novarka, a cooperation between the US, France, Germany and Ukraine. Ukrainian laborers are risking their lives at 5m away from the reactor for a monthly salary of 350 USD, while Novarka Employees can earn up to 30.000 USD a month, sheltered in a safer environment 200m away from the reactor in a ‘safe zone’.
In a waitingroom at the hospital of Pripyat
10.00 - The cranky mini-bus enters Pripyat, Sergei at the wheel, bringing us to an abandoned military factory. On the floor of the factory, we find metal cans that look like hairspray containers; some of them still containing liquid substances. Sergei informs us that these are not hairspray cans, but cans containing a special liquid which neutralizes contaminated materials. Shortly after the disaster, an enormous demand for these cans was required, and in order to fulfill this, the Ukrainian government purchased millions of these hairspray-printed cans in Latvia, to fill them up with the decontaminating substance themselves. 11.30 - Our driver drops us at a kindergarten called Pinokio. Koen, one of our 3 fellow travelers suddenly starts screaming, as a huge animal ran off into the distance. Inside the kindergarten, the floor was seeded with dolls and pulled-off dolly heads. Being considered to have a Chernobyl-doll-fetish, it’s hard to leave the objects on the floor instead of taking one everlasting souvenir home. I have to but I cannot take them home, and I’m not allowed to take them home, even if I could. Smuggling an item, whether it’s a doll, a truck or a rock, is strictly forbidden in Ukraine, and punishable with a high detention in one of the country’s state penitentiaries.
A teddybear laying outside handed over to mother nature Summer 2010 69
Chernobyl and Its Forbidden Spaces | Thierry Buysse
13.00 - We go to the swimming pool where I came last year as well, but back then the sun was a disturbing element in my photos. This year the sky was cloudy, so with a little patience, making a better photo without annoying sun flare was possible. I hope you like the result. 13.30 - As it’s the first time for my fellow travelers in the forbidden zone, we decide to pass by the Ferris wheel and the box caddies. This enormous wheel is the perfect subject for a new set of photos, so I do not hesitate for a moment and go ahead for another shoot. It keeps amazing me that even after 23 years, none of the fixed caddies has thundered down. 14.45 - Time for lunchtime, therefore we return to the Chernobyl interinform, where our daily portion of cabbage and meat is waiting for consumption. Before eating we, or at least our hands and feet, have to be checked by the prehistoric machine for contamination. Green light, so we are considered ‘Safe’. I asked Sergei if they ever had a red light who confirmed they did just the week before. Sergei had visited a highly contaminated place that day, and at the end of the day his shoes were considered unsafe, resulting in a red light. A classroom in a school in Pripyat
A clock at a school in Pripyat, stands still at the time of the accident
15.50 - After our attempt to boost our energy levels with a sufficient meal, we re-enter the 10km zone for the last time today. Eventually we arrive at the well-known lake with abandoned ships. Last year we were only allowed to make photos from the shore, this year we had more luck to be allowed to enter the vessels and go all the way inside the hull. We left Sergei with his companion, the mini-bus, and told him to be back in one hour. He clearly enjoyed this and responded sarcastically saying, ‘enjoy it, have fun! And we were lucky, as the water level was low. On the Internet you find photos of these ships completely or partly under water, today we have more luck with almost the complete view available. As these boats are unstable, walking over them is hard, but valuable. It’s also rather dangerous to walk over them, as they have started to dismantle them partly, by taking away panels, leaving holes and sharp sides where anyone can get hurt. We succeeded in entering the main deck of 2 ships, and even the sleeping cabins. Unfortunately everything else was still under water. The most amazing thing about these ships was probably that on top of one of them, 3 military soldiers were fishing in this lake. 17.00 - Playtime is over, the day is over! We return to the mini-bus. We leave the zone with a sincere feeling of happiness and satisfaction.
A classroom in a school in Pripyat
7 October 2009 - day 3: 09.00 - After another long and cold night and a breakfast of cabbage with 3 sunny-side-up eggs, we were ready again for Chernobyl. Such a small place with such a major impact on human history! We cross Duga, also known as Chernobyl 2. Unfortunately we are only allowed to have a look at the radar from behind the walls. Long ago, one bottle of vodka was enough to pass security, but after some incidents, this period is now gone forever. Despite these restrictions, we do succeed in taking some photos; giving us a good idea what the strange and complex radar system should have looked like in the old days. 10.15 - Finally we get to see some of the surrounding nature while driving over untamed and wild roads. We pass some rare but still existing villages, in which most houses are totally captured by the dominating nature. We can spot some fresh tracks of wild bore. In Zamoshnya, we find one of the three last standing churches in the zone, of which only the outer walls and some parts of the roof construction are still standing. The roof tiles are gone forever, as are the floor, windows and doors. A hundred meters away from this church, we find the remains of an old cemetery, captured by wild trees, bushes and animals. It’s on this place we meet the flying ticks, heavily
The big hall of the cultural building in the centre of Pripyat 70 Soura Issue 29
armored insects, which can fly and attack humans. Sergei directly informs us about the direct danger caused by these small bastards, and they’re quite aggressive in their attacking style, as some try to land on my face. 12.30 - Duga was rather disappointing, and so Sergei brought us to the former observation tower of the fire department, as we hope to get a better view from the radar system. This tower is 37m high, but only 1.5m by 1.5m wide. During our trip, Sergei is assigned a government guide by the name of Sergei. As this guide is a former military general, we named him ‘the general’, to avoid misunderstandings, as we also have a third Sergei, our driver. The general decided to guide us up the ladder, a little bit drunk, but so proud by leveling up the speed he was climbing on this small ladder. As I went up, I quickly noticed that the wind above the tree line was pretty active, unlike below. I saw a small wooden house, with an abandoned mattress, that was giving protection for sleeping soldiers. The wind is playing with this small, unstable piece of handcraft, so I decided not to stand up and to take photos from the sitting position only. 13.10 - We return to the Chernobyl interinform for a break. At the 10km checkpoint, we experience a problem with our mini-bus. The tires of our mini-bus are contaminated, so initially we are not allowed to pass. Eventually the guards let us pass, as they know that we will not leave the forbidden zone in the next 3 days. It appears that there is no problem, as long as they can keep the problem internally.
Propaganda boards at the backside of the cultural building
15.00 - The rest of the day we spent in Pripyat. After being dropped at a school, we find the remains of a propaganda campaign, such as posters informing kids how to react in case of a gas attack, instructing them how to wear a gasmask and how to assemble an AK47 Kalasjnikov. Eventually we visit a piece of land on the outskirts of Pripyat, where we find a parking space full of former service vehicles, used for decontamination of houses and vehicles. As homage, they’ve deserved the endless rest, rusting away near the frontier of civilization. Watch out: This is not the well-known Rosocha, with hundreds of vehicles and helicopters. Rosocha is now a no-man’s land, strictly forbidden for tourists, and already partly dismantled by dubious merchants. 8 October 2009 - day 4: 09.00 - Our last day has just started and we directly head for Pripyat. Sergei is guiding us around in the cells of the local police station. These cells are rather small, musty and with thick metal doors. One remarkable thing: no daylight can reach these cells.
Some playing cards in one of the kindergardens of Pripyat
09.30 - My companion travelers wished to see the space with the big propaganda flyers, situated in the centre of culture. I didn’t protest at all, as I knew I would meet an old friend, the most known doll of the zone would be waiting for me there. A small doll, with a tortured body, 2 broken legs and half of her face burned, but still staring eyes. I personally recognize in this doll the misery and wretchedness of this region and its former inhabitants. Unfortunately, my enthusiasm was quickly subdued, as she could not be found on the place I left her last year. I’ve looked around, searched under and behind every obstacle, but no doll to see. She was gone... Where to? No idea, nobody knows, but I truly hope she finally gets the rest she deserves. 10.00 - Exhausted after climbing 17 floors, we arrive on the roof of the central building near the central square, with the typical Soviet symbol on the roof. We are warned by Sergei not to go to the back of the roof, as from there on, we can be seen by military, and as known there is still a restriction to enter the buildings in Pripyat, not mentioning the roof. Inside the building we found some interesting graffiti on the walls, like this little girl stretching her finger. A picture of a young soldier Summer 2010 71
Chernobyl and Its Forbidden Spaces | Thierry Buysse
In a waiting room at the hospital of Pripyat
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10.35 - Dropped at the ‘River Station’, an old place where recreational water sports were organized, there is actually nothing to see. Luckily the hospital is only within walking distance, so we decide to go that way. I remember this hospital from last year. In contradiction to most buildings, this hospital, and especially the parturition department is still in tact, so a nice place for a shoot. Afterwards we head to the mortuary in Pripyat, a smaller building behind the hospital. Inside all remains are gone, except for the tables on which the dead bodies were examined and the black rubber gloves, which can be found dispersed on the floors. Here, my terra-P measures 1.56 µSv/h. 12.50 - The last standing cinema in Pripyat is now our play zone. In the big room, the big screen is ripped into pieces and the seats are, except for some lonely ones, all gone. You can hear the water dripping down against the walls, which look obviously wet and humid. Next to this cinema, we find the school of music, with only one piano remaining. 15.30 - After the break Sergei is proposing to pass the train station of Yanov, which was rather disappointing when we finally arrived there. Except for some old trains, wagons and chariots, the most exciting thing to see there was a small snake getting away from us through the green grass. The next thing was the old football stadium, of which only one big block of concrete was left, covered with trees and grass. The place where once stood the biggest stadium is now no more than a small forest. To end the day, we visit another child garden, called ‘GoldenFish’; the less spectacular of all 3, and even my terra-P (gamma and beta radiation reader) is not wild about it, at a rate of 0.33 µSv/h. 17.10 - We leave Pripyat and the 10km zone for what it is. Our contaminated tires are in the meanwhile decontaminated, so we’re free to go. 9 October 2009 - day 5: 10. 00 - All our bags are packed and ready to leave. At the border of Chernobyl, the general is waiting for us. He lives just outside the zone, so we’ll pick him up. At the last checkpoint, I finally succeed in taking photos of the control systems. All 4 of us get the green light to leave the zone behind, for me the second and probably the last time.
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Something that captured my attention at the site of the nuclear disaster of Chernobyl was mainly the greatness of the abandoned. © All images courtesy of Thierry Buysse www.reactor4.be
Newspaper found somewhere in an appartment
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Relics of the Cold War | Martin Roemers
Book Review:
Relics of the Cold War By Martin Roemers
The Cold War is over, yet signs of it still exist. For forty years the Iron Curtain divided the countries of Europe into East and West. The arms race was unleashed, nuclear fallout shelters were constructed, and everyone braced for the worst. Dutch documentary photographer Martin Roemers has spent ten years in search of the traces of this period, traveling through the countries of former enemies on both sides of the line. He explored and documented underground tunnels, abandoned system control centers, former barracks, rotting tanks, and destroyed monuments. His photographs are a stark and moving document of this era of hostility, deterrence politics, and the arms race, and also serve as an appeal for future peace. Published in 2009 by Hatje Cantz, Relics of the Cold War consists of 73 photographs of Cold War memories. Since then the exhibition of photographs has been traveling through Europe. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has acquired 15 photographs from the book for its collection.
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Relics of the Cold War | Martin Roemers
Same Defenses, Same Fears By Martin Roemers Summer 1983. I’m on holiday with a friend in Germany. We’re walking through a wood in an easterly direction. It must be there. Through the trees we see something grayish. We can’t go any further. There’s a concrete wall in front of us. There’s nothing else to see. Except for the singing birds it is quiet. We walk along the wall until we reach a watchtower. A soldier is sitting inside and he looks at us. I take a picture of the lonely man in the tower. He takes a picture of us. Fall 1989. The wall has fallen. I’m a photography student at the art academy. I drive through East Germany in my old car. On the way I pass countless Russian barracks. It looks like a completely different world from the outside. I wonder what they look like inside. I walk to the front gate and ask for permission to take a few pictures. “Njet,” they say. Winter 1998. I’m in contact with Ulrike. She works for an organization in Brandenburg that manages the former Russian army territories. Ulrike gives me a pile of official documents with many signatures, seals, and stamps. I may go everywhere. I walk around in astonishment. The local population plundered the buildings immediately after the departure of the Russians. What remains is the beauty of decay: buildings that are about to collapse, old vehicles, car tires, an aircraft, and a peeling mural of the glory of the Soviet Union. This is the Disneyland of the Cold War.
About Martin Roemers
Fall 2002. Kaliningrad. I drive through a sleepy provincial town and see a small, old, and collapsed military building. I grab a camera and tripod and take a few pictures. I walk around the building and see two Russian soldiers lying on the ground drinking beer. I decide to return to my car, but it’s too late. Two guards seize me and take me to a barrack. I am held the whole day because I have to wait for an official from the FSB (formerly KGB) to come from the capital. Late in the afternoon, the stout FSB officer appears with tea and biscuits. He subjects me to a long and protracted interrogation. I tell him about my photo series of the landscapes of the Cold War. He accepts my explanation and completes a transcript of the interrogation. The final sentence reads: “Mr. Roemers has behaved in an impeccable and courteous manner the whole day.” I sign it and can leave. I’ve lost my films. Spring 2009. I’ve taken the last picture for this project in Moscow. The question I asked myself during this series was: “What are the consequences of this war that was never waged on the landscape?” I’ve looked for these places for eleven years between all my other work. Initially I focussed on the Soviet legacy in the old GDR, but gradually the project became bigger. Although the Cold War affected more continents, I’ve limited myself to East and West Europe. I’ve been surprised by the enormous quantities of shelters, bunkers, airfields, shooting ranges, barracks, missile bases, border barricades, and radar stations. They look identical on both sides of the Iron Curtain: the same defense mechanisms built out of the same fears.
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Martin Roemers studied photography at the Academy of Arts in Enschede, The Netherlands. He works on long-term projects like ‘The Eyes of War’ about people who were blinded as a result of World War II and life in Megacities in ‘Metropolis’. In 2009, the book Relics of the Cold War was published by Hatje Cantz. Roemers’ work has appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, Newsweek and The New Yorker. His work has been exhibited widely and is held in public collections including the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. He has received awards and recognitions including a World Press Photo Award. Martin Roemers lives in The Netherlands. © All images are courtesy of Martin Roemers www.MartinRoemers.com
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What remains is the beauty of decay: buildings that are about to collapse, old vehicles, car tires, an aircraft, and a peeling mural of the glory of the Soviet Union.
The best of Soura Magazine in one great compendium
Our 5-year Anniversary Special Edition!
This special edition of Soura Magazine marks our 5th year anniversary, and in order to celebrate our present, and plan for our future, we had to take a long and hard look at our past. And that is exactly what this issue is. It is a journey back of sorts, a retrospective appraisal of what we’ve accomplished and how far we’ve come. It was when we took the time to review our past accomplishments did we really come to realize our present standing, who we were, and who we’ve become.
www.souramagazine.com
Transitions: The Dresden Project | Fredrik Marsh
Book Review:
Transitions: The Dresden Project By Fredrik Marsh
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Concerned with transitions of the physical as well as the psychological, my intention is to provide a visual record of this historic period before its traces– and cultural memory–disappear.
History is often recorded through the documenting of “important” events and the “important” people who made said events happen. Buildings that play a significant role in a country’s history are pictured in their peak of action, a ballroom hosting a royal wedding, a conference hall witness to the signing of decisive political deeds, or even the homes of average people that speak volumes of a country’s political philosophy. But when these buildings and spaces have played their part in the creation of history, and the cortège of historians and artists whose attention was focused on them for a brief moment in time has moved on, what becomes of these structures standing stoically in the shadows of an indifferent world no longer extolling them? Photographer Fredrik Marsh shows us exactly what becomes of these disregarded spaces and of their spirit through a gripping compendium of photographs he took on a three-month artist residency in Dresden, Germany in 2002 and over the next 4 subsequent summers in Transitions: The Dresden Project. “The Dresden Project,” says the artist of his book, “demonstrates the juxtapositions and ironies still abundant in the post-Socialist world, showing the old and the new as well as the grandeur and the decay of these once-majestic buildings.” The book itself transitions sharply between colored photographs of abandoned intimate interiors redolent of lingering human souls, to black and white photographs of deserted industrial and outdoor spaces that tell of a collective memory of a people long gone.
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Marsh takes us on an introspective walk through rooms now bereft of life, but that once held someone’s secrets, someone’s happiness, despair, and dreams. He puts us face to face with our own continuation and existence, occupying a space and time, and what our space will hold and divulge of our stories once we too are long gone. Color and its fading plays a significant role in the embodiment of time and the lack of human intervention, “I attempted, especially in the last chapters of interior work in 2005 and 2006,” says Marsh, “to reference the color aesthetic of these phenomena, the inevitable patina created through the passage and blurring of time notwithstanding.” The second leg of the walk Marsh is guiding us through takes us to a high contrast black and white look at interiors, industrial spaces and vast outdoor spaces all devoid of human existence but clearly marked with the human imprint, and harsh human traces. “Combining a sense of Postromanticism with traces of the remains of the Russians, the East German military-industrial complex in the uninhabited Wilhelminian buildings left behind, the Dresden photographs convey a mixture of melancholy and beauty, even tenderness, without sentimentality,” says Marsh. Through structural spaces Marsh was able to tell us a touching story of the subtleties and nuances of human lives without capturing the people, but rather, their traces. “The scope of this extended series, photographing a city steeped in tragic history,” says Marsh, “required significant leaps in my creative practice to depict the core focus––the human condition.” And that is exactly what we are left contemplating, the human condition, its evolution, its future and its continuance.
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Transitions: The Dresden Project | Fredrik Marsh
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About Fredrik Marsh Fredrik Marsh was born in Quantico, Virginia; and currently lives in Columbus, Ohio. He received his BFA in Photography in 1980 and MFA in Printmaking in 1984 from The Ohio State University. He has been teaching photography at various colleges and universities since 1985. Currently, he is teaching in the Art Department at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. Marsh’s work has been included in over 200 competitive and invitational exhibitions since 1978. He has given photography workshops and lectured on his work nationally and internationally. During his career, Marsh has received many awards including a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in Photography in 2008 among many more fellowships and accolades. Marsh was nominated for the 2009 Baum Award for Emerging American Photographers. His work is included in a number of corporate, museum, private and university collections across the United States with recent acquisitions in Germany. Transitions: The Dresden Project. Photographs by Fredrik Marsh, one-person exhibitions opened in 2009 at the Weston Art Gallery, Aronoff Center for the Arts, Cincinnati, Ohio, and Technische Sammlungen Dresden - Museen der Stadt Dresden, Germany, and most recently in Columbus, Ohio. The exhibition will travel to the Galerie der Stadt Salzburg, Museumspavillon, in Salzburg, Austria in 2011 with additional venues scheduled through 2012 in Europe and the United States. © All images are courtesy of Fredrik Marsh www.fredrikmarsh.com
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Blue Skie’d and Clear | Jamie Baldridge
Blue Skie’d and Clear
Expanding The Photographic Horizon
Jamie Baldridge Creating Fairy Tales
‘Blue Skie’d and Clear’ is a group exhibition presented by Carbon 12, which launched on June 10th and is running until September 25th, 2010. The exhibition featured the photographic work of Birgit Graschopf, Yuko Ichikawa, Maria Maeser, Maximillian Pramatarov, Jamie Baldridge, and Hazem Mahdy. Their individual perspectives on the notion of the everyday reveal the inherent power of the medium: no medium is as contemporary as photography, literally capturing time and space. The twisted perspectives and metaphoric power of Graschopf and Baldridge, the melancholic and playful lightness of Maeser and Pramatarov, the metaphysical exercises of turning the inside out of Mahdy and Ichikawa, they all reveal the personality of each style in its own context. ’Blue Skie’d and Clear’ focuses on these very individualistic approaches and their concern with content and form: An aesthetic venture that should not be missed
About Carbon 12 Carbon 12 was founded in 2008 as a platform for international artistic exchange, enabling artists and art lovers from all around the world to meet in the fantastic city of Dubai. This gallery was born out of pure passion; the zeal of an art lover who started collecting works of the stars of Middle Eastern contemporary art years before they left their native countries. With such a founder, it was only natural that Carbon 12 would take up the task of both recognizing talents from today and detecting talents of tomorrow. Carbon 12 represents both newly discovered artists and internationally recognized names whose works already hang in museums. We made sure that our gallery’s exquisite selection covers all fields of art, including painting, sculpture, photography, and media art. Here, you will find carefully chosen extravagances to enchant your eyes and challenge your mind. Meticulous curating has gone into every exhibition, and the artists represented are being seen for the first time in the entire region. For more information about the event and the contributing photograophers, please visit www.carbon12dubai.com
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Romance in the Subluminal Aether
Jamie Baldridge was born in Louisiana, USA, in 1975; he currently lives and works in Lafayette, USA. Baldridge received his BFA in photography in 2001 from Louisiana State University in 2001, and then in 2005 received his MFA in photography from the same school. Baldridge has been holding solo exhibitions since 2000, including his lates in 2009 titled ‘Magic Realism (with Sergio Fasola)’, which was held at Schneider Contemporary Photography in Chicago.
Artist of the Attic My love of stories goes all the way back to childhood when I discovered a book entitled 101 Fairy Tales in an old steamer trunk in my grandmother’s attic. The pale blue cover was nibbled with flaking and tarnished gold leaf, and had on its cover a picture of a turbaned boy on a magic carpet. I sat in dusty, humid silence, amongst the jaundiced communion gowns and mildewed lettres d’amour, reading by the second hand light of the attic window, enchanted by the riotous jewel-like illustrations of the foxed and dog-eared book. I suppose I became an artist on that boring Saturday afternoon in that attic, and have sought ever since to evince in the viewer that same sense of wonder and adventure that I felt when looking in that book, albeit tempered by the lusts and losses of adulthood. I think of the images I create, and the stories I write to accompany them, as my own interpretations of the fables and tales I have devoured throughout my life, from The Little Matchstick Girl to the Epic of Gilgamesh. The worlds I create are inhabited by the same archetypical characters that writers like Kierkegaard and Joseph Campbell have illuminated and have, for centuries, served to describe the human experience; all at once profane, tragi-comical, and erudite. My heroes and heroines go about their often-futile tasks in analog of our own modern lives, mired in tedium and mendacity, symbolically mocking our own real world endeavors but acting with an enviable perseverance.
The Socrates Safe Company
Implicit in my work is an invitation to the viewer to experience nothing less than wonder, awe, or vaudevillian transcendence above the tedium of daily life. And it would be nice if they got a little bruised on the way. The nature of my work, though primarily photographic, is heavily composed and manipulated digitally. I work with large format, medium format, and high-resolution 35mm digital cameras, and using various software applications I composite my subjects into worlds that are almost purely synthetic, being composed of multiple photographs and digital renderings. The method of working in this way, of having art exist in ether of binary numbers, is complementary to the ephemeral nature of the images themselves. I find it almost enchanting that my work exists in a state of quivering potential, swirling somewhere in a sparkling electric reservoir, waiting to be brought into the light of day.
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I think of the images I create, and the stories I write to accompany them, as my own interpretations of the fables and tales I have devoured throughout my life.
Babylon
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Blue Skie’d and Clear | Hazem Mahdy
Blue Skie’d and Clear
Expanding The Photographic Horizon
Hazem Mahdy
Preserving Memory Hazem Mahdy was born in Sharjah, UAE in 1986. He currently lives and works in Dubai. Mahdy received a BA in photography from the American University of Dubai in 2009, he has been participating in group exhibitions in the UAE since 2007.
Reignite My Memory Photographs are both literal and obscure. Certain phrases light up the mind. I literally glimpse a concept. And that glimpse overwhelms me. As the meaning of this vision becomes increasingly distant, I redouble my efforts. I immerse myself in the process. I chase a conclusion. The experience will bring something to light. But can a literal result portray an obscure memory? The preservation of memory haunts me. Childhood was my home… my home remains childhood. I come from a big family and a bigger ocean of family documentation. The story of my early life is a list in the sea. There are things I remember which were never documented. I research and recollect myself from the traces that remain. I am desperately trying to find real stories. I know there is a switch that will reignite my memory. But I am yet to discover the switch. So I calm myself with my imagination. But they are all that I have. When I exhibit my works, I exhibit myself. People will look at me; they will get to know me intimately; they will preserve my memory. But I am not really there.
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When I exhibit my works, I exhibit myself. People will look at me; they will get to know me intimately.
© All images courtesy of Jamie Baldridge, Hazem Mahdy and Carbon 12 www.carbon12dubai.com
Inta Omri Series
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2010 Summer - 29 Soura Magazine | Issue AED 35 QR/SR 35 KD/BD/OR 3.5 LBP 15,000 USD 10.00 UK 6.99 EURO 7.99
Iraq: Transition to Peace | Tina Hager
Iraq: Transition to Peace By Tina Hager Portfolio Gallery and ArabianEye, the Middle East’s premier photographer’s agency and leading visual content provider, unveiled Iraq: Transition to Peace by renowned American photojournalist and former White House photographer Tina Hager from June 9th to August 15th. Iraq: Transition to Peace shows images of Iraq from a uniquely different perspective, one of the emergence of a new prospering country. Iraq: Transition to Peace is a collection of photos from Iraq ranging from the very first moment the United States went to war - photographed from the West Wing of the White house, to President George W. Bush’s first trip to Baghdad, US military troops throughout Iraq and finally, the emergence of a new prospering Iraq. “The latest photos of Iraq are special to me,” says Hager, “while the focus before was always on kinetics and tragedy, my work on the economic development has afforded me access to daily life in the new Iraq. It is a different perspective that many don’t have a chance to see. Iraq is the cradle of life, and it has reemerged as the country of mighty women, unparalleled history, and great relevance. It is once again regarded as the Fertile Crescent and it has been one of my great privileges to be witness such an historic evolution”.
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I want people to see Iraq as I see it through this exhibition as my photographs are not about a war torn country. War is a part of it of course, but the beauty is in the transformation. Iraq is back and I remain in awe of the Iraqi people and their resolve.
Emmanuel Catteau, founder of Portfolio first met Hager at the Gallery in a meeting to show her portfolio. “Portfolio is so excited to have this almost once in a lifetime opportunity to showcase someone of Tina’s caliber here in Dubai,” said Catteau of Hager’s work. “Tina’s photography is simply captivating,” said Celia Peterson, Managing Director at ArabianEye who introduced Tina to the Portfolio Gallery, “We’re honored by her work as a photographer for ArabianEye and are excited that her unique vision of Iraq showed at the Portfolio Gallery.”
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About Tina Hager Tina Hager has been a photographer for 25 years and has worked in over 70 countries worldwide in often-volatile settings. Her assignments have been a diverse collection of international and newsworthy events, unique areas of interest, and the human condition. She has covered conflicts worldwide including Kosovo, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon. Her photography ranges from coups in Africa, South America and Southeast Asia to gangs, pirates and indigenous tribes throughout the world as well as presidents and kings. She has also seen the softer side of photography in travel, geographical and advertising subjects. © All images courtesy of Portfolio Gallery, Arabian Eye and Tina Hager
Hager served as a White House photographer from 2001 to 2005 for President George W. Bush. “I’d covered conflict before, but now I was able to witness the historic decisions which were made at the highest level. As a photographer, I consider what I do as “crouching in the corner of history” she commented. She took her first photographs in Iraq during President Bush’s 2003 Thanksgiving Day visit to Baghdad and returned a photojournalist from the experience. “I felt it was my photographic and moral obligation, after seeing history unfold at the very top, to be able to continue to photograph the same subject matter at ground level. It was a unique opportunity to witness the same historic situation from various angles”. Hager worked as a foreign correspondent, for Der Spiegel magazine which included much of her early work in Iraq embeds with the U.S. military, portraits of Iraqi officials, life in the Green Zone, trips with Secretary Rice, daily life in conflict throughout the country and even a cover story on the surge in 2008. Since 2009, Tina has documented everyday life in Iraq for an economic development program.
About Portfolio Gallery
About ArabianEye
Portfolio gallery is the sole initiative of Emmanuel Catteau, a French businessman and report photographer who has travelled throughout the world extensively, capturing stunning images of cultural diversity, cityscapes and the nondescript details of life that slip by us. Having spent the last nine years in the Middle East, Emmanuel set up Portfolio Gallery as a personal ambition to showcase images of the region’s multi-faceted culture, society and social concerns.
With a rich library of over 30,000 stock images and an emergent network of over 70 global photographers, ArabianEye is a lens pointed at the heart of Arabian culture. The Middle East’s leading visual provider, ArabianEye is dedicated to offering exclusive representation of outstanding editorial and commercial photographers, the highest quality images and an upcoming collection of video footage through www.ArabianEye.com
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Diary of the Future | Lara Baladi
Diary of the Future By Lara Baladi
Lara Baladi’s Diary of the Future collection was exhibited at the Gallery Isabelle Van Den Eynde from May 3rd to June 10th. In Diary of the Future, Lara Baladi explores the comfort we seek and find in consistency and repetition, in an otherwise uncertain reality. The collection began developing from the time preceding the death of her father, and is a celebration of the continuity of life in the face of death. Collectively, the pieces are testament to what the artist refers to as ‘the movement found within stillness.’ Born in Lebanon, raised in Paris, Lara moved to Egypt in 1997. From the time she arrived in Cairo, her grandmother started inviting friends and family of all generations for lunch every Sunday. These lunches would invariably end with drinking Turkish coffee. One of the regular visitors, Nina, would read fortunes in the thick black residue of coffee at the bottom of each cup. These readings became an integral part of that Sunday ritual. After 50 years away from Egypt, Lara’s father returned to Cairo in 2007 to die in the place he was born. By August of that year, it became clear that he could pass away at any time. The artist focused on the collective experience of her family as they accompanied him in his final six months. She writes of that time: ‘How could I show the beauty and the tensions, the sadness and the joy of this communal moment which was neither morbid nor melancholic but rather excessive and strangely positive?’ The reading of coffee cups assumed importance as a medium to reflect upon this dramatic period. Lara issued strict instructions to each of her father’s visitors: drink, turn the cup upside down, turn it around three times, tap the top twice and label the cup with name and date. The cups were then stored until the artist photographed them. These became the central pieces of her Diary of the Future collection. In Chronologie, Lara presents a selection of the photographs taken on those Sundays, capturing a fragmented narrative of those months. We sense a ceremony, and an unseen performance, behind each image. Meeting, drinking and reading coffee in such a ritualized manner articulates the collective anticipation that drew her family together.
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In Rose, La Mere Noire and The Eye of Adam, the images are assembled into graceful shapes. The delicacy and careful patterning of these collages remind us of both a stained glass window and a paper doily, the blackness of the cups seeming to perforate the complex pattern within the lace. These works contain a sense of the intimacy of the original readings. There are also echoes of Buddhist mandalas about them, with a pattern that seems to bloom from its centre. We see the flow of an arabesque. Or perhaps a cell placed under a microscope, a visceral and mortal reality implicit in each cup. With the interlocking weave of lace as a wonderful visual metaphor, the works meditate on the idea that our past, present and future are entwined. Just as her father’s visitors would never get the same formations in their cup of coffee from one day to the next, so Baladi reflects that our futures are defined by a present that is constantly changing. Relative Destinies, a monumental arrangement of the cups into a vast square, points to the subjective interpretations that each person would read into the cups and in the work. In the distinctly Middle Eastern popular language of cup-reading, soggy ground coffee in the shape of a fish may be interpreted as coming wealth – but it is the intuitive language of interpretation, subjectivity itself, that is at the core of what is being explored here.
Accompanying Baladi’s exhibition was a sound piece titled Fragments, which is a five-track recording of Nina’s interpretation of the photographs. Touching on the myriad fears, melancholia and strange hopefulness of that time, Nina’s thirteen minute kaleidoscopic narrative seems to glide through the emotions that are embedded in these images. Diary of the Future points to an intangible yearning that we feel in the face of mortality. The clairvoyant projections, the reading of cups hints at a desire for a glimpse of something eternal: an unformed future that arises from the reality of the present. Baladi shows us a narrative of life’s continuity in the face of death, and that change is our only certainty.
About Lara Baladi Lara Baladi is an artist working with images in various media and formats. Her installations, videos and collages, which often stage culturally hybrid scenes, are dense with mythology and visual theory. She addresses memory, both collective and personal, in a codified and multi-cultural language articulated in a world of shifting boundaries. Symbolic appropriations contribute to the construction of her numerous visual landscapes.
Born in Lebanon in 1969 of Lebanese-Egyptian origin, Baladi has lived in Beirut, Paris, London and Cairo, where she currently works and resides. Her work has been exhibited internationally across the Middle East, the US, Japan and Europe, and is part of a number of contemporary art collections, including the Chase Collection in New York, the Fondation Cartier in Paris, the Museet for Fotokunst in Copenhagen and the Pori Art Museum in Finland. She won the Grand Nile Prize at the 2008-09 Cairo Biennial for her project Borg El Amal. Baladi received a fellowship from the Japan Foundation in 2003 following which, one of her large scale installations, Roba Vecchia, was created and shown in Cairo in February 2006, in Art Dubai and the Sharjah biennial in 2007 and in the Kennedy centre in Washington DC, in February 2009. In 2006, Baladi was commissioned to show a 20 screens/projections installation along one kilometer of seashore on the opening night of the Image of the Middle East festival in Denmark. The same year, Baladi initiated and directed Fenenin El-Rahhal, an “artists working summit” on the subject of ‘Territory’ in the Egyptian Western desert (www.nomadicartists.com). Baladi is a member of the Beirutbased Fondation Arabe pour l’Image. She has lived and worked in Cairo since 1997. Her work is represented by the Townhouse gallery in Cairo, by La B.A.N.K. in Paris, by the Brancolini and Grimaldi gallery in Italy and by Gallery Isabelle Van Den Eynde in the UAE.
About Gallery Isabelle Van Den Eynde Located in an industrial area near the centre of Dubai, Gallery Isabelle Van Den Eynde opened its doors in 2005 with the founding objective to discover young promising contemporary artists from the Middle-eastern region. Under Isabelle van den Eynde’s tutelage, a new generation of artists began to attract the attention of adventurous collectors and curators, as well as prestigious institutions. Providing a platform for Middle-Eastern contemporary art, Gallery Isabelle Van Den Eynde has showcased an intense and innovative program of exhibitions. © All images courtesy of Lara Baladi and Gallery Isabelle Van Den Eynde
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Abandoned Interiors in HDR | Alessandro Maggi
Abandoned Interiors in HDR By Alessandro Maggi
As many digital photographers know, HDR imaging is a technique that involves combining differently exposed photos of the same subject to obtain a single image with a wider dynamic range of light intensity. Because of this feature, HDR works perfectly for landscape photography as an alternative to graduated neutral filters and even for those scenes where light distribution is not manageable with filters. With its proven results for landscape images, HDR techniques are now being used for interior photography as well. The reason lies mainly in the unusual tonal distribution that can be achieved through HDR processing, a difference that can make any photo look potentially more interesting and captivating. It’s worth mentioning however, that there’s no such thing as free lunch in photography, and this applies to HDR as well: whether you use this technique or not, the result won’t look interesting as long as the photo you’re working on is too common or featureless. Nevertheless after processing many photographs in HDR you’ll eventually learn that there are a number of subjects and light conditions that give better results with this technique. In this tutorial we’ll see how to apply HDR processing on a photograph of an abandoned farm-house through HDRsoft Photomatix 3©.
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As always the first thing to do is loading the three differently exposed LDR photos into the software. As you can see, the main source of light in the scene we’re using for this tutorial comes from a window located in the top-center of the frame. There’s another window to the camera’s right, hidden from sight, which provides faint illumination to the foreground. Apparently, the room was inhabited by a homeless person who moved on, leaving behind lots of empty bottles, lots of clothes and some mattresses. (See the 3 images below) 1. The first step in the processing involves choosing a number of options that the software will have to take into account while merging the exposures into the single HDR image. Photomatix© collects these options through a window that automatically pops up when the selected photos are loaded. From here we can choose whether the images need to be aligned before processing or not, we can ask the software to try reducing ghosting artifacts caused by unwanted movements in the photos, and a small number of other options.
Since the three exposures weren’t taken with a tripod, they definitely need to be aligned before processing. We’ll leave all the remaining options at their defaults since there aren’t moving objects in the scene, and dealing with both chromatic aberrations and digital noise with a third-party solution before developing the HDR in Photomatix© usually yields better results. 2. After confirming the options, Photomatix© will produce the high dynamic range image showing it inside its viewer . If you’re familiar with HDR processing you’re aware that this HDR image is not like any standard image that you can view on your computer or print. To be viewed on conventional medias HDR images have to be converted into LDR ones, thus their contrast ratio has to be reduced. To meet this requirement without losing much of the important information stored in the HDR image we need to convert it “smartly” with a Tone Mapping technique. Photomatix© has a built-in tool that takes care of Tone Mapping, and we’ll now see how to put it in good use to tweak our HDR-LDR image conversion.
of exposures is still a hard task for the majority of personal computers, thus a trade-off between preview speed and fidelity is still the best way to go. 4. In this tutorial we don’t want to see how to obtain a photorealistic output. In fact we want to use the extra dynamic range at our disposal to enhance the local contrast of every detail scattered throughout the image. For this purpose, I often start changing the smoothing to Mid or High (in “Light mode”) and setting Strength, Luminosity and Microcontrast to their maximum values (respectively 100, 10 and 10). The result below doesn’t look that promising as of now as confirmed by the luminosity histogram, the image is way too dark.
3. Pressing the “Tone Mapping” button opens up a window which contains a number of control settings and a large preview of the resulting image that gets refreshed automatically by default. You should note that the preview often gets really close to the final outcome, but sometimes it doesn’t prove to be 100% accurate. That’s because real time tone mapping of large images on a number
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Abandoned Interiors in HDR | Alessandro Maggi
5. Before making changes to the general settings it’s worth trying to adjust the Tone Settings to bring some highlights back into the photo. To do so we have to change the White Point value to a higher percentage (this setting moves the point of maximum luminosity progressively towards the midtones). Since we want strong contrast we’re setting the White Point at no less than 1.620%. The result now is definitely brighter… even too much since there are now some clipped highlights, as the histogram shows. We won’t take care of these highlights in this tutorial, and that’s mainly because they are located on the window that we expect to be bright enough, but in other occasions we would have lowered the White Point to avoid clipping.
6. To enhance the contrast we can use the Black Point setting. This one works just as the White Point setting, but affects shadows instead of highlights. Choosing a very high value will force some shadow clipping raising the contrast and giving a more dramatic look to the image.
7. As a final touch we can fine tweak the Gamma and the Color Saturation settings (as a whole in the general settings or for shadows and highlights individually through the “Color Settings” controls) to adjust the tones in the photo. Once done, we can save the settings chosen as a new preset and experiment some more changing the Strength, Luminosity and Smoothing. When we’re satisfied with the look of the preview, a left mouse click on the “Process” button is the only thing that separates us from our HDRTonemapped photograph.
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