Photography Marathon
On Friday I went on a 'Photography Marathon' event. You sign up in advance, arrive at the starting point on the day of and get an Official Shirt & Kit (TM), and over the next four hours you are gradually texted 6 challenge prompts, which you're supposed to photograph anywhere you want across the city. At the end you submit four photos in different categories for the final competition.
I went with a friend. We both arrived at the starting point early, tired, and regretting the fact that we'd signed up, and instead of waiting in the endless, definitely-longer-than-an-hour registration line, opted for waiting at a bakery across the street with coffee and baked goods until the line cleared.
The prompts we got over the day were generic: social justice, black and white, portraits, architecture, that sort of thing, and the final photos I ended up were really nothing to look twice at, but the experience itself was so, so great. We took it easy, and just wandered through unfamiliar streets, not aiming for anywhere specific, just looking at where we were going and looking for new places and cool frames. Walking around with the intent to photograph but no final destination in mind is such a cool feeling of exploration that I don't usually find myself in, especially not in the city where I actually live. Honestly, in my daily life I usually stay within the same few blocks/neighborhoods, and while Tel Aviv is a small city, it's still much bigger than the part of it which I inhabit. Let's dip in this alleyway and see where it goes; let's take a left on this street instead of a right, just because, not because we're heading anywhere specific - it's freeing and relaxed and really kind of beautiful.
The fact that we were walking around with cameras and shirts (TM) facilitated a kind of interaction that I wouldn't normally have with strangers, and ended up being the best part of the morning. We talked to a dude who makes furniture out of old car parts, young guy who works at a botany store, and a group of bike mechanics who posed for us with a bright yellow bike in front of a graffiti-covered wall. We spent some time talking to a metal engraver in a tiny dinged-up shop, full of oily motor parts and steaming machinery and two big dogs lying in the street, next to an old, crumbling Ottoman-era stone building. A profession that hardly exists anymore, he said; he showed us his certificate from the Department of Labor professional course he took when he was released from the army, in 1988.
The most interesting convo, though, was the almost-an-hour we spent talking with an 83-year-old man in the street, by the old furniture store he used to own. "I grew up in this neighborhood," he said about Florentin, a hip Soho-like neighborhood in south Tel Aviv, which used to be much poorer than it was now. We peppered him with questions, but he needed very little prompting to talk, and it was fascinating.
His family was Greek; his dad, a burly giant of a man, immigrated from Salonika to Haifa when he heard there was work in the harbor, and later on to Tel Aviv, to work on the harbor here, where he learned there were more opportunities, and cheap apartments in Florentin, a neighborhood founded by Salonika Jews. AT home they spoke Ladino, or Judaeo-Spanish - a language mostly spoken by Sephardic Jewish descendants of Jews expelled from Spain in 1492. His dad over time convinced 50 other Jews to follow him to Palestine, getting them all out of Europe in time.
He grew up in the neighborhood streets, with Haim Topol, who he assured us was a slim kid who was always getting beat up, until he became a famous actor. He played basketball with Arik Einstein, who became a close friend; he always tried to convince Einstein to switch allegiances from Hapoel and join him in Maccabi, but Einstein was Hapoel heart and soul. (My grandmother's younger brother also played basketball with Arik Einstein in school, and was Hapoel, as were the rest of her family, all the way; back when sports teams used to have ideology. Hapoel means The Worker.)
He was 13 in 1948, when he stood with the crowds around the then-art museum, now Independence Hall, as Ben Gurion declared the creation of the state of Israel, and the streets erupted into dancing. He grew up to become a basketball player for Maccabi Tel Aviv, winning the state championship. In the '70s and '80s he and his wife lived on the coast of Spain, owning a restaurant and discotheque; he told us stories of living under Franco, making lots of money because there were almost no taxes, but seeing Guardia Civil patrol shoot down someone in the street.
He and his wife returned to Israel in the '80s, where he worked at his furniture store until he retired a few years ago, after his wife passed away with Alzheimer's; he lives not far away now, but comes back to this street a lot during the day, to while away the time and hang out with the neighboring stores, and businesses he's known his whole life. At one point a 17-year-old girl walked down the street with a bagel cart, selling three for ten, and they exchanged smiling hellos; "I remember her as a baby," he said, "when her father took her along his route, pushing that bagel cart down the street."
My favorite story was about 1942, when Rommel and the German army were on the doorstop of Palestine. He and two friends went to the cinema, which cost 5 mil - five thousandths of a Palestinian pound, equivalent in value to a British pound. They watched a western, with subtitles that were projected separately to the side of the screen, operated by a projector who knew English well and manually scrolled to match the text to the dialogues (speaking of professions that don't exist anymore.)
The theater had maybe 30 viewers, wasn't close to full. When the movie ended, the doors to the mezzanine suddenly opened, and in stepped 200 Australian soldiers who began tossing money down to the pit. The three kids were shocked, but stared filling their pockets with the money raining from above; each kid collected about 30 pounds, a sum the entire family could live off of for a month. When he got home and presented the money to his parents, his father was angry, as the story sounded completely bogus. His dad marched off to one of the other kid's houses, even while the other two fathers were angrily doing the same. But the stories matched up, and when they found a British soldier to ask, he confirmed the story. The Australian platoon had just received orders that they were to board buses for the Egyptian front, for what was to become the second battle of El Alamein, and were emptying their pockets of all of the local change that they would no longer need when they were gone.
It's such a vivid image; so sad but joyous from the eyes of a child.
Like I said, I did not get any amazing photos, but that random conversation alone made the entire day worth it.
comments on Dreamwidth.
I went with a friend. We both arrived at the starting point early, tired, and regretting the fact that we'd signed up, and instead of waiting in the endless, definitely-longer-than-an-hour registration line, opted for waiting at a bakery across the street with coffee and baked goods until the line cleared.
The prompts we got over the day were generic: social justice, black and white, portraits, architecture, that sort of thing, and the final photos I ended up were really nothing to look twice at, but the experience itself was so, so great. We took it easy, and just wandered through unfamiliar streets, not aiming for anywhere specific, just looking at where we were going and looking for new places and cool frames. Walking around with the intent to photograph but no final destination in mind is such a cool feeling of exploration that I don't usually find myself in, especially not in the city where I actually live. Honestly, in my daily life I usually stay within the same few blocks/neighborhoods, and while Tel Aviv is a small city, it's still much bigger than the part of it which I inhabit. Let's dip in this alleyway and see where it goes; let's take a left on this street instead of a right, just because, not because we're heading anywhere specific - it's freeing and relaxed and really kind of beautiful.
The fact that we were walking around with cameras and shirts (TM) facilitated a kind of interaction that I wouldn't normally have with strangers, and ended up being the best part of the morning. We talked to a dude who makes furniture out of old car parts, young guy who works at a botany store, and a group of bike mechanics who posed for us with a bright yellow bike in front of a graffiti-covered wall. We spent some time talking to a metal engraver in a tiny dinged-up shop, full of oily motor parts and steaming machinery and two big dogs lying in the street, next to an old, crumbling Ottoman-era stone building. A profession that hardly exists anymore, he said; he showed us his certificate from the Department of Labor professional course he took when he was released from the army, in 1988.
The most interesting convo, though, was the almost-an-hour we spent talking with an 83-year-old man in the street, by the old furniture store he used to own. "I grew up in this neighborhood," he said about Florentin, a hip Soho-like neighborhood in south Tel Aviv, which used to be much poorer than it was now. We peppered him with questions, but he needed very little prompting to talk, and it was fascinating.
His family was Greek; his dad, a burly giant of a man, immigrated from Salonika to Haifa when he heard there was work in the harbor, and later on to Tel Aviv, to work on the harbor here, where he learned there were more opportunities, and cheap apartments in Florentin, a neighborhood founded by Salonika Jews. AT home they spoke Ladino, or Judaeo-Spanish - a language mostly spoken by Sephardic Jewish descendants of Jews expelled from Spain in 1492. His dad over time convinced 50 other Jews to follow him to Palestine, getting them all out of Europe in time.
He grew up in the neighborhood streets, with Haim Topol, who he assured us was a slim kid who was always getting beat up, until he became a famous actor. He played basketball with Arik Einstein, who became a close friend; he always tried to convince Einstein to switch allegiances from Hapoel and join him in Maccabi, but Einstein was Hapoel heart and soul. (My grandmother's younger brother also played basketball with Arik Einstein in school, and was Hapoel, as were the rest of her family, all the way; back when sports teams used to have ideology. Hapoel means The Worker.)
He was 13 in 1948, when he stood with the crowds around the then-art museum, now Independence Hall, as Ben Gurion declared the creation of the state of Israel, and the streets erupted into dancing. He grew up to become a basketball player for Maccabi Tel Aviv, winning the state championship. In the '70s and '80s he and his wife lived on the coast of Spain, owning a restaurant and discotheque; he told us stories of living under Franco, making lots of money because there were almost no taxes, but seeing Guardia Civil patrol shoot down someone in the street.
He and his wife returned to Israel in the '80s, where he worked at his furniture store until he retired a few years ago, after his wife passed away with Alzheimer's; he lives not far away now, but comes back to this street a lot during the day, to while away the time and hang out with the neighboring stores, and businesses he's known his whole life. At one point a 17-year-old girl walked down the street with a bagel cart, selling three for ten, and they exchanged smiling hellos; "I remember her as a baby," he said, "when her father took her along his route, pushing that bagel cart down the street."
My favorite story was about 1942, when Rommel and the German army were on the doorstop of Palestine. He and two friends went to the cinema, which cost 5 mil - five thousandths of a Palestinian pound, equivalent in value to a British pound. They watched a western, with subtitles that were projected separately to the side of the screen, operated by a projector who knew English well and manually scrolled to match the text to the dialogues (speaking of professions that don't exist anymore.)
The theater had maybe 30 viewers, wasn't close to full. When the movie ended, the doors to the mezzanine suddenly opened, and in stepped 200 Australian soldiers who began tossing money down to the pit. The three kids were shocked, but stared filling their pockets with the money raining from above; each kid collected about 30 pounds, a sum the entire family could live off of for a month. When he got home and presented the money to his parents, his father was angry, as the story sounded completely bogus. His dad marched off to one of the other kid's houses, even while the other two fathers were angrily doing the same. But the stories matched up, and when they found a British soldier to ask, he confirmed the story. The Australian platoon had just received orders that they were to board buses for the Egyptian front, for what was to become the second battle of El Alamein, and were emptying their pockets of all of the local change that they would no longer need when they were gone.
It's such a vivid image; so sad but joyous from the eyes of a child.
Like I said, I did not get any amazing photos, but that random conversation alone made the entire day worth it.
comments on Dreamwidth.