“All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind.” (Marx and Engels, The communist Manifesto.)

Google Trends is a product from the well known search engine which allows one to view the hottest searches of the day, giving statistics for what people look for. They provide a list of the top 100 searches of the day.
Todays number one search was “Americans for Prosperity” and the number one hundred was “Chris Brown Mug Shot”. In between, more of the same.
Its really unbelievable how people use the internet.

I plea for more culture on the internet !

According to the latest news the world is in an unprecedented economical crisis.  I was born in Argentina, a country in constant crisis, and I’ve seen crisis where people raid supermarkets because they don’t have anything to eat, where the banks freeze your money while they devaluate the coin to return you only an oat from your oatmeal, where the raided supermaket owner shoots himself the following day because he’s lost his lifes achievement.  Nothing to be proud of, but one should never look away from these things.  That has never afected the first world.  In england today, the media fills us with panic advertisement for the current economical crisis.

But is anybody, specially the economical institutions, aware of the crisis or trying to do anything for a change?  It is in times like this that there has to be a call for the restructuring of burocratic and government institutions, not only cut bonuses, and bail out banks, but optimize these institutions for future “happenings” (which never happen by themselves).  Has anybody heard anything about restructuring or change? 

Banks are on the edge of the cliff, but no action has been taken within the institutions.  For some, it is made impossible to open a bank account.  It seems as if they are not interested in having peoples money.  Lets take my case.  I go to Barclays Bank to open a bank account with my proof of address and enrolment letter to university.  I am an EU citizen.  But no, because I don’t have an id card from my country of origin, Denmark, I don’t “qualify” for an international student bank account.  As I have not been living in the UK for more than 3 years, then I don’t qualify for a UK Student Bank account.  But I don’t work either, because I have a student grant from the Danish government which I am lucky enough to be able to live from, so I don’t qualify for any other type of account.  

Now my thought on this is the following.  A university student is a potencial earner in the coming years, hopefuly he will be making good money and buying a house and getting hooked up on a loans and debts, having to work for the bank, not for himself.  Added to this, there is an economical crisis in which banks cannot sustain themselves because many costumers have withdraw their money, amongst other “bigger” reasons.  So why on earth don’t they take peoples money, and potencial money.  A good buisness man would keep potential costumers happy as they would do with their current costumers.  So banks, at least Barklays Bank, seems to be managed by a bunch of retards who have no idea what to do in the current crisis.  There needs to be a call for restructuring, and it has to happen now.  Not when the world has finally fallen appart and people really suffer from it.

Stop calling the crisis as if it were a morning cereal (“Credit Crunch” is the term used in England), and start calling it a CRISIS, we need to take this seriously.

Credit Crunch Morning Cereal

The guard and the nun, TAH, 2007.

 A story unfolds from a captured moment.  One thousand stories one could tell about an image, and yet, all a product of our imagination.  For a story did unfold when the image was taken, but most likely one which has nothing to do with ours.  The story is not contained in the image, it is the viewer who projects a flux of narratives and speculations on the image, falsly atributing this flux to the image.  Even so, only a powerful photo can set us off in this way and create a dialogue between image and viewer.  

In order for a photograph to set of this flux, you need a creative viewer, otherwise no narrative would emerge from the heart of the photo.  This takes me to think that one has to consider, even when it is merely photographing reality, the audience to which the image will be exposed.  Without an appropiate viewer the image will not have a life of it’s own, and is most likely to be lost in infinity.

I like to meet people who don’t really give a flying fcuk about current mainstream siht.  The last couple of sundays I’ve been hitting the Sunday Up market in search of the fantastic De La Panza meat club.  A couple of “buena onda”, laid back Argentinian fellows cooking meat sandwitches and “choripanes” with lots of love.  

Today was my third visit there, I was doing some photos in exchange for food…  Definitely worth it.  Getting to know them I discovered they are both musicians.  Great ones I must say. Tongas dribbles between Tango, Afro-beat and dub, producing music largely based on percusion, and a back track with a scent of Piazzola.  A pleasent and mellow beat to sit back and take a moment for yourself.  On the other side of the river, Pabs & the Frogcats mixes new-disco, house and arcade sounds, great for the transition between a lounge afternoon to a hard night of mayhem. 

I’m not talking about any mainstream glamour-disco-trash; everybody is spinning that right now in the clubs around London (and worldwide).  I’m talking here about true musicians who believe in what they do.  I was quite surprised because the first thing I’d expect to hear from music makers or music takers is :  ”I’m a DJ…” and after, a silence to which one is supposed to be impressed or something (never judge a book by it’s cover, not that I had, at least in that way, but sometimes the content of a book might surprise you with an unforseen variety of subjects).  Unfortunately not many people keep such a humble low profile and are good at what they do.  Anyway, Pabs gave me a demo to play at home, and Tongas (between the lines) sliped a paper with his myspace.

Pabs and the Frogcats

Tongas

Enjoy..!

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I was just a passerby in Cuba.  I found myself in a beach not very far away from La Habana, the air thick with moist and the sun burned on my skin.  People mingled along the seawalk.  Back and forth, it seemed to me they were not really going anywhere; but it wasn’t sunday.  Neither was I, but I was just a passer by and a hungry one at that moment.  There was a small place about two hundred meters across the road from where I was standing, so I walked some more to find out if there was any traditional food I could get my hands on.  

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Frankfurter read the sign.  Ahhh, I haven’t had a good one in some time, why not?  I approached the bar, shaded by the palm trees and bushes, and looked into the kitchen.  Small place, a fridge with drinks, and a frankfurter machine.  The bread lay on the counter between the fridge and the frankfurter machine.  A big chap, white addidas shorts, havaiannas and some kind of surfer t-shirt sat reading a magazine, a smile on his face told me that he would not start to take my order unless I waved or cried for attention.  But I was wrong, he looked up and said “Un minuto hermano que esta geba me ha alegrado el dia.”, “Se te nota en la sonrisa” y replied with a smile.

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“Que le gustaria hoy?”

“Un Frankfurter y una coca por favor.”

“Enseguida.  Caluroso hoy.”

“Si, pega el sol.”

A few moments after a scilence, he handed over the frankfurter and said:

“Condimentos?”

“Ketchup y mostaza por favor.”

“Sirvase”

“Gracias”

“Gustaria un sorbete?”

“Como es tu nombre?”

“Fidel.”

“Ah, el mio tambien.”

“Que barbaro… sorbete?”

“… No.”

The guy was awfuly kind to me, but so was everybody else in Latin Amercia.  

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I munched my Frankfurter.  To my surprise it was an original Frankfurter, none of that latin-american crap.  The one and only Frankfurter.  Odd to find foreign things in a country like Cuba, you know, communist country, a threatening country to the world trade.  But i did not care about what the political situation was at the moment, to me, everybody is the same in the eyes of god.  Not in my eyes of course, I would never consider myself divine.  But everybody is good in my eyes, good hearted.

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I turned my back to the bar and looked out into the sea while I had my Frankfurter.  I can never stop to be amazed by the endlesness of it, and the uniqueness to, every sea or ocean is different, feels different.  It was a moment to remember.  Being satisfied with my meal I had a sip of my Coke and turned back to the bar.  Fidel was back to his magazine.  I wanted to pay for my food and take a walk.  The side of my eye got a glips at the price list stuck on the bar.  It read:

Frankfurter: €200
Coca-Cola: €150

“Cuanto es Fidel?”

“€ 200 por el Frankfurter y € 150 por la coca Fidel”

“Comooo..?!!”

“€ 350 en total.”

“€.?!!”

“Si”

I looked again at the price list and realized this was no joke.  How could I ever afford that, how the hell was I going to pay for that, all I had on me were thirty five bucks.  I felt so stupid, spending that kind of money on a Frankfurter and a Coke.  

“Pero Fidel, no puedo pagar eso..!”

“Bueno, no te preocupes, no hace falta que lo pagues ahora, te puedes quedar un rato mas chico y lo pagas mas tarde.”

“Bueno, supongo que si.”

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So I sat and looked at the sea and waited.  During this time, my mind went as fast as it could.

This diptic is from a series of photos about the urbanization of south west Copenhagen. It recently won it’s place in the Harker Photography Center at the University of Westminster, and will be displayed on the walls of the HPC, amongst 11 other winners.

København, 2009. (Click to Enlarge)

The utopian urbanization which is going on follows the general line of Copenhagen, and respects the straightness and minimalism of Danish Architecture, a reflection of a wonderful society that seems to be years ahead from any other place in the world.

To see the full series click “Urban Concept” in the top menu of my web site