We Mine Deeper

How you have failed me, invisible lines that pull image onto my screen. Those lines that trawl information from afar. Friends had to scoop them up and mail them before you find the nugget bytes first. Like links to whorecraft real-life porn via a girl in korea (nsfw). or a dope music blog via a giffer in Vancouver (#gifgang). yes, whorecraft to music blogs. the world is a perilous place.

here’s another that took a year for the lines to find. History of Our World – one of the most compelling image and text blogs I have come across in a while. Most blogs consist of image and text, but this one’s really really good at image and text. Particularly the jpgs.

Also, Anour Brahem was born on October 20th 1957. Happy birthday yesterday fifty two years ago Brahem! It’s crazy it took that long before his music graced my headphones. I recommend hitting up this dope post on the greatest conversation to hear and read for yourself.

I made hainanese chicken rice today for the first time. the end result was average due to my not so very good skills but the experience was amazing (nothing tastes like food from home). My hands still smell of garlic and ginger. Mmmmmm.

School is going interestingly. Taking a film studies 100 class which has been blowing my mind a bit. In an art history / archeology of China class, our prof told us about an emperor who had a pool built where the reflection (or illusion) of the moon could be seen during the day. I think it’s supposed to be in or near a cave and there are seven holes around the pool and if any of them were blocked, the reflection would not work.

It’s a mystery to everyone how the reflection works. Apparently when the Japanese occupied the area they built an exact replica of the set-up but were still unable to replicate the illusion. Our prof explained that it was created with an entirely different philosophy and technology to ours, which is why it baffles us so much. I find this incredible fascinating, but cannot find any more information on this reflection pool. It’s supposed to be located at Bishu Shanzhuang in Chengde. If you do know anything more about this and would like to share the knowledge, I’ll hug you for an email!

Travel-wise, I’m a bit shocked at how many air miles I’ve put in. For work I’ve visited toronto six times this year, montreal four times, and a host of other Canadian cities a bunch (I should be in the ‘air canada top tier’ section soon. It means free scotch in the airport lounge, looking forward to this). Considering I hadn’t really been out of BC before this year, I feely very grateful to have seen this much of canada (even halifax!) and learnt more about this incredible country. Overall, photographing the flying lotus tour is still one of my favourite gigs ever. thank you kenny mac for that.

Am shooting a job in toronto next month, and will be flying from there to new york for a job later that week. Never been to new york, really excited for it.

On the internet front, I’m not entirely sure what to do with We Mine Deeper anymore. I’ve got quite a few blogs going right now and as has been said, ‘dude you’re spreading your blogging thin.’ WMD has always been a nice place for me to spew out whatever I wanted though. Imagine if I posted all the random nsfw stuff on my ‘proper’ photo blog…. Or maybe I should.

Whatever it is, a new david lang photo is in the works by andy chung who just started a new blog. I might be keeping with my usual URestlessL behaviour on this revamp. Other stuff in photography… Am procrastinating on a print requested by Day 19 which is dumb of me because they are incredible photographers and this is an honour. Speaking of day 19, harrison boyce went to visit them recently and came back with this fantastic photo.

Bloggingly, there is an interview that needs to be transcribed for some blogging news happening soon. On the work front, I sort of agreed to take a job that happens over my birthday, as I had a momentary lapse of memory on which day I was born on. For whatever reason, I’ve always wanted this to happen.

Really liked Where the Wild Things Are. It’s fucking good, but I must admit it’s a film that is sometimes more groundbreaking than it is pure fun to watch. There is a lot of love and certainly a lot of hate for this movie. I want to watch it in cinemas again, and this time round with a note pad to jot some writing down and maybe try to defend these waves of hatred. A salute to spike jonze for sticking to his path and somehow managing to put this film on our screens.

“He has developed an extraordinary sense of meaningful whimsy as in such music videos as [etc. etc.] where psychological tension is conveyed through original, iconoclastic scenography. Jonze’s sensibility is an authentic development of the music-video era’s generational split—which is also an aesthetic split. He doesn’t exploit pop rebellion but has a counter-intuitive slant on what’s funny, sad, universal.” – armond white in a review of the film.

I think jonze is doing something incredible with wild things, but how people take influence from it remains to be seen – which is a bit scary. This direction has so much potential but will look particularly stupid if used in the wrong hands. I think we’re in for a lot of face-value meandering filmmaking and photography soon; you can imagine how interpretations of the aesthetics and narrational style can be utterly dreadful (yes I know some of you already think this is bad). Whatever it is, the new kanye X jonze video We Were Once a Fairytale Where the Kanye’s Are -a.c. is dope, and you know it.

To finish – am actually falling for that Glee tv show, I have no reservations about playing with a sony psp on the bus and the vancouver locals can continue to look at me strange all they want, chicken rice is the best, and yup.

the above image wasn’t part of the exhibit, but it’s lovely and important so it’s here

Yesterday and today I visited the Vancouver Art Gallery to pay homage to the Andreas Gursky exhibition that was on. It’s really fucked me up quite a bit. I relate to his work more strongly than anything I’ve seen in years… the vantage points, the magnitude, the details within that magnitude, his attitude (and lack of)… and looking at the progression in his style and philosophy really makes me question my own and where I’m going with things.

One of the biggest topics in my head concerned the perception of photography and its moral boundaries both in the industry and to a general audience. Gursky’s disregard for ‘normal’ photographic conventions (especially on the ethics of manipulation) give his work such a powerful voice that I find so lacking in much work out there now, and this includes my own. But I’m still not entirely sure if this is a good thing. Should I continue to strive for the honest depiction as so-valued in the reportage world, or can I manipulate it in order to represent it? And even then, do I represent it with visual accuracy or focus on the feeling? I feel like this is an issue that I should be over by now, but it seems to be a huge roadblock in my path. Gursky just brought the issue up and instead of being sympathetic, fired it back in my face.

Then there is his play on visual tricks. They’re fascinating and make so much of the current work we produce look dated. Gursky has broken down the communication that occurs between the eye and the brain and reconstructed this exercise in his work in ways that I’ve never even thought possible.

There is also the attractiveness of Gursky’s work. It definitely pushes boundaries from a photographic and art-world sense, but is also something that joe-public can understand. I respect an artists’ ability to achieve this immensely.

If there is at least one thing that I do know for sure after seeing that exhibition, it’s that I am for the first time convinced by the following paragraph, and that really changes how things move on from here.

This is also true of Rhein. I wasn’t interested in an unusual, possibly picturesque view of the Rhine, but in the most contemporary possible view of it. Paradoxically, this view of the Rhine cannot be obtained in situ, a fictitious construction was required to provide an accurate image of a modern river. The same thing happened when I visited over 70 world-famous industrial companies. Most of them had a socio-romantic air I hadn’t expected. I was looking for visual proof of what I thought would be antiseptic industrial zones. If these companies had been systematically documented one would have had the feeling one was back in the days of the Industrial Revolution. After this experience I realized that photography is no longer credible, and therefore found it that much easier to legitimize digital picture processing.

Another thing I do know for sure after seeing this exhibit? I haven’t lost hope in contemporary art, which is nice because I’ve been quite the cynical fucker so far.

If you haven’t already set up one of these accounts, you should really get to know her.(mine iz here)

Justin Ouellette made it, he’s a fucking genius. And his path on the come up has been a good look:

I am a designer & photographer from Portland, Oregon.
I created Muxtape. Before that I worked at Vimeo.
I am JSTN on Tumblr and chromogenic on Flickr.
I live in Chinatown, New York City.

via (screen shot above)

I’ve finally started an image .tumblr blog, drawing pictures from my archive of 10,000++ images saved off the net.

Hit it – weminedeeper.tumblr.com

seen on apina

Guys: Here’s your hilarious, awesome, and frighteningly serious instructions to shoot naked girls for no money in a 2007 article by The Naughty American.

Girls: Yes it’s amazing that guys will actually go this far just to see your boobs. What hideous and ill-intentioned creatures we are. PS: do you do TFP?? I IZ NOT CREEPI GUY I MAKE ARTS!!!!!!!

It’s a nude shoot, not a gynecological exam. That means working up to the spread shots by asking her to do relatively harmless stuff, such as run up the beach and back. While she’s running, you can scheme how you’re going to get her to open her legs. If you need more time, tell her to run up the beach again.

I do realize that photo above has nothing to do with the topic at hand, but it’s SO RAD.

(via stuartkennedy)

The Nine Eyes of Google Street View is a really great essay by Jon Rafman. If you are interested in photography, coincidences, art theory, morals and ethics, culture, the streets, kids in ireland giving cameras the finger, general facts, cool points of view, and even just Google, definitely check this one out.

Well I was going to post this on my davidlangphoto.com blog but I can’t figure out how to embed vimeo videos on it because I can’t figure out how to update its wordpress in the first place. So here it is on the deeper channel.

This was filmed on my little Canon SD780 point and shoot after I started playing around (and being totally astounded) by its macro movie function. Considering it can be had for >$270 at Futureshop, I’m still not quite sure how they fit so much technology into a camera the size of a credit card (actually) that is 0.7 inches thick and this affordable.

How did technology come this far? What’s next – cameras that make your breakfast and clean your house? Maybe they’ll call the nearest swinging website and invite an orgy over for you, then vibrate their way to satisfaction. Man, I don’t know.

Whatever it is, I hope you enjoy the video. This was filmed in the Welsh countryside starring, among other things, bees and ladybugs and me chasing sheep in a field. It’s short and shamelessly warm and fuzzy. =P

via ffffound

You have got to see these photos on butdoesitfloat. They are absolutely jawdropping flabberghasting explicitive inducing – ly blah. Just go look. We – both photographers and camera developers – need to find a way to start producing shit this good again with digital because whatever’s going around right now is clearly no match for this.