Writer working at Cafe Wintergarten in Literaturhaus, Berlin.

As a hopeless office inmate, I often fancy the idea of working in a public space—a nice café like Cafe Wintergarten at Literaturhaus¹ in Berlin—but I never actually try doing it. I wonder whether its mild noise of dishes and chatter would inspire or rather distract.

Moreover, I just learned that my preferred café in Bucharest, Crem Cafe Royale, has been acquired by a local restaurant chain and will be murdered in order to make room for another mediocre luncheonette with greasy spoons.

While passing by it, I’ll murmur —The price of progress!, and I’ll keep looking the other way.

¹ Right across the street from the Leica Store—even looking through its window inflicts serious damages to a bank account.

Store window, Berlin, 2008.

Economic growth gets really luxuriant—this country is clearly well managed and really blooming. Any day now—the blooms. Any day.

How to create a cool background texture in 3 easy steps

1. Find a river

A river or a lake on a windy day—water with small waves.

2. Find a building

A building reflecting in the river/lake, that is. More lines in the architecture, more intricate the texture. A sunny day helps.

3. Shoot the water

Shoot that building’s reflection in water. Play with the picture, change the colors, get crazy if you feel the urge.

Living the brand: proposed revision to Orange™ logo.

While playing with the pictures above (large on black here and here), I thought about writing something about the melding past and future, about time stretching like a grotesque accordion, freaking enormous and grossly out of tune.

Until I saw the glistering white tops. One in the painting and one in the picture. I stopped in bewilderment, trying to get my mind around this like when you bite off more than you can chew—choking, unable to move jaw, unable to spit all out.

I shot these pictures thousands of kilometers and a couple of years apart. Fucking long accordion!

Click to view large on black.

A subjective account of winter nights—shaken shots with frozen hands.

Continue reading "Portraits" »

Bangkok 360° panorama as seen from Baiyoke tower. Click on the image to enlarge.

Look what these people managed to build in 20 years. Compare with Eastern Europe.

An amazing incident of retrofuturism

Cubism is not dead and I’m ready to testify—I’ve just seen a chair descending a staircase, 95 years after Mr. Marcel Duchamp saw a nude doing the exact same thing. History repeating¹!

¹ “History Repeating” is a totally addictive arrangement performed by Propellerheads and Shirley Bassey. Watch the video.

My friend Bogdan Dumitrache showed me an impressive “Henri Cartier-Bresson visits Romania”¹ photo retrospective right off his iPhone yesterday—a fine opportunity to drift into a rather lengthy discussion about Leica rangefinders (Bogdan collects Leicas, affectionately naming them “musical sculptures”).

That’s why today I find appropriate to post a photo of Prizzi posing with/in homage to Cartier-Bresson’s Manhattan shot from his 1947² American series, a work that I love and I was lucky enough to see in Amsterdam a couple of years ago.

¹ I wrote about his 1975 visit to Romania a while back.

² The year when together with his friend and colleague Robert Capa and David Seymour, Henri Cartier-Bresson founded Magnum Photos agency.

I walk through the narrow underpass of an unfamiliar town—uncomplicated people hurry to attend their first lives¹—when it bursts out with overwhelming clarity: the watercolor beauty of the real world.

¹ “First Life is a 3D analog world where server lag does not exist.” Darren Barefoot, Vancouver web geek, getafirstlife.com.

A voicelessly despaired brass robot head, all beaten up, scratched and dented—look closely and you’ll notice those tears. Heartbreaking.

A take on that Faces in Places mildly delusional idea.

Update: Yes, it made it to the Faces in Places blog!

Later update: The picture, it seems, has been published in Scotsman Magazine.

Yes, I can

Listen, if The Sartorialist guy can do it, then I can, too: real-life style photography. Staggering findings of urban sophistication. Elegance. Panache. Hell, why not even style commentary—if I want to.

Style and all things chic

Now really. Look at this: les annees folles of transition economy, wild parties and champagne in the morning—a few sips too many—and she hits the street dressed with a sofa cover, prettified with an assemblage of lovely fluffy tassels dangling limp like a strangled family of little animals.

Quite a warning. There are things going on underneath, mysterious things. Ambiguous and intriguing things. Artifacts obliviously hanging out, probably by design—post-modernly quoting the misfortunes of wardrobe malfunction. Design should be, though, because those flowery baits will shrewdly entice your hungry eye—like a stupid little puppy—toward the vicious curves concealed underneath like boas in the jungle, unmerciful and relentless.

And then, the finishing BDSM touch: cheeky not-so-tiny golden hand-cuffs, sprinkled with blinding Swarovski crystals, teasingly barring the way to the vast carnal temptations sequestered underneath. Do sailors blush?

“Chapter One. He adored New York City. He idealized it all out of proportion.” Then, he stops, corrects himself, substitutes “romanticized” for “idealized,” and continues, “To him no matter what the season, this was still a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin.”¹

Gotcha

Just messing with you, really—this is Bucharest, can you believe it?

¹ Henry Jenkins, Tales of Manhattan: Mapping the urban imagination through Hollywood film.

Yesterday at Romexpo Hall I expected my DNA to be sampled and checked upon admission so they can screen the valids from the poor god children. They somehow forgot. Nevertheless, I hid my glasses in a pocket—just in case.

There are situations when dogs are much more delicate and well mannered than humans—the totally wrong situation, usually. For instance, this civilized and respectable dog awaited for a menu with patience, even if he was the only customer sitting at a terrace table while the waiters ignored him repeatedly.

I wish he chased the monkey suits around a little bit, challenge the food chain. Get some respect. Put an end to this discrimination where every crassly ill-bred barbarian dressed with embroidered jeans like a bankrupt fat Elvis sporting shovel fingernails and a biohazard hairdo gets more respect than a clean, exemplary behaving dog.

Captain David at The Coca-Cola Base Station on Mars, 2007.

True, there’s little water around here, but our sponsor sends us plenty of soda from Earth. As soon as we’re done with the wiring, flick a switch—Bang!—”Planet Coke.” Can’t wait, really.

On the other hand, NASA is annoying. They keep sending their freaking Pathfinder rovers that are roaming around taking pictures and sniffing for cooties like some goddamn sleepwalking paparazzi. Lucky they’re utterly confused and functioning in slow-motion so we have enough time to collect all the chewing gum and the cigarette stubs littered in their way.

Remote controlled snapshots-taking robots! If this is not a tabloidization of cosmology, I don’t know what is.

Progress is a wonderful thing. If — and when — The Ministry of Truth says so.

How working cats are different from lolcats — or why Caturday was not created equal for all.

I’ve seen Charlie’s Angels in broad — and harsh — Russian daylight! Yes, it is true. Walking — all goddamn foxy and daringly long-limbed — among all those frowning hurried Muscovites on the boulevard, they must’ve been on a dangerous mission.

There’s a secret passage between worlds, right after the eye, ear and invisible soul trio of ivy-covered columns. If the light bulb is lit you can pass safely, if it’s dim, open the door and you’ll be sucked into the void and your whole existence deleted. Don’t smoke — and don’t try to smuggle cigarettes to the other side — God hates that.

Subway station in Moscow, squeaky clean and completely deserted. The curved pillars look like they’ve been distorted by a a wide-angle lens. Or a gigantic force field. Uncanny.

Happiness is easy. Too bad we’re the over-talented masters of complications.

Speaking of graffiti and walls, I have some crazy-textured wallpapers for you: two from Moscow with love and one from Bucharest with murmured anger. Handmade.

Peace Wall

Graffiti over Peace Wall’s thousands of tiles painted by schoolchildren on Arbat pedestrian street in Moscow. Corny cold-war name — Peace Wall — but cool texture.

• Peace Wall — full format 1600 × 1200
• Peace Wall — wide format 1920 × 1200

The Wall of Tsoi

The Wall of Tsoi on Arbat St. in Moscow is covered with graffiti dedicated to Russian rock musician Viktor Tsoi (Russian: Виктор Робертович Цой), leader of the rock group Kino, who died in a car accident in 1990. Rough and sincere like spilled guts.

• The Wall of Tsoi — full format 1600 × 1200
• The Wall of Tsoi — wide format 1920 × 1200

Scratches

Scratched inscriptions on a house wall in Bucharest. A blind, distressed murmur relentlessly corroding the street.

• Scratches — full format — 1600 × 1200
• Scratches — wide format — 1920 × 1200

Pro versions

For the graphic professionals that cannot afford saturated colors on their desktop, low contrast grayscale versions are available:

• Peace Wall — pro, full format 1600 × 1200
• Peace Wall — pro, wide format 1920 × 1200
• The Wall of Tsoi — pro, full format 1600 × 1200
• The Wall of Tsoi — pro, wide format — 1920 × 1200
• Scratches — pro, full format — 1600 × 1200
• Scratches — pro, wide format — 1920 × 1200

Send ‘em in

If you decide to use one of these wallpapers and you don’t mind sending a screenshot of your desktop (e-mail to kit at kitblog followed by dot com) along with your name and/or web site address, your precious captures will be appended to this post, after the jump. Now is a good time to acknowledge your obsessive-compulsive need for maniacally ordered rows of icons, or to admit your lazy-ass style of obliviously piling random yet completely useless stuff.

Be brave — if you’ve got it, why not flaunt it? Send ‘em in!

Continue reading "Get wallpaperized" »

I picked the blue channel, muddy and stained as it was — I liked it — here it is.

Loving Scandinavian design means buying Scandinavian design.

The stencil reads “Do not climb on the hood Danger of electrocution 27000 V”.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are…

Owner Ivan Milicin practicing with one of his horses Haute Ecole training.

I hate trains. Public transportation anxiety. Or maybe travelers’ spleen.

‘Professional Photographer of the Year’ at IPA

Cosmin, Bucharest, July 2005

Cosmin Bumbuț confirmed his professional stature once again at this year’s edition of International Photography Awards Competition / International Photographer of the Year Competition by winning a 1st place in Editorial category with images from Aiud prison series and a 3rd place in Travel-Tourism category with images from Transit series, along with no less than 12 Honorable Mentions.

This results qualify Cosmin’s work for inclusion in both IPA 2006 Annual Awards book and 2006 IPA Best of Show exhibition.

I am very proud I could contribute to his outstanding results by sponsoring the cutting-edge custom pre-press process of his Transit book, a first in Romania.