The Storyteller

BY BERT STEPHANI

Yesterday I finished Dave Grohl’s book “The Storyteller”. I can’t say that I’m a fan of his music but it was interesting to read the life story of an artist. I admire his fearless way of being himself and create. To be honest, I’m a bit jealous of his mindset. As I see myself as a storyteller as well, the book made me ask myself some questions:

  • Am I too lazy?

  • Where’s the Rock and Roll in my life?

  • Where are the stories?

And last night, while I was lying in bed, I thought about the KAGE Collective. 
We have just paid the rent for our recording studio, aka our Squarespace subscription, just like we did last year, although the studio remained empty.  I don’t blame anyone, not even myself. We all have work and families that rightfully take up the bulk of our time. And we also have our own media channels to fill with images and words. Those are the channels that bring in the work so they should be first on our mind. 

The KAGE studio is not where we perform our greatest hits, it’s a safe place to experiment away from the mainstream audience. It’s a place for failure and growth. It’s a place that I NEED. I won’t keep paying for this studio if I never use it. 

I’ve been an artist for long enough to know that you can’t just sit and wait for inspiration to strike. Sure, it happens every now and then but don’t hold your breath. You can have meetings with the band about ideas for a new album but although fun, these meetings are usually unproductive. The only way that I know of to get going … is to get going. It doesn’t matter on what, just start creating.

So here I am at our recording studio, gently strumming my laptop and tuning my camera in an unfamiliar key just to see where that leads me. 

The other band members are way more talented than I am so I hope someone will drop by the studio to jam together. At this point it’s irrelevant to where it will lead. It’s about just doing it, experiment. Sooner or later part of a riff will surface from the chaos which will lead to a chorus, which will lead to a song, which will lead to an album, and so on. 

One, two, and a one, two, three, four …

Dispatch from an Analog Day

By Patrick La Roque

I shut down my phone last night. Doesn't happen very often so I'd forgotten the key combo. Had to dig in the settings for that one. My iPad is off as well, nestled between two books on my desk. The computer is silent; no fans, no whirrs, and no glare hitting my retinas everywhere I turn. It's early, still, but already minutes seems looser, elasticized by the sudden disappearance of markers. This is a dispatch from my first self-imposed analog day. As in, few electronics or screens, no multipurpose devices. I'm writing this on a typewriter, after filling up two pages in a notebook. I also took pictures of a dead houseplant a few moments ago—they’re on the card but I haven’t looked.

I'm not wearing my watch.
So far, so good.

There’s an unusual sort of anxiety in the air, like you've forgotten something but don't quite know what it is. Thoughts pop into my head, ideas I’d normally record on a machine, to check, or note, whatever. But I have to stop myself and there’s a sudden jolt, as my brain reassesses, unexpectedly. This is years of conditioning, challenged. An entire workflow upended. Every time it happens there's a micro-panic while my mind scrambles for a solution, searching for its bearings, trying hard to settle. And it does. It does.

…

No metrics. Today will not exist. To all those apps, I'll be a non-entity for the next 24 hours, a blank placeholder between streaks. Nothing out there will know that I drank water, and meditated, and spent time working on a post on a 1960s machine with mechanical arms banging and smacking and splashing ink on a letter-sized piece of office paper. My existence today will leave no trace. A precipice. Null and void.

What I do now, I do from Outside. I could be an unknown force fomenting a quiet revolution away from prying eyes. There is no word count, no time tracking.

This day will not be logged.

I Don’t Know.

By Patrick La Roque

I’m using the title of this post as a direct response to Bert’s Now What?  And while I’m at it, let me also echo his appreciation of the work some of you shared on Instagram during the #kage202202 project: you folks do indeed rock. Thank you.

But my god, what a loaded, impossibly difficult question to answer. Because we’re still mostly stumbling in the dark, aren’t we? I did my first maskless shoot in almost three years a few weeks ago, and I was stunned by how emotional that was. I felt a weight lifted that I didn’t even know I’d been carrying. I’ve always been fully on-board with measures surrounding COVID-19, especially mask-wearing which is just, basic, elementary and beyond obvious. It’s an airborne virus. We wash our hands before dinner too, FFS.

And yet here I was. 

As I stood there with strangers, watching their mouths and lips and smiles, listening to unmuffled voices, shooting the breeze without care, the memories flooded back: this is normal, this is what we do. We are social animals. We exist in packs and feed on the warmth, breath, and oscillations of others. I’d even argue that, for the most solitary among us, disconnection is only possible because we’re secure in the knowledge of others, out there, within reach. Anything else is a void, not a choice. So what I felt there, I think, was hope. 

And then Russian forces bombed a maternity hospital.

I use the word “force” because I refuse to believe this is the Russian people’s war. It is a war of old, cruel men with blackened hearts, grasping at the vestiges of a savage century. A roomful of tyrants with the unfortunate power to destroy the world. Wait, what was my point again? Ah, yes: that I don’t know. That I Don’t. Fucking. Know.

Other than we must go on, and dig the earth and pull at the stars and do everything in our power to shine, shine, shine. One image, one song, one story at a time.

This is the torch we wield in the night.
And its flame should burn.

Now What?

BY BERT STEPHANI

So we finally got off our asses and kicked them in gear, but now what?

I can’t talk for anyone else, I can only talk for myself, but I’m not too impressed with what I produced in February. For some reason, it feels like I’m done with the more traditional documentary stories that have made up the bulk of what we’ve done in KAGE. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll always be documenting life but at this point I don’t know if the short photo story is the way to do that for me anymore. Maybe I’ve worked in this style for too long, maybe it’s the pressure of a project at an inconvenient time, maybe I’m just getting old. Whatever the reason, it’s time to explore other ways of storytelling, other types of stories.

Here are some colour shots that didn’t make the project:

Some observations and thoughts:

  • I might need to give my pictures more breathing room and give them time to speak to me. The whole instant thing is deeply ingrained in my way of working and I need to get away from it.

  • I would like to work less chronological and literal. I’m not a news photographer, I want to share more personal, complex and nuanced concepts.

  • Wow, you guys rock. I’ve seen truly amazing images on Instagram from those who joined us in this project.

  • For the past 15+ years I’ve been carrying a camera pretty much all the time and I need to keep doing that. But I also need to plan very specific photography outings to immers myself completely in making work without combining something else with photography.

  • It was great to be forced to shoot through this project. Often it’s a matter of just getting started and something will happen. Frustration got the best of me a number of times during last month for not creating anything that I really liked. While I need to push myself to create, I shouldn’t be so harsh on myself if the muse doesn’t show herself immediately. I just need to thrust the process.

  • It’s too soon for conclusions but that’s fine. Let’s keep shooting and see where it will take me.

Some black and white images that didn’t make the stories:

As a collective, we are not sure where we want to go next. We’ll see but we are interested to hear your comments. How did you experience this project?

(Blown) Away

BY BERT STEPHANI

The weather has continued to be sub par lately and we’ve been longing for spring. A couple of storms came through our little country and wreaked havoc but that couldn’t stop the two of us to escape for a little cycling trip to Holland.

This is what our garden shed looked like after storm Eunice passed through. We suffered some other damage but luckily nobody got hurt.

We rented a cosy cabin in the Dutch countryside to just be away for a couple of days. Despite the very strong winds we still brought our bikes to hopefully go out and explore.

On day one we managed to do a 35km ride through wind and rain. The parts against the wind were like cycling with flat tires and stuck brakes. The parts with cross wind in the open country proved to be hard to stay upright, but I felt like a pro cyclist when the wind was in my back.

A very challenging obstacle

On the second day, the winds were still crazy but for the first time in ages the sun was out. So we went for a long 72km ride.

On the third day we had obligations back home so we couldn’t stay long. But we couldn’t leave without a last short ride.

The last 3 kilometers of the ride were against that crazy powerful wind again (for the cycling fans: I was pushing between 250 and 300 Watts to reach only 12km/h). By the time we got back to our car the rain came back with a vengeance to mark the end of this little trip.

And this also marks the end of my #kage202202 project. I’ll probably let it all digest a bit and follow up with what this project ment to me.

Week 75 - ON AND OFF

PRE-2020 BACKSTAGE RIDER

  • 20 lines of coke

  • 15 spliffs

  • 5 bottles of Jack Daniels

  • 4 cases of bear

  • 2 fireman’s buckets filled with red and blue M&M’s

POST-2020 BACKSTAGE RIDER

  • Lots of Covid tests

  • 2 packs of face masks

  • 10 bottles Hand sanitiser

It felt good to be on my way to photograph real live musicians again. I had 5 concerts to shoot during the second half of 2021 but they didn't feel anything like normal or the way they used to be. This was the first concert of the year by The Scottish National Jazz Orchestra and it kinda did feel like it used to....until I got there!

The orchestra had played the night before, but I was joining them on the second of three nights. One musician had already dropped out at the rehearsal stage after testing positive for Covid 19. But it was only 4pm the day after the first concert and two more musicians had tested positive. Once again deps were found and the gig was going ahead. The beauty of jazz musicians of this calibre is that they can sightread what's put in front of them.

As restrictions are being lifted, and in some parts of the country being scrapped altogether, I've been seeing first-hand that things are worse than ever out there. People are not bothering with masks more and more, even though, unlike England, we have not had the mad government instructions that all restrictions are over. Do what you like. Tounge kiss as many strangers as you feel is appropriate.

Day 3: I'm editing the pictures from the night before when I get an email to say that this evening's performance has been cancelled.

Guests Joe Locke (vibraphonist) and Kenny Washington (vocalist) flew in from the US to perform with The SNJO. Months of writing arrangements for Joe, concerts postponed from 2020, and in the end, the plug had to be pulled due to Covid. It's only going to get worse in my opinion!

The music was brilliantly arranged by Joe Locke and the musicians played flawlessly as always!

This was an amazing start to the year for The SNJO which was cut short. I hope this project can be resumed at a later date!

ALL SHOT WITH THE X-PRO2 & THE 50/2 (75mm FF equivalent)

One of Fuji’s most underrated lenses!

Gold

BY BERT STEPHANI

So, what gear do you bring to the Under 18 Belgian Athletics Championship? What about a slow medium format camera and a short(ish) manual lens? At least that’s what I did: GFX50R and the Mitakon 65mm F1.4.

But the real reason I was there is that my girlfriend’s eldest daughter participated in the pole vault competition. Because I knew I wouldn’t have good access, I also packed my X-Pro3 and dusted off the XF50-140 to document one of the best days of her life. Before the big day, I gave her my best advice: crush the competition … and boy, she did just that! With a series of beautiful jumps, she went over 3.40 meters, improved her personal best and won the Belgian championship.

Above you see the the sequence of the jump that sealed the deal. It’s art in motion but the picture that we like even better is the one below of the most relaxed smile we’ve seen on her face in ages. The pressure of high level sports is a very heavy burden to carry for a teenager. But when the stars align, it’s all worth it.

And Again We Accepted The Drums Of War

“I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, ‘This is genius.’ Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine, of Ukraine, Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful...”
— Donald Trump - Tuesday, 22 February 2022.
“Social media posts claim Canada’s governor general said she would remove Prime Minister Justin Trudeau if she received 958,000 emails calling for his departure. ”
— AFP Fact Check - Wednesday, 23 February 2022.
“Russian forces have launched a major military assault on Ukraine, with reports of missile strikes and explosions near major cities.”
— BBC - Thursday, 24 February 2022.

By Patrick La Roque

I picture a teenage boy. He’s in his room, staring at the space in front of him. He doesn’t see what’s actually there—no walls, no dirty carpet covered in yesterday’s clothes. He sees control panels floating at arm's length, lines and geometric shapes in a constant state of mutation, their oscillations so fast it blurs their outlines.

Below these a terminal window, complete with an old-school prompt. It’s a nod to Gibson and Stephenson, his favourite authors in The Simulation™.

>_

Do we cry, scream, or shrug at this point? I never expected I’d be writing this project’s last entry on a day that might now live in infamy—the largest attack on European soil since WWII. What? Oh! My apologies: on the day “Russia Began Its Peacekeeping Operations In Ukraine”. 

War is peace, as we all know. Silly me.

I once believed humanity had turned a corner. We’d flirted with nuclear annihilation, realized our foolishness, and decided to leave savagery behind. The Berlin Wall came down, the Cold War thawed—we would slowly enter an age of reason, fuelled by technology and a renewed sense of collective purpose.

The Oracle of Delphi I am not.

I spent the last few days finalizing details for two projects—a commercial shoot next week, and a rather surprising commission that I never saw coming. This, along with the usual writing sessions, work on an upcoming book, research, trying to stay in shape and mentally fit, driving the kids around…it adds up. It mutes the outside world somewhat.

But those drums are so bloody loud. Downbeats to blow-up every subwoofer from here to fucking eternity. Trucks smashing at the gates, the livid and clueless playing out Hollywood hero fantasies, with mouths foaming. The Patriot Sons and Daughters of Meta, dancing to The Feed. What an uncannily appropriate name that is, too. So obvious it’s almost daring.
And now, this unlawful attack.
Heartbreaking. Cruel. Unhinged.

I haven’t recorded today’s accompanying soundscape yet. But I hear notes already. Clusters. A low, dark resonance.
It’s coming…

Hey kid? Flip a switch, won’t you? Get some homework done, clean your room… You’ve had your fun. 
The game’s just about played out for us.

All images in these posts were shot with the GFX 50S and a vintage Pentax 50mm f/1.7 lens.

Le Beau et la Bête

By Vincent Baldensperger

Ne regardez pas mes photos, observez Jean-Luc, découvrez ses sensibilités, ses oeuvres. Là-bas, en pleine campagne, dans son ancienne ferme peuplée d’animaux naissent des trésors artistiques. J’ai un petit parcours dans le graphisme, des souvenirs d’études de dessins, de croquis, un apprentissage m’ayant permis de comprendre rapidement que trois sujets de dessin comptent parmi les plus compliqués : la main et le pied de l’Homme ainsi que le cheval. Petite parenthèse pour vous dire que j’ai découvert un Maitre en la matière, de sublimes dessins et sculptures d’équidés…

J’ai eu ce vrai plaisir de suivre pas à pas Jean-Luc dans la création de sa nouvelle oeuvre. Dans son atelier ouvert sur la nature, les outils cognent, tapent, découpent, creusent les plaques de métal qui sont ensuite assemblées, rivetées. Immense puzzle réalisé à partir de vieux bidons découpés et recyclés en feuille blanche. Ca fait des années que ça dure et jamais ça ne s’arrêtera je le sais. A cet instant je pense à la passion qui l’anime autant que la mienne pour un tout autre domaine.

J’ai eu ce vrai plaisir de ne pas chercher à comprendre, juste à gouter des yeux comme on savoure du Mozart du coin de l’oreille. Il n’y a rien à expliquer, rien à démontrer, rien à étudier. Jean-Luc fait partie de ces êtres rares qui abreuvent nos existences de Beauté et d’émotions, celles qui vous coulent le long de la joue sans retenue.