Casita De Turron: It's messy and it's weird

Casita de Turrón by Roberto Tondopó  is messy and weird. Good job!

It's one of those real/fictional interplays that tells the story of Andrea and Angel (the photographer's niece and nephew) and what it is to grow up, to be in a family, to live through the chaos of becoming adolescent (the statement mentions the 'uncanny' and the 'oneiric' but let's leave that behind so it doesn't spoil things).



The best way to sum it up is to describe it as a mix between the work of Alessandra Sanguinetti and Timothy Archibald, but not as tidy and with added oddness thrown in; Andrea and Angel wear thick-lensed glasses and are more than happy to perform in whatever situation. Andrea stands above a fan in her party dress, Angel kisses a mirror and holds a cat. The two of them appear together, Andrea sitting on a bed looking mature, typewriter by her side, but with scraped knees and Angel standing behind her. He's got no shirt on and his head's thrown back, his hand over his groin, a latter Michael Jackson. 



It's rough as you like but it has the energy and madness in there that is so often absent from more filtered depictions of childhood. You know there's a dark side to these children, and it  you know that they know it. You also get the feeling that Tondopó is not entirely in control, that the pictures go beyond sanitised dreaminess and have a bit of madness in them. Which is a good thing. Control is the enemy.

The interiors are interesting too; real grubbiness and rough decor with plenty of wildlife to add to the general messiness. If you have indexed shelves and dust-free floors, this might not be the book for you. If you are more human and live in a bit of a mess, then it might be.  The textiles and drapes add to the atmosphere as does the underlying ambivalence of sibling alliance and sibling conflict.  It could be shorter, or sequenced differently, or designed differently, or lots more.

But it isn't and really it doesn't matter  because it's not that well-mannered a book. Or that simple a book. It's a bit of a mishmash in some ways, but there are mishmashes and there are mishmashes, and this is the latter; a mishmash. A good one. It doesn't look like a junior school science book. That's nice for a change.  I like it.


Buy the Book here. 

Life Advice from Sam Harris: It's Raining! It's Cold! It's London! Let's Go to India!

The Middle of Somewhere is a lovely book about growing up, about being a child, about experiencing the world, about being part of nature.

The world of the Middle of Somewhere is ostensibly India and Australia, but really in an ideal world it could be anywhere where there are open spaces, clear skies and a family where freedom, adventure and discovery are the norm. And the children are Uma and Yali, daughters of  Sam Harris. He photographed their lives, their joys, their tears and their traumas as they grew up in the most idyllic surroundings. But again, in an ideal world, it could be any child.

It's a joyful book then, one that starts with a picture of a line of green clad girls, their feet pushing through the grass of a forest clearing, their arms pushing against the barriers of our imagination. Flick forward a page and we see  Uma (I think) lying in a meadow, her eyes closed as she falls into the ground upon which she lies.

There's a pagan element to the book, a sense that we are, or should be, one with nature, and that is emphasised through repeated pictures of birds, animals, flowers and fruit. A double-page spread shows a dead red-beaked finch held in the palm of a hand that is adorned with bangles and bead, together with Yali (I think) holding a mashed up bunch of blackberries, her lips stained red, her eyes gazing directly into the camera from hair that is reminiscent of the well-dwelling Sadako of The Ring.

So we have coming of age and we have mortality and there is half a nod to Sanguinetti's Sixth Day and the lyricism of the Immediate Family landscape, but the symbolism is never heavy handed and the book can be read as a straightforward journal, especially because it is made like a journal.

The journal inserts help in this. We hear from Yael, Harris's partner, as she sits with a young Uma in a one-bedroom flat in London. It's raining and she needs a change, they all need a change. The next entry comes from Goa. The change has come and life becomes a romantic tale of travelling in India, on the road in places where hungry cows, blue seas and freak storms create memories that have a value beyond value. Then Yael is suddenly pregnant, one month from term and ready to give birth, 'just like millions of other women..' in an Indian village.

And on life goes.



There's a great picture of gleaming eucalypti (I think?) shot from the inside of a car. It's a familiar shot with the dashboard in the foreground but is evocative all the same, a sign of the move to Australia, and the beginning of a new kind of life.

Here, the open spaces and the big skies open up before Harris and Yael. We see them standing beneath the stars, looking at a gleaming mood, a moment of peace as a quiet domesticity (toys, make-up, washing, chickens - the quieter pictures that punctuate the stronger double page spreads) makes a home in the smallholding that the family now calls home.



Amidst all this there are tears and conflict. Uma and Yali fight, then make up. We see this in little kiss-and-make-up notes stuck into the pages of the book.

The girls grow and so does the family's Australian home. Uma and Yael reach up with brooms to dislodge water trapped in an awning. But now Uma is almost Yael's height, more nimble and stronger. The generational 'surpasso' beckons.



And that is almost how the book ends. It's a gorgeous book with a gorgeous cover that is a pointillist rendition of the bush surrounding the Australian home. It's romantic, populist and beautifully produced; as well as the post-it notes and journal inserts, it comes with rounded corners to edge off that travelogue feel.

Buy the book here. 

Everybody's got something to hide...

Roger Ballen regards his distance from the sea of images that wash over us as part of his success at finding his own visual voice. Connected to that, Alessandra Sanguinetti notes that it is not enough to make good images, that she has to make great images.

How many great images are made though and what constitutes their greatness?

How many images will we see this weekend - in newspapers, books, magazines, on screen or posted in the street? How many will we remember when Monday comes around, how many are worth remembering?

With that perennial thought flowering once again, it's back to animals. Apes and monkeys are (after kids juxtaposed with the spoils of the day's hunting trip) one of the favourite subjects of photographers who shoot animals. Best of the monkey men for me is James Mollison. His James and Other Apes features portraits of chimps, orang-utans, bonobos and gorillas - all done in Ken Ohara (I still can't believe he's not Irish!) close-up - which, in opposition to Ohara's One pictures, accentuates the apes' differences and their individuality.

Apes look pretty good in a photograph, but monkey films, God help Us! The one exception is King Kong, especially the original, co-directed by Merian C.Cooper. Cooper was inspired to make his film by the island of Komodo in Indonesia - his first idea for the film was to take a gorilla to Komodo and have it fight a Komodo dragon to the death!

Partly because of King Kong, I have always had a bit of an obsession with Komodo - so tying in with the dead animal theme, here's a picture from Komodo.