Tuesday, August 03, 2010

Spraygraphic and Facebook and Twitter

I have recently moved all of my photography and art efforts to Spraygraphic.com which is a brilliant site for artists who want to show the world what they are up to.

Click here to see my Spraygraphic profile and all of my projects.

I have also created a fanpage on Facebook for Jan Krcmar Photography. Fans get regular updates as well as some hidden photographs which can not be found on Spraygraphic.
Click here for the Facebook page.

Or, if you prefer, you can from now on follow me on Twitter, where I will try to post regular updates as well.
My profile on Twitter.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Grown up men

Copyright for text and photos: Jan Krcmar 2008-2010
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When I finally went to the Holy Land that is Anfield Road I picked up an old idea which had occured to me sometime in 2005 when watching First Vienna play and taking photographs. Quite often, you can isolate players in a photo from the rest of the team, the stadium, etc. and get a clear shot of just the player and the pitch. I took a liking to the idea; on one level I simply think it looks good, but there is something more to it, which I tried to express in these photos.

Grown up people attending football matches is something fundamentally intriguing to me, and it has been ever since I was forced to explain my fascination to my girlfriend. I had never really thought about football on a metaphorical level before, other than agreeing with Nick Hornby and other authors who tried to explain why people go and watch football or any other sport for that matter; I knew I liked watching it, I knew I enjoyed going to the stadium, I knew I loved reading about football and talking about football.

But once somebody asks you why you chose to go and watch highly paid people you don't even know personally play football, you are forced to give it more thought. Which I tried to do with these pictures.

The players are isolated, by colour and by their positioning in the image (not manipulated, except for one case). In some cases, they have even been isolated visually by having the ball removed or even the opponent. So here's what the images show you: grown up men. Not much beyond that.









The only image I altered beyond the concept above is the following one of Stevie Gerrard. At first it only seemed like a nice action-shot, but on closer examination I realised the position in which I had captured the Skipper. And I realised, why he has saved us on so many occasions time and time again. For he is the messiah.

Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Household messiah

Copyright for text and photos: Jan Krcmar 2008-2010
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Just a fun idea I had last summer. This is called Household Messiah. Let me know what you think.



White night or any other title you can think of

Copyright for text and photos: Jan Krcmar 2008-2010
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Here's a few photos of our flat. Nothing special, just my obsession with the idea that a brick wall seperates our private lives from something we call public space. I still like the idea of
a) documenting your own apartment as well as you possibly can (spend as much time as you can getting to know your private space, documenting your bathroom, toilet, living room, kitchen, kitchen sink, etc),
b) restraining yourself in your artistic output to whatever you find in your flat (or looking out of it), so no big trips to some place else to take photos, if pretty much everything you need is right there in front of you and
c) throwing all that private shit right out into the open, into the public space for everybody to see, whether they like it or not, whether they want to see it or not, because I'll be fucked if it's anybody else's choice whether they get to see my private life or not. Which means that I decide what they do NOT see, but also being able to force upon them what I think they SHOULD see.
So here we go.


Our bedroom with a lot of rubbish lying around everywhere. A nice look out of the window, so I am quite literally opening up to the outside world. It was freezing outside.


IKEA-Expedit-bookshelf complete with books, plus other items from the IKEA catalogue and my photograph / painting in our living room.


Light coming in through the window and the shadow cast by one of our living room lamps. This is the second of three pictures I took sitting and watching The Wire.


Another view of our living room, still sitting and watching the wire and handling the camera on the tripod. Shutter speed was 30 seconds, because - and some of you, the really clever or obsessed amongst you, might have noticed - all of these photographs were taken at night in complete darkness in the flat with the only light source being the orange-light street lamps shining in through the windows. It was almost pitch dark, but still, with a bit of invention you can make a night photograph look like one taken during the day. Very little photoshopping applied here, almost none to colours, saturation, etc. I'd say 95% camera work.
This beautifully ties in with my second - and admittedly rather tedious (for 2010) - obsession of creating images that are a bit disturbing to watch; either because they are specifically designed to bore you, or because the subject is not very pleasant.

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Working on the railroad

Copyright for text and photos: Jan Krcmar 2008-2010
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In 2008 I took a trip to the czech town of Kolín, about one hour by train east of Prague. I took my cameras with me and this is the result. Life on and around the railroad between Prague and Kolín. In no particular order and hardly photoshopped. I tried to leave the photos as much in the original state as possible. This means grain, little or bad contrast, lighting, etc. Real outdoor hands-on conditions.















Monday, December 21, 2009

One step further

Copyright for text and photos: Jan Krcmar 2009
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I will not explain any of this, nor justify myself. I think it is pretty self-explanatory. All I can say is that I know it is wrong to play with food.


Emanuel Adebayor, Manchester City


Didier Drogba, Chelsea FC

And time, I think, for a bit of meat.


If you have any doubts about the author, then here you are:

Monday, December 07, 2009

It's finally happened

Copyright for text and photos: Jan Krcmar 2009
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I've actually gone and done something. I mean created something. Done as in: done more than just push a button whilst looking through a lense at something. Actually created the object I then took a photo of.

So, what have I done? Here's a little intro:
about three weeks ago I bought little stamps used for stamping your name on christmas cookies and I tried to use them in the process of developing photos. Didn't quite turn out the way I wanted to and so yesterday I had some time on my hands and I sat down and trie to come up with something. I had these little stamps, small blocks of wood and some black tape.

The trouble with letters on stamps is, that you must put them together to say something. And for that you should have something to say. Which I don't. And ever since Macht und Rebel you can't even write "Heil Hitler" or "Sieg Heil" or "Fuck little girls" if you want to shock. In fact, all you can do after Macht und Rebel is shut up and get on with your life.

So, to recap, you need something to say. But what do you do, if all you have to say is "We all hate Leeds Scum", "el-aye-vee-ee-ahr-pee-double-oh-el-liverpool-fc" or "stayed on the telly, you should have stayed on the telly"? I guess in that case you have no other choice.

So this is basically objets-trouvés found in our flat with objets-trouvés found in my head, combined with my fascination of household items and households in general (wait until I finally get round to doing my "Household Attack").

And here we go:

The preparations:


and for a close up, which looks cool just by itself:


And now the finished products:






Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Modern statues

Copyright for text and photos: Jan Krcmar 2009
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Have you ever noticed how sometimes technical or industrial objects are situated in a way that resembles statues or memorials? This is hopefully the first photo in an entire series.

Thursday, August 06, 2009

Botanical pornography

Copyright for text and photos: Jan Krcmar 2009
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One of my entries for a competition on the topic "flowers".
And before you ask, it is a rose. Shot with an old russian Zenit-E-camera. Instead of a proper lens I used a single lens glass from a broken Canon lens which I held in front of the camera, which blurs the image everywhere except the place of focus.

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Yes sir, we have no bananas

Copyright for text and photos: Jan Krcmar 2009
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I just scanned in a few old negatives and thought I might share this with you. Nothing special, just a banana...



And by the way, I lost out in the "summer" competition to a lot of better photographs than mine.

Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Competition: Summer

Copyright for text and photos: Jan Krcmar 2009
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As announced, here are my entries to the photo-competition in the czech newspaper Lidové noviny.
This week's topic was "True summer" and I submitted the following images.


Let's start with a nice, simple holiday picture. This is one of the bizarre mud vulcanoes in Qobustan (Azerbaijan). These volcanoes are about 10-20 metres high and spit mud, which then runs down the side of the hill and dries up, creating an almost african drought-surface. Summer as in heat and drought and holiday. Not an intelectual challenge, just a nice, interesting picture.


And once again straight to Chicago. This was on a very hot day last year, when the temperature was still high in the evening and made you want to jump in the lake while watching the citys skyline.


This fellow was there all day long (still Chicago), probably practiced all day... I hate the unemployed.


Come to think of it, a lot of my best pictures are from my stays in the USA. This one is from Havre, Montana. After a long day at the local beach (at a reservoir lake), playing football against local high school kids (myself against 10 of them and I still won...) within a few minutes the sunny sky changed and clouds appeared. Soon after that, hail and rain started slamming down and I got completely soaked taking this picture. You only get colours like this at the beginning of summer. Such a sky while the fields are still green.


Probably my favourite one for this week's entry. A school bus depot on Coney Island. Tommy Kane took us there and knew I would like it. So I guess if I win something, I will have to share the revenue...

That's it. I will let you know how I ended up this week.