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date » 03-08-2026 12:49

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tags » rodney lewis smith photographer, mood photography, black and white photography rodney smith, location photography, allah akbar, hasselblad rodney smith,





No word



Be Open to Chance Rodney’s first (and last) shoot for Ralph Lauren. This picture was shot totally spontaneously. The experience taught me several important lessons. We had just completed a shoot for Ralph Lauren and we were driving back to New York City. On our way, the art director realized that we had yet to shoot a picture of a certain outfit. We stopped the car immediately to solve the problem. Directly outside the car was this field....continue...
The art director said we needed to shoot a picture without showing the model’s face. At first, I suggested we shoot from behind. For some reason, this was not acceptable. We had a canoe for the shoot that we had never used. Suddenly, I came up with the idea to place the canoe on top of the model’s head. This sudden thought was a combination of spontaneity, luck, and necessity. However, unbeknownst to me at the time, there was probably also something deeper at play.

For years I had placed hats on the heads of my subjects. By doing so, I obscured their heads and faces, and these pictures inadvertently became more and more surreal. This was not because I consciously or intellectually decided that’s what I wanted; rather, it was because I liked playing with the iconic image of the hat. On the one hand, it dressed people up, finished the outfit, and made them timeless. But on the other hand, it acted as this obscuring object that made the person every man, as opposed to a specific person in time and history. So, without even realizing it, I used the canoe as if it were a giant hat.

I usually spend days scouting and finding the perfect location. However, here we were obviously pressed for time, and we had to get this shot right away. We literally took the canoe off the car, and placed it in the field right where we stopped. This was a very important lesson to me. While the location is so important in my pictures and I work so hard to find the perfect place, on occasion, I can take what is given to me and make a great picture. This particular picture was totally fortuitous. We did not scout or permit the field; it was just kind of handed to me. And to this day I really like this picture.

Sometimes, days of preparation will not necessarily result in a perfect picture. I have learned over the years to try to use things to my advantage. I scout when it’s sunny, but it rains on the shoot. The model is happy at the casting, and depressed on the shoot day. The right clothes don’t arrive, etc. If you want to shoot on location, be open to the possibility of luck and chance. If this ability to not be in complete control is too bothersome, I suggest you stick to inanimate objects, landscapes, or accounting. Be open to complications and problems. I welcome the rainy day, because I never know what may grow from it.

In the end, I was told Ralph Lauren never used this picture because he claimed it was too strong for the clothes. People remembered the image over the clothing. I don’t know if that story is true, but it perhaps shows insight on the part of Ralph Lauren.





date » 23-07-2026 08:35

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tags » wim wenders director, scrolling cellular, patch calibration monitor for printing, allah akbar, america wim wenders, extrema thule nostra salus, thumberwald,



The image on the cover is a patch that was once used in an empirical way to determine the visual quality of a monitor, back when its main purpose was to achieve a 1-to-1 match between the screen image and the final print. Today this is no longer necessary because even affordable monitors come equipped with internal self-calibration software, designed for those who use them daily for video editing and fine art photographic printing. Yet it remains a valuable exercise to train the eye into a true built-in light meter, allowing you to bypass all the useless gadgets sold as tools of wonder.






The English language, with its lean and utilitarian grammar, tends to strip away the winding pathways of thought if you let it run on default settings. It turns a philosophical standoff into a bulleted executive summary. But when you want to match the weight of a slow, deliberate European gaze—the kind forged in darkrooms, excavation sites, and Wenders’ long, highway-bound tracking shots—you have to stretch its tendons and force it to hold the brea.
The Anatomy of the Loss...continue
From the moment the daily news cycle flattens human tragedy into a background hum—a stream of live deaths designed to numb rather than awaken—the path toward total disembodiment is already set. We are told that the world can be parsed, measured, and perfected by the cold arithmetic of binary code. The algorithm promises a pristine, frictionless reality, complete with plastic probes, automated color spaces, and profiles designed to replace the biological eye. But this is the grand illusion of the modern age: mistaking the digital proxy for the living subject.
When Director Wim Wenders pointed his lens at the American landscape, he saw this future taking root. He understood before most that the danger was not a lack of images, but a suffocating deluge of them. An endless, weightless cascade that doesn't testify to existence—as Roland Barthes’ «ça-a-été» once did—but actively replaces it.
The Barbarian at the Boardwalk Enter the modern consumer, moving through life in a haze of immediate gratification. With a steak in one hand, a Coke in the other, and a butchered, CGI (Computer Graphic)-laden frame of the Odyssey (an impossible to say) flickering on a pocket screen, this figure represents the ultimate triumph of the image-as-commodity: the Flattening of Myth, Homeric journey—once an epic descent into the depths of human fate, memory, and exile—is reduced to a twenty-second clip of special effects, swallowed between bites and forgotten before the next swipe.
The Seduction of Saturation: For an eye trained on hyper-lit LED screens, depth is an inconvenience. The nuance of a midtone or the subtle threshold where a shadow surrenders to absolute darkness (D = 1.9) holds no value. If it doesn't scream with artificial saturation, it simply doesn't exist.
The Immaterial Trap: There is no friction here, no resistance, and certainly no patience. The digital file remains an unformed ghost, floating in a cloud server, destined to rot silently when the format changes or the platform dies.
To try and speak to this mindset about the sanctity of a gamma curve or the precise balance of an ink deposit on a barite sheet is like trying to hold a conversation in a dialect that has no words for silence or time.
The Act of Physical Resistance. This is precisely the deliberate, stubborn act of printing on physical paper—is no longer just a technical choice; it is an act of quiet, uncompromising defiance.
When you sit before a calibrated monitor, bypass the automated formulas, and rely instead on the quiet authority of an experienced eye (de visu), you reclaim the right to see for yourself. And when you commit that light onto a physical sheet—feeling the weight of the paper, controlling the density, forcing the digital phantom to take on a tangible body (de manu)—you step completely outside the circus.
The crowd on the boardwalk will keep scrolling, chasing the next hit of dopamine, oblivious to the fact that their memories are built on sand. But on that quiet sheet of paper, the ghost is finally caught. It doesn't move, it doesn't refresh, and it doesn't ask for approval. It just stays.








date » 28-05-2026 08:12

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tags » kive & moort, urban life, conversation end life, modern time, thumberwald, finis terrae, moby-dick, flush.mokatar bell mokatar, digital time,


Click on
NO WORD
(https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/oDSR8hqVG-4)

(For english sound, please select the
appropriate language)

date » 18-05-2026 18:35

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tags » camedia c 8080 olympus, still life domestic, real window light, abstraction in studio, living room as studio, thumberwald,


© archive manunzio

====== The Venomous cord: a domestic short-circuit ======
The Venomous Cord is a striking visual short-circuit that operates at the boundary between everyday reality and graphic imagination. A common, industrial object—a glossy red coiled cable—is stripped of its mundane utility and imbued with predatory tension. As it snakes across a domestic background, its mechanical form seamlessly morphs into a stark, hand-drawn black-and-white viper head, featuring a singular, hypnotic red eye that echoes the synthetic hue of its body.

Occhio come mestiere ( the Master’s Eye)
While the final composition carries the polished weight of a high-end commercial or conceptual campaign, the process behind it is rooted in pure photographic instinct and visceral execution. Rejecting the sterile atmosphere of an artificial studio setup, the shoot was entirely “cooked” within a living room environment, utilizing the most fundamental elements of classical photography: the window light: and not relying on strobe lights, flags, or heavy studio modifiers, the image harnesses the raw, directional power of natural afternoon light streaming from a side dx real window. This raking light grazes the plastic spirals, emphasizing their three-dimensional texture, weight, and volume.

The Set? A simple white tablecloth in a living room is transformed into a clean, seamless studio limbo, proving that sophisticated spatial geometry requires vision rather than high-end production gear.

Ps. Camedia C 8080W, image taken at Iso 50 the beast(ial) camera Olympus, no words








date » 20-12-2025 19:32

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tags » pietrapertosa, landscape with snow, still life, food photography, land of the soul, shakespeare dream, merry christmas,



I don't no...

Combined Christmas image: a landscape (the window sill above it) sourced from the web, placed beneath a soup tureen with a ladle on a wooden board, reconstructed in the studio to test composition, lighting, and props. A shot from many years ago, left in the archives…

It is difficult—or perhaps more accurate to say that there are no words—to describe this still life. Now, whenever I “stumble” upon it, I feel a lump in my throat, a deep and distant melancholy. So perhaps Shakespeare was right… we are made of the same stuff as dreams.

* Pietrapertosa means “pierced stone” and derives from the ancient name Petraperciata, referring to a large rock with a hole through it, visible at the highest point of the village, which gave it its name. It is a municipality in the province of Potenza, in Basilicata Italy, famous for being the highest in the region and for its charming historic center of Saracen origin, the Arabata, carved into the rock.

date » 18-07-2024 20:43

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tags » crisi occidente, disgregazione sociale, lotta classe élite vs gente comune, finis terrae, no word, apocalisse sociale, teoria finestre rotte,





Un clima civile imbarazzante che ricorda la teoria delle finestre rotte di James Q. Wilson e George L. Kelling: esiste un legame tra le condizioni dell’ambiente e i comportamenti delle persone. Più bruttezza, più incuria, più volgarità, più degrado dei luoghi producono comportamenti “ devianti”, antisociali, crimini, insicurezza. Lassismo, tolleranza indifferente, l’incapacità, o peggio la volontà di non punire determinate condotte, a partire dal decoro ambientale e personale, dalle norme di convivenza comunitaria, creano una situazione di disordine che porta alla generalizzazione di comportamenti arroganti, violenti, che determinano insicurezza instaurando un clima di dissoluzione del legame sociale

(https://comedonchisciotte.org/la-teoria-delle-finestre-rotte/)

date » 18-07-2024 17:30

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tags » fotogiornalismo, fotografia moderna, reportage america 2024, attentato trump 2024, social network predatori, no word,






Regardless of the complex cultural, social, and political impacts of the attempt on former president and 2024 election front-runner Donald Trump’s life, the event has left an indelible mark on the photography world and offers a chance to consider how society consumes, shares, and thinks about images.

(https://petapixel.com/2024/07/16/photos-of-the-attempted-assassination-of-trump-show-photography-isnt-going-anywhere/)

date » 28-06-2024 08:51

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tags » pubblicità leica morte, composizione fotografica, fauci bigpharma covid, fotografia digitale leica, nati non foste, omicidi rituale, mors tua vita mea, adrenocromo elisir lunga vita, nuovo ordine mondiale, democrazia regole occidente, no word,



Leica non si vergogna di mettere in scena la Morte più che Mood, che rima con Modalità di esecuzione. Una bimba in primissimo piano, vertice del triangolo compositivo, è stravolta del suo prossimo omicidio rituale Meticoloso. Su la gradinata, destra, versomil + mente in riva a mare vista la sabbia, un uomo più che sdraiato a "prender" sole la rappresentazione della Morte. Immagine, quindi, trian + cula con l'altra Morte a sinistra della gradinata con Mascherina del Medico Fauci & BigPharma a complemento Covid di laboratori, sodali Mortali. Sì, non c'è che dire un bel Mood. Amen

https://leica-camera.com/it-IT/fotografia/m/m-is?utm_source=dv360&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=leica_hq_it_dd_awr_m_mis_2024_05&dclid=CJG20fDZ_YYDFUX0EQgdEK8KxQ&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI3ZH57tn9hgMVopODBx1O8AWGEAEYASAAEgJxNfD_BwE

Ps. La bimba in PP è "orientale" così a caso Leica? Oriente che rima con Cina. Retrostante e giacente su scalinata, destra immagine, un tale che sembra di carnagione scura: Africa? Due continenti insubordinati, qui, alla "democrazia" delle regole dell'Occidente. Mors tua vita mea, dicono i regolatori, ecco, ad adrenocromo, no? No. Punto

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