MSA O/N May 2022: Wabi Sabi

[mooseontheloose]

@darr - that looks great and is very wabi sabi!

@MattKing - it's an oldie but a goodie! I love derelict old boats.

 

[MattKing]

Thanks Rachelle. That boat stayed there for several years after, but finally was either removed or broke up and washed away.

 

[markjwyatt]

A piece of art from 1970s high school students, edited, painted over , and in need of repair, and ready to be erased, but people fighting to have it maintained/refurbuished. One of the largest murals ever painted.


dam bicyclists by Mark Wyatt, on Flickr

 

[mooseontheloose]

Couple days left to get any last-minute submissions in!

 

[David Lingham]

Wabi sabi is the beauty of imperfect things.
something that becomes more beautiful as it ages.

Holga 120n. FP4 ID11.

 

[russljames]

When we bought our rural property many years ago, we inherited a lot of items that had been discarded on it. Over the years I have cleaned the debris. But I left this 1940’s washing machine that still resides under an Oak Tree near our windmill, getting a bit more rusted as year passes.. It has been a frequent subject for black and white film. This OLD image was taken in April 2020. (Nikon F5, 28mm f2.0, 1990 dated Pan F @Iso 25, in Rodinal 1:100 semi-stand)

 

[mooseontheloose]

Hi everyone - sorry for the delay! Last week was crazy busy at work and I threw out my back on the weekend (still suffering now) so it just slipped my mind.

In any event, I am really happy to see so many submissions for this round - at 18 different posters, many with multiple submissions. We had everything from more lo-fi cameras like pinhole, Holga, and Polaroid, to soft-focus and blurry shots, to some made on large format - it was a real mix and I have to say that I hard time narrowing down the list to just a few favourites in order to choose the winner. But choose I must!

Although I like all of the images submitted, in the end I decided a short list based on my understanding of wabi sabi, with the focus on the imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete (at least from a photographer's perspective). Thus I chose images that were more minimal in nature with a very clear subject and few other distractions. My short-list of favourites then, in no particular order, are Don Heisz's single blossom (although all three submissions are great), bdial's shadowed stairs, MattKing's forest floor foliage, awty's flower wabi sabi, moose22's washed away, darr's broken Buddha statue, and David Lingham's old boat.

From this list my top three would be the images from awty, darr, and David Lingham. And from these the winner is....David Lingham! The wild flowers overtaking the old boat to me really captures the spirit of the transience of time, both short- and long-term within nature and with man-made objects. And there's the added imperfection layer of it being a Holga image. But awty and darr, both of your images could have equally won this round, it really was coin-toss and very difficult to choose!

So David, you are up next with the theme for the next round. Again - apologies for the delay, hopefully this won't set the new round back too much.

 

[mfohl]

I had a few ideas for a theme but in looking at past assignments I see they've all been done before. So I'm going to go a little different and suggest the theme of wabi sabi. I'm a little apprehensive about suggesting it, but let's give it a go.

For those of you who are not familiar with this Japanese concept, I'll quote Leonard Koren, who wrote Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets,& Philosophers

“Wabi-sabi is the beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete, the antithesis of our classical Western notion of beauty as something perfect, enduring, and monumental.”

This is interpreted in many ways (especially in the West, where anything goes) but I've always understood it to be about the beauty of aging and/or deterioration, often of man-made items or of something that has had the hand of man influence it in some way. It could be an old farmhouse that has seen better days, a cracked vase holding a crooked branch, or cherry blossom petals floating on a slow moving river. There's often a feeling of nostalgia or melancholy associated with it, but not always. In terms of design it could be anything rough-hewn or made of natural materials, that is often asymmetrical or otherwise lacking in refinement.

I don't want to go overboard with examples, but hopefully that gives you some ideas. As I've already mentioned, it's a concept that's pretty open to interpretation so let's see what everyone comes up with!

Submissions can be OLD prints/negatives that were taken earlier in the year (or prior)
Submissions can be NEW prints/negatives taken during this month

For the updated MSA guidelines :
https://www.photrio.com/forum/threa...5-07-2019-07-and-2021-12.126124/#post-1667700


I think my winning image from April's theme could fit here (with the tree overtaking the temple gate), but here are a few other examples from my gallery posts (all lith prints, it's clear I like this process for these types of subjects):

Hey Rachelle, our camera club in Columbus has chosen "wabi sabi" as one of its assigned subjects for the upcoming year. I like photos in that style.

 

[mooseontheloose]

Hey Rachelle, our camera club in Columbus has chosen "wabi sabi" as one of its assigned subjects for the upcoming year. I like photos in that style.

So do I, although unfortunately like many things that get co-opted by popular culture a lot of modern interpretations of it are often way off the mark ("these photos of my children are wabi-sabi because they are impermanent and will die someday..."). I've had to remove myself from many social media groups claiming to be wabi-sabi because in reality it just ends up as a catch phrase for pretty pictures. That said, I was very happy with the contributions to this assignment and hopefully your camera club will see some interesting photos come about with this theme.