Mosquitos and irregular schedules...again
I keep waking up in the middle of the night, and this is something that I find highly unsustainable. That, and we also had mosquitoes: these don't seem so active in terms of biting, but will hover around my face incessantly; as I sleep with someone else in the room, I can't go wild in trying to get rid of them, and at the present moment I have no other strategy to handle this issue. Maybe a pre-sleep mosquito clearance is required. I could have woken up at 5:30AM – it was already quite bright – but instead I stayed for another cycle. So there will be no work in the field this morning, unfortunately. Even at 7AM, the sun is already quite bright: it feels equivalent to Portugal's 9 or even 10AM in the summer, on a very sunny day. It is quite strong, and this requires wiser dynamics in terms of work schedule.
meeting Simon Chang, the photographer
A little after lunch, we had a visit from another friend of the farm. Simon Chang, a Taiwanese photographer based in Slovenia, would meet the group in the beginning of the afternoon. Perfect timing: not only were we evading the hot starching sun, a break from all the work of these past couple of days would always be welcome.
Simon made a very visual impression right away: big black masses of paper were scattered throughout the table, punctuated by smaller, funny-sized books. All of it, photography books – some great paper, colours, thickness, even the smell of the pages! A true feast to the senses. And he's a great conversationalist, too: we were promptly engaged into discussing the photographing of strangers, being immersed in many scenarios, being invisible...
And I certainly haven't read many photography books – the only that immediately come to mind are both by Martjin Doolaard, with some breathtaking pictures of his travels thoughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas on his bikes –, and thus I was paying attention to how Simon laid out his photos, the typography choices, possible post-editing; all of it I inquired him about, and he very graciously answered – not without remarking the exquisite nature of the questions coming from someone with a programming background. Heh.
It was a very interesting and inspiring moment, and it really is a privilege that we get to be exposed to so many different stimuli in this volunteering project. Soon, some plans arose for some photography exercises; one of us shall photograph nature; another one, the work habits of the group; I'll be photographing the general geography of the farm, and the big barn kitchen in particular – it has gripped my attention from the first moment and I've thoroughly enjoyed cooking in it for this last week. There are some light plans of making prints (which I have never done!), and a very informal exposition of our work. This is, of course, very exciting; but it also feels like naively delving into a world we don't really belong to, more so after looking at Simon's incredible photography and book montage work.
He offered us a print of his work. It is written in Slovene: I can already make sense of some words, and some very small sentences; I'm excited to try and read through it!
