Mercato Centrale A Firenze, By Mara L.

Copyright 2008 Jens Haas - www.jenshaas.com

This past week I met up with Jens in Florence, at the Mercato Centrale – as it turned out, not Jens’ favorite location. Or rather, he is quite generally through with Italian cities, especially those that can be likened to large tourist traps. Jens was in a remarkably grumpy mood, while I was in heaven: Florence’s market has wonderful produce, incomparably nicer than anything you get in New York (however, there’s a certain naturalness here that is disturbing to the Manhattenite, birds come whole with heads, and so on). I was pushing Jens to make some photos for me of all the nice fish, or the half-cow that was brought in and cut up while we were there, but no, he is not only through with the beautiful little towns in my homeland, but also with the bit of food photography that I kept pushing him into over this past year. The only picture I could pressure him into taking was one of the sign for the bar where we had coffee… Anyway, I am back in the spheres of cooking and shall report soon on some amazing Austrian cake I made.

Coming Soon: Baked Goods

While We’re At It

Copyright 2008 Jens Haas - www.jenshaas.com

I think I’ve been to more exhibitions of Stephen Shore’s work over the past ten years than of any other photographer. But that was purely accidental – I am not all that interested in the staged approach of his more recent work. And I do not find an image interesting simply because it was made with a large format camera. However, I’ve never seen the reasoning behind using large format laid out better than in this interview. Of course, to achieve the effect Shore talks about, today you can use a high resolution digital camera of considerably smaller format as well – still, much of what is being said in the interview sounds convincing to me.

[See an update here.]

Guilty As Charged

Copyright 2008 Jens Haas - www.jenshaas.com

I remember working on the final edit of a book of photographs from a group of designers a couple of years ago, and at some point the book-designer buried his face in his hands and and asked, “what is it with designers taking pictures of rusty traffic signs?” Well, not only designers do that. This one from earlier today – guilty as charged…