VISIONDECEMBER 2013

by Vision Explorers

VISIONWelcome to

Keeping the Spirit Alive !

Does Art always have to be beautiful? Is its only purpose to serve the audience with a joyful experience of awe and magnificence or can it also be used by the artists as another language to express a variety of difficult emotions? This may infinitely differ for different eyes of the beholder,

but all can agree that art comes from the heart in order to touch the heart. If we're lucky something is presented in such a unique way as to change hearts, minds and eyes.

! That is exactly what Cole Thompson has done in his body of work ‘Auschwitz – Birkenau’. This presentation came from the depths of the heart to convey the heights of the spirit of those who

have lived and died in Auschwitz –Birkenau. During the Second World War Winston Churchill’s advisors urged him to cut down on the budget allocated to the arts to divert more funding into the security war efforts. Churchill’s answer was: “Then what are we fighting for?” In honor of all those

that have lived and died in the Nazi death camps, we dedicate this issue. !

What comes from the heart speaks to the heart - Jewish aphorism !

Sincerely, !

Joel, Sharon, Armand and Daniel The Vision Explorers Team

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Melbourne & Great Ocean Road

May / June, 2014

In 2014 the Vision Explorers team will be heading to Australia for two exciting workshops. We’ll start off with 3 day a fine art architectural photography workshop in Melbourne,

Australia’s architectural hotspot, on May 30 - June 1, 2014. !

The following weekend we’ll be offering a 3 day fine art seascape and landscape photography workshop along the Great Ocean Road, one of the most spectacular stretches of coast line in the world. Join us for this unique photography adventure on June 6 - 8, 2014.

visionexplorers.com/melbourne-2014

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AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU

The Ghosts of

Cole Thompson

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“Auschwitz No. 14” by Cole Thompson

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I would like to set the stage for this image, Auschwitz No. 14, by telling the story of how "The Ghosts of Auschwitz-Birkenau" came about. !My wife and I were visiting my son who was serving in the Peace Corps in Ukraine. Because I'm part Polish, we decided to visit Poland and stayed in Krakow. As we planned our activities, the family voted on visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau. This did not please me for I am a "sensitive." I am saddened by certain situations and try to avoid them, and visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau was certainly one of those situations. But the family had voted and so along I went. We arrived on a tour bus and because it was not safe for me to

leave my equipment onboard, I carried it with me. However I had not planned on photographing there as I thought it might be sacrilegious or at least in bad taste. !The tour started indoors and we were shown photographs and detailed descriptions of the prisoners before they were murdered. I was struck by how beautiful the black and white portraits were of the prisoners, clearly the photographer was talented. But it all seemed so odd to me, why go to all that trouble to document a person you were about to murder? !Then we visited the rooms with the iconic piles of glasses, shoes and hair. This was just the

beginning of the tour and a feeling of suffocation overcame me. I am not claustrophobic, but I needed to get out of that room and into open air, and so I signalled to my family that I was going outside. !Once outside and breathing easier, I found myself walking very slowly and looking down at my feet. I began to wonder about those who had walked in these very same footsteps and were now dead. I thought about the people who had walked this same path and then had been murdered. I wondered, metaphorically perhaps, if their spirits still lingered here? And then it hit me, I must photograph the spirits of those who had lived and died at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

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My goal was to portray Auschwitz-Birkenau as a place where real people

lived and died, and not just a historical place or a museum.

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I wish I could take credit for carefully and thoughtfully planning each image, but I cannot. I arrived at the camp with no intention of photographing and I left two hours later with 16 images. I saw, I felt and I created. There was no time for thinking. I composed and photographed by instinct and then literally ran to the next location. My goal? To portray Auschwitz-Birkenau as a place where real people lived and died, and not just a historical place or a museum. !My creations are not calculated, they are not pre-planned and they are not a result of following formulas or rules. I do not work that way and find that such planning actually hurts my creative process. !But I do have one rule that I religiously follow and I call it "Cole's Rule of Thirds" (I'm poking a little fun at the rules of

photography). My rule of thirds states: !A great image is comprised of 1/3 vision, 1/3 the shot and 1/3 processing. !A great image begins and ends with your vision. Vision is a tough concept to describe, but I think each of us instinctively know how we want our image to look, and our job as an artist is to bring that image into compliance with our vision. !When we pursue an image with vision, then equipment and process becomes the servant and the creative process the master. It’s only then that great images can occur. !When I am following my Vision, I am guided by my feelings. I look at a scene and compose it so that feels right. I've had people look at my images and then tell

me that they don't follow the rules of composition. I remember one image in particular where a woman told me that it didn’t follow the rule of thirds and that I shouldn’t have put the horizon on the center line. !I marvelled that she could not see that the composition was absolutely perfect! This kind of blindness is one of the reasons I advocate not knowing or following the rules. Look, see and think for yourself. Working with Vision doesn't mean that you're always spot on; most of my images end up on the cutting room floor and the public never sees those failures. But following your Vision is so much better than trying to distill a great composition down to a few rules. Those rules may create safe and mildly pleasing images that are suitable for a pretty calendar, but they'll never create great images that you'll love and be proud of.

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“Auschwitz No. 1” by Cole Thompson

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“Auschwitz No. 4” by Cole Thompson

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These are long exposures and I used the unsuspecting visitors at the camp as proxies for those who had lived and died there. I had some previous experience with long exposures and so I was somewhat prepared for this idea. However I didn't have experience using long exposures to turn people into ghosts, and so I wasn't sure if it would work. Thank goodness for digital with its immediate feedback, otherwise I could not have created these images in two hours and I certainly could not have done this with film. At each location I was faced with an unexpected challenge; when

the tourists saw my camera on a tripod, they would politely move out of my way, which is exactly what I didn’t want! So I quickly devised a trick to lure them back in: I would turn my back on the camera and talk on my cell phone. Then they would move back in, and using a remote shutter release, I would trigger the shutter. !I had to take a number of images at each location because the ghosting effect is dependent upon people moving, and so if someone stopped during the exposure, the image didn’t work.

I envisioned this as a very dark series with bright ghosts. I underexposed my images by about one stop to give a dark feeling to them, and then further burned down all distractions from the scene including the skies. I then dodged up the ghosts so that the eye was drawn to them. !But the most important element in the creation of these images was my Vision, not my long exposure technique or my Photoshop processing skills. Vision drove the image from start to finish: it guided the shot and directed the post-processing.

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“Auschwitz No. 13” by Cole Thompson

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Most of the time, and certainly for this body of work, I instantly know how I want the image to look. For "The Ghosts of Auschwitz-Birkenau" the challenge was not to find my Vision, but rather how to translate that Vision onto paper. !I had never done work like this before and so I had to develop the Photoshop skills to make it possible. Many photographers believe that the skills come first,

and only then is the Vision possible. I strongly disagree. I think the better way to approach art is to know what you want and then to develop the skills as they are required to fulfil that Vision. Too often we as photographers are very good at the technical, but we are weak on the Vision. This can create technically perfect but soulless images. !Auschwitz No. 14 is my favorite image from the series for many

reasons. Compositionally I think it's a good image and the rendering of the ghosts shows a lot of energy and anger. Another other reason it's a personal favorite is because it reminds me of the fate of the camp commandant Rudolf Hoess. !To the right of the guard tower is the gallows where the Poles hung him after his trial, this is the same location where he would torture and kill camp dissidents.

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The most important element in the creation of these images was my Vision, not my long exposure technique or my Photoshop processing skills.

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