Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Old photos - little tales

Both of these short pieces are made of old photos and some music from my friend. The Old Shoemaker did work on Sniperstreet 1977 and I made a photo reportage of him then. Black and white negatives were still in my boxes and as I had some new photos of the same spot I thought 'why not?' Toivo Laakso was a remarkable old man, kind and so peaceful that surely he was worth a little memoir...

The quality of photos is not good but I think that in this kind of work it's not important, on the contrary: shining and glamorous pics would be pretty much out of place!



And the other one, a walk in Tallinna on a saturday morning 1998: me and the boys then 8 and 10 years. I had last visited Tallinna 1975 while working on Ilmatar for Matkayhtymä, travelling agency, that made so called 'vodka cruises', the ship was on international waters for 24 hours and the passengers could buy alcohol tax free. It was a horror story and the city of Tallinn was grey and miserable. 1998 everything had changed and Tallinn was a lively growing modern city with a lot happening everywhere!

Our walk took place in the old Tallinn, where repairs and restoring was done, and also new houses erected, I still had my film camera, Olympus OM-2, and shot maybe six or seven rolls of slides. In the original slides the quality is good, but as these are scanned with a kind of mirror prism... so and so, why to explain something everyone can see! Again I think it is the feeling, atmosphere, that is important, not the shine! It is an idyllic medieval town we see in pictures!





The Old Shoemaker 1977



Tallinna 1998 - old slides

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