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A promise of great things to come... |
| 15/02/2012 |
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I dislike getting packages. I really do. It means I have to take my ID go all the way to the post office in Overport Centre (which is a shit hole), stand in the queue (which seems to get longer every time I go) and redeem my flimsy piece of paper usually for a returned BOMBsurf mag because someone has filled out their address details incorrectly.
This Saturday was different though. I’d been avoiding the chore all week when finally it could be put off no longer. With my game face on I braved the pleasures of Overport City and the post office.
My weary resignation gave way to surprise then timid hope as I saw the package I was collecting. The Ucapah Selamat Indonesian marked postal stamps plastered down the one side of the package promised something different.
These days with fast file sharing services like drop box, yousendit and we transfer contributors don’t bother to send discs anymore, it is all handled online. It is by and large a much more efficient process actually. However every now and then you get surprised.
My first though was ‘who is it from?’. Like a little child at Christmas I flipped the manila envelope over. This package was travelling one way only as there was no return to sender on the back, instead a one line email address lanceslabbert@gmail.com.
I smiled to myself and rushed home to see what was on the disc. Though I haven’t see much of him in recent years Lance and I go back quite a bit. At a time when I was wandering around the world penniless looking for the next wave to surf, Lance was one of the powerhouses of global surf photography. In fact between him and Chris Van Lennup they pretty much dominated the scene in the 90’s. I’m not just talking about locally in SA. These guys were amongst the best in the world, if not THE best. They shot for SURFER and Surfing and a bunch of other international titles. Both of them were formidable swimmers, but they were very different people with very different approaches. Chris was an endurance machine, he would swim all day at Pipe just to get the shot done. Lance was a creative genus who constantly found ways to present a new take on things. They were both incredibly brave. In fact Lance was the first photographer I ever saw swimming at Waimea Bay on a day so big that The Bay closed out. I know that because I was right next to him when we both got caught inside… |
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I digress. Unplanned and uncoordinated I had this uncanny knack of bumping into Lance all over the world. I’d be walking down the street in London waiting for my connection back to SA and bang I’d bump into Lance. Or as mentioned previously I’d paddle out at Waimea to find him out there shooting. This happened with such regularity at one point we both joked about where we’d see each other next.
So now having not spoken to him in ages this package arrives at my door bringing all the thoughts and memories with it.
Most often when you get a body of work by a photographer you’ll get one or two great pics and quite a few average ones.
These days what happens is that the photogs will send low res viewing copies via email. If you then select the image you request the high res and they’ll send it using an FTP service. Call him old school, but Lance hadn’t f@#ked around. He’d sent the high res Tiff’s, 45 images at 50 odd Megs an image. Talk about the motherload!
As I scrolled through image after image mesmerised by what I was looking at I had only one thought. This body of work should be displayed in an art gallery in New York, not sitting on some hack publisher’s broken down Mac in hot humid Durban SA, the arse end of the world.
I contemplate the humble presentation of this work and wonder at its real value in terms of changing the way we think about and choose to interpret the ocean’s lineage and our relationship with it.
I have no idea what prompted him to send these to me after all this time, but what I can say is that you are in for a real treat when we share some of these images with you in our June Issue.
John |
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| Posted by Lance on the 16/02/2012 05:42 |
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| Posted by Millerslocal on the 16/02/2012 07:43 |
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| Posted by Emma-joan McPherson on the 16/02/2012 11:49 |
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| Posted by mark on the 16/02/2012 12:45 |
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| Posted by Lance on the 16/02/2012 19:37 |
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| Posted by rene on the 20/02/2012 09:35 |
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| Posted by glennintune on the 20/02/2012 14:36 |
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| Posted by Jack on the 20/02/2012 15:19 |
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| Posted by John McC on the 20/02/2012 16:09 |
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| Posted by Douglas on the 22/02/2012 01:01 |
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| Posted by Rizky on the 17/03/2012 09:17 |
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| Posted by Yamila on the 02/05/2012 12:32 |
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