11-XI-1978.
Timişoara. No clue what or why, just regular grocery. It's our far out supermarket. Saturday is a regular workday over there, which suits us perfectly.
These days we were imagining this Baja's movie, and for some reason wanted to drop by one Cvetko Bakaluca (in romanian probably Bacaluţ), also a DC-99 member. For his looks he kept reminding me of sir Oliver of Alan Ford. He lived alone in an old house smack downtown, in one of the sidestreets. He did advertising photography, wasn't really an amateur, but then the club also didn't have any policy against members who were professionals. These professionals, the local photographers, had their own small shops, photographed weddings, developed vacation photos, and generally considered the club an unfair competition and didn't even want to talk with us, except once one cursed us loudly when he got drunk enough.
But then Cvetko was a different kind of a professional, he wasn't a local shooter who'd retouche any old hag to appear some ten years younger and have a twinkle in her eyes, didn't have a shop, but rather, I guess, kept paying his own social dues as a free artist, which was then a way to get paid for what he was doing.
Just remembered how mom criticised me for my photos being more successful years ago, and now with the accumulated equipment and knowledge they come out worse. Well, yes, actually, but that's because there were a hundred things I wanted to try but didn't have the gear, and now I can. Sorry for seeing the failed attempts, can't avoid them.
We came to him one morning, there was a really good fog, and didn't find him at home. So it happens, most of us have no phone lines, so every now and then we spend half an hour of walk to go kiss someone's door. We left him a note. His backyard is really pictoresque, the pressed clay walls were whitewashed with earthen colors probably at least twenty times so far, and each time the humidity would push out and the wall would shed a few layers of paint, in a spotty manner. I couldn't resist, now that we've got into the swing with developing color material, I simply had to snap this shot.
Rorschach himself would never be able to paint a thing like this, not even in oil.
And then I had to do this too, because it set itself up right in front of me as I sat to write that note. The spider web spanned the upper frame of the banister, and the dew had condensated on it. Thing like this can't be let to pass away, one rather unscrews the objective, and leans it backwards, the handy technique for macro photography which I perfected ever since I got the praktika, and snap. Didn't turn out bad when printed on paper, but now as it got scanned and I managed to drag out the contrast the way I then imagined it should be, it finally looks like I wanted it to.
As per that note we eventually scheduled a sitting one evening, his place. We two came, Baja, and two-three more guys from the club (Zoran, Goran, Vlada... fuck me if I remember). Cvetko's chick is some basketball player, tall blonde and strong, plays for kombinat, not really a two-meter but impresses as one. I don't remember that she said anything, and then we never saw here afterwards. Of drinks I also don't remember what stiff stuff was there, the hit of the day was tut gut, new product from the local brewery. The barley malt, i.e. not quite fermented, still no alcohol. Something like young wine translated into beer language. It was interesting, specially when it soon became clear that it's perfect to mix with strong stuff, made good cocktails with anything that didn't have too much of its own fragrance.
Cvetko showed us how the double reverse process worked, i.e. how to make prints from diapositives. It uses special paper, from Cibachrome, and the developers are sheer poison, don't pour down the drain before neutralizing with yet another chemical that also came with the package. The prints, though, look phenomenal, just couldn't believe that a simple house lab can produce such quality. Well, a proffessional. The whole parade costs an arm and leg, but he sells it quite well, advertising photography is an expensive sport but it pays well, if you're seriously doing it.
Mentions: Alan Ford, DC-99, Jablan Škanata (Baja), kombinat, praktika, in serbian
28-II-2021 - 11-XI-2025