Saturday 31 December 2011

Monique van der Steen - Ten Seconds Project

Yesterday a submission from the Netherlands came through. Photographer Monique van der Steen has created a great contribution with her matching wallpaper hiding trick. 

See her photograph and video below (make sure you watch the video!)




To see more of Monique's work go to www.moniquevandersteen.nl
Join the game of hide and seek with your camera, and submit to alma@haser.org www.tensecondsproject.co.uk 

Tuesday 27 December 2011

Submission from Gandro on holiday in Norway

They call themselves Gandro 
All the pictures and videos were taken in norway and can all be seen on the Ten Seconds Project website,






To join in, read the rules and hide and submit

Friday 23 December 2011

Ten Seconds Project Submissions December

I have received three more submissions in the last few days, Please take a look at them, they are all great! www.tensecondsproject.co.uk

I need a few more Ten Seconds from people before I can start organising the Exhibition, so if you like you work see in a gallery in London and want to have some fun, join in! (and tell all you friends)











Friday 16 December 2011

Follow The Red Line

Recently EAGERmagazine submitted a great Ten Seconds which you can see here.


Now the lovely girls from EAGER have asked me to join their new project, 'Red Line'
"Wouldn't it be cool to connect photographers all over the world? We think so. That's why we started this quest for the longest conceptual photo series ever!" - EAGERmagazine, connecting people with a red line.


Here is my contribution:



Go to their website to see the rest of the submissions and and how to enter the project.


Tuesday 13 December 2011

December Submission for the ten Seconds project

Ignacio Pérez Pérez and Fantomas the cat created some great photographs and videos for the Ten Seconds Project. To check out all his submissions go to www.tensecondsproject.co.uk






And to see more of Ignacio Pérez Pérez performance art go to www.antesdenadaydespuesdetodo.net


Tuesday 29 November 2011

The Other Art Fair

Last weekend myself and my London house mate Alex Simpson shared a stand at The Other Art Fair.
It was held at the Barge House behind the OXO Tower on South Bank from the 25th-27th November.
A que was formed to get in on the 24th for the Private View and there was an excellent turn out for the rest of the weekend. I met some great people and have made lots of new contacts. A great experience for anyone to find out more about their own work and how to sell and talk to customers and galleries.
This was the first year of the fair, so it will be exciting to see what the next one will be like.

Here are some photographs from our stand.











Tuesday 1 November 2011

The Ten Seconds Project on Dazed and Confused

The Ten Seconds Project has been getting a lot of attention recently. Today Dazed and Confused is featuring a Q&A with me and the project. Also EAGERmagazine have featured it on the online magazine and even contributed to the project. Go check out the recent submissions! www.tensecondsproject.co.uk














Top left to bottom right: Alex Simpson, James Stokes, Petra Oldengarm and Jessica van der Burg and Joe Ryan.

Thursday 29 September 2011

Ten Seconds Project

Today I have launched the Ten Seconds Project website. I have created it so everyone can find out more and join in with this exciting game of hide and seek with camera's.

Anyone can do it.

The 'Ten Seconds' Rules
To join in with the project there are a few things you have to do, it's all very easy and fun.

1. Get together with some friends, or you can do this on your own (which is what I did.)

2. Get two cameras, one to take the picture and the other to record the video. 
You can tape the cameras together to get them levelled and in the same position. 
A tripod is very useful and recommended, but you can get creative and use furniture or shelves.

3. Find a small space, area to hide in. 
(It is often funnier if you don't practice getting in the space before taking the picture, 
but you can always re-take the shot as many times as you like.) 

4. Press both shutters (the video first and then the self-timer) and the run to hide.

5. Once you have taken both video and photograph and are happy with them, 
send them over to me at alma@haser.org. And I will upload them on here for all to see. 

If I get enough people interested in playing this game, I will not only create an online exhibition, 
but would like to make a traveling show, (you will of course all be credited.) 


Check out the website www.tensecondsproject.co.uk and join in with this exciting project!


Here is the Press Release: 

The Ten Seconds Project  

Alma Haser has created The Ten Seconds Project paying homage to her childhood version of the game, hide and seek. Here is how it all began; when Alma was a child she used to play with her younger brother, Oskar. They lived in an old match factory deep in the Black Forest in Germany. Both parents were artists, and their home was extremely creative. They made handcrafted toys and allowed their children the freedom to run wild.

Alma’s father often filmed his children while they played. When she rediscovered archive footage of herself as a child it sparked the idea for this project. After watching the home video of her and her brother playing their own version of hide and seek, she decided to recreate the game with her adult self and her camera.

Now Alma is playing against herself. She chooses the hiding locations and sets up her cameras to record and seek. The new rule to the game is that she only has ten seconds before the self-timer goes off and she is caught on camera.

The Ten Seconds Project has already attracted interest from galleries, magazines and other artists. Kate Edwards the Guardian picture editor said, “Brilliant project - I really like it, and love the way you have developed it from recreating a childhood game to videoing the process. It’s really clever and I agree, could well go viral.”  

Alma has now created a website to allow other people to join in the game. She plans to start an online craze and then eventually when there are enough entries, to start a travelling exhibition. Anyone and everyone can join in; you need two cameras, one to take the picture and one to video yourself as you hide. For the rules and more information please go to www.tensecondsproject.co.uk or email alma@haser.org.

Thursday 25 August 2011

Candid Arts Trust


My 'Ten Seconds' project will be showing at the Candid Arts Trust in London, from 2nd - 11th September 2011. So if you about please do go and check it out.

The Private View is on Thursday 1st September, first floor Gallery from 6-9pm and its FREE, so your all welcome. Unfortunately I wont be there in person, but I will in spirit and on the walls in my pictures!

Featuring new work by:
Alma Haser
Emma Walker
Geoff Bartholomew
Hannah O Hara
Jasmine Cooke
John Maher
Kayung Lai
Khyle Henderson
Kyle Zeto
Louisa Maxwell
Norma Walton
Oliver Watson
Olly Clarke
Rebecca Hallett
Rocio Pe Efe
Ruso Bochorishvili
Tamzin Plummer
Thomas Bacon


Open Daily
12 noon - 6pm


More information at:
http://www.candidarts.com

Wednesday 10 August 2011

Places we go

Last Summer I went traveling around Europe. I traveled to Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Budapest, Haslach (my home town in Germany,) Luxemburg, back to Budapest, Spain, Copenhagen and then back to England. Spain was a very spontaneous visit, to see my Granddad and to get some sun (it had been raining the past weeks in Budapest.) My granddad and I had a few relaxing days together up in the southern mountains of Spain. One day we walked up the mountain overlooking the town of Gaucin where my grandfather lives. I took my pinhole polaroid camera he had given me a few years ago and propped it up on rocks or trees before joining my granddad for a few seconds. The polaroid film is very out of date, and that is why it has a ghostly blue tinge.


(Granddad and I, September 2010)

I decided to do the same kind of series with Pat when he visited. We went to Bath in Somerset one afternoon and took these five polaroids.


(Pat and I, August 2011)

Back to the Darkroom

Last week my friend Pat from Australia came to visit. We both have a big passion for photography and decided to take advantage of my mothers old darkroom equipment which had been abandoned in our studio. There was no dark space we could adapt in our studio, so we moved everything to my mothers new house, into the utility room.
Pat and I both searched high and low for the developing tanks for film, but with no luck. Instead of wasting time we thought we'd spend the time experimenting with Black & White photographic paper. We cut the right sizes and loaded our cameras. I was using my 4x5 Crown Graphic, and Pat was using his 120 pin hole camera. The results were better than we had expected and it was great to be able to run down stairs after shooting and popping the sheets of paper into the trays to see the pictures apear. Man I love being back in the darkroom!

Here are some of the shots I took (all of which have been scanned in and inverted.)

(This is the first portrait I took of Pat, click on the image to see the quality.)

(I'm out of focus, I must have placed my head slightly more forward than Pat.)

(My brother and his girlfriend came by the house so I took a quick portrait of them both, they are brutally honest pictures.)

(The portraits are great but creating scenes of narrative is what I love to do most of all! Click on the image to see larger.)

Now I want to experiment with black & white film and then possibly hand tinting my prints..This was something I did earlier today.

(These are just a pictures I took of the photos with my phone.)


Three golden apples

The story and idea came from the greek myth - "After Atalanta participated in the hunt and received the pelt, her father claimed her as his offspring and wanted her to get married. Although a very beautiful maiden, Atalanta did not particularly want to marry after an oracle told her that she will gain bad luck if she marries. In order to get her a husband, her father made a deal with Atalanta that she would marry anybody who could beat her in a foot race. Atalanta happily agreed, as she could run extremely fast.
She outran many suitors. The one that finally became her husband accomplished this through brains, not speed. Hippomenes (also known as Melanion) knew that he could not win a fair race with Atalanta, so he prayed to Aphrodite for help. The goddess gave him three golden apples (sometimes the fruit was quince instead) and told him to drop them one at a time to distract Atalanta. Sure enough, she quit running long enough to retrieve each golden apple. It took all three apples and all of his speed, but Hippomenes finally succeeded, winning the race and Atalanta's hand."

Friday 15 July 2011

Dusk and Dawn test shots for my Hare project.

The 'Hare' project:
My surname, Haser, means Hare in German. For one of my first University projects I photographed 'Alma Roads' all around England, with people from the street. (click here to see the series.) So I thought it would be fun to now do something with my surname. I read a poem called 'The Names of the Hare in English' with over 70 descriptions of the hare. I wanted to create a photograph for each description, or at least the ones I could relate to.

Shoot 1:
14th-15th July 2011
Last night my mother and I ventured into the corn fields above our house. I had been meaning to start my 'Hare' project for some time, and recently I had bought myself a smart white suit that would be my costume for the project. It only seemed right not to waste anymore time. So at 19:30 mum and I carried my 5x4 camera up to the fields, mum for the first time, was my assistant. She was also wearing white so that I could use her as my stand in to focus the camera and get the right light reading. After a bit of cursing and shouting we got the shot.

The next morning at 05:00 we got back into our white gear and drove back up to the fields. It was very misty and the sky was beautifully pink. The idea of this picture was to have two paths and myself walking down the one facing away from the house. I was re-creating 'The one who doesn't go straight home.'

DUSK
(digital test shot)

DAWN
(test shot with my mother modelling for focusing and light purposes only)


Monday 20 June 2011

My 'Ten Seconds' Project

When I was a little girl, I used to play with my younger brother, Oskar. I was always the boss, and directed what we had to do. We often played hide and seek, but had invented our own way of playing it. I would tell Oskar where to hide, and then count and look aimlessly around pretending not to know where he was. Or we would both hide and get our father, who used to look after us in the mornings, to be the finder. Our hiding places were never very hidden, and in most cases still revealed our small feet or bottoms, but never our faces.

‘Ten Seconds’ is a series of photographs that pay homage to our childhood game. I am now a lot older, and my brother is out in the world, all grown up. I have based ‘Ten Seconds’ on the game we used to play. This time I am directing myself, and the new rule is that I have ten seconds to try and hide, or make myself as small as I possibly can, before my camera goes off on self-timer.

I have also been recording the game with a camcorder, so that I am almost my own seeker, my adult body squeezed into confined spaces, never completely concealed, but also never revealing my true identity.

When we were children, our father used to video us playing. The home movie of my brother and me playing our own invention of Hide and Seek will be shown as part of the Series.



























I think this project has the potential to go viral. Recently a new craze appeared, called ‘Planking.’ A person has to lie flat with their arms by their sides; feet stretched out and face looking downwards, expressionless. People all around the world are joining the craze and posting their photographic evidence on Face Book. ‘Planking’ has encouraged creativity and resourcefulness, and brought a community of people together from all different walks of life.

‘Ten Seconds’ could do something similar. Through play, people will be encouraged to be creative and inspire others. I would love to originate a harmless game that involves good photography. Using social media, I would want to make this game ‘viral,’ so that anyone can join in, set the self-timers on their cameras, and hide in the smallest places available.

If you'd like to join me in my mission or just ask a question email me, alma@haser.org

Sunday 12 June 2011

A rainy Sunday afternoon

'Ten seconds in the kitchen'




'Ten seconds in the cupboard'



'Ten seconds in the rain'