TITLE: Ghosts of Brno

Ghosts are a metaphor of my darkest memories. Do you remember yours? This series was born out of a mistake and a lucky day. It is a progression of light to darkness. I had just arrived to Brno, the second largest city in the Czech Republic, in late February. It was miserably cold, but my first week there it was sunny. I didn’t see the sun again this way for another month or two – keeping me and my camera away from the streets – long exposure photography in damp, freezing weather is taxing. I was sorting images, and it struck me: ghosts. I aimed for trams as they moved across the streets, but instead got eerie outlines of people. In this series, twice you’ll see a “ghost” stand out to others, first as a dark figure in Masarykova Street (1), then up close in (7). Two images take the lead title Ghosts of Brno (2 & 3) since they set my theme, completely by chance. In the first (2), I looked to capture a moving tram, which I did in other images of the composition, but individual people stood out. Seeing the world as a sea of ghosts, better represented by (3), feels like many photographers do: lonely - out of frame - always a willing contestant but never a subject to your photographs. This then leads to (4), a moving tram on a quiet, desolate Sunday, and (5), distant “ghosts”, both reflections of true loneliness to me. The penultimate image is of Brno’s beautiful gothic cathedral which I took from Špilberk Castle – a prison in the Middle Ages – both figurative ghosts of bygone eras. I close this series with “the old apparition” (7), a haunting image, and my closest encounter with these “ghosts”.

AUTHOR: Alejandro Cruz (Mexico)

My name is Alex, from Mexico, and I'm 23 years old. Through film and old gear, I discovered my love for photography. I realize most of my peers seem to look out for the next best thing - the fastest, sharpest lens, the best bokeh, the cleanest image - but I find myself lost in old oddities and emotion. I want to capture moments, feelings and movement, but above all, I want meaning in my work. I find more significance in a story behind an image than in its technical aspects, and I don't care much for new gear, instead I hunt for old stuff that will do the job. I can recall a funny situation when looking for film in California. I went in to a store - the film tech there couldn't help but laugh - I had a thirty year old Olympus lens on my Canon camera, which I stored in a Nikon bag; inside, a Russian Zenit lens, my grandfather’s 60's Minolta, and a 70's Fujica with an aged Carl Zeiss lens. That's me. I find it beautifully limiting, forcing me to get the shot right the very first time, every time. Film, the best teacher I’ve had in this medium, is quite impractical this day and age, so I often try the next best thing: fitting old lenses to new camera bodies. I've lost track of how many adapters I've had, and how many Russian lenses have died on me (and yet, for some reason I keep buying them). I love photography, it fills me with joy: 6 out of 7 days I'm out with a camera. It's a third eye with which I can see the world in many ways I never thought possible. People and expression change behind a lens: it is my job to find those moments when it seems the camera isn't there at all. Truth behind a captured moment. The beauty of symmetry. The abstraction and logic of movement. The colors of a sunset. The dull, dreary white of an overcast winter's day. The nights in the streets of a city, unforgiving to a camera yet beautiful to the eye. I was born and raised in Mexico, but with the camera I became a citizen of the world.