Gary Draluck | Burning Man

Photo © Gary Draluck-All Rights Reserved

Brace yourself for over 100 unique photographs of the incredible Burning Man 2015 festival by photographer Gary Draluck, and set some time aside to view scenes that are so unusual that I thought these were from another planet.

According to Wikipedia, Burning Man is an annual gathering that takes place at Black Rock City—a temporary community erected in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. The event is described as an experiment in community and art, influenced by 10 main principles, including "radical" inclusion, self-reliance and self-expression, as well as community cooperation, gifting and (sic) "decommodification", and leaving no trace.

Some describe the Burning Man festival as a socialist utopia; bringing thousands of people to an empty desert to create an alternative society. Money is banned, advertisements are taboo, and this creates a gift economy. Others are critical of it, describing it as a week-long art party in a handmade city in an inhospitable environment, and that is being taken over by the rich Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.

Whatever side of this divide one belongs to, the fact remains that Burning Man is wonderfully photogenic, weird, alien...almost extra terrestrial, and has a Mad Max-style environment.

Gary Draluck is a multi faceted photographer from Oakland, California, who's enamored with music and musical photography, with emphasis on tango, and naturally on Burning Man which he visited many times. He's also an alum of the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop (Chiang Mai chapter).

Lou Bopp | The Blues Musicians

Photo © Lou Bopp-All Rights Reserved

One of my earliest music loves was the Delta Blues (aka Mississippi Blues), and consequently a major must-do on my bucket list is photographing authentic non-famous blues musicians in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and spend time with them to document their music making.

It's more than a major must-do...it's an itch that keeps recurring every now and then....especially when I chance on the work of talented photographer such as Lou Bopp who traveled in the Mississippi Delta to do just that.

Originating in the Mississippi Delta, the Delta blues is one of the earliest styles of blues music. The area is famous both for its fertile soil and its poverty, and as consequence gave birth to a soulful and passionate vocals.  Guitar, harmonica and cigar box guitar are the dominant instruments used, with slide guitar (usually on the steel guitar) being a hallmark of the style.

The Blues Musicians is one of the many galleries on Lou Bopp's website that features his work on the blues. He had long been a fan of the music, so he knew he had to go to Clarksdale and surrounding areas in order to photograph some of its remaining legends. He drove on Route 61— the “Blues Highway”—and ventured down dirt roads and stopped into juke joints that featured these legendary musicians.

Much more on this project can be found on Behold, Slate magazine's photo blog. He also participated in the production of Moonshine & Mojo Hands, a web series about the Delta Blues. It'll give you a little taste of what this type of blues is all about.

Gary Draluck | Burning Man

Photo © Gary Draluck-All Rights Reserved

"Trying to explain what Burning Man is to someone who has never been to the event is a bit like trying to explain what a particular color looks like to someone who is blind." www.burningman.com

For those who are not familiar with Burning Man (I had heard of it, and seen some of its photographic coverage, but not much more),  Gary Draluck attended the festivals a few times and features many of his candid photographs on his website. It will give you an excellent overview of this unique festival, which rivals many others in terms of exoticism. Having viewed Gary's photo essay makes me wonder if the Burning Man is not our reply to India's Kumbh Mela.

The Burning Man is a week-long annual event held in the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada. The event begins on the last Monday in August, and ends on the first Monday in September, coinciding with the American Labor Day holiday.

It takes its name from the ritual burning of a large wooden effigy on the week's Saturday evening. It's described by many participants as an experiment in community, art, radical self-expression, and radical self-reliance.

I met Gary during the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop in Chiang Mai last summer. He's a California-based photographer, and is enamored by tango (as I am). 

Magdalena Solé | The Mississippi Delta

Photo © Magdalena Sole-All Rights Reserved

"To understand the world, you must first understand 

a place like Mississippi". William Faulkner

The other day I found an invitation in my mail from the Leica Gallery on Broadway for The Mississippi Delta exhibition by photographer Magdalena Solé.

The invitation described the exhibition as being a photographic exploration of the Delta communities in the Deep South. Communities such as the sharecroppers, plantations, and conjuring up the sound of the Blues. The area is known for its small wealthy gentry, and the "large impoverished underclass living in dilapidated house and tilting trailers". Naturally, Ms Solé worked in Clarksdale, which has been historically significant in the history of the Blues, and is now a mecca for those photographers and other documentarians who seek to document this musical genre, and lifestyle.

Her photographs also formed the basis for her book New Delta Rising, which won a prestigious award in France. She used Leica M8 and M9 cameras for the project preferring them because they're small, and portable...while allowing her to remain virtually invisible. The photograph used in the exhibition's invitation (above) is really fabulous...the expressions of the two men (and the dog), and the juxtaposition of all the characters in the frame is just perfect.

Magdalene Sole was born in Spain and raised in Switzerland. She arrived in New York City in 1984 where she still lives.

I'm not terribly fond of attending exhibitions as such, but I certainly intend to drop by the Leica Gallery for that exhibition, which runs from January 11 to February 23, 2013. I will post about what my impressions are when I do so.

Election Day

"Vote For Obama" chalk graffiti on a sidewalk in SoHo.  

David Michael Kennedy: American-Indian Dance

©David Michael Kennedy-All Rights Reserved

I infrequently blog about photography projects or galleries of American subjects on The Travel Photographer simply because it's not really one of my self-professed purviews, but once in a while I stumble on photographic work that easily transcends this reference point.

The work of David Michael Kennedy is one of those.

David Michael Kennedy is an art photographer from New Mexico who lived in New York City, specializing in portraits of musicians such as Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Muddy Waters for magazine and album covers. Having moved to New Mexico in the mid 80's, he focused on Native American culture, and more recently wandered back roads photographing preachers, craw-fishermen  RV-ers, buffaloes, longhorns, cowboys and mystics.

He wandered in a 1959 Airstream trailer outfitted with a wet darkroom, and took all his photographs with a handmade 4x5 camera using Polaroid positive/negative film, which he developed in the trailer then made contact prints using the archaic platinum palladium process.

Having worked with a 4x5 camera, he is now revisiting the square format with a Hasselblad.

An interesting interview with NPR is here.

Alex Webb: Streets of Chicago

"I did not have a goal in mind. In fact, I do not have goals in mind when I photograph. I respond to what I see before me." 

Reading Alex Webb's interview on The Leica Camera Blog, I gasped (figuratively) when I got to these phrases. How refreshing to read something said by a photographer that is so devoid of pretension! No bullshit here. He responds to what he sees. He doesn't pretend to see a La Pieta (as some did in Samuel Aranda's World Press winning photograph) in any of his frames...an honest guy and comfortable in his own skin, this Alex Webb.

Perhaps uncharacteristically for many street photographers, he chose to photograph Chicago's character in color. Having mostly worked in color since 1979, Alex tells us he respond to color, and that black and white for him at this time isn't an option. He sees in color and feels in color, so works in color...for him, it's that simple.

That's an interesting statement. When I walk the streets of New York with my camera, I see in color as well, and certainly photograph in color. However, when I return home and view the resulting images, there are some that work better in monochrome than in color. This is the advantage of digital photography, which allows us to alternate between the two. Purists may disagree and will extol the incomparable qualities of Tri-X film and others...but there's no denial that we currently have the best of two worlds.

Since buying a Leica M9, I've been working on a long term project which will involve producing an audio slideshow of my street photographs of New York City. Alex Webb's Streets of Chicago certainly will inspire me to complete my project. I haven't yet decided whether my photographs will be in color or black & white, but after viewing his work, I am inclined towards color.

Amy Helene Johansson: 88 1/2

I'm extremely pleased to feature Amy Helene Johansson's evocative new work titled 88 1/2; a 5 minutes film which revolves around Jack O'Connell, an eccentric film director who lives in Manhattan and who recalls his days with the greats...Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni.

Reminiscent of the fabulous New York Times' One In 8 Million series (which sadly have been discontinued), Amy's terrific short film has captured the very essence of this film director...she directed, filmed and produced it after spending 3 weeks with Jack in New York this past fall, and tells me she has much more material to work on.

Amy Helene Johansson studied film and theatre theory before earning a BA in fashion design. Witnessing the power of photography to tell the stories of people without voices, Amy ditched her pencil and paper and bought her first ever professional camera and embarked on a successful career as a photojournalist.

She was published in leading broadsheets and magazines in the UK and Sweden, including the Sunday Times UK, Dagens Nyheter, Sydsvenska Dagbladet, Amelia and Omvärlden. She also picked up first prize in Asian Geographic Magazine “Faces of Asia Award”, and won the “Foundry Emerging Photojournalist Award. Her work has taken her all over the world covering topics as wide-ranging as Burmese refugees to the Cabaret culture in Denmark. Her work has been displayed in solo and collaborative exhibitions in Bangladesh, the Czech Republic, Sweden and the UAE. She is currently exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in London.

What's with these alum of the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop??? Both Amy and Agata (yesterday's post) produced brilliant work!

Occupy Wall Street

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

More of my OWS photographs can be seen on The Leica File.

Yesterday morning was sunny in New York City, but it was cold in the canyons of Wall Street and its neighboring streets.  And yet, Zuccotti Park was full to the brim with the currently residing protestors, sympathizers from all walks of life, gawkers and tourists...and naturally the members of the NYPD, whose main function it seemed (at least when I was there) was to tell the onlookers not to block the sidewalk.

The atmosphere in the Park was jovial and collegiate. Reasonably clean, with the protestors expressing very friendly vibes to the sympathizers and tourists alike. It was not unexpected that a few weirdos were in attendance, but they weren't getting much attention. Photographers were a dime a dozen...pros as well as non-pros. Television crews were ambling about, trying to get footage that hadn't been done before. Two ladies were busy knitting woolen things for the OWS protestors, while a long and orderly line snaked to the tables where fresh and appetizing food was being served.

At one end of the Park, a lively group of protestors were drumming eclipsing the valiant efforts of a saxophonist, whilst a man was typing some manifesto on -inexplicably- a manual typewriter. A few American flags were hoisted here and there...and vendors seemed to be doing a brisk sale of commemorative lapel pins.

I was gifted a small Hohner harmonica by a protestor who urged me to attend some demonstration later on. Whilst walking around the part, I was accosted by a photographer who asked me if I was The Travel Photographer! It was Charles Meacham, a photographer I featured a number of times on this blog. What a small world! Since he had been featured for his excellent work on the Sikhs, I had assumed he lived in India...but he's from NYC as well.

Like many other sentient individuals, I sympathize with most of the OWS positions...however I fear that all this remarkable civic energy would be better expended in Washington DC. This is where the responsibility for our difficulties lie.

PS. The mellowness that I witnessed may not have lasted long. The NY Times has this.

Carolyn Beller: The Mississippi Delta

Photo © Carolyn Beller-All Rights Reserved

I've featured Carolyn Beller's talented work of Oaxaca on The Travel Photographer blog a few months ago, and she comes back here with an equally impressive body of work from her time spent photographing in The Mississippi Delta, a gallery of 15 photographs.

Carolyn started her photography work in earnest as recently as 2006 with an established background in art, interior design and pottery, as well as in teaching art. She took up photography so it would serve to document the lives and culture of various indigenous people she came in contact with when she worked on pottery projects. She traveled to Nepal, India, Burma, and Rwanda, and will revisit India this coming January.

As in her Oaxaca gallery, I thought her Mississippi Delta gallery had traces of David David Alan Harvey's and Alex Webb's influence, especially in terms of composition and shadow play. Carolyn is a gifted photographer with a keen eye for capturing 'tableaux" which tell stories in themselves.

Speaking of which, I was imagining viewing Carolyn's Mississippi Delta's photographs, with a song by Howlin' Wolf or John Lee Hooker (as only two examples) blaring in the background. Naturally, her already compelling photographs coupled with a sound track by local musicians, and interviews would make a remarkable audio-visual package.