road trip

war photographers.....

 

we have read quite a bit in the "comments" about the "a good time was had by all" at this year's Visa Pour L'Image (Perpignan)...and surely this was true....at least by most...however, this year's photo fest, which celebrates conflict photography above all, was in fact, in itself, a scene of violence and death...

Jason P. Howe (above) author of "Columbia:Between the Lines" and veteran war photographer in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, was beaten senseless by five men as he left an evening slide show ... he  was heading to have a beer with us at the very Cafe Le Poste  in this picture...he said "they just kept yelling "money, money, money" ..i would have given them whatever i had...but they did not give me a chance..they just attacked...all they got was my cell phone..it was all i had on me"....Jason also told me that in all of his years being in and out of ridiculously dangerous situations, this was actually the worst thing that had happened to  him....

worse, 48 hrs before, and ironically  in the very spot where Jason stands for this picture, a local teenage woman took her own life by jumping from the top of the Castillet crashing to the ground in front of the merry festival goers sitting at this most popular "people watching" spot...

war photographer Bruno Stevens who has covered conflicts in Africa, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon etc. said to me "i have seen everything doing my work...dismembered bodies, death all around, yet what i saw right here at Cafe le Poste was far and away the worst thing i have ever witnessed in my whole life..i cannot get over it..i am truly shaken".....

by all accounts , Perpignan is a quiet, charming,  peaceful town in the south of France by the sea...friendly locals who will remember you from year to year....good food and wine...and home of surely the very best photojournalism festival in the world...i would recommend it to anyone who may want to have documentary photography in their life...and i will return and walk without fear in the streets day or night...

but this year was a grim reminder that LIFE HAPPENS everywhere, all the time...ironic and tragic that these events happened at this event, but none of us can be spared from the realities that surround us at all times...we cannot have the PROTECTION from life that we may fantasize...all of us try, all of us fail...

this is not the first irony for me involving life around Cafe le Poste...all of the best war photographers in the  world were gathered on this very same spot on September 9,2001...i remember "shooting" a couple of tequilas with the war photographer of all war photographers Jim Nachtwey and all of the VII crew since they had just "launched" their agency...laughter, hugs, merriment....48 hours later Jim watched the second tower of the World Trade Center come down on top of him and i watched it from 15 blocks away...the weather that day was perfect....

life is fragile...fleeting....never to be taken for granted...no matter how sunny the day or how good the wine....does this story sound pessimistic coming from me??  i hope not....i am always optimistic by nature....my optimism comes from knowing about the fragility of life....knowing that i should always enjoy every  moment given to me and that every moment is special...i do not live in fear....

what about you??   where does your "reality check" kick in??  do you "fear the worst" or do you "expect the best"???

 

 

 

for the very first time...

so many topics get discussed here, that it sometimes makes my head spin...but, it all pretty much centers on "the photographic life" and how we can all best "live it"...yes, the photographs themselves are indeed our final "net worth", yet getting to these photographs , this incomparable journey, is an entity in and of itself...

this is not exactly "news"...but, i never cease to be inspired by this simple simple fact that this journey is unending  and leads us down paths we would never go down without our cameras in hand....seeing something, being a part of something "for the very first time", just gets me BUZZING in way that unfortunately i cannot really put into words...

last night was such an experience...the owner of my building in New York is an Hasidic man ...Nachman...a man hard to know, hard to "figure out", rarely speaks, and seems mostly to want his rent check on time...i have never signed a legal piece of paper in my three years in the now almost famous "kibbutz" building and my "business" with Nachman is all eye contact and a hand shake...it works....i pay my rent on time and that is that....i have asked  Nachman from time to time if i could photograph is  family...he always says no...three years worth of  NO..

just one day before i went down to the beach to be with my family, Nachman stopped by to get his rent  check....he sat down....for a long 20 minutes or so....even smiled...he invited Mike and Marie and me to his daughter's wedding....nobody else in the building was invited  and we were the only non-Jewish guests to be...this wedding was last night and i had absolutely zero time to go, but i went anyway...with ten rolls of 220  Tri-X (not enough)...

i will get to the point....i think most of you know that i have been blessed with being able to make photographs almost every day since i was 12 or so...  some might  think by now that i would have "seen it all"...maybe even bored with having seen it all...surely i have "been around the block" a few times...however, even i continue to be amazed at being amazed...

what i witnessed last night, or rather what i was a "part of" last night at the  wedding , was definitely a "for the very first time" immersion  ....

a brand new never saw this before didn't know this happened before what is going to happen next i am not prepared and i am missing everything kind of experience...do you know this feeling??

if only i had any kind of insight or knowledge or "guide" or anything, but i had to take it "straight up"...no clues...no "map"...Nachman smiled watching me "work"...and all i could think of was that i had better get something "good enough" to make Nachman happy...

i was not thinking about you or my Magnum mates or anybody to "satisfy" except Nachman....somehow i was working for HIM.....yet, he did not ask me to take one single picture of anything in particular and i offered to do so ....he has seen my "work in  progress" on my walls, has never commented on any of it, and yet he seemed to know exactly what i was doing and what i would do  and  he let me roll roll roll...

 

when Marie and i sat down briefly last night to "review the evening" we commented to each other...."now THAT is what photography is all about...."  to be so so INSIDE and to bear witness to something that you would NEVER have seen otherwise...even the other Hasidics did not see or experience what i did....i moved freely from the "men's side" to the "women's side", so NOBODY actually experienced the wedding in quite the way that did i...

ENERGY  comes from these moments....our "raison d'ete"...all of the other "stuff" that we all have to put up with in our often frustrating craft  ,  totally disappears  when we slide into the  warm arms of real discovery  and enlightenment....

don't tell anybody, but i only left the party (yes, Hasidics party!!)  when i RAN OUT OF FILM!!...but,  i think the  moment was over anyway...at least, that is what i keep telling myself....i do not even want to know  what happened later...regrets??  oddly , no....

oh yes, did i get any good pictures??  quien sabe...i made all of my usual mistakes...i only hope i have something that Nachman will like...

i would just like to see him smile one more time...

       

commitment....

         

"commitment" is almost nobody's favorite word....

"freedom", "fly", "space" seem to be more comfy life "key words"....easier for one thing...and whole supporting  philosophies to go along with them....but, as we all know, at some point anyway, only through commitments do we get anything done at all either personally or professionally...

last sunday on a Carolina beach ,above,  Amanda Pitts became Amanda Halladay.....she gave up her "freedom" to marry the ever elusive can't pin me down vagabond of all vagabonds surfer boy Scott "Scooter" Halladay...you may read about Scooter in one of my chapters in Divided Soul and realize the extent of  my long relationship with Scoot since he was a young boy living at the other end of Pinetree Road... my son Bryan's best friend in Richmond and now in the wind whipped surfer community of the Outer Banks....

Amanda and Scooter announced their beach wedding less than 24 hours before it happened, therefore extending their reputations for non-conformists right up until the final "i do" here on Hatteras Island, the water burial ground of almost 300 storm related shipwrecks, and where even the crews of German U-boats,  during WWII, used to sneak ashore and get a suntan right here on these long white beaches and just a few miles from where the Wright brothers launched the first powered airplane in 1903 and Blackbeard the pirate, in the early 1700's, retired here to enjoy his loot from  hijacking ships of commerce...

lots of history for a rather "out of the way" thin strip of land likely to be erased in any hurricane, but as far as we are concerned, the Amanda/Scooter wedding is at the top of the list of "important events"...everyone down here figures that if those two can make a commitment, then all things are possible..

speaking of relationships, we have one right here....because i happen to be on vacation right now, i let the last post hang a bit too long and yet the comments are getting close to 700...crazy.....conversation...online friends...chit chat...serious thinking and references....assignments coming to fruition....work to be shared and displayed....an internet phenomenon by any reckoning....

so, now what do we do??  stay as we are?? make a commitment for more??  by the end of September we will have all assignments finished i think and i will be ready to announce new grantees from EPF....there are other "awards" besides the cash grants to come, but i will announce those later...now, i just want to get a feel for what we should do next....

frankly, i cannot do more than i am doing right now...my personal photography just cannot take a back seat to managing this forum.....and i well know that none of you expect that nor suggest otherwise...however, if some of YOU were to volunteer your help , i think we could get better without getting bigger or losing our "personal touch".... i have shunned advertising for our forum here because, well, i just think we should take our "popularity" and instead of advertising, have corporations and individuals sponsor your projects i.e. EPF ...

so far, this has been an easy "sell" for me because it is just flat out a "worthy cause" at a time of shrinking photo budgets on every front..my only problem is that i just do not have the time go really go "out there" and sell it in the way that could really make it "fly"....we will have a permanent slot as part of Look3 and next year's show will be "killer"..and i foresee we will do many more shows/exhibitions from the work generated here in 2008...a printed annual is an obvious possibility, but this will take some major fund raising  which i , in theory could easily do, but if i did i am afraid i would lose momentum on my family project....

in the next few weeks my schedule will take me to Perpignan (Sept 3-9) where i will meet many of you..we should discuss this if you are around...also ,in September ,  i have two weeks of workshops in my New York loft....then i will be back on the road with my "families"... somewhere in there, i would like to meet as many of you in New York  as i can...yes, a meeting at my place.....maybe between the two workshops.....maybe after....

your ideas on what we should do or what we can do are important...tell me, tell me....of course, we do not have to do anything different from what we already do....but, i would feel so proud if we could generate enough funding to have many of you working and with a nice publication as an end result...

again, getting "bigger" is not on my mind.....representing a growing and talented legion of photographers and writers who have made their online environment the very message itself, is potentially very interesting...it is what already happens here, but perhaps more of a commitment from some  of us could push our collaborative efforts towards its own logical evolution...

Amanda and Scooter, i wish you love and  happiness forever......

 

babies etc....

 

this is just a guess, but i am imagining that most of the readers here do not have children...at least  not small children requiring lots of care or certainly not new babies...we do discusss so many topics involving our work and our respective careers, but i do not think we have spoken much about the effect of family or, more importantly perhaps,  marriage and the decision to have or not to have children....i do often hear discussions among photographers, both women and men, who surmize that marriage/family/children could somehow alter or stop the pursuit of a career in photography...particularly if travel is  involved....

Chris Anderson, conflict photographer extraordinairre, playfully holds aloft 6 week old Atlas, as his bride Marion, Newsweek magazine editor, looks on at breakfast yesterday morning in Tuscany...obviously Chris and Marion both have careers that require lots and lots of attention and yet little Atlas needs his fare share of their time as well...

there are certainly many examples of men and women in our craft who have successful marriages and raise emotionally healthy children, but there are also many stories of exactly the opposite...i  personally do not subscribe to the often repeated theory that photographers in particular are particularly susceptible to failed marriages etc., but surely it takes a special combo to make it all "work"....i did manage , with the sustained help of my now ex-wife, to take my sons on so so many assignments around the world....but, i was not working in conflict zones and i was also not jumping from one two day assignment to another...i had long periods of time in one place...

Alessandra Sanguinetti (below) , also with Magnum and author of "On the Sixth Day" lives happily in New York with her photographer husband Martin and their one and a half year old Catalina....they seem to me to be "living happily ever after", but i am sure there must be times of compromise between her career and his....

both photographers are being included in my new family work and i started shooting Chris and Marion long before Atlas was born...i plan to photograph Alessandra and Martin in the coming year..(no, these are digi photos and not the REAL pictures for this project, but i love snapshots just like anyone else...)

i am curious how you feel about family and your career.....will you "wait" until your professional life is established before you raise a family , or will you just go ahead and figure out how it all blends later?

 

xxx....

Sally Mann had, early in her career, been accused  by some of shooting child pornography for making photographs of her naked children at home ...the FBI raided the studio of Jock Sturges and confiscated his lifetime of work often concentrating on naked pre-pubescent teenagers on a public beach in France...and Antoine d'Agata will, at some point, have to explain to his 3 young daughters why daddy takes pictures of prostitutes....

there is no explanation needed of course at the fine galleries who represent these photographers works...and, of course, even the conservative lawmakers no longer chastise these artists for what they do...maybe they now even want to invest in a print or two!!!

these artists quite simply photograph their own lives....

one of the leaders in self documentation is of course Nan Goldin...her eloquent "Ballad of Sexual Dependency" is a landmark testament to the concept of  "my life is art" with sexuality as just a part of everyday life...Duane Michaels and  Robert Mapplethorpe certainly felt no need to "stay in the closet" and their work often reflects an inner peace...and the remarkable love story by Jacob Sobel, "Sabine," is a newer addition to the collection of fine personal essays...

so, how does one determine when a photographer is making "art" or stepping over the line to indecency???

last week, right here on our squeaky clean forum, controversy arose....our man Panos, never one to be called shy in the first place, took us all down his road of "discovery" with a new woman in his life....the revelations in his new work shocked some, rocked some, and made some readers here fire off charges that Panos had just gone too far this time..

now, wasn't Panos supposed to be photographing his life??? no holds barred....to stick tight to his assignment ,yes this "event" should have happened at Venice Beach!!! not up in the mountains somewhere... but isn't it all a part of his rather irreverent self exploration of his California lifestyle???

now, the other photographer who is doing self exploration here is Patricia....she is just as stylistically free as he....Patricia's hypothetical "immobilization" keeps her from doing absolutely nothing...Patricia knows no bounds... she is as "liberal" as they come...and where some would see storm clouds, Patricia sees clear to the blue horizon...

i am mentoring both Patricia and Panos  towards book projects...these two photographer's works  quite literally "look in the mirror" perhaps more than any two essays we have going here....these two have much much more in common than whatever differences may be apparent...i think i may be the only one here who has met them both and i see the irony of their similarity...

in critiquing much of the work here from you, i usually ask most of you to "loosen up" a bit...let yourself go...be who you really are....this does not mean i want to open Pandora's Box and have you spin totally out of life control ...but frankly, i would rather mentor a photographer  who is "too loose" rather than one who is "too tight"....."too tight" is hard to unwind ..."too loose" can be guided to lead to the "edge" and it is right along this "invisible edge"  where the real magic of creativity lies.....

what do you think about this???  not just the right of photographers and artists to explore sexuality , but the deeper value of documenting their own lives for its own artistic sake...

driving....

Mike waiting for me to finish this post..the boy wants to hit the road!!!!!!

 

i must check out of my Iowa motel right now....heading for Chicago or somewhere near Chicago...i was reading comments, looking at links and made the comment below....i decided this might make a good post , so here it is:

HELLO ALL....VERY IMPORTANT!!!

do any of you ever go look at the links posted by forum readers under "student work/workshops"??? 

there are a lot of photographers here who never write, but who do have some very interesting work...right now there are about 175 links...please check them out...

for those of you who have posted links, please be assured that I DO LOOK....it is from this "pool" of work, as well as photographers on assignment here, that i am looking for photographers to fund with the Emerging Photographer Fund this fall....

my only problem with some of your links posted is that there is no contact information for some of you...i cannot review the work of all of you, but when i see someone with very interesting work, i would like to make contact...

maybe what i should do is look at all links and then post the names of photographers with whom i would either like to see more or make contact...make sense??? just as an example, i randomly clicked on the link of Sofia Quintas and saw some Polaroids of hers that were very very interesting and nothing like the work she had submitted for the EPF last fall..but, i have no way to contact her...

yes, yes, i am very busy shooting...and i hope all of you are as well..but, i do pay attention to what is happening here ... because i am doing my own work it does mean there are "lapses" in my posting here, but this forum has taken on a life of its own, and i do not intend to let it slide away.....

only a very small percentage of what is going on in my head ends up in print on this forum, but do not for a nanosecond think that i am not aware of your work...

I KNOW WHO IS DOING WHAT...but, if you think i have missed something of yours , please tell me so....

i cannot review every link nor edit all of you...but, i will see your work and remember your work and "bookmark" your work.. i want to make sure that all of the best will have a very fair and equal chance at being considered for my jury this fall...

in the next month or so i want to have a very clear head about all of the amazing work that is being produced by readers of this forum...there is a lot going on and it is sometimes difficult for all of us to keep up..but, i intend to keep up....and i will...

right now, i am waiting for assignments to be finished from Bob,Cristina, Marcin, Erica, Jonathan, Kyunghee Lee, Audrey,Panos, Sébastian, Eric, David M, and Patricia... as far as i know, i think only James is finished...this is right off the top of my head, so please correct me if i am wrong or have missed someone who is shooting right now on assignment...

i will clear a space under Emerging Photographers on this site to publish your essays when they are complete...and , of course, i am ready to make new assignments when appropriate...

it is basically from these assignments that the EPF jury will choose photographers for funding this fall....a photographer who posts a link under "student work/workshops" will also be totally eligible, but naturally photographers who are developing here before my "eyes" are just going to have a better chance i think...

please do not think of this EPF as a contest....a contest is a one time award for a good picture or essay..goodbye...

do you not think i am still tracking very carefully the China essay of Sean Gallagher, last year's recipient of the EPF???

our forum and EPF is about LONG TERM development and RELATIONSHIP...think of this more like a relationship with a traditional print magazine where photographers present their work and editors decide "who will do what" based on the work and the editor's judgment on who is capable of completing any particular essay...subjective yes, but it will all happen right in front of you as it has in the past..

yes, we are traveling together into totally new territory...the "old territories" are either gone or going away....fast...so, what have we got to lose??? nothing that i can see...

your ideas, thoughts and most importantly YOUR PHOTOGRAPHS have a place right here...A HOME....there are no "bosses"...this is just me driving down the highway, taking my own pictures , looking at yours, and having a jolly good time doing both....

peace, david

p.s. i am still reading and responding to  comments under the previous post "how the west was won"

how the west was won....

   

around 30,000 years ago the descendants of the Navajo and Apache tribes of New Mexico crossed the Bering Sea from Siberia and became nomadic tribes hunting freely in the fecund mountains and desert where the trendy town of Santa Fe now sits....

Europeans whose culture was far more "advanced" by the 16th century and were looking for "expansion", religious freedom and gold, rather quickly conquered with horses and guns... they killed and dispersed the indigenous tribes of the American West....precious few remain now on reservations and some sell "traditional" Indian handcrafts to the upscale tourists who now stroll the streets of Santa Fe...now Cowboy and Indian culture exist side by side happily trading with each other and both mostly forgetting the rather bloody and often sordid past...

Carlan Tapp (above right)  has not forgotten....he documents the current plight of the Navajo tribe with the modern day  incursion by the "white man" ... this time  armed with oil and gas rigs and dynamite  often destroying the land and lives of modern day Native Americans .....Carlan is a Native American from the Wicomico tribe of Virginia, but has spent his life here in the Southwest using  his camera as a weapon to fight back....his powerful black and white imagery is a testament to the once dominant culture of this region...

every existing world culture today has, at one time or another, "replaced" another existing culture....it is the way of mankind...a part of human nature that has moved us all "forward" ....in the "big picture", war and conquering has given us tools and science and "advances" that would not have happened otherwise...but men and women like Carlan who write, paint, and photograph  also recognize the loss, the sadness and the poignant nature of what seem to be historical inevitabilities...

Carlan, Jerry Courvoisier (yes, Mike's father) and i are now in Santa Fe teaching students how to think about photography...ways to use their cameras for something other than documenting their family vacation....photography as art, photography as reflection, and perhaps photography as a tool for social awareness....

i am curious where many of you "stand" with regard to photography as a "weapon"....there is a deep history in our craft of photographers who have devoted their lives to "saving the world"....what do you think??

since our species seems to move  forward  at a pace few of us can comprehend, does the work of Carlan and others have any effect, or are cultural events just pre-ordained and we all "saddle up and ride" ahead with no control of our fate???

www.carlantapp.com

www.questionofpower.org 

"goin' to hell"....

"I just don't know how long I can take it down here anymore. Too much traffic nowadays, too many tourists. They have overbuilt the beach. When I came down here, things were different.The place is goin' to hell"   

the look on Michael Halminski's  face when he says this, reflects both pain and confusion.....the old days were better....i guess maybe they always are....or, so we "remember"....

i have known Mike and his wife Denise for about 20 years...we met on a fall day when i was down here in the Outer Banks of North Carolina (OBX) shooting fishermen pulling in their seine nets...we were both jockeying for position...we were the only two photographers shooting this classic fishermans reward...a full net, right up on the beach and the light early and warm....long shadows of the fisherman and Mike and of me...

local photographers often give me a "look" when they first see me in "their territory"....i mean this was Mike's beach , not mine...he could tell i was from "out of town" and the local folks down here suffer no fools....meeting the "local photographers" is something i always do right away...make friends and they will help, make enemies and they will..well, i do not know, because i have always enjoyed the companionship of photographers who reside in the places where i am just passing through...

Mike keeps up with what is going on in the "biz"...he shows up in New York every now and then for a trade show or in D.C. for the Natgeo seminar, but mostly Mike sticks around OBX and photographs whatever the hell he wants...Mike sells prints....to tourists and passersby and folks who just  know his work..Mike's work is of old boats, seagrass, summer storms and nesting birds...he has worked with 4x5 (made his own prints in his darkroom) , but now chooses digi and makes his own inkjets and frames them and hangs them with his own two hands in the gallery that he built with his own two hands...

you must note that Mike started out doing what so many of us strive for...he left a cosmopolitan upbringing , and at age  22 picked a place to live that he loved...surfs up....he took  pictures of things that interested him and hoped that somebody would buy them....they did......end of  lifestyle and commercial business strategy story....

now on this forum and in "real life" too, i have introduced you to mostly to my photoworld friends from New York, Paris or wherever...Mike  chooses  another life....he does not seek for one single second any aspect of my world....he appreciates it, but he does not covet it....

when my whole family shows up down here for two weeks in August, Mike and Denise will be sitting on the back deck for the "required" sunset happy hour chatting with my whole family...they have become , in fact, part of our family...of course, Mike and Denise "get in" by showing up with a bushel of crabs and a steamer!!

so, i introduce you to Mike...a man who lives his own  "photographic life"...so so valid and surely to be treasured ...if you are ever down OBX way, stop in and say howdy to my friends Mike and Denise...

i guess "grumbling" is what people do who live "out there"...away from the crowds....things could be better...summertime traffic is pretty bad....but, what do you think? 

is everything "goin' to hell" down here, or is Mike living in paradise????

self-portrait selection.....

Les

 

David

 

Suryo Wibowo

ok, we have the three best forum self-portraits as curated by Magnum photographer Chris Anderson....Chris said he chose these because of "their overall photographic quality, sense of humor, and the intelligence that went into them".....there is  a link below to the 37 photographs from which he chose... these were from a "first edit" that i made yesterday....

for those three of you whose photographs are here, please confirm that you made these within the time frame i set up....honor system....and also, please give me your full name and address  so we may send out your "prizes" soonest....

Les gets an archival signed print, David a signed book, and Suryo the much coveted used camera bag!!

Chris made the same comment i made when he first saw all of the work..."impossible to judge...they are all very interesting"....but, a decision had to be made, so here you have it....

i will incorporate all of the self-portraits into a new slide show as soon as there is time...there were several others that i really think are very fine photographs, so i think it prudent to make an overall presentation of your work....

thanks again for participating....i seriously enjoyed looking at all of these portraits...the revelations were endless!!!

 

www.davidalanharvey.com/emergingphotographers/selfportraits