Living Proof

      

      

       

       

       

      

      

      

       

      

         

         

         

i always forget what a mountain to climb publishing a book can be....from the germ of an idea, all through the often grueling shooting process, editing, finding a publisher, doing the layout, to the final moment of realization that a book is actually finished....for me the living proof of publishing is when a book sits on my mother’s coffee table...

only then do i know the process is over, and i am free to move on to new horizons....new ideas.....other mountains...other valleys....and back again to the acts of discovery that gives being a photographer real meaning...

“Living Proof” is not really a “photo book”....not a collection of my best photographs at all....more of a “photo record” or diary during my short but intense journey through the world of hip hop culture...or rather, i should say, as a visual representation of all the lyrics of rappers that i read who are at the end of a long chain of african storytellers (griots) who spun their tales, became enslaved, shipped to the americas, and whose lyrics are manifested in gospel, blues, jazz, rock n’ roll and finally rap.....

a cultural chain linked around the world...from the south bronx of new york to the wall slicing through jerusalem to the ghettos in paris  and the favellas of brazil and on and on and on...oppressed people everywhere using rap as a way to “get it out”, “get it down”.......words as mirrors, words as swords....

yet, while the pen may be “mightier than the sword”, unfortunately the words often reflect  “real world”...my “main man” Uptown, who you may remember from other posts, and whose prison based poetry graces “Living Proof” and who has been my friend for three years , lies tonight in a hospital bed with multiple gunshot wounds (four i think) and a bullet still lodged somewhere in his 32 year old body...

with weak voice he called me on my cell phone as i was having noodles here in Bangkok ...Uptown has spent a third of his life in jail and was jailed the night of my opening exhibit back in june when i had fantasized him being the celebrity of the evening...jail or death are the most likely ends for men who live Uptown’s lifestyle....men who are unlikely to have been dealt a winning hand....

i hope Uptown is around to sign books whenever i have a book signing...but, my white middle class fantasies of what should be or not be for Uptown are over.....actually, they were over long ago.....if you can find a copy of “Living Proof”  somewhere, skip the pictures and go straight to the last page....read Uptown’s poem “The Struggle”....he says it all right there....

Comments

[Eric Espinosa]

David, It is great to see your hip-hop book coming out...I have it on pre-order so hopefully will be getting it very soon. I particualrly like the pictures that you have taken into the club...I remember that during the workshop in Rome, you were just arriving from New-York and you still had the card and you showed us the pictures you took, non edited. This was a fantastic learning...Just to see how stay focused on a scene, kept working at it....So many great pictures I felt at the time and was happy to se that you have kept several of that series...What did happen with your friend "uptown". Last I remember, he was in Jail for some time and was going to be missing your show. Is he gone back to a more stable life now and are you still in touch with him? Just have been wondering what is happening with him and again I cannot wait to receive the book....
Cheers, Eric

[Giancarlo Mori]

Very cool stuff, David!

I live in LA, a city where Hiphop is a way of life for thousands of young people... entire neighborhoods... with all that surrounds it, the entertainment aspects, as well as its deep cultural roots and the very controversial reactions it causes.

It really seems in these photos (and the few others I've seen before) that you've been able to capture all of those aspects of its soul. I look forward to seeing more of this work, but what I would really love is to hear your feelings about this project, as a photographer and as a man.

Thanks as always for sharing,

Giancarlo

[david alan harvey]

ERIC AND GIANCARLO...

thanks for your comments...actually we are still in the process of building this post!!! michael in new york with the pictures (we are adding some..stay tuned) and me in bkk ready to write a short story...

cheers, david

[Kelly Lynn James]

Congratulations on the book, David! I hope your friends from the South Bronx enjoy it as much I did. Have you had the chance to give them copies yet? Please post about that experience when you do.

Also, thank you for your your birthday wishes again. I'm framing my present this week! I had a great time in Mexico with you and Lance and the crew. I loved meeting Suki. Good friends and conversation... What more can we want in life? Maybe a beach next time?

Still thinking about the road trip... hummmm...

[Giancarlo Mori]

Just too cool not to comment, David.

Look forward to the rest, photos and story...

Giancarlo

[Gunnar Mjaugedal]

Congratulations on this book David, the images has open up my hip hop eyes:) My personal favorite images is the one with the two hands.
It gives me a strong feeling about a macho vs friendship world.
Gunnar

[Yan]

Congrats David, I am looking forward for the book and to read that poem,sure that there is a strong message there...

[Michael Kircher]

David,

So sorry to hear about your pal. It floors me sometimes the life/lives others endure. We've all had difficulties in life; tragedies even...but there is always that something, that Hobbesian moment of realization that yes life can often be nasty, brutish and short. That whatever pain in the ass moments we usually suffer...it thankfully ain't nothing like it could be!

Here's hoping Uptown somehow finds a way to pull it together.

Thank you for the insight. I will absolutely check out his "Struggle" at the end of your book.

Peace,
Mike

[Aga Luczakowska]

Congratulations!!! :-)

[Chris Richie]

David,

Your camera was indeed a passport to other's lives, existence, conditions...the book is a window for all of us to gaze through...thank you for the view.

[Kelly Lynn James]

David,

Oh man. I'm sorry to hear about Uptown. Whether by fate or choice, it's still sad for a father of little girls to be lying in a hospital bed that way. Please let us know if you hear any more news.

Take care friend,
Kelly

[Herve]

Thanks for the words,David. One thing I am still grasping to understand in life is the circle of violence that ensnarls people, govnmts, and all. I am not sure there is exploited and exploiting viokence. maybe it's all human violence, a cruel trick we play on each other, pretexting higher forces in our lives.

If I may, this subject is very much about authorship as we often debate on the blog. I am compeletely divided, immature, unsure what I want to shoot ultimately with a camera. The unhappiness at being alive, or the happiness of being alive. Not to wear naive rose-tinted glasses, but to show my profound optimism at what lies at the core of all mankind.

Well, looks like my very modest essay I just sent has finally got its word of intro. That joy could be more infectious than hatred, something we have grappled with for a few thousand of years by now.

Late for work again...Nothing like being self-employed!

[Mike Berube]

David,

I wish i could be in bangkok with you and Jim. I am excited for the book and it must feel great to say everything you want to say in it. I hope Uptown will be Ok. I guess my question for you is do you really feel this body of work is finished? For example... When you published Cuba. How do you know when there is an end to a personal project? Just gut feeling?

Stay well,

Mike

[Giancarlo Mori]

David,

Beyond the rigid confines of labels and common places that many in our society live by, I hope that a book like yours can help show that humanity, human fellowship, dreams, even without hope, are everywhere, regardless of class, race, life choices, even violence; that no one makes of alienation a way of life; that if we don't work hard on peace, if we don't elect peace and dialog as our path, there's always going to be an Uptown laying in a hospital bed at 32 somewhere.

Good luck to your friend.

- Giancarlo

[Rafal Pruszynski]

Hi David,

What I really want to see is the Korean story:) How far along is the editing? Cant wait to get my hands on the book as well as see the exhibition.

Could you please find out if my photos have been uploaded? I uploaded 20 photos (2 stories) on the weekend, but Im not sure about an email I got from Michael about my photos. Michael isnt responding to my questions and the deadline is today.

[robert wiedenfeld]

Well done David: this looks really interesting. Can't wait to see more. I'm experiencing the same problem as Rafal only i haven't sent my images as I'm waiting for a response.

[bartek nowicki]

what can i say, it looks to be a fantastic book! i love the sound of hip hop, i love the lyrics [especially of polish groups like pijani powietrzem, molesta, killaz group etc.]and i would love to see more pictures. i'm interested in passion, and there is passion on the pages of your book. thank you!

[bobblack]

David:

let me jump quick to the quick of things....about your friend Uptown. As you so eloquently wrote, he is the portal through which your body, your heart, your eye as shuttled and like Ariadne's string, your eyes and words have pulled us along too, especially for those who have never spent a waking/dreaming second in corners and alleys of squalor and fear...

i know and feel your pain...

when i was 21, a senior in my best friend, a jazz guitarist and rock-rapper, was gun-downed in a gang-hit in Hill District of Pittsburgh...he'd come from s.bronx to get away and to study.....when i first saw your pics and read about your essay i thought of my buddy and his family and all those who had gone before and will continue...

my thoughts for you and for your friend and pass along to him that this old boy hopes he dont get none more of that tune but the tune that is still stuck harder in his body then that calibre of steel: tell him a nyc boy now in toronto tells him that sting...and that he must get up to grace all of us what he was meant to do!: that be sing!....

thank you david....

hugsw
bob

[bobblack]

and this, a note about the photographs and book. The comment i left this summer on Lightstalkes when I announced David's exhibition:

CONGRATULATIONS David!...and congratulations too to the SBronx community which has always been far richer, more beautiful and sad, more communal, generous and wise, than the world has always painted it. Those are stories that must never stop being told…I’ve seen too first hand…..

check it out y’all (the book)

though mississippi aint no longer burnin, she still is singin, in the alleyways, rooftops, sidestreets, splitup, doubledutchparks, bboyzramps, that song that her beautiful children, and the rest of us, need to take inside our wobbly bones so that ankles and asses alike get get that righteous and important grove-groove going….

I think, like others above, that the story is incredibly strong and hard-won. I could also speak upon the technique and the lighting and why as a story it is powerful and yes in many sense risky for David, aesthetically and emotionally. I think that David would agree (i hope ;) ) that the project is not about any 1 or 2 single photographs. In fact, I think the best way to approach the story is as a whole, an accumulation, that there may not even be more than 1 or 2 or 3 “stand out” photographs, but that is also the point and that it works as a whole and should be swallowed and read and thought upon as a whole….

and then there is this:

I think the project is really about two people: the rappers “uptown” and “ruckus.” It is, within the larger story of sbronx rap (and its effects elsewhere) is really about the two of them: in fact, for me, that’s the strength of the intimacy of some of those images. In fact, many of so-called visual “cliches” in the story are 1) not cliches, but extant moments in the life of this community and hiphop and, more importantly, 2) often serve as a foil to the powerful (often sad, often lonely, often celebrant) images of “uptown” and “ruckus”, the two main characters in this story of life and loss in the s.bronx. I dont wish to point out those images to others, which ones im referring to, but if you spend enough time with the pics, you’ll see, i hope, what im talking about….

It is the story of 2 men and the lives surrounding them….both the living and the dead….remember the image in BedStuy barbershop, the young man in front of all the pics of the braids-brains and cornrows: that could be a mortuary, a remembrance too…...those pictures of dews and dreads and cornrows, like photos of the dead, how profound, how prophetic, how honest, not only as metaphor but as truth...

and the icecream truck, the swinging baby, ruckus and uptown…..

we are, the viewers, most often are the one’s with the cliches, the eyes that have been so jaded (as viewers and photographers) that we have failed to take the time to actually see, to look carefully and to see the story as it is…..

it is the story, a story about 2 young men in the south bronx and all the attendant, yes attendant, life surrounding…How wide the chasm between IceCube’s smiling, almost suburban comfort and cubano with the smile or sadness of those still there in the sbronx….

to me, its’s uptown and ruckus’ story that this is all about, a simple story filled with joy and sorrow, for those patient enough to see…..

living proof….hmmm, in africa there’s a saying: the stars in the sky are the teeth of the ancestors smiling down upon the living, proof that their spirit survives…in a world and a place and culture that continually sees so many and so much of its parts and members perish, there’s song in that title and sadness too….

bob

[Paul Treacy]

I can only imagine what you must be feeling. The utter frustration must be quite debilitating.

I spent some time working with the detectives of the Brooklyn North Homicide Task Force back in 2000 just after my ICP course and just before I ducked out of my career for a while for family reasons.

I met some extraordinary people. I saw a New York I could have hardly imagined. I saw the ghetto. I saw extreme violence and death. I saw despair. Anger. Hopelessness. The devastation of crack cocaine. Aimless youngsters whom I wanted to rescue. I saw the third world right here in New York City.

I often used to dwell on the troubles in my native Ireland and how one day I would involve myself somehow. On one afternoon in Brooklyn's 90th precinct a detective I had been shadowing explained to me that during the height of the crack epidemic in Brooklyn, not New York City but Brooklyn alone, there were more people being murdered annually than the entire death count of 30 plus years of "The Troubles". That floored me.

America needs to learn how to better look after its children, particularly those aimless youngsters that we all know about.

It continues to break my heart. One day soon I will do my part. For now I'm working hard at securing and educating my own children.

I really hope that your friend will pull through this. I can feel assured, however, that his life has be enriched for his having met you.

Best,
Paulyman.

[Lara Wechsler]

Congratulations and beautiful photos, sorry to here about Uptown.

I am curious in what got you interested in this subject and what made you decide to explore this topic. Sorry if this was mentioned before, a link is cool if you already answered this or discussed this somewhere. I am always interested in what motivates someone or why someone is interested in a topic.

[Lance Rosenfield]

i've read uptown's poem in the back of the book.. my white middle class ass screams for uptown.. david thank you for jumping into the hip-hop journey and sharing it with us.. uptown doesn't know who i am, but through you i know a piece of him.. 'your friend is my friend'.. and so i feel uptown... blessings, lance

[Ana Yturralde]

In a way, through your pictures, your work, your stories and my recent experience, I feel close to Uptown. Will look for that poem.

Best wishes to him

Ana

[Neil]

Well done! Through you we know a little more and our minds are a little more open. Your photos and words (and I'm guessing those of Uptown) take us into a place we fear to tread.

Thankyou.

[Jeremy M. Lange]

David.
Just a note to express my sympathies for your friend and a wish for his recovery. There is nothing even remotely close to the feeling of losing someone close to you, whether you knew them for 20 minutes or 20 years. May he live to see the completion of the powerful collaboration you all began.
Jeremy

[Amy]

Don't give up on Uptown, that white middle class fantasy that the wrongs of the world can be righted with (insert panacea here) is really worth hanging onto. I hope your friend is ok. Amy

[david alan harvey]

ALL....

i cannot tell you how much i appreciate your comments about Uptown and the whole "life in the 'hood" experience...i will print all of this out for him, but i think he does check into this blog from time to time....

please know that i do not glorify Uptown...he has done some really bad things..when he and Ruckus went to jail when they were 18, they totally deserved to go to jail...their's is not a story of innocent men wrongly accused...

yet still, their circumstances make their "bad things" worse than the "bad things" i did as a teenager...who knows how "bad" i would have been growing up in their environment...

in any case , Uptown is in stable condition...he is my friend unconditionally....

peace, david

[Martin]

Really sad to hear this after following this essay and reading and watching (at magnuminmotion) your story. Hope everything will be allright. I really really do.

/Martin

[Kristin Murphy]

Oh man. That's tragic. But excellent that he is in stable condition now. Is this going to mean more jail time?

Uptown- if you check in on this - I'm sending positive, healing thoughts your way.

Thanks for coming to talk at David's workshop- it was pretty cool to hear your side of the story.

Hope you're healing quickly.

-Kristin

[Matin (marcin luczkowski)]

"....for me the living proof of publishing is when a book sits on my mother’s coffee table..."

:) !!!!!!!!!!

Martin

[tw]

Hello David..

I must say first that I am quite the curious, or rather busybody, type and I took the liberty of saving your pictures and to my surprise the EXIF was intact. What was even more surprising is that you shot this body of work with the your nikon d70, a camera that I myself own! It's surprising to me because I thought that you, having (i presume) a variety of seemingly better gear, Leicas etc, would not shoot a whole story with a camera like that.

So my question is: Why did you shoot this with that camera?

It would seem that all of the excuses I give myself for taking substandard photographs have become unacceptable. Although I am definitely not a gearhead, I find myself thinking about gear a lot more nowadays, instead of taking pictures. If only I had a leica.. I tell myself. You have inspired me with your work, especially so when I know now that I have everything I need to take better pictures. Thank you for that.

Hope this finds you well.. Cheerios!

[david alan harvey]

TW...

i do not get into tech stuff much here, but the D70 was the perfect tool for this story...i also shot the "nairobi style" piece for natgeo with the D70....first of all, the M8 did not exist when i shot those two stories...and even if it did, i probably would not have used it...why?? because i used so much strobe light on both projects...the D70 was perfect..great for remote flash...small , light, unassuming..i have 12 foot wide prints from the D70...they look terrific!!...i have never used the larger top of the line cameras for my work ...always preferring the more "pro-sumer" or amateur cameras...i just do not like the weight and bulk of the top of the line cameras...and too much "stuff" i just do not need...go stealth, go simple....think, see, feel....your camera is the least important part of the whole equation....

cheers, david

[Eric Espinosa]

David...I finally just received a copy of your "Living Proof" book that I had on pre-order....Great feeling to have in in my hands and look at the pictures. I had seen your slideshow, seen the Magnum in motion but somehow, nothing compares to a book....The pictures are so impactful....Congratulations! Eric

[Lassal]

Hi David,

just a quick info:

I did strike the "back"-button at the wrong time, I fear, and TypeKey hung up on me. It will not let me post on "road trip" anymore...

Could you please "clear" my name there?
;)
Hope you had a pleasant flight back to NY.

Cheers,
Lassal

[olli bery]

nice to see all these new pictures and good to meet u here david.

your work is always great
hope to see more soon
takecare

[Eric Espinosa]

David,
As I know how much you like books and how much time and thinking you put into these before publishing, I wondered about the reason why you have selected this particular page layout and format for "Living Proof"...Very different vs Divided Soul...no white borders, full double pages split in middle....Presumably for some photographers, the page layout may not be so critical but I am sure that for you it is likely a very important point...or is it not? Is the format layout of a book critical to you or is this a decision taken by the publisher and you put your effort on selecting the pictures and the sequence??? I would guess that you would want to control the book from A to Z but I wonder...Personally, I was initially surprised by the layout of Living Proof as I usually like some borders around the pictures and also prefer the photos to be on single page instead of over the double page to avoid the fold in center etc...Very much like you did for Divided Soul....However, the more I looked at the Living Proof book the more I eventually felt that the layout you have chosen works great! Somehow, after flipping the pages a few times, you no longer have the fold problem and the pictures are large, "in your face" as if you were in the middle of the action....Works great for this particular topic.... Might have lost some impact if you had chosen a layout like Divided Soul....Anyway, while after all, I like the layout a lot, I am just curious to hear if this is something you have spent time debating and checking on options or whether this was imposed....Always glad to know the thinking behind....Cheers, Eric

[Daniel]

Hi David, I'm Daniel from Valencia... I did a workshop with you this year,
contratulations!!.. your previous book, Divided Soul is a pleasure..
but I've just realized that tour style now is a little different,... may be the flash.. I don´t konw, but I'm sure the soul is the same..
I follow your blog frecuently, but my english level isn't enough good, so, I only read the posts...

Good luck and peace for you!
Dani

[Pamela Jackson]

Hello David,

I am still a big fan of your work!!!

[Jenny Lynn Walker]

Hi David,

You've captured breathtaking fire and raw sexiness in your images - and that flash! It's made 'their look' match hiphop culture! Pure genius! Will those 12 foot prints get to be seen in any cities in Africa? It would be great if they were.

Is there any other way to get to read Uptown's poem? The mail is too unreliable where I am to place book orders and get to see them. Who knows, reading it could help get me out of the trouble I'm in.

Peace always,
Jenny

[Pablo]

muy buenas las fotos. estoy tratando de postearme pero no puedo

[Tyrone Okesene]

hey there David,

just wanted to say AWESOME book.... sorry photography is not really my strength but I definitely am interested improving and also strongly influenced in HIP-HOP and am doing an essay on your work for uni...I just wanted to say AWESOME work bro....Great emotion in your images...HIP-HOP seems to be blamed for alot of criminal activity where I live although deep down I feel we are to blame by turning HIP-HOP into a weapon of conflict..anywayz once again AWESOME work.....thanks for the experience....and most of all THANKS FOR INSPIRING ME....

Cheers...

Tyrone Okesene (New Zealand)