My photo, On Top, will be part of the the New Waves exhibition at Virginia MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) opening this Thursday, March 22. This is my first juried exhibition, so I’m pretty excited. The show will be up for a while, so next time you are at the ocean front stop by MOCA. This annual exhibition featuring Virginia artists was juried by Lane Relyea, and I’m told that out of about about 160 artists, 37 were accepted. My photo is part of a larger project titled Steeple + Chase. For anyone curious about how I took this photo, it was shot on film with a YashicaMat. There are only two frames. I shot the first photo from the side, and then I moved to find this view.

A photo I shot last summer is finally going to press as the cover of a poetry book titled When My Brother Was an Aztec. I shot this photo for our friend Natalie Diaz. This is her first published collection of poems, and I am very excited for her. The poems are very personal, many of them centering around her family. The man in the photo is actually her brother. He was awesome! Natalie and I started with some loose ideas of photographing her brother in a headdress and incorporating other symbolic objects. The real challenge for me was to use light, location, and gesture in a way that captures the surreal nature of some of her poems.  I was lucky enough to get a preview of the book for our photo shoot, and some of the themes of the book that I could experiment with visually were family, alcohol, loneliness, Christianity and identity. It was important to Natalie that we try and hint at her mixed Native-American/Spanish identity. Natalie told me, “My dad is Spanish and my mom is Native, so I’m pretty much the epitome of conquest/colonization.” We shot this in the Mojave desert. It’s my understanding that the Mojave tribe does not use head dresses like this one, but for the photo we took some artistic license. I believe this headdress is Aztec, which fits the title of the book. Below are some other outtakes from the shoot. I think they chose the right photo for the cover. It includes family photos, the figure of Christ and the headdress. It was one of the last locations that we photographed. You should pick up the book and see if I did the poems justice!

I’m sitting here in Bangkok’s Airport with my buddy Gordon on our way to some beautiful Thai beaches. Thought I would post a photo from Angkor Wat that I took two days ago. It was an amazing place to visit but hard for me to relax because I wanted so badly to make some unique photos. This place is photographed so much! I finally let go of that and just made some photos. On the third day I was able to relax and enjoy the temples. Going for a bike ride from temple to temple was lovely!

A few weeks ago, I got a call from NBC to shoot stills for a TV commercial they were making in Norfolk. The ad was directed by Spike Lee to promote the Ed Schultz show. Everyone was super nice including Ed, who attended Maury High School. I went to Cox HS, which according to Ed, is the first team against which he threw a touchdown pass.  On the second day of shooting, we worked at Doumar’s Cones and Barbecue, a local drive-in eatery. It was tight quarters, so I spent some time outside in-between takes. While roaming around, I found this spot and waited for the crew to move through in a way that created an interesting composition. You can see some of the gear that goes into a production like this including lights, fabric scrim and a ladder.

Tonight is the opening of Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes at the Contemporary Art Center. More details are in the previous post. I just wanted to share the story behind one of the photos in the show. Let’s start with how I got selected for the show. Through my wife’s volunteer work at CACV, I was asked to do a one night program with a group of talented high school art students. I brought in my print portfolio as an example presentation format for their own work. Heather Hakimzadeh, the co-curator at CACV dropped by, and flipped through the book. She liked it and as I found out later, she tacked one of my print promos to her wall. A few months later when she was planning this show she saw the photo on her wall and thought I would be a good fit. She called me up and asked to come by my place and look through more work. I had a lot of prints and digital files ready that spanned several years of photography. After an hour, she selected four photos, including this one. I took this photo in 2001, while still a graduate student at the University of Florida.  When I was a student at UF, NFL scouts came to the school and tested the size, speed and strength of college football players hoping to go pro. This event was the 40-yard dash. Perhaps I am too attuned to race issues, but I was struck by the overwhelming whiteness of the scouts and the predominance of black athletes. There is also the issue of power: the power of the scouts, and the power of the athlete’s body. I discussed the photo with Scott London at London Square Gallery and he helped me come with the title starting block / auction block (NFL Scouting). Too obvious? Let me know what you think. You can see it much bigger if you come by CACV.

I’m excited to announce that I’ll be part of a group show at the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia. A promotional piece featuring my photo with red solo cups in a big pile of trash is below. I hope all my friends can make it to the opening on March 24 at 6pm. There is a small fee of $5 for non-members, but I’m sure you don’t mind supporting the arts. This is one of four photos I’ll have in the show. There are a bunch of other great local artists showing in a variety of mediums. Read more below from the official Press Release. Click the image to see it larger.

The Contemporary Art Center of Virginia highlights the face and body in an exhibition designed for the young and young at heart. Contemporary artists in a variety of media explore the human form and the idea of “identity.” All the works will be hung at eye-level for children, but we invite art lovers of all ages to view the exhibition and learn to look at art with a fresh perspective. This is also an opportunity to meet many of the artists in the exhibition! Virginia Beach Visual Arts Academy students will be giving spotlight tours of current exhbitions: Ultra-Realistic Sculpture by Marc Sijan; Eric Lindbergh: Faces; and VBCPS Youth Art Month in the Fleming Gallery.

Featuring: RJ Clark, Matt Eich, Derek Eley, Jason Hanasik, Christine K. Harris, Jason Levesque, Elizabeth Levesque, Glen McClure, Amanda Outcalt, Deborah Rogers, Susan Tolbert, John Rudel, Roberto Westbrook

I have not posted in a while. Got busy and distracted. Anyway, today I was going through my archive, and I found this photo I had forgotten about. For anyone wondering what is going on here, I slowed my shutter speed to 2.5 seconds so I could ensure that I captured the flash when this little girl took a photo of me. The direct light into the camera caused some odd colors, so I converted it to B&W which I like better. I like how her face is a big burst of light and her arms seem to be flapping. It’s like a mysterious fairy is trying to catch me. I wish I knew what her photo of me looked like.

In an ongoing effort to create posts that are barely connected to the one that came before, I share with you this photo taken over Thanksgiving with a very old wooden 4×5 camera that I borrowed from my friend Knox Garvin. 4×5 indicates this was taken on a piece of film that measures 4 inches by 5 inches. I had to do this old school, getting under the black cloth and focusing manually on a ground glass. Once you cock the shutter, you can’t see anything. I got this photo by prefocusing on a spot, then adjusting all the camera settings, and finally having my brother put his dog Henry in the exact spot. Then he had to get out of the frame, and I had about a second or two before the dog disobeyed him and followed. Henry is less than a year old, so still technically a puppy. He weighs about 45 pounds! We took ONE photo. No memory cards full of images. The white mark is a light leak, which I like. I think this might have print potential for Bulldog lovers.

Given the reports I read, I was expecting the apocalypse. But from a few thousand feet above the ground, Port-au-Prince looks a bit like the outskirts of Lima and others cities in the developing world. It’s greyish brown. The color of unfinished cinder blocks sprinkled with dirt. Nine months after the earthquake Haiti does not feel like hell…not for some.  It’s probably not something you read about often, but in the hills above Port-au-Prince there is money. Lots of it. The money is behind 10 foot walls and iron gates guarded by men with shotguns. My first night in Port-au-Prince, I dined on Spinach Ravioli with a pomodoro sauce. You read that right. This place was too fancy for tomato sauce. The menu stated “pomodoro” in Italian. It was better than the pasta I ate the night before in Norfolk. It cost $16. I’m told that the average DAILY wage in Haiti is $2-$5.

Scene from the Sean Penn Tent City in Port-au-Prince.

I have seen the divide between rich and poor before, but for some reason I was surprised to find it here, too. I just assumed that in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, everyone would be poor. A pretty stupid assumption now that I reflect on it.

I could go on with anecdotes, but there is real reporting out there that is much more helpful. I was there to take pictures for Physicians for Peace and my mission was to show the positive effect of their work with amputees. Their core mission is to provide training to local health providers so that when they leave, skills are left behind. It’s a sustainable approach. However the need is so great in Haiti, that the Physical Therapists are doing more hands-on work than training at the moment. Below is one of my favorite photos. This woman is a double-amputee and her spirit seemed unbreakable.

A patient celebrating after a strength training exercise.

While the above photo might be inspiring on the micro level, I found a quote from a recent Mother Jones story that sums up the situation in Haiti at the macro level.

People forget that the day before the earthquake there were more NGOs operating in Haiti than any other country on the planet and it was still an unmitigated shithole and a horror. The idea that this will turn around in your lifetime is a fantasy—and a crime of gargantuan proportions.

This dark picture does not mean people should stop giving or helping. I think it means we should focus on giving to groups that are providing training or are performing a sustainable development function in Haiti. One last anecdote. On my flight, I met an electrician going to build houses with a mission group. The group spent thousands of dollars to fly labor to Haiti. One thing Haiti has plenty of is unemployed labor. Why not use that money to send down two or three very skilled organizers and teachers, and pay $5/day to a Haitian to work and get on the job training. Perhaps I am naive. Here is a Nov. 1, 2010 story about the current ineffectiveness of charity groups.

A view of the Artibonite River Valley, where the cholera epidemic is thought to have begun.

I sent this image to a few friends the old fashioned way (e-mail) with the subject line, “can your iphone do this?” Well, the answer is sort of. There are water proof cases for the iphone but would you really want to take it down Class V rapids? That’s what I did with my $25 Holga. I knew the plastic camera would get wet, and I wanted to see what would happen to the film. Looks like it started to stick together, which left those cool markings at the top. Also looks like the red emulsion started to run or streak. I like that the river left a mark on the film. I fell out of the boat on one of the rapids and thought I was going to die as my foot was stuck in the raft while my head and torso were bent back beneath the water. Super scary for what was probably 5 seconds, but felt like forever. My oar even hit me in the mouth as I was getting sucked out of the raft. Somehow, the camera stayed around my neck. This was taken near the end of the trip with the New River Gorge Bridge in the background. A much more peaceful scene.