One of my images Jijiga, Ethiopia, created with my cell phone while on assignment with Mercy Corps in Jijiga, Ethiopia was part the “Constellations” exhibit at the Kaaterskill Fine Arts Gallery.
This show was curated by Robert Tomlinson and will run until September 9, 2018.
An exciting aspect of this show was that one of my long-time crushes, Steve Buscemi, attended the opening!
I love when I get to be inside the walls of Oregon Ballet Theatre’s building and watch the heat and fury that arises from the dancers as they practice. It takes enormous focus and energy to perfect those twists and turns and leaps, and to be able to witness trial after trial until they reach their aspirations is a wondrous sight.
I was there to make dancer portraits, and even though they came right from brutal practice to sit before my camera, they each faced the lens with authentic passion in their eyes.
Several of my images made while on an assignment documenting extreme climbers in Yosemite are included in the documentary, Valley Uprising.
If you attended my lecture at the Portland Art Museum, you might recall that I left my corporate work years ago to become a full-time photographer based upon two experiences: watching people trying to salvage photographs in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and a life-altering discussion I had one day in a cave with climber Dean Potter.
This film is startling and evocative, delving into the tensions that exist between climbers and rangers in the Yosemite area.
It was a complete surprise to see that my name was listed in the credits at the end!
Mary Ellen Mark lives.
She is still examining between the lines of what we see and what we understand. The subjects of her portraits, her students, the people whose eyes she deeply sought and whose lives she intricately examined, know she is not gone. How could she possibly be far from our reach for influence?
Her voice lives on. Her love of the less seen and forgotten souls lives on. Her catch of nuance and unveiled thinking still moves us.
I will miss talking with her, yes. Seeing her braids. Hearing the jangling of her bracelets. Feeling the swish of air that arises from her swirling skirts when she walks by. Looking at her hands.
But she lives. She’s here. Her belief in humanity and resulting photographic images command a riveting attention like no other. How she moves us.
Maybe I finally will listen to her words of advice more so now since she won’t have to repeat those sentiments as often as she had to in the past. Sorrow blankets my heart. I can hear her voice, magnified.
No, Mary Ellen has not left us. She has only just begun to fill the world around us, and will do so for our future generations.
She just caught the light.
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To hear my radio interview on Oregon Public Broadcasting: Remembering Mary Ellen Mark
How can a young man, so early in his life, produce such forlorn material that depicts strain and stress and mystery and broken down spirit, with the tendrils of hope right within and outside of reach?
This is Vikesh Kapoor‘s style of song, and he sings it with conviction, as though he really did experience such down trodden affairs.
Photographing him was not an easy task – when he reaches for his guitar and begins to sing, he is lost in the lyrics and I had a difficult time finding a connection through the camera. For most of our session, I just put the camera aside and listened to him.
Once the guitar is by his side, he returns to his impish and stylish self, joking and smiling in a playful manner. But the specs of my assignment was to photograph him while he was playing. I waited and joined him in his means of story-telling, forgetting that I had a job to do. Sometime during his songs, I was able to pick up the camera and create these images by not looking through the experience-ruining lens.
Something feels a bit controlled about him, but not in the traditional way. He seems to be really thinking about things: his day, his upcoming tour, his lovely girlfriend perhaps? No, there seems to be a tragedy that lurks behind his boyish grins. Who knows if he has experienced some trauma that brings him to this music – it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t seem to question where his creative center comes from, and neither should I.
The Portland Mercury writes that his album “The Ballad of Willy Robbins is a vital, blood-spattered document of the times America currently finds itself in, examining hard-working people and their families as they’re sidelined by big business and the bottom dollar”. At such a young age, he is certainly able to channel nuance, the loss of a cherished something or someone, with anguished tentacles running deeper than we allow ourselves to feel in this highly distracting world.
I wonder what he will do next.
Images shot for OnTrak Magazine; his story is on Amtrak trains now.
I love shooting for the Oregon Ballet Theatre, and this last shoot was exceptionally fun!
Here are two renditions of the poster they created for this performance.
Photographing Thomas Lauderdale of Pink Martini was a highlight of my career. He was alert, game for anything, and even taught me a lesson or two.
In the back of my mind, a Madonna song is playing. I can’t recall all of the lyrics, but the ending lines play over and over as I watch Kuye in her classroom full of boys:
In this world
Do you know
Do you know
Do you know what it feels like for a girl
What it feels like in this world?
There are 42 students in Kuye’s class, and only four of them are girls. In a society that cherishes girls to a point of thinking of them as “prizes”, too often girls are not seen outside of the home for fear that she will steal the heart of a man before they are ready to have her live outside of the home. When a girl goes outside of the house to socialize or to school, she can also be ostracized a bit, out of fear, jealousy, or the upholding of traditional norms.
Kuye used to go to the spring to fetch water at 3am with her friends because water was very difficult to find. In exchange for her labor, these friends helped her by purchasing pens and exercise books for her to use while at school. If she didn’t help them fetch water, they would not help her. Sometimes she would arrive at late school because she was so tired.
However small, her support is provided by her mother, Taiko. Since she attends school under such financial hardship, sometimes she wanted to quit, but her friends encouraged her to remain in school.
Mercy Corps supports Kuye by covering the expenses of pens, exercise books, uniforms, and soap. Kuye speaks about her moral obligation to her friends, and still wants to help them. But now she tells them that she has assignments to do and will help them as soon as she is finished with her homework.
I ask her what her dinnertime is like, and she tells me that if food is present, they eat. If no food is present, they don’t eat. Sometimes Kuye walks home from school with a friend and they search each other’s homes to see which home has food for that evening, and they will share what they find with each other.
A tough life she has. Yet she remains confident and excited about her future.
She realizes that she is learning more than just the traditional subjects at school. One area that has been particularly difficult is changing the way her family and village think about equality between males and females. Since attending school, Kuye has successfully built the case surrounding her brother’s and her duties at home: hers should be no more nor less than those of her brother’s.
Kuye wants support to be available so she can go to university. She wants a comfortable home in which to lay her head down at night. She wants a husband to love, and children to educate. She also knows more about family planning, and has decided that she would like to have only two children, which will reduce the burden she and her husband will have to feed and educate them.
Kuye is a girl. She loves pretty shirts and skirts and hair bows and bracelets.
She is also a pioneer and a fearless leader, bold and defiant, paving the way for others.
Madonna would be proud.
I spent an hour in my studio with Gus Van Sant, and as one might imagine, it was a highly interesting evening!
He talked about how he gets ideas for his films and a bit about his history. But the most fascinating things he spoke about were of the mundane. He is incredibly aware of his surroundings and I loved the endless questions he had regarding minutia found in my studio.
Read more about him in the latest issue of 1859 Magazine.
Love this man.
My images of Cheryl Strayed were featured in the Spring issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. Cheryl’s newly released book, Wild, debuted at #6 on the New York Times Bestseller List, and the movie rights were recently purchased by Reese Witherspoon.
Cheryl was not the easiest person to photograph, as I chronicled in a blog post. She has an intensity and ease about herself, all in one wonderful package.
Holy Moly! Cheryl Strayed’s book, Wild, is taking the world by storm!
Her book is everywhere, she is being interviewed on all kinds of programs in numerous cities (at once!) and soon she will be riding the Hollywood train, as her book movie rights were purchased by Reese Witherspoon, who will produce and star in the upcoming movie.
I can’t keep up with her, and where my author photo is landing. Here are a few places.
NPR:
