Archive for the 'dialogue' Category

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play the EPF 2010 sampler


We are now receiving submissions for a BURN grant of $15,000.

Deadline for entry is May 15, 2011

Funding is designed to support continuation of a photographer’s personal project. This body of work may be of either journalistic mission or purely personal artistic imperatives. The primary intent is to support emerging photographers who will become the icons of tomorrow.

The Emerging Photographer Fund grant was initiated by David Alan Harvey in 2008, and is awarded by the Magnum Foundation, a non-profit created by the member photographers from Magnum Photos, Inc…Funding for the EPF has come from several private donors who have chosen to remain anonymous.

Some of the previous jurors have been:  Carol Nagar, Martin Parr, Gilles Peress, Eugene Richards, Maggie Steber, Fred Ritchin, Bruce Gilden, David Griffin, John Gossage , Susan Meiselas, and James Nachtwey…For 2011 an equally astute set of jurors will be selected and announced before the deadline date.

The 2008 Emerging Photographer Fund grant was awarded to Sean Gallagher for his essay on the environmental Desertification  of China.

The 2009 Emerging Photographer Fund grant was awarded to Alejandro Chaskielberg for his 8×10 format essay on the Parana River Delta.

The 2010 Emerging Photographer Fund grant was awarded to Davide Monteleone for his essay Northern Caucasus.

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Anyone can enter the EPF 2011 Grant, there are no age restrictions… however, it is intended for emerging photographers, who are the icons of tomorrow and not today…

we use the SlideRoom system which is very easy to use for your submission to the EPF 2011 Grant… you can sign up and edit your work as much as you like for the next several weeks, right up to the deadline, and you only need to pay the submission fee IF/WHEN you actually submit your final essay for consideration…

All the rules for submission are explained in great detail once you are signed in to the SlideRoom system and start uploading your images.

nobody goes to Iowa for vacation….if you go to Iowa it is for a very specific reason…you are either driving to Colorado from Illinois , or to enter a Presidential primary,  or to grow corn and the animals that eat it….i can tell you for sure that Cecil and Wilma above were not responsible for the Iowa primary results pushing Barack Obama into the international spotlight….they are among America’s conservatives by label…..conservative only actually in the sense of thinking that a man ought to work hard for his family and be independent and the government should keep its hands out of just about everything…the irony of course is that without government subsidies , Cecil would have given up the family farm long ago…

yet Cecil, a hard working man of strong opinions, didn’t see it that way…he figured he was providing Americans their biggest commodity..food…of course the only food i can remember after milking cows and baling hay all one summer with uncle Cecil and aunt Wilma was in fact Wilma’s chocolate cake…but, forget politics anyway…even if you disagree with the politics of many so called middle Americans, you cannot question their basic integrity…an honest dollar for an honest days work, get the kids disciplined and off to school, fight for freedom if necessary, and get to church on Sunday…..period

our current essayist Danny Wilcox Frazier explored Iowans as no other in his first book Driftless…check it out…brilliant book…he might not have met Cecil and Wilma, but i am sure he would have recognized them quickly if fate had brought him to their front door…

nobody goes to Iowa for vacation…well, i did…as a kid i thought Iowa was the coolest place on the planet…left my beach home , just to go help clean out the chicken house….seemed like fun at the time….wanted to be a farmer even before i wanted to be a photographer…old Cecil had big hands…i always felt he would crush mine with his handshake and basically, he scared the hell out of me in general….2010 was Cecil’s last year, so i publish this little anecdote just for Wilma and  my cousins Marilyn, Doug, Lowell, Julie, Allen, Dale , and their families…

even apparent disconnected aspects of my history i figure play into the whole mix of things one way or another…what may seem important at one point, may lose significance in the long run and conversely something long ago almost forgotten may jump right in your face….all of this goes into every picture i make that truly resonates…not literally perhaps, but deep down…

what about you? do past family relationships affect you and your work? or is the present all that there is?

-dah-

Normally comments do not end up on the front page of Burn…however, as we get ready to move into a new year and are looking at a new design to better display the work of our audience photographers, i thought it would be interesting for those of you who do not read comments here to understand the behind the scenes discussions that go on here everyday with this audience…below is my last comment to readers in connection with how we can best use the comment section…the question of course is: do we stay as we are or do we go to a forum format…if interested you might just have to catch up a bit by checking out reader reaction under Viva Freedom..

THOMAS..MARCIN..ALL

there is no time line..and we are just having a conversation..i simply asked for some feedback, and it has been quite helpful…we are planning a bit of a redesign (when we can afford it, very expensive) to make things work a bit better and i was thinking perhaps that this would be a good time to try to fix the comments section…everyone can see there is some problem if one is not here everyday to keep up or simply miss constructive  comments in with all of the chit chat..however the solutions do not seem to necessarily be solutions either…and of course part of it is just personal as i so stated in the very beginning…how should i participate or in what way is best for what i feel i have to offer?

were i not publishing Burn , you would not find me on the internet except maybe to buy a camera and use Google for some research before a shoot…i was never a blogger at all and participated in no online community before i started Road Trips…so the ramble scramble of online chat is not something that i naturally gravitate towards…what i do enjoy, and why i started Road Trips, was to see if i could take the work in did mentoring in person and do it online…to see if i could do online what i seemed to be able to do with workshops..to help mentor the next generation and perhaps find a photographer who had been passed by and show their work….

please remember that Road Trips grew and became Burn ONLY  because i decided to show the WORK OF READERS instead of just my own..Road Trips did not feature any audience/reader work at all…it was only my personal diary…some say they preferred this, like Marcin…but i felt it would really be interesting to see what the audience was doing and so Burn was born…

then i thought , hmmm i wonder if we could actually print a magazine from this audience, and set a good example for all by getting some donations and sponsorships, and  paying photographers online…so this is what we did….

“we” being of course Anton and i primarily and throughout the history of Burn, but also with the help of Kerry Payne on the biz side and now with Diego Orlando, who masterminded the printing, and picture editor Anna Barry and Michelle Smith doing Burn 01 biz and Michael Courvoisier just keeping me in line on every angle.

all along, even with Road Trips, i had to consider how much time i was going to put into my online life and try to balance this with my own photographic work…right now as you can imagine i have two full time jobs….and interestingly enough quite well balanced, at least for the moment…but i am sure you know that i absolutely 100% cannot and will not let my own photography slide..either with shooting or with printing/publishing  and editing…all i really have to offer you as a mentor is that i am now “in it” myself…this is the same for Anton who wants to primarily be a photographer with Burn in second place..so we both feel the same in this regard..neither of us can totally drop everything else we are doing and just do Burn…actually if we did that, the irony would probably be that it would kill Burn…so time management is certainly part of this equation…

part of the fun here i think with both Road Trips and Burn, is that the audience , as like right now, has always been a part of the evolution and always knew the “business plan” because i would write about it over my morning coffee as an announcement to all….so Marcin you may lament the loss of Road Trips, but i think you must agree that i never left…like right now, i mean right now, if you Marcin gave me pictures to view and edit and consider for Burn or for anything, do you think i would do it?? and Thomas i AM waiting right now for ideas from you for an assignment….

so do not cry too much yet…we are all still here and intact and doing the best we can from our laptops set up in coffee shops and airports and sometimes from home…

right now, i mean right now, i am listening to you …as i always have and always will..that is why i did this post…Burn is NOT going to become some big commercial operation as some have suggested…anybody who knows me (and many of you now do) know Burn would never never become something else… we know what Burn is and what it means to you..we only want to make it better for all of us….and if it does not become better or grow in a way that makes sense for all of us, then we will go and do something else…and not for one minute not be very proud of what we did right here with all of you….

cheers, david

for Americans tomorrow is a day for a full on meal….no fast food….an actual sit down relaxed meal with your family is what Thanksgiving is all about…..and for me a more enjoyable holiday than Christmas since it is  minus a whole lot of pressure and a whole lot of commercialization….i cannot really think of anything wrong with Thanksgiving (except for when my friend Medford and i accidentally set fire to the turkey)

however,  in the culinary sense Americans are still most famous for their penchant for fast food….take a butchers scraps, press it all together,  put some onions, ketchup, and mustard on it and you have our most significant contribution to international cuisine.. the hot dog….while we are embarrassed that we invented the hot dog, we all want one every now and then …as i did right after i made the snap above in Oaxaca, Mexico….i actually took the picture so i would have an excuse to buy a hot dog in the land of tortillas and black beans..

i always regret or feel guilty  eating one, but i think it is the mustard and onions that gets me…the actual hot dog rarely has much taste (except in New York)…in my world travels , i do not think i have been to any country where i could not get a hot dog somewhere, somehow….fast food for folks with no time to eat…no time to digest….no time to enjoy and savor flavor …no time to talk with your friends….just no time…..

what does a hot dog have to do with your photography? maybe everything with so many of us looking like the guy above…i sense a desperateness among so many photographers…rushing….trying to keep up ….get ahead fast…..websites up, websites down…internet gobbling pictures…no time to actually savor photography….no time to talk about pictures…no afternoons with just one book…just business…fast…gone…just no time…get to it later…uh huh…

just fast photofood….i am getting  indigestion just thinking about it….

what about you?  does photography seem like a relaxed way to live life?  or are you scrambling to keep up? mustard or pickles?

update:7:15 am september 3  nags head, north carolina…..hurricane Earl….

house shaking like hell and cannot take much more it seems…but not taking in water anywhere that i can see which is amazing in itself…now blowing 75mph and raining horizontal sheets…my street is a river…i doubt i can even walk outside and surely not make it to the truck….i cannot believe electricity is on and coffee almost ready…

simply spectacular to see and feel , but not something easy to show in a picture..will try..like a shot out my front door is probably best i can do and even that will not be easy…weather satellite shows it is almost over…cats tired of being prisoners in the darkroom…they do not seem to have any appreciation whatsoever that i saved their lives…so far

( below is september 1  post)

no joke, i am now in a bit of trouble…

hurricane Earl , now updated to cat 4 is gathering strength …and headed for my town…this is a very different report than i had earlier today when we all thought Earl was going to pass 300 miles out to sea ….now, it appears we have been given advance warning of the worst possible news for those of us who live in the Outer Banks of North Carolina… all but permanent residents are being evacuated and almost everyone is preparing to leave…our island can take any beating , it is  supposed to move around and come and go,  but the structures on it are extremely vulnerable to wind and water at all times…everybody knows, nobody should live here…

yet i do, and i always knew the risks…grew up in this neighborhood, fell in love with photography in this neighborhood…

i now have about 24 hours to make some very major moves…i must do all i can to save my house and honestly there is not too much i can do except close the wooden hurricane shutters…what i really must do is round up all things of archival value…my negatives which i have here ready to make use of my darkroom …was just getting ready to print a few editions of my early family work…

my son Bryan and his girlfriend yoga maestra Michelle  are my neighbors…just by amazing luck we are all here now to lend each other a hand ….Bryan travels the world as a film maker but always makes sure he is here this time of year for the world class surf…Bry lives to surf and he has made it an art….film making is in second place in his mind, but his visual talent is clear….Bryan’s main tool,  the surf , was in its most majestic moment this afternoon…..alas, those beautiful waves from this afternoon might just come and try to clean out these overbuilt beaches by tomorrow…i just love those waves….they are the earth and the earth has rights… more than my personal property which i hope will survive, but it won’t be the end of the world if it doesn’t…

however, i am not idle, nor complacent ….if the projected path of the hurricane continues as is predicted , i will have no choice but to put my negatives/prints/books  etc into my pickup truck and drive away to safety…if it were not for the negatives etc i would be tempted to stick it out..and no my friends cannot come and get the negatives for me..already thought of that…they will not let anyone not from here to come here…i think …

hmmmm, story here?? maybe i can get permission from NatGeo to let me publish a picture or two here on Burn from what is going on…i mean wouldn’t that create buzz for their upcoming OBX  NatGeo Magazine story which they are contracting from me?? just thinking off the top of my head…more important things for me to think about now…

when things get dire , i feel my best…little things irritate me and i am annoyed too easily….but big things and major problems tend to make me calm and focused…..my problems are no more important than anyone’s,yet this seems to be a problem for many…every tv network on the planet is set up down on the beach…..anyway let’s not overdue this..all things relative and in the realm of natural fluctuations , this is the easiest to survive because of the advance warnings…..but i do know that you would be interested and mostly how ironic that we have been discussing archives, and digi and film etc etc…

ok, must move on this …i will keep you updated as best i can….

oh yes, almost forgot, much better and bigger news…Diego Orlando , Special Projects Editor of Burn, is in Perpignan, France at this very moment and is showing (and maybe selling) first edition copies of BURN 01 at Visa Pour L’Image …we must also talk Jean Francois Leroy, Founder and Director,  into at least a projection for the Burn audience next year..if you are in Perpignan now , just know i miss hanging out with  you and yes  please buy a book from Diego…this is a seriously cool book featuring 25 essays from photographers/artists published here on Burn , both iconic and from the audience here, two think pieces by Akaky and Bob Black, and  printed and bound by the best in Italy supervised by Diego and designed by Anton Kusters and researched by Anna Maria  Jester and yea i am in the mix too…  and if you are not published  in this edition,  maybe next….please try….best part of this is if my own stuff ends up underwater, at least i will have BURN 01 to show….i think this really might be the first seriously published book/magazine from the works from an online blog audience…

anyway, just to give you something constructive to do , i will do what i often do and ask you a question…

ok, here is a relevant one: if you were in my shoes , would you now concentrate on getting the old work/negs/prints off the island or should i spend my energies on taking new pictures of the catastrophe around me?

-david alan harvey-

Carl De Keyzer is a quiet man…one of the most prolific and intense photographers i know, is usually hard to find in a roomful of Magnum photographers…self effacing….unassuming….yes, classic Belgian….yet every time i see Carl he has a new book and 10 new exhibitions …i mean, who can keep up with this guy?  his books God Inc, Zona, and The Europeans show us a straight up shooter who does not let us miss his wit nor his ironic twists….

“Congo (Belge)”  and “Congo Belge en images”  are his two new books…the first , a color selection of his two year journey through this former Belgian colony and the second, black & white historical photographs from the colonial era…a powerful one, two visual and historical punch…i do not recall ever having seen a duo body of work quite like this one….as if these two books were not enough production , Carl simultaneously is working on a project of great magnitude, the coast of Europe…yes, the whole coast….i get exhausted just thinking about it…but, Carl in his most methodical way has raised his own funding, and is bit by bit literally photographing approximately 400  thousand of miles of European coastline….

rather than write any more about Carl now, i think it best if you chat with Carl yourselves…so, do a bit of homework on Carl, then jump in here and ask any relevant questions…Carl will be available to answer any questions you post here for the next few days.

Related links:

www.carldekeyzer.com

www.momentsbeforetheflood.com

is there anything better than a childhood dream?  9 year old Gracie Johnson dreams of becoming a photographer….she lives now in the Virginia town where i also dreamed of being a photographer at about the same age…Gracie and her family are part of my American family series Off For A Family Drive…Gracies’ father,  U.S.Navy Capt. Andrew Johnson was the Director of Medical Operations on the first wave of Haitian relief after the earthquake serving on the military’s largest hospital ship Comfort…

symbiotic stuff….

so here at Burn we are creating Circus Magazine  for photographers 18 and under…young Gracie will of course be a candidate photographer…. with less than 6  degrees of separation, we are also working in the kindred spirit of her physician father Capt. Johnson and will be using the fee many of you contributed as part of the EPF  grant award for Burn  to send approximately $6,000. to Doctors Without Borders specifically to be used for Haitian relief efforts….

this year the Emerging Photographer Fund grant will be given to one of 25 finalists…more than double the number of finalists as last year…this will be a very tough call for the jury that i will name next week….while i am very proud that the tenor of Burn has made it so that generous donors have made it possible to give out a $15,000. grant for 2010 for the completion of one photographer’s project, i still want to be on the leading edge of a wave that will help as many of the talented unknown as possible…

after allotting first for Haitian relief, then paying our fee to Slideroom for making the whole entry and judging process easy, Burn is left with a small profit from your entry fees…we had approximately 1000 entries…..so what to do with the profit?

Anton and i figured we had three choices: Do we?

(a) take a vacation in the Bahamas

(b) throw a helluva party in my loft in New York

(c) give the money back to the readers of Burn

those who know me, know the answer….and Anton is of like mind…yup (c), we are giving the money back to you….

starting on July 1, 2010 Burn Magazine will start paying for every essay and single published online in our magazine….

we will have to start with a token payment of $500. per essay for one time use rights on work that comes to us through submissions…more for a first time exclusive….we are confident this number will rise significantly as we seek outside support….now we are doing this with your money….a big circle….the right thing to do in this nebulous time in the world of publishing…

Burn will not last forever…Burn will always be small….we only care about one thing at Burn and it matches the way i feel about everything i do…i just want Burn to set high standards and live by example…and in this case hopefully stimulate the “big guys” to follow suit…the large media companies , even with advertising for support , are thinking of every way possible to keep from paying photographers for online content, and we at Burn are thinking of every way possible  to make sure the young photojournalists and artists of our time are compensated for their work….so, this is our brick in the wall…and oh yes, i am still working on assignments for Burn readers and icons as well…be patient, this is part of it…this is how it will happen….

photography has never been a professional choice either craft or art where people were expecting to become wealthy…photographers work from their deepest passions, either artistic or journalistic…yet, compensation so that they may continue their passion and yet feed their families seems to me to be fair enough….

i want to take this time to thank Andrew and Melissa Johnson and their beautiful children Critt, Cole, and sweet Gracie for allowing me into their lives….yes, i have made a few pictures with medium format film for my personal project, but what will be even better is if Burn gives Gracie a good digital camera so that she will have the opportunity to photograph her family from the real inside….soon to be published on Circus….

done…..

…dah….

it is getting cold here in Rio…fall has arrived…everyone complaining of the rain…temperature has dropped to a chilling 68F….i am wearing a long sleeved shirt, pants and shoes…beach days are over (pictured above from non-NG shooting)..New Yorkers may scoff, but i am freezing….besides,  my time is up on this National Geographic shoot…..i am coming home next week…

i have written before that i do  some of my best work in the first few days of an assignment and some of the best in the last few days…the first ones from raw energy and beginners luck and the last ones from “damn, i had better get something”…i have pretty much been on the case here in Rio since New Year’s Eve, with a short but busy one week break in january…mentally on it the whole time…and, of course, i shall return…perhaps on assignment , perhaps not…for i am not finished..

i was actually secretly hoping i would not fall in love with Rio….i assumed a romantic relationship, but figured it would be over when it was over….i have several other projects to complete and have no time to get involved with any long term body of work, but alas she has me…real love is of course often painful…despite the beach scenes you may imagine as pictured, there is another whole world here…full of intrigue, passion, hate, sex, death, light, darkness, despair, cruelty and kindness…the gamut of human nature all played out on a stage like no other …

i have been sick , scared, injured, and upset…long days turned into long nights often with no result…many moving parts and often with the gears grinding….it is very hard for me to look at the work…but, i must soon….i am not one of those photographers who come home at night and rush to the computer  to see what i have done…quite the contrary…i hate to look….deep deep down inside i am assuming some good work….but any long term results seem now far far away….on top of it all, i must justify all of this to the editors who commissioned me to be here….i need an Advil…

yet now my home front porch beckons….but, will my cat remember me?  has my electricity been shut off ?  battery run down on my truck?  yes, my “real life” has been on hold…even patient family and friends are fed up with me…no responses to emails….missed events…forgotten birthdays…major responsibilities undone…of course no woman can put up with me…i will spend the next week apologizing to everyone about everything…and so it goes…

is this any way to live? or, is this the only way to live? i know my answer…what is yours?

many of you have seen this book before, but i am sure many of you have not….my first work in print….i publish it again here now only because my friend Masaaki Okada, who was the designer/editor, died on December 21….Masaaki was a tremendous influence on me as a person and as a photographer….my first collaborator…

i met Masaaki my senior year of high school….he barely spoke any English, had few friends, and had come from Japan to help out his uncle who ran a gift shop in Virginia Beach, Va…Masaaki and i ended up as college roommates and close friends…Masaaki was the most talented person i knew at the time …a brilliant man with a sketch pad and painter as well…from Masaaki i learned about Eastern art and about the concept of not making anyone lose face…the single most valuable concept i know….later, i went with Masaaki to Hamamatsu, Japan and met his whole family when i did a story on the Japanese kite fighters….

just after undergrad school, when Masaaki and i did Tell It Like It Is , we were idealists….the $2. contribution was to go to the local church and intended to buy food for the residents of the neighborhood where i did this story… i lived with this family for the better part of a summer….our goal was to save this Norfolk, Va. neighborhood and eliminate poverty  with this book…Masaaki and i were both 22…

Bruce Davidson is leaning on me to re-print this book (it pre-dates publication of East 100th Street by 3 yrs)…for only 4 copies of this book exist…..Masaaki and i threw away dozens of copies of  Tell It Like It Is,  not thinking they were of any real importance at the time…we sold few….after all , we were not important…living in a small Virginia town and not sensing any “place” in the photography world…Masaaki did not think it even appropriate to have my name, or his, on the cover….small type on the back jacket was all he would allow…i agreed…this was not about us, but about the people in the pictures….eastern humility…

a few weeks ago, i stopped by to see Masaaki in Richmond , Va. where he lived, a retired photographer from the Richmond Times-Dispatch…….in recent years i saw him rarely, but we picked up right where we left off….he thanked me for coming and gave me another one of his paintings from the outer banks where i now live…Masaaki was an avid surf fishermen and often painted the land that surrounds me…we talked of him coming down …i knew he would love the house, the space…but, that is not to be….

Masaaki’s paintings will grace my home always…more importantly his influence on me is forever….i did tell him this many times….he always shook his head in disbelief…..i wish i had told him even more…