Archive for the 'dialogue' Category

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COMIC BOOK. A new reality show…with david alan harvey and friends

 

 

 

 

I have a very playful side. Some get this side confused with my so called “serious side”.  Often the two blend.  Surely my intent. So, right smack in the middle of Burn 02 production and also when I am focusing on two major projects, RIO and FAMILY DRIVE, I come up with this idea now called COMIC BOOK,  which spun spontaneously yesterday out of nowhere while I was playing with the Instagram bit.  The beauty of COMIC BOOK is that I can do it while doing other things.

These are to be three picture fiction sequences based on real life.  Or, are they even really fiction? You can decide. Just like the way I always saw the comics in the paper as a kid, and smiling as an “adult” as well. Anyway, fun and I keep trying to think of legit creative ways to use Twitter and Facebook, which is where these sequences will appear first. The “reality show”  is now being built by introducing the characters.  Two characters have been introduced so far on the FB/Twitter platform, and I will have up to ten interacting characters. These “stories” will evolve over time and are intended totally as a retro spoof on the so called “picture story”. But who knows where this goes?

Well, for one thing I hope it will spawn some ideas for you. I really want you to start thinking in terms of packages of pictures, sound, music, or whatever media you like and wrap it all into little units we can plug right here into Burn. Just as I have here. Yes, this is mine , but I am waiting for yours. The sky is the limit. No restrictions, just come up with a totally fun or totally serious concept. We will play you right here if provocative enough.You must produce the entire idea and package it for use. We can help of course, but the point is independent production by you. Yes, we already do this to some extent, but we want to max out this idea. So my “play” is just to get things rolling.

There is one thing I really need for you to do right now. We are late for this idea for Burn 02, but I think we can still make the deadline. Anyway, let’s try. Go NOW and take a self portrait using a window, any window,  to frame you. No more instructions. Just you in a window as a self portrait. We need 100 of you to do this for it to work as a spread in BURN 02 which we are scrambling to have in print and a debut at Visa Pour L’Image in Perpignan, France by the end of the month.

Just drop this picture into Submissions right here and mark it Self Portrait. If we can collectively make this happen cool, if not BURN 02 will rock it no matter what. If you do this, it must literally be done in the next few days. Should be fun and the designer of 02 has an interesting concept for these pictures. A surprise for you of course.

Hey, its summertime. Time to do things just for fun. Of course if you do anything you enjoy, it might just be taken seriously. I think the point is, and I try to get my students to open their minds way way way up, is that everything you do should be some sort of self portrait. Not literally, but figuratively. A point of reference to who you are, not who you are supposed to be. Photography can be used in so many ways. I never cease to be amazed by the possibilities. Wishing you feel the same. Show me.

-dah-

Published on August 3, 2011 by david alan harvey. 1,283 Comments

Magnum Portrait

 

A one minute movie by Chien-Chi Chang

Published on July 9, 2011 by david alan harvey. 838 Comments

summer job…

Dasha wants to see California. Los Angeles specifically. She knows L.A. from the movies. New York  police car chases a la television shows she wants to see as well. In the meantime, she and a few hundred other Ukrainians are biding their time on the Carolina coast filling in all sorts of jobs. Dasha and her friend Katya work at a miniature golf course. Galaxy Golf. A golf course where you might immediately look around to see if Martin Parr is indeed doing a book on it. Has crossed my mind too. Classic kitsch.

I have spent the last three days photographing the Ukrainian community that paradoxically lives here side by side  in the land of rednecks and tourists and fishermen and construction workers and surfers. Most return to the Ukraine after a three month summer stint, but some have married and raised families with the local crowd. However, Dasha and Katya see themselves raising their families in Kiev.

The Carolina shore and L.A. and New York are simply passing fancies. A growing up adventure and a first time, maybe last time, flirtation with America. My best pictures of these women and men mixing in the local environment must be saved for my upcoming essay on this coast for NatGeo and book following, yet I can never resist simple portraiture just because, well, I just like to do it.

Summer jobs. The best of times, and maybe the worst of times. How about you…Ever now fantasize your best summer job?

Published on July 7, 2011 by david alan harvey. 129 Comments

akaky says…

Before I start, I should point out that summer is not usually a particularly silly time here in our happy little burg. It’s true that the kids are all out of school now, save for those who find the modern curriculum of pabulum and political correctness too educationally challenging to qualify for social promotion, and so the kids are out doing the things that all normal, healthy kids do at this time of year like robbing liquor stores, beating up old people, and setting fire to stray cats. While this sort of thing is occasionally unsettling, it does little to upset the calm and orderly progression of life here; the kids take their cues from their parents and in the main parents here in our happy little burg do not act in a radically silly manner. There are always exceptions to the rule, of course, but they are few and far between.

It is summer, after all, a time when few people want to behave in a seriously silly way, except at the beach, where the intense sunlight has the unfortunate effect of making large numbers of people who should never be seen without their clothes on suddenly decide that the one thing in life that would make them happy is to display themselves to a horrified American public in all their avoirdupois magnificence, thereby scarring the psyches of many a small child for life and permanently blinding large numbers of family dogs. The vast majority of people, however, simply want to kick back, mellow out, and enjoy the long sunny days and maybe take in the occasional movie at the drive-in or bring the family to see a ballgame. Even our civic affairs take a back seat to the demands of the season, as our local solons usually decide to not decide anything until after Labor Day. It therefore came as a bit of a surprise to all and sundry when one member of the city council proposed that henceforth all public housing built here shall come equipped with environmentally sound dry toilets instead of the flush toilets that have made American civilization the envy of the modern world.

The economic rationale behind this proposal is simple: the ecofriendly dry toilet will save water and will, as a result, save the city millions in sewage treatment costs. At least, this was the explanation given at the city council meeting; the vast consensus of opinion at Don German’s Hair Cut and Hand Gun Emporium, as well as at most other tonsorial establishments throughout our happy little burg, is that this particular member of the city council is a jerk and a jackass, when he isn’t actually aspiring to the elevated status of complete moron. I do not hold this somewhat low opinion of the councilman, although in the interests of full disclosure I should mention that I did go to high school with him and that when I was a senior his first wife gave the varsity football team a particularly nasty case of the clap, costing the team a place in the semifinals for the county championship that year. I know that the councilman is a serious environmental activist and always has been; even in high school he led clean-up drives and recycling efforts years before it became the thing to do; and I believe that he made this proposal with every intention of making his community and his planet a more environmentally safe place in which to live. I also think he is full of toads’ gonads.

A more dispassionate observer than I, however, might choose to question the motives of the councilman and all his plumbophobic ilk. Why this sudden demand to do away with indoor plumbing, surely one of the hallmarks of a civilized society? Why, in this day and age of incredible scientific advances, should our modern post-industrial information age society turn away from Sir Thomas Crapper’s gift to the world and return to the outhouse? Let us look first at the outhouse, or rather, let us smell the outhouse, since we will be able to smell the place well before the outhouse comes into view.

I know this for a fact, for my family home once came complete with an outhouse. This was long ago, of course, when my family came up to our happy little burg from the great metropolis to the south for the summer, an annual trek we made every year in order to keep my brothers and me off of the streets and out of trouble, and a removal that became permanent when I was eleven, at about the time when my ability to turn the five-fingered discount in bulk was becoming somewhat notorious with the merchants on our block. Although my father plumbed for a living, he hadn’t actually gotten around to putting in a toilet in our house until the summer before we came here permanently, and so every year we marched through the high grass in the back yard (Pop disliked mowing the lawn, and he especially disliked mowing the back yard, his reasoning being why should he expend time and effort on something nobody would ever see) to the outhouse. It would be hard to imagine a filthier, more disgusting, more feculently crapulous and noisome hellhole than that outhouse, the overpowering stench of which made my brothers and me evacuate our bowels with a single-minded determination and alacrity we seldom displayed beforehand and have never displayed since, and get the hell out of there forthwith and in a hurry, too. It is difficult to imagine the sighs of both psychic and physiological relief we expressed when Pop first tested our brand new flush toilet in the summer of 1969, and it was with no end of fraternal glee that all the brothers together pulled down the old outhouse and set it on fire, and then filled in what had to be simultaneously the most loathed and the most fertile spot on the property.

So why, you ask, would anyone possessed of all their wits actually advocate a return to such a primitive method of sewage disposal? To understand the war on the flush toilet, you must first understand the mindset of those who want to ban this paragon of Western inventiveness. The modern environmentalist is, in our current political climate, most often associated with those who believe in the power of the state to correct all of society’s ills. There are many reasons for this, one of which is that environmentalists like to tell people what to do, and the state’s ability to make the populace do things they don’t want to do is even greater than your mother’s, if you can believe such a thing. In order to get you to do what they want, they have to nag and nag and nag, and sometimes they’ll make you fork over a stiff fine for not listening to them, and at other times they’ll send in SWAT teams, but mostly they simply annoy you until you do what they want you to do. But to annoy you, they have to get at you, and they can’t get to you if you’re in the lavatory copping a squat on Sir Thomas’ pride and joy.

This is true, believe it or not. The vast majority of Americans own more than one television, but they don’t keep one in the bathroom, and until the cell phone came along, most people didn’t have a phone in the bathroom either. The bathroom was a place of solace and rest, where the harried citizen could simply sit and read and go about his business without the constant pressure to do one thing or another, simply because they were already doing one thing or another and they had to prioritize. The bathroom was the one place where an American teenager could read without their friends knowing that they were actually looking at a book, because books are gay (actual quote, people, I kid you not) and not at all cool, and social standing, as we all know and remember from high school, is everything to an adolescent. One can only imagine what will happen to the collective American grade point average when students can no longer use the bathroom for any prolonged period because of the room’s intense crapulence, or what will happen to the social life of teenaged girls when they are no longer able to use the bathroom for so long that you wonder what the hell they are doing in there? It seems clear, therefore, that this push for the ecofriendly toilet is little more than an attempt to rid this our Great Republic of the last bastion of personal privacy left to the common citizen.

And for what? To expand the already increasing power of the state to interfere in the ordinary lives of the citizenry, and yes, to serve the interests of those with a vested interest in increasing that power, such as all civil service unions, most Democrats, some accordion manufacturers, and my classmate the councilman. As I said, I am sure that in making this proposal the councilman is doing what he thinks is best for the people of our happy little burg, and indeed, for the nation as a whole. That being said, and again in the interests of full disclosure, I must say that I never liked him or either of his wives, and let me be among the very first to say that he can have my flush toilet when he pries it off my cold dead ass.

Story: AKAKY

Photo: DAH

 

Published on July 1, 2011 by david alan harvey. 54 Comments

ahh, Paris in spring…

Joseph Koudelka gives a winsome Martin Parr a pat on the back after the Paris portraits session

John Gladdy emerges from his Paris hotel executive suite, only to be met by the dreaded Burn paparazzi

 

Like most photographers, I have a bunch of ideas about half cooked….Only some very few of my many on going projects actually get finished…I write about finishing often on Burn because it is the one single element most holding most photographers back..They just do not finish..I have often described a one in ten “finish rate”, which sounds low, but might actually be high….In any case the above two pictures, along with hundreds of others will fit into my now 4th book in progress tentatively titled:   PHOTOGRAPHERS (I have known)..

You will have to use your imagination on the typography and layout, but you can probably imagine the scrapbook look that would contain all the pictures I have made of my colleagues over the last 40+ years. No not just now as in Paris with the Magnum crowd and a piece of the Burn crowd, but all the way back to my college days, newspaper days, NatGeo days and 15 yrs worth of Magnum days and from seminars and photo fests world wide and all of my students and on and on and on…

Yup, I have pictures of probably everyone reading this text right now…Right? Or pretty damned close to it. Everybody shoots these “extended family ” pictures , but I might just have been doing it longer and over a wider demographic of our photographic community than most…

This is not so unusual , for photographers seems to love taking pictures of each other. I saw it at Look3 and I see it at the Magnum meetings like the one we just had now in Paris.  Photographers will often say “don’t take my picture, I belong on the other side of the camera”,  then give a silly grin into the camera just like everyone else getting their picture made. C’mon let’s face it, we all like being in a “memory picture” …Not a good picture. Not an intentional picture. Just a snapshot for the memory book. Well, this memory book might just be a real book. So unselfconscious and so not “trying” that it might just have an authenticity to it that would give it some lasting value. A little piece of history. And of course I will sell a copy to all the photographers who are in the book! Hot sales figures right there. :)

Of course, the cynical response could be, and will be, “who cares about a bunch of pictures of photographers?”…. a fair question of course…Well, I would sure buy a copy if someone else did it..Assuming it was done in a really interesting way…Just a bit of text, a few identifying captions, and well ..done…

Above are just two of the many I took around the Magnum annual gathering of the tribe. The first is of an unusual moment when Martin Parr arrived at the HCB Foundation cocktail party after photographing dozens of Parisians who had been lined up around the block to have a Parr Portrait as part of a Paris office fundraiser. Who could be more different than Parr? Koudelka, that’s who…Yet this is classic..Two photographers who see the world so so differently, and who might disagree on some issues, yet blend in a family way in the long run of our cooperative..This is the extended family of photography that I have always seen since my youngest days. Here played out on the same time stage with a late night Burn crowd reunion in the room of John Gladdy who decided to show us work at 3:30am after a diet of champagne, red wine, and tequila…All of this is part of my photo mix. What I have seen since starting to shoot this sort of thing during my grad school days.

That old famous line “if you remember the 60′s you were not there” is pretty much true. Same for a lot of these gatherings. I sure would not remember 90% of the stuff I see in my contact sheets. So good thing I made a few snaps to trigger the memories. Good ones, great ones,  to be sure..

Next time you see me, smile..You just might end up in the book…

Published on June 29, 2011 by david alan harvey. 337 Comments

think tank…

Burn editors Diego Orlando, DAH, and Anton Kusters on beach Carolina - photograph by Bryan Harvey

sorry i have not been around here for comments etc…nevertheless i HAVE been doing all things Burn …both at LOOK3 and now at my home…the whole Burn staff and a few crashers and hangers-on did manage to get to my house after the three day non-stop marathon that was LOOK3…Burn  officially started off the final day of Look  with the slideshow leading to the announcement about Irina being our new EPF recipient…i am so proud of all of the jury for selecting Irina…thanks Maggie Steber, Narelle Autio, Trent Parke and Barbara Stauss…these jurors added  to our repertoire of photojournalists like Davide and Sean winning our award but also more conceptual artists like Alejandro and Irina as recipients as well……Burn 02 coming soonest and the reason for the meeting at my home,  the book is going to rock it bigtime…we will launch with a special Burn slideshow in the arena at Perpignan this year…an honest too cool European opening of Burn.

anyway, i cannot stay long now, but i just wanted you to know that yes i am having fun and still working all the time to make this an educational hangout for all of you…Anton just left for the airport…next story up will be his Yakuza book official announcement…after all Anton is a former student and Burn colleague who listened and then went and did it with his own special talents…so damn right i will help to sell his book on Burn prior to Burn 02….later i will also do my own RIO, but in early 2012 with a free tabloid for all of you and a book for sale if you choose…all books and printed objects of any kind coming from Burn will be built around their limited edition appeal…Burn 01 has already proven this…as will Anton’s book, and 02,  and maybe maybe YOUR BOOK….yes, we will be looking all around the town…for things that will make sense…for things that just MUST be published…Diego is your go to book guy. Bryan, who shot the short film for our upcoming book JOOK is going to be selecting a few new short videos for our attention…we want to start featuring more short films…

anyway, this is the conversation on my front porch…as you all know by now if i am anywhere near you, everyone is always invited into the discussion…we plan to do Burn meetings in Warsaw, Rome, Bangkok, etc. etc..to meet more of you, to look at your portfolios, to consider your work for Burn. we will have to charge something for this but just enough so we can get to you…plane tickets, meeting space, etc., etc…anyway, we can all figure this out….we are thinking of more ways for all of you to participate, starting with a call for self portraits…yes, just like i did for Road Trips…only this time for possible but not guaranteed use in Burn 02…as a portfolio of a hundred or ten…we would have to see…not silly gratuitous gimmicky use of self portraiture, but something totally sophisticated yet edgy…yes, looking nice for 02…anyway, we are working it all out…fun stuff…creative stuff…education stuff…only things we like and care about…figuring we are pretty much on the same page with whomever is here…no pandering to an audience who will never like the way we think but assuming a nice connection with a significant number of like minded folks who just appreciate the visual image…and with photography as a way of living life….hard to knock the combo…

ok nuff said…

Mike Courvoisier, Diego Orlando, Maya Joseph Goteiner, Michelle Madden Smith and Bryan Harvey

Published on June 15, 2011 by david alan harvey. 397 Comments

revelations…

part of our little Burn magazine team met tonight over Pizza Hut delivery…thin and crispy Supreme is the suburban delivery of choice..no Coke, only Pepsi..hmmm, now where was i…oh yes, revelations…not necessarily things which can really come true, but well you all know how it is..i start this way, and then try to make it happen…so, revelation now, attempt/work on it to begin immediately…no time to mess around…

FIRST, we think we will try the obvious…keep EPF as is…no change…our Oscars…grumbling is part of it…the nature of it…

however, we will start with a grant of equal size a readers choice for the recipient…all of you literally vote for say one out of 15 finalists for example and for say another 15k ..nothing to do with EPF……at another time of year..in the fall…the Peoples Choice Award for Burn may not carry the weight of the EPF , but it will satisfy the desire of readers to play in the game….and real financing for some lucky recipient who won the hearts and minds of the people…power!

SECOND, a Burn branded camera bag has been born (anyone surprised?)…we will announce at Look 3

THIRD, RIO, yes my RIO will be a super over sized tabloid freebie..free to all of you..free to everyone…maybe postage only ..we will see…but an unbound tabloid on high quality paper that you can take apart and hang a spread/picture on the wall…i will look for a sponsor so i can give it away to you folks……will also be a real book too for sale, but the free tabloid will be a collector item itself no matter how many we print….

this will happen AFTER Rio makes its debut in NatGeo of course …one thing at a time por favor…we are talking early 2012 i think….the tabloid will be the “directors cut” …all stuff that could not be published in NatGeo and the totally behind the scenes rip it up….what you think?

there is a fourth thing, but i will save that for tomorrow…well hell, i cannot give it ALL away right away…

Published on May 27, 2011 by david alan harvey. 969 Comments

c’mon baby light my fire…

Brazilian model Fernanda Brandao photographed for my YOU MADE ME LEAVE book project in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico

 

i am supposed to be quitting this Burn bit right now….sort of announced that i would a few weeks back…too much work and i need to devote all my time to my own photography…i am doing three different projects with my own work that need my full attention…this is no time to be thinking of others….damn…everything was set for a high five very honorable goodbye until i went to Amsterdam as a guest of World Press Photo…

ok, so i met some young Burn audience, they told me how much Burn meant to them, uh huh, and then to the Magnum education blast in Toronto where i felt the effect of Burn in a very palpable way from both students and my Magnum colleagues, and then finally the coup de grace  last week a 16 yr old kid with a camera literally skateboarded into my gallery show in Colorado and said out of breath and without shaking hands, “i love Burn”..

so, how do you walk away after that? i mean it was only three or four people who said those things to me, but it is not about how many, but about the glint in their eye…sincere, warm, authentic…while i feel as though i have tried to avoid responsibility for the better part of my life, right here in my moment of total life freedom i have somehow managed to get myself into some sort of position of responsibility…freedom backfired..flipped…where did i go wrong?

and just now, just today, just an hour ago, after a long net session with Anton Kusters, the two of us structuring the way we would play the Emerging Photographer Fund Grant finalists starting tomorrow, we both ended up laughing hysterically…Anton with his own Yakuza book almost hot off the press was with me in thinking we would let Burn go…pass it on to others, or just let it go….and yet the reason we were laughing so hard was because in a moment of artistic and personal clarity, we saw that Burn was not fading for us, but getting ready to take on a new life…

for sure, our ten finalists this year will be our benchmark for now and set a tone for the future….exciting yes, and for sure to be controversial as well…if you have everybody agreeing with you, or have any sort of dogma attached to photography,  in any direction, then  for sure it would be time to go home…light a few fires, and you might just be getting somewhere…

no, we will not keep playing the same song…we will always be looking for fresh vision…and this year all of our candidates have it …fresh, new vision..yes, some purely journalistic, and yes, some purely conceptual…are we the arbiters of a new age of photography? of course not…in this new age, the readers choose…on the other hand, we have taken it upon ourselves to have a birds eye view of who is doing what , where and why…i have young students from all over the world, see so much work coming into Magnum, all of us see thousands of entries here on Burn, and make sure we see what is going on at all the international photo fests and pay attention to all curated shows and most recent publications of all kinds…

do we miss some stuff? sure we do, but we feel we have a reasonable handle on  what is going on as well as anyone and with no attachments commercial or otherwise to lean anyone anywhere for any reason other than to celebrate pure creativity… and we personally see a world where the various worlds of photography blend…something i have tried to do my whole life never being satisfied with labels….for sure we will blend on the pages of Burn all styles and types of photography, both online and in print soonest with BURN02…

our greatest weakness, and yes greatest strength, is that none of us who work on Burn have a full time job with Burn…we all have to do it when we can and if we can…for one way or another, we all do other things…all of us are photographers first…struggling as are all….none of us are business types, and the raw commercialization of Burn becomes less likely day by day….we want to get better, but none of us want to get negatively bigger…so we may do some things which will bring us enough funding to get a new infrastructure web wise etc., to totally display the amazing archive of stories we have for example, but all of us on Burn care more about a clean initiative than about a real biz plan…

we might fantasize a benevolent patron, and all that we do finance here comes from these generous donors (readers here), but Burn will always represent our original core philosophy of celebrating  primarily the work of new young talent with just a few iconic candles on the cake from time to time to keep things credible and referenced….and even during the short life of Burn, we have seen our original emerging crowd turn into the established crowd right before your eyes…again, we will soonest make the archive easier to access , so if you do not remember, you will be able to more easily go in and have a peek…..

Every other day we’ll show you one of our ten finalists for the EPF… and on June 11, at 10am, one of these finalists will be announced at the LOOK3 Festival to receive our $15,000 grant….

three distinctive jurors (who will now go unidentified, so you cannot influence the vote by buying them a drink) will decide on the recipient over the next two weeks of discussion and voting….these jurors will be of course identified on the day of the award…

in the coming days, we will also reveal the “short list” of 200 special  candidates out of the around 1,000 entrants and the even “shorter list” of 30 or so who came very close and are all very good….all of these will be considered very likely for publication on Burn …

i wish we had enough financing to help more than we do…and maybe someday we can have the equivalent of five of these grants or perhaps more assignments….right now, we are doing the best that we can…it is pretty obvious we are a very small rogue operation ….yet hopefully we are at least setting some examples for the larger media companies who in theory could do what we are doing way way better….but to be the small garage band has an appeal second to none really…suits me for sure…i hope it works for all of you as well…

-dah-

Published on May 21, 2011 by david alan harvey. 405 Comments

only the good die young..

I am totally not up to this…Writing obits is not what I do…This will not be my best of anything. Yet, it is all I can do at the moment.

I found out yesterday, at exactly this time by text message  while driving in a blinding rainstorm,  that my friend and next door neighbor Tim Hetherington had been killed in Libya along with colleague Chris Hondros. Mike Brown , who lives just upstairs and featured here with his Libya work was thankfully spared…So, two men who hang with me at home, stop by for a beer from time to time, were caught in the same mortar attack and one of them gone forever.  I did not know Chris Hondros, but was an admirer of his work. I write here only of my friend Tim.

Mostly Tim and I would see each other rushing in and out of the building. On the elevator. Tim with his bike. Fast chats typical in our trade. My last conversation with Tim was to congratulate him for his Oscar nomination. Gave him a hug. Told him he was a winner no matter what the outcome. Tim is a winner. Tragically gone now , but a shining light of integrity in journalism.

However, it is very difficult for me to defend right this minute the business of war photography. Tim is not the first friend I have lost like this. Richard Cross was the first, John Hoagland the second ,  and few  now can even remember their names at all nor  the war they died in or what it was about. Sure seemed important at the time.  Nicaragua, Contras. Anybody know about it? Even I who was there  have to really stop and remember all the details and the politics and the lies and the propaganda and the pure bullshit and a craving press  that led up to those guys feeling like it was their mission and their sense of making a difference to be there with their cameras. Met Nachtwey there and he survived that and many other conflicts and I have heard his speech of justification many times. I listen.

Same with Tim.  Tim Hetherington stopped by to talk to my students in the last loft class, he always came to talk to my students. He had a sense of mission as well. So yes, yes I know the peoples right to know and the documentation for the sake of the oppressed etc etc. I know the speech well. Yet, I also know the realities.  I will bounce back from this anti war photography mood  most likely, but this is how I feel right now. I know that conflicts must be covered, but the repetition of the realities year after year after year  just gets me in the gut.

It is just so so sad, tragic,  sickening that one of the few who really was trying to make a difference and one of the truly most honorable and creative  men I have ever met is gone.

Tim Hetherington, I love you bro. You did what you set out to do. Nobody can ever ask for more.

Published on April 21, 2011 by david alan harvey. 100 Comments

workshop plus…

I always tell my workshop students on the first day that my one week workshops actually  go on forever…That is, if a student stays in touch with me and continues to produce compelling work , I do stay on as a lifetime mentor…The picture above is proof…Chris Bickford (left) with Burn readers Roberta Tavares and her twin sister neurologist Dr. Renata Tavares (background) in Lapa area of Rio de Janeiro with Lance Rosenfield (right) …Chris and Lance have both survived my New York loft class several years ago and remain close friends…Chris’ essay on New Orleans Mardi Gras will show up here on Burn on Monday. Lance, on Burn with Thirst for Grit,  has just formed a photographers coop PRIME and several photographers in his coop have been published here  like Charlie Mahoney with his essay Troubled Paradise. So my alums  are rockin.

I am trying to set a good example for them as well. This week I am in Rio shooting on my own, and will pick up with my NatGeo assignment next week after Carnaval. After all I did DO in a big way  Carnaval last year for NatGeo Magazine and for NG television. Thank you NatGeo. So now I am here just taking pictures for myself and possible book/iPad book and hanging with my buddies/students/friends….Hey, the ultimate spring break!! Normally it would not work to have other photographers around while I am doing my thing , but in this case it just flat out rocks..We are laughing ,talking pictures, and shooting like hell as you might well imagine. The competitive spirit works in this case because there is plenty of material to go around. Well, after all, it is a party for heavens sake with the whole world invited…

And of course the obvious. Anyone who really knows me personally will know some of  MY best work will come from this week…No doubt about it. I thrive having family and friends around. Always have.

In the Mississippi  Blues workshop class I am doing upcoming in April, I will be out shooting with my students as well…i also do this in Oaxaca, Mexico class…Always fun and on subjects where everyone is spread out and not tripping over each other.

Well you may imagine I have way better pics than the one above. Just used this to make a point. Saving the hot sexy totally  outrageous ones for later. Make sense? Stay tuned.

-dah-

Published on March 5, 2011 by david alan harvey. 18 Comments

is paper hot, or not?

“Color , grace, gesture. Slipping and sliding through nights humid and intimidating. I am both lost and found in a simultaneous rush of primal feelings and needs.”

These were my words for a Bravo paper promo for their paper and printing. A commercial use of my photography but the whole concept, design and writing was  a collaboration between Polish designer Jurek Wadjowicz and yours truly. Of course the pictures were my personal work from the Caribbean and South America . I cannot publish the whole portfolio here, but it was a labor of love and flat out a whole lot of fun to make. Trust me, the kind of commission you will savor. They are rare. I have never worked with anyone in quite the same way as I did with  Jurek. It really was our baby and he made me feel like it was my baby.

Holding the final paper product in my hands now is a certain kind of experience and way of viewing photographs that cannot be duplicated on the computer screen. Yet I and many others scramble every day to make our work viable for mobile devices, like the iPad and Kindle etc. We see our books being reasonably priced iPad books as a secondary offering for the traditionally printed book, or will it be the other way around?

Either way, times are changing. Some top media executives see bookstores closing and all but boutique printing moving to the iPad. Their feeling is that the consumer will happily pay say $5. for an iPad book rather than $50. for a paper book. I will no doubt end up doing both , therefore spending $55., but perhaps I am not the average consumer of photo books. We will see how discerning consumers move on this.

While I work everyday to create a good web experience for you, I also work everyday in traditional media. I live and breathe books. Traditionally printed books. My workshops which always had as the grand finale a slide show from the week of intense shooting by students, will from now on have as the end game a handsomely printed book.

In April during the Juke Joint Festival in Clarksdale , Mississippi  students from my small class will start their shooting knowing that we will be producing a book titled JUKE.  This will not be an  everybody automatically gets 5 pictures in our class book, but a seriously conceived and edited book where each student is going to have to make a truly strong image to be considered for publication. We  will start building this book from day one.

Eileen Gittens, Founder/Ceo of Blurb, told me her company will sponsor JUKE and give us  very special attention.  This will be the first in a series of student produced books.  These may become a part of our upcoming Burn library of carefully thought out books of all kinds including upcoming publication of a wide variety of photographic artists from this audience both emerging and icons alike. Soon to be presented on Burn will be series of iPad  compatible essays,  starting with Chris Anderson and his Capitolio.

ok, QUESTION FOR ALL

So what do you think? i am reading Ross in our comments section  whose book budget is blown after buying 4 books…..what about this? Ross could have perhaps had 4 iPad books for say $20. instead of the probably $200. he spent…the profit to the photographer and publisher is probably also better in the electronic version…book stores closing down….are we seeing the end of the printed book game?

You guys tell us…..we are listening

Published on February 24, 2011 by david alan harvey. 3,268 Comments

righteous (as in bob marley def)….

(interview with Alec Soth , above, coming soon…..stuff you never knew)

I have had writers block for the last three weeks, yet I am not a writer. Which is no doubt  the whole of the problem. I can do ok with pictures on demand. Not so with  pen and paper. Surely it isn’t that I don’t  have much to tell you. I have too much to tell you, yet i need to be brief. I will get right to the point.

For those of you who have been readers here for awhile, you probably figured out a long time ago that this is a pretty humble operation here at Burn. While we are in popular terms a “wildly successful new brand” , we make no money and our staff is still an all voluntary army.  Now mind you we are not even trying to make money. Yea invest in us!  Smiling.  Seriously, all of us value independence and freedom more than money. So we are not looking for bosses. Yet we are looking for support. Sure, uh huh, right dude, who gets money without a boss?

In fact we are ninjalike action heroes because we have  generated some income from thoughtful donors to pay for our $15,000 Burn/Emerging Photographer Fund grant with funds donated through the not for profit Magnum Foundation. Subscription donations help to pay photographers for work published here. These are donors who simply believe in what we are doing.

Yet indeed, we are scrambling to make things work . There are two possible solutions. First , is to accept advertising. While I have zero aversion to advertising and have done ad photography, I think that for Burn right now we might just be able to survive without it and therefore have a really clean slate for just doing what we want to do and with a particular kind of unencumbered cred. This audience will basically make the decision for funding/donations  based on the steps we are making.

So you may ask, what steps?

We want to make more of what we did in the last two weeks. Financially and psychologically supporting an emerging photographer like Egyptian  Laura El Tantawy in Cairo and at the same time commissioning an exclusive for Burn essay by Paolo Pellegrin. Both photographers with unique styles and both looking at Cairo.

Both with equal pay, equal artistic control, and one time use only photo rights..

My stated initial goal of Burn was to combine the iconic with the emerging iconic. We have done it now with original photography from both and an exclusive here.

Next we go to firebrand Bruce Gilden who will be in Haiti during elections  and a soon to be assigned young  Haitian photographer to shoot a parallel story with Bruce.  Followed by Alec Soth (shown above during my interview this week)  and and an emerging photographer chosen by him. Our aesthetic interests will know no bounds and we will actively seek all individual styles of work.

Simultaneous with these projects sponsored by Burn and the readers of Burn will be a special corporate commission presented by BD who sponsored James Nachtwey with his TB essay published on Burn in 2010. BD will now sponsor in Russia both Nachtwey and emerging star of Russian descent,  Alisa Resnik. Frankly we would welcome this type of selected corporate sponsorship for any of the above projects as well. We feel we will get them , but I am willing to bet on it in the meantime with our readers support. BD was happy with Burn as a platform before, and have come back this time with additional support for a talented young photographer.  So this is a model. Again all of this original work both by Nachtwey and by Resnik will be featured first here on Burn with a proper drum roll preceding.

All of the above projects highlight four new emerging photographers as well as the established legends.

I think we have taken a large step forward today without losing any of our identity. We just want to do things here on Burn, and upcoming in print magazine  Burn 02,  that are simply cool.  Serious.  Fun. Imaginative,  and flat out informative as well. If it is  not rewarding to do and we are not giving you something unique, then we fold the tent and go have a beer. Already in our short history I think we have helped a few young photographers, respected a few icons, and made  a lot of new friends along the way.

Now one of the things I have noticed about creating space, funds, and a platform, is that while some receive , some feel left out. This is a conundrum with no real solution except  I can say that I will do my best to pass things around. I cannot support everyone. My honest hope here is only to set an example so that others better equipped to do this sort of thing than I , will take on the responsibility and the effort. I am as accessible as I can be to photographers with ideas. At the same time, I do have my own photography and books to do, so there are times when I disappear into my own shooting as I am about to do in Rio. So all patience is appreciated.

We are struggling in the good old fashioned way. Times when real things happen for the right reasons. Feels like such a time.

-dah-

Published on February 15, 2011 by david alan harvey. 592 Comments

Emerging Photographer Fund 2011 – Call for Entries

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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.

—

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.


The EPF grant 2011 submission link:

http://burn.slideroom.com


Deadline for submission: May 15th, 2011

The winner will be announced in June, 2011 at the Look 3 Festival of the Photograph in Charlottesville, Virginia

Published on February 12, 2011 by david alan harvey. 81 Comments

holiday lights….

i am always telling my students and those i mentor that the most obvious and best projects are just at your front door….so it is a concept i endorse and have indeed lived…yet, i need to re-learn it all the time and the subtleties therein…so sure, it was clear and obvious that i would two years ago launch on a drive across country and do medium format work on American Family…keyed off all the work i had done on my own family…good idea, and i moved on it…what never occurred to me until a combo of  the family exhibit in Madrid last spring (which i viewed as a work in progress at the time) and something my son Bryan said to me yesterday, is  that i was indeed “done” with this project after taking the very first picture….after all, isn’t a family album complete even if there is only one picture in it ? how many pictures does a family album make? everyone always asks me regarding projects  “how do you know when you are finished?”….my usual answer is that you just “know”…you  simply feel it is done…

the incredible revelation for me on this one was that i was finished as soon as i started….so, i am done….

in other words it is a movable feast…always a work in progress and always ready to be shown at any time…..for this one there could never be an end and at any point it is finished…i can do a 15 print show as i did in Madrid , or a 100 print show , or a 1,000 print show using the contact sheets alone , or a combo and with hard copy albums and big prints and videos, well, the whole bit……a two book boxed set…one of my own family who i have documented since 13 til yesterday….and the other the med format work of families from all over my country….this of course could have no end internationally once i complete the U.S. work.

my love of family and extended family runs deep…my relationships at Burn, Magnum, NatGeo, are akin to familial bonds (often with all the drama to go with it!!)…that will lead to yet another book (trilogy?) no joke just called “Photographers (i have known)” for i have religiously documented them (i have everybody)  as well and all of my students  and Burn audience etc etc etc…for those of you who have met me, i most likely have taken your picture, right?…..so this work is family as well…

Sally Mann      Charlottesville, Virginia 2008

so, forget all of my pictures of the world ….what will be important is all the work i did “on the side”…the family snaps…yup, those will be IT i am sure….knowing that now makes me wish i had tried harder…but, i guess that is the whole point…i didn’t TRY…it simply happened….

this simple revelation is of course totally a game in my head…nothing physical has changed…nothing has happened…EXCEPT the way i am thinking about something….a something that was right in front of me…yet this,  as we all know IS everything…for those of you who have studied with me, this is a real work in progress right before your eyes….just as Road Trips and Burn have been as well…i am sure you can all see it…and feel it…there is no way to beat that which is organic…authenticity is the benchmark…

as we swing into the holiday season and the end of 2010, reflection is always our mantra….throwing out that which does not work and moving towards things which do….i doubt any of us get it exactly right, but willingness to change and push new initiatives forward is after all our being….

are you finishing something up or starting something new? or both?

yes, my holiday lights are up all year…they  get blown around in the wind, fall down, get skewed, a real work in progress….just like me..

-dah-

Published on December 19, 2010 by david alan harvey. 2,105 Comments

the corn state…

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-

Published on December 10, 2010 by david alan harvey. 54 Comments

who is this?

eyeballs


if you have Skyped with this person you may not play….if not, you may guess who this is…honor system please….first correct answer receives my slightly used Timbuk2 messenger bag with camera insert adaptation…ok, ready set go!!

Published on December 3, 2010 by david alan harvey. 107 Comments

letter to friends..

bubble gum


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

Published on November 30, 2010 by david alan harvey. 676 Comments