AKAKY IRL: Am I what?

AKAKY: Home.

AKAKY IRL: No, I’m here with you.

AKAKY: Am I?

AKAKY IRL: Are you what?

AKAKY: Home.

AKAKY IRL: No.

AKAKY: Am I with you?

AKAKY IRL: Not damn likely.

AKAKY: Oh. In that case, I should go do something.

AKAKY IRL: Such as?

AKAKY: Beats the hell out of me.

AKAKY IRL: I wish someone would. Maybe they’d pound some sense into you.

much rather have the sour delights of olives than the bland and pasty charms of dog food anyday.

anchovies.
david

I guess I will see you at the SPA. YOU MAKE MY DAY TOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!
See ya soon, street fighter !!

i´m really sorry…when i mentioned that some of us here are verbose i was talking about me! I know a pic is worth a thousand words but i don´t have a website or your e-mail so i used words instead :(( Can you forgive me for making your eyes sweat?

kat-

yes, extremely well put. We need more voices like yours here. Please stay on.

Ok, Can you submit a picture or something because …:((
My eyes are hurting already … Can you Imagine …I read my name at the beginning and immediately I started sweating …

“He said,”reading”.
YOU PHOTOGRAPHERS are blessed !!! BUT, BLESS can turn into a CURSE !!!
OIME…
WHY… “YOU MADE ME STAY !!! “

Well! My photo assignment was to go with a couple members of the woman´s club to donate a few hundred new library books for Book Day at a school in the poorest barrio of Costa Rica. The barrio is called La Carpio. The school has 2500 kids attending in three different shifts. La Carpio is like going to another country. Literally. There´s a long skinny road, very straight, bordered on both sides by canyons. And mountains in the distance. It is right outside the capitol but you would never know it or see it. It´s like a country in a country. A really, really strange feeling. The roads are paved and there´s a steady strem of public buses going in and out. Bus after bus after bus. There are no trees, not a blade of grass or a tree or a flower. Just houses and houses and houses. A no-man´s land at least no one i know has ever been there.

I was invited to take photos that will help with fund raising. There were children everywhere. Dark children, light children, blonds, brunettes and redheads. Every single one was freshly scrubbed, ironed, polished and shined. And no, not because the woman´s club was coming with a photographer. Just because whoever got them ready for school had the same pride that every other parent or grandparent in Costa Rica has when they get their children ready for school. I kept wondering where are those little kids you see on the Adopt-a-Child tv commercials? I mean, i sound naive and sheltered because i´ve lived here for 20 years and have never seen the kind of kids they put on those commercials. And it´s not because i have always lived in nice places. I have lived in a two room shack with an outdoor bathroom here. I have shared a home in a squatter barrio with a family of 10. i have walked this country´s roads till i´ve been ragged. The only time i saw kids like the ones in the commercials was when they had just played a game of soccer in the rain and the mud. So i´m not saying those kids don´t exist and i´m not saying ther isn´t poverty and horribly difficult conditions but people here have so much pride that they will never let their children betray their painful impoverished cicrumstances with an unkempt appearance.

I was taken into the library where the little 4 and 5 year olds were practicing a play called ¨Sopa de Piedra¨. A story about a very poor person who had no money for food. So along the road he started picking up rocks and pretended to make soup with them. By and by people came by and asked what he was doing and he told them he was making sopa de piedra but what would really make it taste good would be an onion. So someone gave him an onion. Then he said, what would really make it better still would be a carrot. And someone gave him a carrot and so on and on until he had a real soup. This play was then presented to all the children gathered in the front part of the school for assembly. Afterwards they pledged allegiance and all sang the national anthem and then they all went into the dining room where they had a REAL sopa de piedra with REAL meat in it, prepared by 3 heroines of La Carpio who prepare a hot meal for 2500 kids every single day. But never with meat. The meat was contributed by an American lady named Gail. Gail has worked with kids in CR for many years. She used to pick up street kids right off the road by telling them the cops were coming so they´d better hop into her car and then off she´d go, taking them home, giving them an alternative to their terrible lives sniffing glue and begging for money barefoot. So anyway, the meat was a big treat today in celebration of Dia del Libro (Book Day).

For me it was amazing to be able to shoot children so freely. Especially at a school. usually there is terrible paranoia and kids are off limits almost entirely. So this was a bit of a shock for me. But a delightful one. One little boy was very camera shy. When i asked why he said the camera doesn´t like him. I said ok, i´ll take a picture and if he didn´t like it i would delete it (i was shooting digital for a change). He said ok. But everytime i put the camera to my eye he would assume a tough guy look, narrowing his eyes and letting his jaw go slack. So i´d put the camera down and try in my usual ways to get him to drop his guard. Which he would do..until i put the camera up to my eye again. Same thing. Finally i started asking him about stuff he liked hoping it would make him forget what i was there for. He shrugged. I asked him…cookies? TV? soccer? chicken? video games? Girls? nada, nothing. He just gave me a blank stare. So i just dropped the camera to my side, slid up along the wall next to him, slouched down and just relaxed with him. I said, ok, so what do you like best? He said, ¨reading¨. He made my day.

And Civilian, that account of my day is for you. My sweet dyslexic psychic person.

kat-

Another Dyslexic…Oime ! You will be needed…
Good that you didn’t write anonymously cause MR. MICHAEL COURVOISIER is waiting at the corner !!

Don’t get me wrong BUT If you are keep writing here you will realize pretty soon that is so hard “to control your urges.”

AND You can SKIP My post cause it took me only a minute to write ( since i only copy and paste):))))

My Gracie : I got no space…I saw your Spaceboy
Katie : need update with your photo project
Mr.Jim :hold your ground

I LOVE YOU ALLLLLL

most sincerely:
kat-

first of all, thank you for not being anonymous…secondly, i really liked your interiors of Nicosia…thirdly, well, just thank you for taking all that time to so articulate your feelings…

all very much appreciated…..

cheers, david

The Good:
This is by far the most interesting site/blog I’ve followed in a while.

In the past several years I’ve followed many such sites, but most of them—even though interesting—either contain and present a single point of view (their authors, like Conscientious, Aphotoeditor, etc…) or are so general in their “focus” that they contain too much information—making it difficult to navigate through—and attract people with too different levels of involvement in photography, interests, backgrounds, etc… making it even more time-consuming than need be to distinguish between those comments/opinions which are actually insightful and helpful from those that are REALLY not (see Photo.net for example.)

The most intriguing element of the Burn community is the fact that most—if not all—posters are actually really good active photographers with personal styles and different approaches to the medium, and their comments—to some extent—provide insight to the ways they think and work.

The Not so Good:
Some posters seem to feel the need to show off how close and personal a relationship they have either with other posters or with our host. Don’t get me wrong, if I was friends with DAH or any other of the great people (and photographers too…) who frequent Burn I’d want the whole world to know… :) just keep in mind that there are more readers/followers of your posts than you might think, so make an effort to control your urges. There is always email, Skype and other more appropriate ways to communicate personal messages than public forums…

Of course this is a (semi)free world and you can post whatever you fell like posting—just like I do right now—but keep in mind that I—and I fear I’m not alone on this—have a “list” of posters whose posts I usually skip—just like you might do on my next post if god forbid there is one :)—even though from time to time I do like their views/opinions, just because I feel that they abuse their said freedom. We don’t need and we should not have “rules” as such to dictate and restrict how we express ourselves, but as anyone who’s been in a long term relationship knows:
a) there is a time and a place for everything
b) it’s not so much what you say but how and to whom you say it
and c) it’s best to weigh your thoughts and think twice before saying something out loud because like PJ said “some words when spoken can’t be taken back…”

Conclusion:
It is still a bit early but Burn could indeed evolve into something with historic proportions for documentary photography. Kind of a group f64 of shorts but on steroids—due to the “globality” provided by the internets…

(by the by I’m also dyslexic and it took me more than an hour to put this together… so please read the whole thing before responding.)

Partha Pal

There seems to be something attractive about what you call “David’s sandbox” that keeps bringing you back to play in it. And you are as welcome as any of us. You are an honest man who says it like you see it. I just wish you could find a way to share your opinions without denigrating others’.

Patricia

I think I have started enjoying the subtle ‘method’ in your apparent ‘madness’! :) The barely-perceptible way you compared Fly with Osama/Saddam is a masterstroke no doubt! But imo there was no need for that “G’tefakatahere…” – I think he is already out and there is really no need to overkill! Or is there?

Enjoy…

bodo

Best wishes,

Mike.

Really, you might want to consider preventing posts from this kind of thread from appearing in the “Recent Comments” column. The focus should really be on the work and not on the nonsense here.

Kathleen, I’ve stop posting under the photos and essays because I don’t have anything useful to say. Much of what is presented here is too edgy for me. The edges of the frame have always been a point of tension in a photograph, and the “edges” of photography itself even more so. We understand that life extends beyond the edges of a photograph. I’m not sure I’m interested in what extends beyond the edges of photography itself.

I WISH ,I WISH , I WISH I am MY GRACIE.

SPACECOWBOY…are you single ? No need to reply…Anton are u single?
My Gracie take notes…too many singles so little time…and I am out of time !!!
I will be back…