Wow, some photos that I've been trying to get up online for ever, and now finally with this new slideshow ability, I can do it the way I want to. These are actually from last July when I took a week off to hang out with my mom, dad, sister and her son Dylan. It was an amazing week of hiking and hanging with the whole family. Most of these are of these are of the little guy, of course, mostly because he's not so little anymore.
People often ask me about equipment I use (in fact, it was one of the things my class and professor suggested I talk about when I was encouraged(required) to add words to this blog): A lot of the pictures on this blog over the last few months have been taken with whatever I could get my hands on at the time - everything from a 5D to F3, MarkII to YashicaD. The above photos were taken with a Leica, 35mm lens on film that I bought from a friend out of a sort of grab-bag - a lot of it looks like TriX and I think there's some fuji (looks a little less contrasty).
In case you missed the opening and the conference last week, you luckily can still go see the images at the Harry Ransom Center right now. The exhibition is in two main parts, the first images from the war in El Salvador beginning in 1979, the second part an exhibition of Donna DeCesare's images depicting the lasting effects of those wars in the US and Latin America up until the present. THESE IMAGES WILL BLOW YOU AWAY. I'm not kidding. A lot of this work was what got me interested in photography in the first place - photography with a purpose.
And lastly, a new addition to the blog - slideshow feature! Let me know how this works for you. I'm still trying to work the bugs out, so let me know if anything's funky or it just straight doesn't work.
http://uhf5justice.weebly.com/index.html So, a week ago some friends of mine were given some bogus tickets for "jaywalking" downtown. Yes, jaywalking. They ran across Congress and were stopped by 4, yes 4!, bicycle police officers (I don't know, I guess they travel in packs). Anyway, the good people of The Wonderful Organization have pledged to give all the proceeds from their next show to the guys to help them pay their tickets since the guys were just out there helping them out on a super-secret project.
So yeah, go to the website, watch the video, and head out to the Dirty Dog on May 17th at Midnight and hear some tunes to help the guys out. I can promise it will be an amazing time.
I noticed over on Joey's blog some images from a point to point race during his trip to Virginia. A point to point is a horse race that involves jockeys and jumping and all that jazz, but really it is a huge, ridiculous social gathering that has a lot more to do with champagne, high heels and hats. Here's a couple shots from the Holga I dug up. I had two last year, one with 35 and one with 120.
So, I've had big plans for some major updatage of this blog for awhile now, but I keep holding off because I want to make "significant" updates to it. What that means, I don't really know, but it somehow involves more than just a picture or so. Anyway, ran into a couple SNAFU's today, but I wanted to just get the ball rolling for myself, so here's an old snap that got scanned from some film I found. Just a quick entry in the visual journal of heading out to drop off some photos with Sypher at a Vineyard. When we arrived, we were told that the man he needed to talk to was busy - out in a field chasing a run away horse. So the two of us ended up leaning on a fence watching the far-off scene. Good times in Fauquier County.
Oh, and for a bunch of you who were at Kan's open-mic last month; Raymond threw up some photos on his blog that should be checked out. His latest entry on his blog though is actually the photo story that Raymond was down in Texas working on. He's been working on it for over a year now, so the edit he has up is definitely worth checking out.
Still have a ton of scanning to do from all the film I processed this week, but I wanted to post something I shot tonight real quick for the Boss. He needed a headshot for the upcoming Austin Shakespeare Festival production of Much Ado About Nothing later this April. Big thanks to Cliff for the use of his camera tonight. Any other semi-professional actors out there?
I just had to put a belt on, my pockets are so full of film to process: HP5, TriX 400, TriX pushed to 800, HP5 120, TMax 120, Plus X, Fuji Neopan, Delta 3200 ... this is going to be a lot of time in the dark :)
THE Raymond Thompson, as he is affectionately known, graced the floor of my apartment this past week while he worked on a story in San Antonio about a little boy and his family. Daniel Garcia traveled from Culpeper, Va. down to Texas to undergo a special surgery to implant a titanium ribcage into his 8 year-old chest. Raymond's been following the Garcia family for well over a year and half and his efforts at telling their story to the community through the Culpeper Times newspaper has yielding amazing results both in community awareness and support for the Garcia's as well as needed monetary donations (to the tune of more than $39,000 - who says community journalism can't have an effect!?).
Raymond is truly one of my favorite photographers, not simply because of the amazing images he always brings home from assignments, but because of the heart he possesses that drives him to never settle for the easy way out. Raymond really cares about documentary photojournalism in a way I sometimes find lacking in other shooters (often including myself). That's why it was so amazingly refreshing to have him here this week. His visit has gotten me geared up to finish out the semester strong and really go make things happen through photography.
Please check out these links to his blog and the stories on Daniel available online. I'll let y'all know when he's ready with (what I imagine will be) some amazing multimedia from this trip down to Texas with Daniel. Oh, and Daniel came through his surgery last Wednesday extremely well and was even off the ventilator days sooner than expected. Have the Garcia family in your thoughts if you can.
It was the last regular Wednesday night show for the band Fly Jack who'd become real favorites of Eddie and all those folks in the Wonderful Organization. Fly Jack is a seriously funky band. 4 piece horn section, funky drummer who sings like Stevie Wonder, sick guitarist, 6-string fingerstyle electric bass, and keys that keep your booty shaking.
The Wednesday night's at TC's sort of took over from the Monday nights we used to spend there listening and dancing to the Little Elmore Reed Blues Band while consuming copious amounts of cheap Lone Star and High Life (which I swear somehow tastes better there than anywhere else). Interestingly enough, I just found that the video featured on the groups myspace page has several folks featured dancing in the background that many of you will recognize. I saw Sid, Rachel Sibley and The Boss all dancing away in the video. Good times, good times.
Anyway, the days of Fly Jack at TC's are over, but you can catch them Monday nights over at Antone's from now on. Although, that would mean you miss out on the blues over at TCs ...
A nice little side note though that ties into Eddie's presence at TC's: In this Statesman review, they mention a certain star of such hits as Point Break and Speed having visited the bar in the past. How amazing is that?
Just wanted to encourage folks to read this amazing article on Robert Frank. If you're not familiar with his 1958 book The Americans, you need to run out and find it right now. The first copy I ever got a hold of was at the county library where I requested it with an interlibrary loan - how awesome are libraries. I ended up with a copy published in 1969, an edition that will set you back about 350 bucks just about anywhere you find it. Library! Free! Books! Yes!
Lucky for us though, a new edition is coming out, and it's only 26 bucks!!! I'm quite excited. I've been talking with a lot of people lately about the idea of "straight photography," and Frank's work in The Americans is a perfect example of just how deeply one can descend into a deep document of an entire culture simply with a 35mm lens.
Read the article, check out the book, you won't be sorry.
Here's a little taste of one of the many gems of explanation (or un-explanation) Frank provides the author of the article:
" “It amazes me,” he said. “It’s a book of such simplicity, really. It doesn’t really say anything. It’s apolitical. There’s nothing happening in these photos. People say they’re full of hate. I never saw that. I never felt that. I just went out to the street corners and looked for interesting people. O.K., I looked for the extremes, but that’s because the mediocre, the middle, it’s bland and that bores me. "
A week and a half ago, I caught a ride down to Houston to spend Spring Break working for FotoFest (more on that in coming posts). During the week I stayed with my parents whom I sometimes forget are amazing people dedicated to helping folks through helping to run a local food pantry and working with the St. Vincent de Paul organization. With St. Vincent de Paul the visit people in their homes who need help with everything from food to rent to electric bills. On a visit a couple weeks ago, they met a woman who a year ago had triplets. She did not have a crib for them to sleep in, so my parents were able to locate two of them for her which we brought to the house on Sunday and set up. Here are two of the amazingly cute kids sleeping like little cubs.
The experience was only deepened later that evening when I went to church with my parents. The sermon happened to be given by a visiting priest who was leading a retreat of sorts at the church that week. He talked a lot about faith and renewal and hope. The idea of Hope is something that really resonates in me. It made me realize how I think that ultimately I want to take pictures that really explore hope in any situation. I think that one of the reasons I like documentary photography is that you often find the most hope in the people that from your outsider perspective would initially seem the most hopeless. The picture that starts this post is from Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. It's members of the St. Rose de Lima choir rehearsing in early January of 2006. Katrina destroyed much of their town. Al Acker, the choir directer, vividly described to me those months later how when he walked through the doors of the church on August 30th after the storm, the first thing he saw, amidst all the destruction and death that had wreaked their town, was this mural on the wall. People always tell me that they really like this picture, and I often think about how little I have to do with that, at least from a photographic standpoint, it's really very simple in its execution. The message does seem to shine through though, and what's great about that, is that it really has nothing to do with me and everything to do with the members of that community.
A little extra addendum to this post: I've been in the lab all day, and I'm about to start editing some video and was starting to lag a bit, SO I flipped on one of my favorite YouTube videos. It actually fits perfectly with the subject of this post, so I'll post it here. If you don't know who Billy Preston is, I'll give you a little background. Preston is who I consider to be the infamous "Fifth Beatle" having been brought in by George Harrison during the tough times suffered by the Beatles while making Let It Be. He famously earned joint credit with the Beatles for the single "Get Back." I always think of his most recognizable contribution being on the B-side which only made it later on to Let It Be ... Naked, "Don't Let Me Down," where we hear "Hit is Bill!" before a quick electric piano solo at the end of the tune. The video below is Preston leading the band in a tune during organizers Ravi Shankar and George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh in 1971. The concert was a benefit for refugees from East Pakistan after the 1970 Bhola cyclone. Preston performs which such amazing fire and emotion with his soulful voice, swelling organ and eventual dancing . I hope you enjoy this as much as I do.
On Friday I found myself wandering around campus contemplating heading home when the urge to go check out what was hanging at the Harry Ransom Center suddenly hit me. I had not visited the Ransom since coming back to Austin this semester, so I turned and back-tracked towards the constantly rotating collection. As I approached, I noticed a scene comprised of the elements above plus one additional element (not pictured) that (would have) proved the key to making an infinitely (in theory, at least) more interesting picture.
Just left the three elements pictured above of sat a woman on a concrete barrier in the foreground. She was facing the building and wearing a deep, orange shirt and a vibrant white headscarf. Because she was facing away from me, the shape she created was organic and surreal when juxtaposed against the wall with its line of pipes and hydrants. As I walked by, I picture popped into my mind: a longish-telephoto compressed the space between the covered womans' shape and the shapes it aligned with against the wall; everything lined up, heights all equal. The camera hanging across my shoulders though remained buried in the bag at my side. I did not stop, instead just walked by into the Ransom Center.
As I walked through the exhibit inside, all I could think about was that picture-possibility. I honestly can't remember a single thing I looked at in the exhibit really save a few pictures of Charlie Parker playing with Mingus. It took me about three minutes to come to my senses, turn my back on the walls of the Ransom, and walk back outside praying the woman still sat there.
OF COURSE she was gone. My much-more-than-momentary hesitation cost me the picture. I was instead doomed to stand around for 30 minutes waiting for something, anything to happen in its place. Nothing ever did. I took a few pictures more of visual evidence of what could-have-been than what really was while I watched longingly as the headscarf-clad woman sat reading around the corner of the Ransom Center in another courtyard.
My resultant restlessness did serve one purpose though; I found myself walking down 21st Street poking around for pictures, finally ending up in the PCL. There I finally sought out some of the Thomas Merton books I've been craving since leaving Virginia in November.
If I've never told you about Thomas Merton, don't get me started. The best way to not have me try and explain it to you and convince you that he is amazing though, is probably just to read some of his writing yourself.
All Photos on this page are copyright Mark Mulligan. You do NOT have permission to use them. If you have a legitimate use, ASK me, and I'll probably say yes. I promise.
