rubin museum

12 Ekim 2012 Cuma

FIRST 3 LINO'S FROM CHIANG MAI TRIP

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These are the first 3 lino's I've cut and printed based on the sketches from my trip to Chiang Mai, Thailand as part of the group Volunteer Positive. (And one linocut from my friend Phra Kritsada Prueprong) The first 2.5 weeks was spent in service which afforded me very little time to actually draw on my own, most of the prints from the full series were sketched out on my last week in Chiang Mai. The only 1 of these 3 lino's that was sketched during my actual service is the Elephant sketches print. We spent an afternoon at the BAAN CHANG ELEPHANT PARK in Chiang Mai where after a educational introduction to the Asian Elephants in residence we had lunch and a few minutes to digest our food before the 2-hour trek we were about tro partake in. Having not had much opportunity to do any prior sketch work, I had the foresight to bring along a few pieces of pre-cut lino and stole away for 20 minutes after lunch and did these sketches. Let it be known, elephants do not stand still, ever. It was a challenge to get a complete sketch, which explains why there are so many partial elephants in this print.

The print of the Monk is in fact a dear friend I made while in Chiang Mai. He is a 20 year old Monk named Phra Kritsada Prueprong originally from a village outside of Chiang Mai in Loei province. We were paired up as part of something called "Monk Chat" which is an event that creates the opportunity for local monks to practice their conversational skills with English speaking foreigners. On this particular morning, Kritsada and I took a tour of a few of the local temples and I decided that since he would share with me, I would share with him by having us both work on a lino sketch. I offered to take his drawing back to NYC with me where i would cut it out and print it for him. I had no idea that he could actually draw and was quite talented. It turned out to be an incredible opportunity for the both of us.

The print of the banners was from Wat Phrasingh in Chiang Mai. I'm not sure of the exact purpose of the banners, but if you look carefully, you will see representation of 3 Birth Year Animals. As there were many more banners there, I assume that's what they were there to represent.
SKETCH OF ELEPHANTS ON LINO

PARTIALLY CARVED LINO

INKED LINO

FINAL PRINT

PORTRAIT OF "DAVID" - BY KRITSADA PRUEPRONG

PORTRAIT OF KRITSADA - BY DAVID BERUBE

WAT PHRASINGH - CUT LINO

WAT PHRASINGH - FINAL PRINT

11 Ekim 2012 Perşembe

POV: Highlights Of Vietnam's Photo-Expedition/Workshop

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Looking back at my recently completed my Vietnam: North of the 16th Parallel Photo Expedition/Workshop, here are my main favorite photographic experiences.

But before listing them, let me make the point that it's the people one meets on such trips that make them memorable. In my case, it was spending a few hours listening to Mr Dao's life story in Hoi An, with Mr Nguyen Bao in Hanoi and with Mamei near Sapa.

1. Street Photography in Hanoi:

Hanoi is a dream come true for street photographers. Its residents virtually live their lives in the streets...conducting their daily routine in the open, eating and interacting with each other in the open. This obviously gives rise in innumerable opportunities for amusing and ironic life vignettes. I could easily spend days upon days wandering Hanoi's streets and alleys; especially those of the Old Quarter.

Actually, street shooting in all the cities and towns on the itinerary was the highlight of the trip. Whether it was Hanoi, Hue, Hoi An...walking in the streets with a camera in hand is just a sublime experience for those who like this style of candid photography like I do. The only problem? Too many scooters parked on the sidewalks!

2. Cao Ä�Ã i in Hue:

Driving into Hue from Da Nang, I had noticed an unusually looking structure and saw a sign that proclaimed it to be a Cao Ä�Ã i temple. I just could not let this opportunity go by, especially as I thought the only temple was in Vietnam's delta. Following telephone calls and my visit with Maika Elan, we secured the approval of the head priest to photograph its daily prayers. I can't emphasize enough how gracious and welcoming the congregation was...despite our many faux-pas during their prayer ritual.

This was a big deal for me as I always wanted to witness the rituals of this new indigenous religious tradition.

3. Model Photo Shoot in Hoi An:

Many of the walls of Hoi An are painted yellow-ochre, which symbolizes wealth. The town is a well-preserved example of a Southeast Asian trading port of the 15th to 19th centuries, and is a delight to walk through. With Maika, I set up a photo shoot with one of her acquaintances who posed for us along one of its photogenic streets.

I'm not a fan of frozen and posed portraits, but the exercise in itself is both fun and educational. The best for me was to capture unposed moments such as this one when a child looked out of a window while the model adjusted her ao dai.

4. The Hilltribes of Sapa & Bac Ha:

I greatly enjoyed wandering in the markets of Sa Pa and Bac Ha...especially the latter where the Hmong and Dzao, and a handful from over 10 other tribes, attend Bac Ha's famous Sunday market to buy, sell, barter and eat. I'm still scratching my head as to the genetic mystery behind this Hmong child's blond hair.

I wandered in these markets for hours...occasionally using my Canon 5D Mark II, but relying more on my Fuji X Pro-1 in my street photography style...shooting from the hip to capture as much candor in my photographs as possible.

An audio-slideshow was born from these wanderings, and can be viewed on my Vimeo page.

5. Halong Bay:

Being cooped up on a boat...even for 24 hours...and even if it's a luxury cruise...is not my kind of thing. However, I must agree that Halong Bay is visually gorgeous, and amply deserves its World Heritage listing. I only include it as a highlight because its land-seascape is beautiful.

As I wrote elsewhere, I included this 24 hours cruise on our itinerary in the hope that the group participants would use the time to complete their audio slideshow projects. Some did and others didn't.

6. Vietnamese Buddhist Funeral:

On the way back to Hanoi from Halong Bay, we encountered a funeral. Both Maika and I went ahead to seek permission from the family to attend it and to photograph the rituals. I wasn't optimistic, but the head of the family readily agreed provided I lit an incense stick and presented my respects to the memory of the deceased. This I did, and planted the stick at the shrine. The deceased was born in 1925, and his name was Cu Pham Van Bao.

I was invited to drink green tea, and sat amongst the head table along with our host. The funeral rite is called le dua tang, and some of the mourners (presumably close relatives and families) wore coarse veils of gauze.

Being allowed into their midst at a time of sorrow by these Vietnamese mourners is a testament to their graciousness and kindness.

7. Catru: Vietnamese Religious Music:

We attended a Catru concert held at an old building in the heart of Hanoi's Old Quarter. High-brow and very traditional, this musical genre was already played during the 15th century during ceremonies at the Vietnamese court, but during the 1950s fell in disrepute due to its association with opium and similar nefarious activities.

The musician/singer in the above photograph is Ms Pham Thi Hue, a famous practitioner of this art form, who performed beautiful musical pieces during the hour-long session.

8. The Vee Sign:

Perhaps it's moving from the high brow (above) to a low brow topic, but many people hate the V-sign that Asians seem to do when being photographed. The V-sign was flashed as soon as young Vietnamese women asked me to take their pictures while celebrating the pre-Lunar festivities in Hanoi streets. They also did it when they posed for photographs with me. Not only are the Vietnamese youths camera-friendly (very friendly!) but they also know cameras. I was frequently stopped and asked about the X Pro-1 and the M9...but not once about the 5D II which many of them already have.

But I got used to the V-sign, and always expected it...I won't go so far as to say it's charming, but it certainly was part of the scene all around me when photographing the celebratory activities where I call the "street of the gaudy decorations". I got different interpretations for it. Some said it was a way to say "Hi"...and others said it was the peace sign.

9. Meeting A Vietnamese Star:

Ms NgÃ´ Thanh VÃ¢n is a top Vietnamese actress, and was filming a movie in Hoi An. It's by total serendipity that we saw her. Very approachable, she was charming and we exchanged a few words. NTV (as she's known in Vietnam) asked me where I was from, and what was I doing in Hoi An.

I naturally took as many photographs as I could of her on the set without interfering with the going-ons.

If this brief encounter is not a highlight, I don't know what is.

The Travel Photographer's Vietnam Daguerreotypes

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Here's the second of my Vietnam-related projects following my recent photo expedition-workshop....Vietnam In Daguerreotypes. This one is a gallery of stills, modified with Alien Skin Software to look like daguerreotypes. I recently installed the software and I'm amazed at its versatility and range of options.

I expect processing photographs with this software comes with some destructive element to it, but according to my very brief research, there are web tutorials that show you how to process photographs and keep their integrity intact.

The photographs were made with a Canon 5D Mark II (mostly with a 17-40mm), a Leica M9 (with a 40mm Voigtlander f1.4) and the Fuji X Pro-1 (18mm f2.8 XF Fujinon).

Very labor-intensive, the (real) daguerreotype is a direct-positive process, creating a highly detailed image on a sheet of copper plated with a thin coat of silver without the use of a negative. Exposure times for the earliest daguerreotypes ranged from three to fifteen minutes, making the process nearly impractical for portraiture. Modifications to the sensitization process coupled with the improvement of photographic lenses soon reduced the exposure time to less than a minute.

In comparison, the processing of a still photograph using the Alien Skin Software takes less than a minute, if that.

My first Vietnam project is an audio-slideshow titled Hill Tribes In The Mist, which is on my Vimeo Channel.

Cao Đài: iPhonegraphy

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I thought I'd feature a collection of the portraits of the Cao Ä�Ã i adherents made with my iPhone during our visit at their temple in Hue.

As I wrote in my post of September 19, I had wanted to witness and photograph a Cao Ä�Ã i prayer ritual for quite a while, and it was by pure serendipity that I discovered that this new religious tradition had just completed building a temple in Hue.

Cao Ä�Ã i is a syncretistic, monotheistic religion, officially established in southern Vietnam in 1926. Its Adherents engage in ethical practices such as prayer, veneration of ancestors, nonviolence, and vegetarianism. Its opposition to communism until 1975 was a factor in their repression, and its practice was forbidden until 1997 when it was granted legal recognition.
Caodism (as it's called) draws upon ethical precepts from Confucianism, occult practices from Taoism, theories of karma and rebirth from Buddhism, and a hierarchical organization (including a pope) from Roman Catholicism. Its pantheon of saints includes such diverse figures as the Buddha, Confucius, Jesus Christ, Muhammad, Pericles, Julius Caesar, Joan of Arc, Victor Hugo, and Sun Yat-sen.
I can only stress how gracious the Cao Ä�Ã i congregation was during our visit...despite our many faux pas during their time of prayer, and how receptive and welcoming they were to our photography.

Ehrin Macksey: Hanoi, Calm After The Storm

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As my readers know, I was in Hanoi about two weeks ago, and one of my favorite street photography haunts was the Hoan Kiem district, especially in the streets where vendors sold toys, lanterns, masks, and other gaudy decorations in anticipation of the mid-Autumn festival in early October. The crowds were simply overwhelming in the late evening when young people congregated there to have fun.

Ehrin Macksey, a photojournalist/photographer and filmaker living in Hanoi, decided to photograph the streets of Hanoi the first morning of Tet, another huge festival in Vietnam...after the chaos and bustle at the end of each January or beginning of February that characterize the period leading to Tet.
As you'll see from Ehrin's video of his stills, the calm that replaces the preceding chaos is eerie. He describes Hanoi as being in a Valium induced state. The streets are empty and one can hear birds clearly while walking down some of the larger streets in the city like Dai Co Viet.

I recommend a visit to Ehrin Macksey's website; especially his South East Asia Travel Photography gallery...a lot of gems!

FIRST 3 LINO'S FROM CHIANG MAI TRIP

PARTIALLY CARVED LINO

INKED LINO

FINAL PRINT

PORTRAIT OF "DAVID" - BY KRITSADA PRUEPRONG

PORTRAIT OF KRITSADA - BY DAVID BERUBE

WAT PHRASINGH - CUT LINO

WAT PHRASINGH - FINAL PRINT

10 Ekim 2012 Çarşamba

The Everywhere Quintet + 3 @ Spectrum 8/25/12

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This is a project led by Thollem, a pianist who travels perpetually. That's one way to get to see who else is out in the world playing music. And he seems to find awesome people to play with. He was here for a week and this was the only thing I could make it to. I have the whole NYC schedule below because it's interesting.

The venue is very cool. It's someone's apartment. A music lover with money to set up a really nice space for great musicians to play. The room isn't much smaller than The Stone. The sound is phenomenal. There is a lot of very nice equipment including a Steinway and a cool lighting system. There's a bunch of really nice leather lounge chairs to sit on. Of course, the entire cover goes to the artists. I always thought if I had massive amounts of money I would buy a whole building and have a few rooms to do something like this. In my fantasy, I never imagined it being so nice.

The music was stellar. All improvisation, which was impressive given 8 musicians many of whom never played together before. They sounded as if they've been together forever. It was also cool that I only knew one of them prior to this show, Fay Victor the vocalist.

I loved having 2 drummers. They switched kits for the 2nd set. The amplified violin was very cool. I liked what Fay was doing with the vocals, she would often sing a phrase from something familiar in the rock or funk genre. She was definitely another instrument. Eric Holmes was very interesting as well. He had a guitar, baby mandolin and harmonium. He sometimes played the strings as a slide. Thollem sounded great on the beautiful piano.

For the first set, they all just improvised together for about an hour. It was announced as the Everywhere Quintet Plus Three. The concept is to have different people every time.

C. Spencer Yeh had to leave after that, so the 2nd set was the 7. The listing did say 2 different groupings. It was pretty different. They decided on a concept of overlapping solos, with each solo being 1-2 minutes. It started with a piano solo then add drums for a duo. Next was a vocal solo, adding the baby mandolin for a duo. Vocals drop off at some point so Eric had some solo time. The violin then came in first for the duo and then for a solo. Next there was a piano/violin duo into a piano solo into a piano/voice duo into a voice solo into a voice/drum duo into a drum solo into everyone improvising together. What was so impressive was there was no plan as to who was going to go when. It was all spontaneous.

I had a great time.

This show:
August 25 at Spectrum The Everywhere Quintet (Two sets with two different groupings, 7:00 and 8:30)
with Laura Ortman (amplified violin), Fay Victor (voice), Michael Evans (drums/percussion), Ravish Momin (drums/percussion), Eric Hubel (guitar, mandolin, harmonium), C. Spencer Yeh (violin), and Patrick Holmes (clarinet)

The NYC Schedule:
-------6 Nights of NY/Brooklyn Concerts-------
August 21 at The Stone with Pauline Oliveros and Susie Ibarra NY, NY
August 22 at Douglas Music Collective with James Ilgenfritz and Brian Chase also Jeremiah Cymerman / Josh Sinton duo
and Daniel Rovin, Austin White, and Dave Miller Brooklyn, NY
August 23 at Goodbye Blue Monday with James Ilgenfritz and Brian Chase also Chuck Bettis, Joe Merolla Brooklyn, NY
August 24 at The Stone Thollem Sworld NY, NY
August 25 at Spectrum The Everywhere Quintet (Two sets with two different groupings, 7:00 and 8:30)
with Laura Ortman, Fay Victor, Michael Evans, Ravish Momin, Eric Hubel, C. Spencer Yeh, and Patrick Holmes NY, NY
August 26 at Zebulon Cafe Thollem Electric with Gregory Saunier (Deerhoof et al) Brooklyn, NY
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