I couldn't find much in the way of background on Jimmy Williams except the brief biography on his website which tells us that he's a narrative storyteller. That is true, but to me he also captured the essence of the remarkably talented southern music makers.
The series began with an assignment and led to an organization named the Music Makers Relief Foundation which supports musicians who are the true representations of southern music, whether blues, bluegrass, gospel and so forth.
A wonderful section of Jimmy's website groups all the musical genres, and is narrated by him. It will thrill all of us who love authentic blues and its derivatives.
I've promised myself that I would fly down one day to Clarksdale, Mississippi and spend time with blues musicians, and document their music making...yes, an item on my bucket list, if you will.
I just saw lovely photographs by Maya Joseph-Goteiner on PDN Photo of The Day, and thought I'd feature her work from Oaxaca and elsewhere relating to the Dia de los Muertos festivities, which was featured on PDN here as well. You can also see more of Maya's work on her blog.
The Dia de los Muertos is a Catholic celebration of the memory of deceased ancestors celebrated on November 1 (All Saints) and November 2 (All Souls). Its origins can be traced back to the indigenous peoples of the Americas, such as the Zapotec, Aztec, Maya, Purepecha, Nahual and Totonac. Rituals celebrating the lives of dead ancestors has been observed by Mesoamerican civilizations for at least 3,000 years.
Foreign Policy Magazine has featured an interesting photo/graphical essay on the war in Afghanistan. It's titled Inside Talibanistan, and effectively makes the point that our "enemies" are not a monolithic entity, but a combination of disjointed groups with different agendas and ideologies.
According to our media and politicians, who have the talent of diminishing everything down to simplistic terms in the hope of further dumbing down its viewers, listeners, constituents and readers, we are fighting against the "Taliban"...the problem is that the Taliban (as defined by our talking heads, politicians and their cronies) doesn't exist as such.
In FP's feature, I've counted 10 groups ranging from Al-Qaeda to some group called Haqqani Network, and added up the estimated members of these groups. Most of them are obviously estimates, but a total of 100,000 seems to be a reasonable one. Possibly included in these numbers are insurgents fighting against an occupying foreign force propping up a deeply unpopular corrupt government....and others who want nothing but power.
To put this in perspective, here's Cost of War which runs a counter for how much the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing us. It's an estimated $1.1 trillion to date.
We would have been so much better off by creating jobs, building modern infrastructure, state of the art trains and airports, new schools, invest in medical research, in alternative energy sources...and taking on China's growing economic power. My politics are diametrically opposed to the Republican Party and its legitimate and illegitimate spawns, but this ad by one of its affiliated group did strike a chord with me....yes, it's obviously over the top but there's still a kernel of truth in it. We are losing ground very quickly to China. (The video is via FP).
For the week starting Monday November 1, the following posts are in the pipeline:
1. A photographer's lovely portraits of Sadhus attending the Kumbh Mela earlier this year. 2. A interesting web documentary (multimedia) on the drought conditions facing East Africa. 3. The work of a photographer documenting musicians of the Mississippi Delta...with my kind of music...really hard core Blues. It was promised for the past week. 4. Another interesting web documentary (multimedia) on Women.
This is a delightful short documentary featuring Mariachis musicians in East Los Angeles produced by Drea Cooper and Zackary Canepari. The piece features Mariachi musicians who gather on corners of the streets of East Los Angeles looking for work, whether in birthday parties, in cafes, restaurants, quinceañeras, weddings and the like.
To my delight, the main singer belts outs out the famous Mexican song "Volver Volver", initially without the accompaniment of musical instruments. I used to hear it played often in the zocalo of Oaxaca...just delightful.
According to Wikipedia, the term "Mariachi" is said to be an adaptation of the French word for marriage or wedding "mariage" as this type of musical formation plays at these events.
Here's a superb multimedia presentation guaranteed to knock your socks off.
It's part of a collection of 24 multimedia documentaries produced by France Télévisions. Portraits Of A New World is a narrative of the world of the 21st century, and the upheavals which transform and influence our destinies.
Unfortunately, it's only in French with no subtitles, which sadly reduces its internationalization and its appreciation by non-French speaking audience.
Having said that, take a look nevertheless at Journal of A Concubine which, in my view, is the segment that most beautifully merges the techniques of photojournalism and videojournalism.
In the era of pre-Communist China, wives and concubines lived under the same roof; in full sight and knowledge of everyone. The practice was legal and widely accepted. In 1949, it was made illegal by Mao as being a relic of feudalism, but has reappeared with a modern twist in the 1990s with the economic resurgence of China. Concubines are now viewed as a sign of wealth especially in business circles.
This being a French production, the nuanced difference between concubines and mistresses is explained. The latter do not expect gifts nor monetary rewards. Concubines do.
I've decided to self-publish a book of my photographs of Bali. I've hesitated for a long time, since I have no patience to fiddle endlessly with layouts, fonts and the myriad of other variables necessary to produce a book, but I recently discovered that Blurb has introduced a new interface called Bookify. This is essentially a tool for people like me who don't have the mindset to spend hours on a project of that nature.
Lo and behold, I received my mock-up book a few days ago. The book is large landscape (13x11 inches) format, with an image wrap hardcover and the photographs are black & white. The mock-up revealed some slight variations in tone, a few photographs were reproduced "soft" and others were "muddy" requiring some more adjustment in Levels.
But I am pleased by what I saw, and I'll work on refining the current photographs, add some meaningful text, and add a few dozen more photographs. These will probably be from my 2005, 2007 and 2010 trips to Bali.
Masr is the Arabic word for Egypt...and it's also colloquially used for Cairo. So in Arabic, Egyptians are called Masr'yeen...which is confusing for non-Arabic speakers, but that's how it is. Egypt was borrowed from the Latin Aegyptus and from the ancient Greek Aígyptos.
Javier Morgade was filming in Egypt for an airline company, and was left with surplus footage for this short movie. It's a documentary made with a Canon 5d Mark II and a Glidetrack HD. It was edited in Final Cut Pro and graded with After Effects. The song is by a contemporary Egyptian singer and is titled ah men al forak, which loosely translated means "lamenting separation".
In my view (and I should know), Javier managed to capture in this short movie the essence of the Egyptian character, the kindness, humor, hospitality and generosity...even their occasional legendary intrusiveness. It saddens me to see the poverty in the alleys of old Cairo, but as always, it's mitigated by the Egyptian talent for being able to share setbacks, poverty, sorrows, and life troubles. No Egyptian is an island...and while they find enormous solace in their extended families and friends, neighbors and even casual acquaintances...they deserve better.
Charlotte Rush Bailey joined my Tribes of Rajasthan & Gujarat Photo-Expedition ™ earlier this year, and has just published her photo book titled Kutch Classic: Portraits from Northern Gujarat of her photographs made on that trip, which is a wonderful visual compendium of this magnificent region of India.
The book is full of photographs of Kutch tribals; most are portraits, some processed in the photographer-author's signature style. Charlotte chose purple as the predominant color for her book, basing it on the lovely woman's veil on its cover. I also happen to think that Charlotte will follow up with another book, possibly titled Portraits from Southern Gujarat, on her return from another photo expedition next January. We'll see....
Published and available through Blurb, the link above provides a preview of some of the book's pages.
I really wish that many more of photographers who join my photo~expeditions publish their work in book form. That would be so gratifying! I may be mistaken but I only know of one other photographer-participant who does that. It's not an easy task to prep and publish a book, but the eventual satisfaction is just sublime.
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