Moving Walls in Amman

Post Imported from "this is what i see"

Yesterday I went to the Moving Walls Documentary Photography Exhibition. It was really refreshing to see an art show in Amman that was actually good. I enjoyed most of all the work there. I heard about it because my friend Tanya Habjouqa was exhibiting her Lebanon war work. Below are some images, check it:


This was one of many great photos Tanya had up

This was Andrew Lichtensteins work titled "Life Inside the Prison Boom"



Gary Fabiano's project called "Property". It documented poverty by photographing the poor and their objects. I personally thought it was well executed but over all it seemed like a college student thesis project.

This project sparked my interest the most. I've seen Edward Grazda's book and it was kool to see his images in person. I was interested in it because it was similar to the project that i have been shooting for 4 years now, the South Asians in New York. His stuff is a little more specific to Mosques but that of course is part of South Asian Life in NY. (Tanya told me she liked my work on this subject alot better :)


James Nubile's project "Freedom's Wake" was my favorite. Every image was powerful, and compositionally brilliant. I hadn’t seen this before and it really made the show for me.


It was good to see a black and white doc photo exhibition after a long time. It recharged my batteries. I gotta get back to new york and finish my project.

Black and White is the true color of Photography

I truly believe that Black and White is the way photographs should be taken. Yesterday I just set my camera to black and white and started shooting that way. I get a certain satisfaction from shooting black and white and I think its because we see the world in color and many times color can be very distracting. Once color is taken out of the scene we start to observe and enjoy what we see. I think this abstraction makes you really look at an image. If it’s a portrait of someone you will look into their eyes and not just at the color of their eyes. I sometimes think color is a wall that distracts your perception between you and a photograph. Once it is taken away, you see what is actually there. I know a lot of people will disagree with that just because by taking out color you are distorting the reality of what is actually there.

I don’t completely agree with my point either because I think there are certain photographs that are meant to be in color. Similarly I think there are certain photographers who best shoot in color (steve mccurry being one). I’m just sayin this is the way I prefer shooting.

Crashing a wake.

Fire for the memory of Brad Will, November 11, 2006.

We stumbled out of brunch. We had a couple hours of unlimited mimosas under our belts, and were walking through Tompkins park with my friends feisty Boston terrier, Cooper. Through the park we saw a marching band. Cooper's legs are short, so he was scooped up and we did what any good citizen should, we joined the march. The musicians had no sheet music, but they were dead on, playing beautiful New Orleans jazz. It was like walking into a nightclub full of the musicians that Dr. John likes to rip off.

Marching along we had no idea why, but there was this energy that we should be there. We were doing something, and we were in the right, a great sense of justice and good vibrations. The march took a few laps around the blocks in alphabet city, finally filing into a community garden on 9th and C, the people wrapping around a bonfire in a trashcan. The musicians fell silent and we all formed a circle, putting our arms around each other. A man with the kind of accent someone from 9th and C in the '80s would have, before alphabet city was cool, before it was safe, instructed us to shout out memories for Brad Will.

Brad Will was shot and killed on October 27, 2006 covering the dispute in Oaxaca, Mexico. And we were in the middle of his wake. Hearing the stories and memories of who he was and what he did for all these people that saw the lower east side through its darker hours showed what a dent one human can make. And all the loose ends of why this feeling that we were doing the right thing and involved in a good thing were tied up.

Brad Will fought elegantly for the meek.

Shadow*Stickers*DeadCats

No one takes stickers off here (amman, jordan). Yesterday I went to a cafe where I posted a bunch of stickers along the way and at the cafe. To my surprise they were all up. Including the ones posted here.

Shadow puppets...
Vane Sticker 1.0 Still strong
Dead cat in the middle of street is vane, I'm cruel.




Send me your vane pictures and i'll post em up just for kicks... and@wearevane.com

Inuits love VANE

This little guy is the most adorable bathroom stall tag in the history of bathroom stall tagography.

And he loves VANE's new dyes and fall hoodies.

Big thumbs up.

Dye!

We were having a hard time finding colors that we wanted to use for some of the upcoming tee's. So we got ourselves a dye kit and some white tees and tried makin some colors ourselves. They came out real clean, so you can bet we’ll have some ill colors coming up!