LUCEO member Matt Eich has launched a Tumblr page to allow people to see the development of his ongoing collaboration with The Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art. You can watch the evolution occur at www.sevencitiesproject.com or you can follow him on Instagram under the handle @matteich.

Eich only recently began using an iPhone as part of his process and is excited by “the potential of the most intimate photographic tool I have ever used.” Below are a selection of images, some of which are first seen here. 

You can also follow other LUCEO members on Instagram at @kendrickbrinson, @davidwalterbanks @dpeveto and http://kendrickbrinson.tumblr.com/

© Luceo Images for Luceo Images, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us

I would watch as themes and concepts organically evolved, tying these brief glimpses and snapshots together.  I would let the disparate places and images create a whole greater than themselves.  I would stop to smell, and feel the breeze, and talk to a stranger at each opportunity, for I would have no final destination.  The end would always be found in the journey, leaving me with a goal achieved with each passing moment.

Since this is not the case, I am nourished by my brief glimpses into bliss.  I am rejuvenated by each small outing and journey along the way, and blessed to find them more often than most.  Perhaps this is a gift in itself.  Perhaps the fruit would not be as sweet if it was of unlimited bounty.  Perhaps my bliss shines brightest when it only has a crack through which to flow.

For now I comfort myself with these thoughts, I take joy in my passing moments of zen, and I plot to narrow the gap between.  My recent travels in Caracas, Venezuela was not a vacation, and not a trip of leisurely pace – it was one of intense instruction and learning with long and rewarding yet sleepless days.  While that may have been the case, it was still a trip that renewed my passion through those I met, and gave me hope and excitement I needed in a way I was unaware of.

Despite the hectic pace, and emotional ride this trip entailed, I was also given the gift of time to wander.  This gift came in small doses.  It came while in the car between radio interviews.  It came while walking with students down alleyways as they worked.  It came when I least expected it, and wasn’t looking for it, but it was there.  For these moments of wandering bliss, I will be forever grateful.

View and license my images from Caracas → here.

Read and see more about the workshop, exhibition, and presentation led by LUCEO photographer Kendrick Brinson and myself via the links below:
Via Crucis in Petare
An Overview
Kendrick Brinson’s Travelogue
The Students’ Work
A Rekindled Creativity by Kendrick Brinson

© davidbanks for Luceo Images, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us

We are excited to announce the Call for Entries for the 3rd edition of the LUCEO Student Project Award. 

Central to LUCEO’s mission is our belief in the importance of long-term projects. We also understand that developing photographers need support. To advance both of these causes, LUCEO has created the LUCEO Student Project Award, which is disbursed annually to a talented student photographer in support of a significant and developing body of work.

This year’s recipient will receive $1,000 and mentorship for the project from one LUCEO member for a year among other yet-to-be-announced perks. One of the ten finalists will receive an assignment from AARP Bulletin.

Finalists will be announced in late May. A select panel of judges presided over by moderator Michael Wichita, Interim Director of Photography for AARP, will narrow the decision to one winner who will be announced during LOOK3: The Festival of the Photograph.

The deadline for receipt of your application is 11:59pm EST May 10, 2012 has been extended to 11:59pm EST, Tuesday, May 15, 2012.

The 2011 recipient of the LUCEO Student Project Award was Maddie McGarvey.

The 2010 recipient of the LUCEO Student Project Award was Masud alam Liton.

© Luceo Images for Luceo Images, 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us

Dr. Rudolph Byrd passed away in 2011. He created an important ongoing discussion panel at Emory that CNN hosted called CNN Dialogues and was the founding director of the James Weldon Johnson Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies at Emory University. I photographed one of the CNN Dialogues events about the Arab Spring, as well as Dr. Byrd’s now almost empty office for The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Mark Sanders, a professor at Emory University, stepped up and took over Dr. Rudolph Byrd’s class after Dr. Byrd passed away. He is photographed in the late Dr. Byrd’s office at Emory’s Briarcliff Campus in Decatur, Georgia February 13, 2012.

© kendrickbrinson for Luceo Images, 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us

This week we are featuring an archive image by David Walter Banks, taken in 2008 in Denver, Colorado.

About This Photo:

“As the next round of Super Political Conventions grows nigh, I’ve become reminiscent of the last set, which photographer Matt Slaby and I documented together four years ago.  This particular image takes us to the ‘The Presidential Experience’ – a 40,000 square foot temporary tent, full of Presidential memorabilia, which was open to the public during the 2008 Democratic National Convention. 

The smaller, yet equally amusing ‘National Tea Party Convention’ in 2010 become my third political convention, and I’m hooked.  I normally avoid spaces where hordes of photographers gather like the plague, but these are different.  For me, it’s a puzzle to find what others might ignore, and shoot the same photograph that everyone does with a slightly different twist.  In these cases, I would almost always rather stay outside the doors to the big hall, center, or stadium, and look for the quirk and conflict that is inevitably drawn to the main show.” -David Walter Banks

You can find this image and thousands more in LUCEO’s archive here.

© Luceo Images for Luceo Images, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us

Lead Judge Michael Wichita is currently the Interim Director of Photography for AARP. Wichita has worked for the AARP Bulletin for 7 years working on print and web stories. Prior to that he was the Photo Editor at Metro Weekly, Washington, DC’s gay and lesbian magazine, where Wichita began work after graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design. A strong belief in collaboration, visual storytelling that mixes art and journalism and the passion of photographers keep him going. In his spare time Wichita is working on a photobook project.

Pamela Chen is a Senior Photo Editor for National Geographic Magazine and an award-winning producer, editor, photographer, and composer. Previously, she oversaw photography and multimedia production for the Open Society Foundations, focusing on visual storytelling to advance social justice and human rights issues. As a producer with MediaStorm, her work earned numerous industry accolades, including the national News and Documentary Emmy Award, the duPont Award, Webby Awards, and Pictures of the Year International awards in photography, multimedia and music. As a commissioned musician, her sound design and compositions appear in broadcast and online publications including the New York Times Magazine, The New York Times, Showtime, Hulu, and Wired. She has served as adjunct faculty for the School of Visual Arts and the International Center of Photography, industry workshops and conferences, and currently on the Photojournalism Advisory Council for the Alexia Foundation.

Nicole Frugé is the Associate Director of Photography for Education Week in Bethesda, Maryland. American education’s newspaper of record, Education Week, takes documentary photography approach to better understand the people directly affected by education news and policy. Before photo editing, she spent ten years working as a staff photographer for newspapers in Texas and Florida. She has photographed the war in Iraq, returning frequently to the region to document the lives of ordinary Iraqis and American soldiers coping with the evolving conflict and its consequences.

Frugé received an Award of Excellence for her Photographer of the Year portfolio from Pictures of the Year International and was named the National Press Photographers Association’s Region 8 Photographer of the Year for 2008. Her work has also been honored by the NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism, The Society for Newspaper Design, Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar and the Southern Short Course in News Photography.

A wayward Cajun, born in New Orleans, she fell in love with all things Texan while at the San Antonio Express-News (2003-2009). In her free time, she’s happiest wearing an old pair of Wranglers and eating crawfish. 

To view Nicole’s online portfolio go to www.nicolefruge.com or to see her work blog, visit www.edweek.org/blogs/fullframe.

Heather Hakimzadeh, Associate Curator at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary (MOCA), came to Virginia Beach in 2008 from Washington, DC.  During her stay in the DC area she earned her Master’s Degree in Art History from George Washington University while simultaneously working as an Educator for the Phillip’s Collection.  Since moving to Virginia Beach and joining the staff at MOCA, she has enjoyed creating and helping solidify significant memories and historical milestones for the Museum by curating/organizing fifteen exhibitions and helping MOCA achieve accreditation. She has worked with national and internationally recognized artists like Camille Utterback and Jean Pierre Roy and locally known artists like Renatta Keep and John Roth. Hakimzadeh looks forward to continuing her career in the Hampton Roads area by participating in and creating more cultural adventures for everyone to enjoy and applauds everyone who participates in our artistic community.    

Maggie Steber is an internationally known documentary photographer, educator and photo editor whose work has appeared in major magazines, newspapers and book anthologies as well as national and international exhibitions.  She has worked in 62 countries specializing in telling the stories of underrepresented people. Best known for her photo essays in National Geographic Magazine and her humanistic documentation of Haiti, she published Dancing on Fire: Photographs from Haiti with Aperture. Steber has worked as a picture editor for Associated Press, a contract photographer for Newsweek, and as the Director of Photography at The Miami Herald. She has exhibited her work internationally and her work is included in the Library of Congress. She has received numerous grants and awards for her work.

Her clients include National Geographic Magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Aperture Quarterly, Fortune, Smithsonian, People Magazine, Time Magazine, Stern of Germany, Newsweek Magazine, U.S. News and World Report,  CARE, , Der Spiegel, DU Magazine of Switzerland, Merian Magazine of Germany, The Independent in Britain, and French Geo, as well as many others.

© Luceo Images for Luceo Images, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us

This week we are featuring an image of a father and son by Daryl Peveto made while on assignment in Mexico. 

About This Photo:
My son is two now. It is still really hard to say goodbye to him, even for a few days. I grew up without a father, which makes me think about my time away from him with great care. I made this image of a father and son asleep in a chair while I was wandering the streets off the Bahia De Puerto Marquez in Acapulco. They were waiting for the boy’s mother to finish cleaning up her food stand.

It was such a tender moment for me. The tenderness with which the father was holding his son, both exhausted, struck a chord. The strain on families today require both parents to be attuned caregivers, balancing the responsibilities of home and work. I thought for a moment about my son, the times he has fallen asleep on me and it made me smile.

To view more images from this edit or to license this images, please visit LUCEO Image Archive: Daryl Peveto

© daryl for Luceo Images, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us

The panel of photographers featured in PDN’s 30 issue, which highlights top new talent, will offer perspectives on getting started in the photography industry. Panelists will share how they got to where they are today, including how they got their first jobs and structured their first promotions efforts. This seminar is a must for any young photographer beginning his or her career.

Moderator: Lauren Wendle, vice president, Nielsen Photo Group; publisher, Photo District News

Panelists: Matt Eich (PDN’s 30 2010), Caroline Kilgore, Photography Director at Atlanta Magazine, and Eliot Dudik (PDN’s 30 2012).

© Luceo Images for Luceo Images, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us

From the Archive is a regular column that features one image from our archive and appears every Thursday. LUCEO Images has a thorough group archive (keyword search bar, top right) and it can be at the LUCEO Image Archive.

This week we are featuring an archive image taken by Kevin German in Vietnam.

About This Image:

“When I first met Thang, he was nine-years-old. He was grossly underweight and extremely shy. Thang suffers from Ventricular Septal Defect (VSD), a common congenital heart defect (CHD) that occurs when there is a hole in the wall between the right and left ventricles of the heart. Symptoms of VSD include shortness of breath, fast heartbeats, loss of appetite, poor weight gain, chest pain, and discolored blue skin. In addition, other areas of the child’s development such as physical growth and brain development are affected if VSD is left untreated.

He lives in the coastal town of Nha Trang with his mother, grandmother, and 10-month-old brother. Thang’s father, Bui Van Tri, spends much of his time away from his family, as he is a fisherman and works up and down the coastline. His income is about 400,000VND (~$23USD) per month; however, this salary is seasonal and there are months when he earns nothing at all. Thang’s mother, Nguyen Thi Bach Tuyet, is 31-years-old and is a housewife. She cannot work as she must look after Thang, his brother, and his grandmother. Therefore, the family of five is solely dependent on Thang’s father’s income. The family lives in a lean-to extension of Thang’s uncle’s house that is just eight square meters with a tin roof, cement floor, and brick walls.

I collaborate often with the NGO, VinaCapital Foundation. One of their primary programs is to supply heart operations to children living in Vietnam. I followed Thang and his mother though his life-saving, open-heart surgery at a hospital in Ho Chi Minh City.

In this particular frame, Thang is wincing in pain as he is given anesthesia for his operation. His mother, middle back, began crying and after Thang passed out, she had to leave.

One year later I saw Thang again. He was running around and playing with other children in Nha Trang. He had gained a considerable amount of weight and he was smiling like I had never seen before. The surgery was a success.

Recently one of my photographs of Thang was oddly enough signed by Jack Nicholson and Angelina Jolie and auctioned off in Vietnam for $10,000 USD. The money was used to save three more children through successful heart operations.” – Kevin German

To view the full edit from this shoot or to license this image, please visit the LUCEO Images Archive 

© Luceo Images for Luceo Images, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us

Given my obsession with The Fourth Wall, and our society’s interaction with altered theatrical realities, I was in heaven, so to speak, as I watched Jesus drag his cross through the barrio El Nazareno in Petare, Caracas, Venezuela.  I was on visual overload as I watched the passionate reenactment unfold through this small corner of the largest slum in Latin America.  It was like a perfect storm of culture and social interaction for my taste. 

Normally I would have been in production mode, blocking out everything, and searching feverishly for a photograph.  But that is not why I was there.  I was there to teach, and not to produce.  This gave me the license to simply take in the scene, absorbing it in a way uncommon for me when in ‘work’ mode.  Without the pressure to produce, I was free to really see, and only shoot when the urge pulled the camera to my eye instinctively.  I was able to shoot in the way I document my personal life – without rush, without agenda, and merely on a guttural or instinctual level.  

To be honest, this was a free and liberating experience which produced photographs I was pleased with.  I thought I had come back with nothing, and wasn’t worried about that possibility.  When reviewing our photographs, both Kendrick Brinson and I saw images that we didn’t even remember shooting.  These photographs that had been created from within instead of calculated precision. 

For me, it was a return to something that had gone into brief remission in my own photographic life.  The production of the images harked back to a time in my life when photography was new and alive with possibilities, and this feeling has stuck with me since. 

This idea and feeling was compounded by the liberty I afford myself while shooting with my Fuji X100.  Though still only a tool, the camera creates in me a freedom from the perfection and attention to technicality which I apply to most of my work.  I allow myself to just shoot, feel, and let go of perfectionism.  I also believe the small camera strips the barrier between myself and my subjects, allowing me to blend more easily and draw less attention (except of course when I’m the bearded tattooed guy in the middle of a barrio in Latin America).

It wasn’t just my mindset or the camera that give me this new-found photographic reboot.  It was our students.  I saw in them a passion and excitement for photography.  An excitement with an end of creation and learning instead of monetary gain and career advancement.  I saw in them the reason I fell in love with the photographic arts, and the core that will carry me throughout my life.

View and license my images from Caracas → here.

Read and see more about the workshop, exhibition, and presentation led by LUCEO photographer Kendrick Brinson and myself via the links below:
An Overview
Kendrick Brinson’s Travelogue
The Students’ Work
A Rekindled Creativity by Kendrick Brinson
More to come from me – check back soon.

© davidbanks for Luceo Images, 2012. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us

Creativity comes and goes in waves. I try to be patient in the slow, dry times. I just wait for it to return.

David Banks and I recently went to Caracas, Venezuela to lead a workshop, give a talk and for a gallery exhibition of our work. The students in our workshop were a mix of teenagers and lawyers, doctors, dentists. I was excited to go, but didn’t have huge expectations from their photographic work because for most of them, photography isn’t their job.

That was a mistake.

The majority of my time is spent working. I don’t have a lot of friends where I live because I’m often traveling and often working. A lot of the people who I stay in touch with outside of close old friends and family are professional photographers, often they’re photographers who work for the same people I work for, who see and shoot similarly to the way I shoot. The conversations are about photography or some variation of it. All of this can be very limiting, though I hadn’t thought of it much.

When I landed in Caracas, I hadn’t been shooting personal photos much for a few months. I felt like I couldn’t catch up with all my office work (accounting, archiving, LUCEO tasks) so adding photos that I had to edit that weren’t for a client was too much. It’s not that I didn’t like the photos I was shooting, I just wasn’t pushing myself to go out and shoot more when I didn’t have to. I actually started shooting more instant film because that felt manageable (ie I could put the photos in a literal box and worry about them later), but even that wasn’t a priority. It’s not a place I was proud to be in, but like I said, I knew it would go away just as it had come, just as it had before.

When I landed in Caracas, I had only just gotten the Fuji X100 camera a couple weeks before and I’d gotten it specifically for that trip in mind because I didn’t want to be afraid to take my camera out in an area where I already stuck out like a sore thumb. I also have always been a photographer who never cared about gear — 95% of my shooting is done with one camera with one lens. This new camera was lighter and smaller. I felt excited to be using it and I felt more confident about shooting in a place where I didn’t speak the language and where I was told over and over by the locals was unsafe.

Then I met our students. They all saw the world so differently from how I do.

David Banks and I had recently given talks at both Western Kentucky University and the University of Miami, and while we shared images with the photojournalism students, we mostly discussed the business of photography. The business of photography is important and a lot to wrap your head around, but it is the means to the end. Photography is where my heart lies. The Caracas, Venezuela students at RMTF did not want to focus on the business behind photography. They did not care who I worked for. They did not care how I worked for them. They did not care where I went to school. They just wanted to make photos. They wanted to get better at making photos.

The thing that had been drowning my photography, the worrying about catching up on business, was eliminated with this workshop. Every single one of our 29 students in our workshop is busy: They raise children, they are lawyers, they are full-time high school students. That means it takes extra effort for them to make time to learn and practice photography. That means these people really cared about being in our workshop and learning. Just like me, they had the business side of life to tend to, but they were dedicating time to their art.

My God, it was so refreshing.

As an introduction, we had each student show us 15 photos that would introduce themselves to us and to the other workshop students. Every day, David and I would have the students edit their images from the previous day down with a partner. Then, everyone as a group would look at their top photos and David and I would edit them down even more. Every day the students would progress so much. Natalia Agostini, for example, showed us portraits of children on the first day we met. They were simple, straightforward images. Each day as the group edited, we would discuss what would make some images better, how to experiment with motion, how to clean up backgrounds, and to think about layering. The last day, Natalia brought back images that were a complete 360 from what she showed us the first day. She brought back thoughtful, intriguing, complex layered images of the crowd during the stations of the cross in Petare. Some of these images I’d wished I had taken, as I’d walked the same path she had.

Another student, Marianela Perez de Guruceaga, has a background in painting. Her images are only about shapes, color and light. We could see the same exact scene and she would see circles where I would see a crowd of faces. I was so intrigued by her vision and thinking because it was so incredibly unlike mine. It made me want to see more figuratively when I wandered with the students as they shot. It challenged how I see everything.

These students re-sparked something in me. It was photography for photography’s sake. It wasn’t pretentious, it wasn’t competitive. The students were nurturing and supportive of each other and excited to learn from each other. It wasn’t about invoices or even captions, it was just about photography.

I am so grateful to them for reminding me of the beauty of pure photography. Their energy and kindness and visions and creativity challenged me and pushed me in ways I didn’t expect.

I shot these images while working with the RMTF students during our Holy Week workshop in Petare, one of Latin America’s largest slums in Caracas, Venezuela.

You can see and license these images and more HERE.

© kendrickbrinson for Luceo Images, 2012. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us

Ambrosio Plaza

In the beginning of April, David Walter Banks and Kendrick Brinson traveled to Caracas, Venezuela for a four-day workshop, exhibition and lecture.

We hopped a flight to Caracas, Venezuela based on faith and hope.  Not the religious kind, though we were headed to holy week.  We had faith in our colleague Kevin German, who spurred and encouraged the trip.  We had hope and blind faith for the owner and students of Roberto Mata Taller de Fotografía.  We knew we were headed there to teach, to speak, and to exhibit, and we knew the core of our curriculum, but how this would all play out we had no clue. 

We arrived late at night with the slight apprehensions that reading a slight bit about the Caracas airport and road to the city tends to produce.  Once through customs we were greeted by the warm smiling face of our host Roberto Mata.  This greeting set the tone for the rest of the week, and hinted at the wonderful new friends and bonds we would soon make.  To read more about the week as a whole you can click here.  This post is meant to feature the extraordinary 29 individuals who showed us the most beautiful side that Caracas has to offer. 

Our exhibition and presentation was a huge success, but as we told anyone who asked, that’s not why we were there.  We also managed to fit in some casual shooting, but neither was this the goal or purpose of our trip.  We were there for the students, and the students alone – the rest was just a bonus. 

The first morning of the four-day workshop was spent reviewing pictures the students felt represented themselves as photographers.  Our theme for the week was ‘Collaboration’ (big surprise, right?), and we charged the students with working together to tell the story of holy week, with a focus on the barrio of Petare.  To further encourage the students to build connections with each other, we paired them into teams based on their strengths and the themes we saw in the photographs they showed that morning.

We went out into the field with our new team to make ourselves available to help on site, and just watch as they worked and learned.  The next day as we reviewed work, something special happened.  First of all, the work was great, and exceeded any expectation we had.  We found ourselves critiquing in the harsh way that you only would for a seasoned professional.  Not only was the work good, but they had embraced the sub-assignments we had given them, based off of what we saw in their work.  The group came together organically until we were forced to find room with a projector to accommodate all. 

They had not only embraced their individual assignments, but they had embraced the hard-to-grasp concept of working together for the greater good.  They watched and listened as the workshop evolved into one hinging on editing instead of shooting.  They learned from each others’ successes and failures, chiming in on our critique and building a dialogue.  They even suggested taking out photographs of their own because they saw another student create a better version of the same image.  This is no easy task for any photographer.

The next day we went for a longer field excursion to document The Stations of the Cross reenactment in Petare.  The only thing more amazing than the event itself was the gift we were given to re-experience it all through our students eyes the next day.  We spent the next day and a half editing and preparing for the final presentation, when our students would invite their friends and family to see what they had produced.  We were again astonished.  These photographers not only built on what they learned the day before, but they soaked up what their fellow students had learned and applied it in the field. 

Overall, we spent over 20 hours and reviewed over 2,500 photographs, sparking individual discussions on over 1,000 of those images.  The work was undeniably impressive, but what excited us even more was the individuals behind the pictures.  We went to Caracas to give of ourselves, with the hope of imparting a piece of knowledge and inspiration.  We hope we did that, but we were given so much more.  Through their warm welcoming spirit, their raw passion and excitement for photography, and their presence alone, we were the ones inspired.  These students restored a piece of our own faith in photography and human nature that we didn’t even know was missing. 

They say that you get back what you give when you teach, and we certainly did.  We hope to make educating a growing part of our lives and career, but doubt we will ever be given so much in return, nor could we ask for it.  So, a big thank you to all of our students.  We love you.

Now please enjoy a selection from their work, shown above and below, in alphabetical order by first name. (Students, if you didn’t send us your blog/web link, please put it in the comment section below, and we will add it to the post.)

Alejandro Cegarra

Alex Lopez (follow @alexrafa_lopez on instagram)

Carlos Becerra

Carlos Arvelaiz

Claudia Riveros

Diana Molina

Elias Azpurua

Emilio Damas

Fermando Barreto Hidalgo

Gabriel Mendez

Gianfranco Di Flumeri

Hugo Assanti

Isabela Eseverri

Jose Manuel Mosquera

Juan Quevedo

Julia Arvelaiz

Julio Estrada

Mariana Mendoza (follow @marianamendozam on instagram)

Marianela Perez

Marianella Perrone

Mariangela Ochoa

MariaPia Bevilacqua

Mauricio López

Natalia Agostini

Naty Rios

Paloma Lopez

Victoria Molero

William Urdaneta

© Luceo Images for Luceo Images, 2012. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us

Working in close collaboration with another artist is an exercise in trust and communication. It’s like a dance where sometimes you lead, sometimes you follow. I’m fascinated by watching how my colleagues work, and with Few and Far Between, I can finally feel as if we are making something together. In our latest adventure throughout the rust belt region there were two specific instances where I saw this play out in ways that stuck with me.

The first was a day when Kevin German and myself were paired up. We made contact with a man I’d photographed previously for BusinessWeek and spent a little bit of time with him in Orgas, WV before driving into Whitesville to see what we could find. Sometimes I can be a little shy when approaching people, but when Kevin gets into his outgoing mode, it’s a wonder to witness. We strike up conversations with almost everyone we encounter. Some people offer something useful, some people not much. One person tells us to look for a man named Red Martin, that he is 93, making him the oldest man in town. While I was content with wandering, from that moment on Kevin was like a bloodhound on a trail. Every single person we encounter could be sure they would be asked the whereabouts of Red Martin. Eventually we narrow it down to a house, Kevin knocks and talks his way in past Red’s caretakers, speaks with one of Red’s children on the phone and the next thing I know we are sitting and having a conversation with the most fascinating man I have had the pleasure of speaking with in some time. 

Kendrick hit the nail on the head for me in the first “A LUCO Collaboration” post when she wrote, “because we trust each other and LUCEO’s group products aren’t about our egos, they are about working together to make the best product for our client and for the readership.”

In Chauncey, Ohio I was paired up with David Walter Banks, who is one of only a few people in the world that I would bring with me to find a specific family. In this place the tables turned and for two days I tried to track down and spend time with the Goins family, photographing things along the way while David put up with me. When we finally were allowed into their lives, it is with the heart-wrenching realization that Crystal’s daughter was murdered since my last visit. The time we spent there I did not photograph all that much, but I sat with Crystal and smoked a lot of cigarettes. I didn’t really know what to say. David sat there too, but unlike me, he was capable of making video. The short clips he produced in that time grip your heart in a way different than the photographs. They don’t overlap on the emotional resonance. 

Below is an excerpt of the transcript sent to me recently by Rob Finch, who is currently producing the Few and Far Between video. He tells me that the interview with Red Martin is what held the piece together and brought it to closure. After viewing his rough cut, I couldn’t agree more. 

There really isn’t any way I could have said it more clearly. To see more “A LUCEO Collaboration” posts, visit the links below.

A LUCEO Collaboration: Kendrick Brinson

A LUCEO Collaboration: Kevin German

A LUCEO Collaboration: Daryl Peveto

A LUCEO Collaboration: Matt Slaby

A LUCEO Collaboration: David Walter Banks 

© matteich for Luceo Images, 2012. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us

I was recently speaking with a friend about his ideology and intent in shooting iPhone photographs.  He told me that he looks at them less as photographs, and more as visual notes.  For me, the same idea transcends to much of what I shoot, especially in the realm of street photography.  Much of it is visual notes on places, people, and light.  99.9 percent of street photography is failure, according to Alex Web, and so it is especially healthy for me to think about the process and the reason more than the final product.  Many of the photographs are more of a sketch than a finished drawing, and I’m okay with that.  It is through these photographs that I learn and understand the world around me.  It is these visual notes that make up the diary of my life, and reveal what I’m looking for in the future.  Here are some of my memos and sketches along the way as of late. 

————————————————-

These images feed into an ongoing exploration of the cultural and social identity of Atlanta, Georgia as part of an essay titled, ‘Too Busy To Hate’.  To see more images from the project, visit NPR for a short edit here.

To see more blog entries click below:
Atlanta Untitled 3
Atlanta: Parade
Atlanta Untitled 1
Atlanta: Flux
Atlanta Untitled 2
Waka Flocka and Brick Squad
Evander Holyfield
Kasim Reed
Big Boi
Suburbia
More Atlanta Music
More to come soon …

© davidbanks for Luceo Images, 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us

David Walter Banks and Kendrick Brinson spent over a week in Caracas, Venezuela at RMTF, an amazing photography school run by teacher and photographer Roberto Mata. LUCEO’s Kevin German was the first of our members to have an exhibition, give a presentation and lead a workshop at the school in 2011 and Banks and Brinson followed suit in April of 2012.

David and Kendrick arrived in Caracas and immediately went on a press tour–the two were interviewed and photographed for a full-page section front story in Venezuela’s El Nacional newspaper, they were also interviewed about the workshop, talk and the exhibition by three radio shows and an online art magazine.

They each exhibited images in the gallery at the school: Banks had work from his ongoing “Atlanta: Too Busy to Hate” and Brinson showed work from her new ongoing project “Memphis: Music Eden.” The exhibition was the first for both projects. Although many Caracas residents vacation at the beach during holy week, the exhibition opened to a packed house. The same went for their talk a following night, where they both shared personal project work and then debuted work from LUCEO’s Few  Far Between collaborative ongoing project on rural America. Their talk was standing room only and was received by a dozens of questions by the crowd and a round of applause.

Then the pair held a four-day photography shooting and editing workshop centered around Semana Santa (Holy Week). The 29 students shared personal work and then were paired into teams based on their strengths. Each team was required to photograph Holy Week in Caracas, specifically in Petare, one of Latin America’s largest slums. The teams were given challenges and were required to help each other shoot and edit. Each day Banks and Brinson would edit the previous day’s photos down, explaining why each photo worked and if it didn’t, how it could be improved, and then the groups would go out and shoot again. Saturday, the entire workshop was escorted by police as they photographed the stations of the cross in Petare until past dark.

What made this group of photographers so unique was each has such unique backgrounds, the majority of whom do not have a goal of making a living off photography. The students ranged from a student who is 14-years-old to a professional doctor and lawyer. All of the students have plenty of distractions in life, so their devotion and passion for photography pushed their work to another level. Their styles and tools ranged as well. Some shot instant film, some shot medium format, some shot Holga, some shot digital, some specialized in still lifes, some specialized in portraiture, and some specialized in documentary. Each day, after Banks and Brinson edited images down as a huge group, the students would try shooting in new ways they’d previously seen in their classmates’ photos. Each student improved each day and because they worked in teams, they got to experiment in ways they hadn’t before.

Don’t be mistaken, Banks and Brinson were not easy on their students. In an upcoming post, you will be very impressed with the range of images the students created during the Holy Week workshop in Caracas. Stay tuned!

© Luceo Images for Luceo Images, 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us