The Edward Curtis Project is a unique collaboration between Redux photographer Rita Leistner, Métis/Dene playwright Marie Clements and numerous individuals in First Nation communities in Canada and the United States.
It was a commonly held view in Curtis’s time that the Aboriginals of North America were a “vanishing race” – and his job was to create a photographic record before it was too late. Leistner and Clements take a fresh look at colonial photography and the attitudes of the day, addressing questions such as: What happens when the ‘vanishing race’ doesn’t vanish and what is the impact on people when the message is that they are vanishing?
Two years in the making, the play and photography exhibition, commissioned by Presentation House Theatre, premiere in January as an Official Selection of the Cultural Olympiad of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics.
Andrew Cutraro, a newer addition to the Redux family, brings a lot to the table creatively. Here’s a little taste of what he can do in the realm of video and the process of how it was made in his words;
6,500 stills and one hour of 1080p HD footage shot on Canon 5d and 5d Mark II cameras to produce the final product, which weighed in at a staggering 30gb! Shot entirely on-location in the basement of a single story ranch home in South St. Louis over three days and two nights.
“We went through 8 lbs. of glitter, 6 lbs. of confetti, one guitar, two amplifiers, a drum set, two suits (Men’s Warehouse and Syms), a pair of Stacey Adams shoes, three gallons of black matte paint, two cans of spray mount, a woman’s wig, one disco ball, 4 lbs. of ash, 8 lbs. of potting soil, two cases of Budweiser, a fifth of Makers Mark, four packs of various cigarettes, two interns from Webster University, a domesticated fern and a tree branch from what we believe is a maple in the back yard.
“I worked with Tony Gaddis and Jon Lutjens to produce the piece. Both men I’d worked with before at the venerable agency CORE, but they have since moved on to other ventures. I collaborate with them as often as I can. Just about everyone whoever worked at that agency is a genius for some reason.
“Gaddis directed it and Lutjens edited and did the treatments in Final Cut Pro and with some secret software he’s been developing. As Director of Photography, I was in charge of the look– but titles are misleading; we all cross-pollinated the production.
“The concept evolved over a few months of weekly planning over the phone and iChat — sharing story boards and testing concepts and scouting. But, mostly, we had a fairly loose spine of an idea of what we wanted to accomplish in theory — always leaving room for discovery and serendipity — which is the way I like to work.
“With all the traditional media collapsing around us, we are often missing the bigger picture — we are in a golden age right now. Creativity, collaboration, production and distribution have never been so democratized. We can do things fresher, smarter, quicker, and cheaper than ever before. A day after the video was released I got a message from the guys “What’s next?”
“The answer is: “stay tuned there’s more to come.”
December 29th, 2009 at 10:45 am by Audrie
Filed under Erika Larsen
Flak Photo features a selection of images contributed from the online photography community celebrating the spirit of the winter season. Published weekdays through Friday, January 15, 2010, today’s selection is by Redux photographer Erika Larsen, from her series Sámi, The People.
Sámi, or Saami, translates to ‘The People.’ They are an indigenous tribe who live in northern Scandinavia, in the Arctic Circle region. The Sámi live in the largest area in the world and are bound by a strict adherence to the traditions of reindeer herding and live a nomadic lifestyle based on the migration of these animals.
Flak Photo is a daily photography website that celebrates the art & culture of photography. Produced by Andy Adams, the site highlights new series work, book projects, and gallery exhibitions from an international community of professional photographers and online contributors.
December 28th, 2009 at 11:09 am by Perrie
Filed under Awards, Brent Lewin
Congratulations to Brent Lewin, a Nature Category runner-up in the 2009 American Photo Images of the Year contest for his abstract portraits of Thai street elephants which can be viewed on the Redux Pictures archive here.
December 23rd, 2009 at 11:55 am by Audrie
Filed under Michael Rubenstein
In August 2009 Michael Rubenstein was given the opportunity to return to the scene of the Mumbai terrorist attacks in order to photograph the Mumbai Chabad House. Between Wednesday, November 25 and Friday, November 27, 2008, six Jews including the Rabbi and his wife were killed. During this trip Micheal photographed Rabbi Berkowitz, the Rabbi chosen by Chabad to organize the reconstruction of the Mumbai Chabad House along with those who lost loved ones in attack.
The experience in Michael’s words:
“I covered the 26/11 attacks for the NYT as they were happening. Ruth Fremson, Amiran White and myself were witness to the horrible events those days at the Taj Hotel, Chabad House and Oberoi hotel. We missed the destruction at VT station and on Colaba Causeway. Professionally I did my job and made pictures that people around the world needed to see but those days were very difficult for me on a personal level. I’d never seen anything like it and I never want to again. Though I wasn’t captive and no one I know was killed during those days I, like many native Mumbaikers and Indians alike, felt personally attacked.
I look at the work I did in August and September of 2009 as a way of getting closure for myself. I needed to see the inside of the Chabad house as an American and as a Jew (albeit secular). I needed to photograph it and I didn’t want to do it with a throng of other photographers. I wanted to do it silently so that I could say goodbye to people I never really knew but had felt connected to for almost a year.”
Jeffery Salter covered the gamut of all that Miami has to offer; including the best cuisine’s, late-night clubs, and its’ design district in the Winter 2009 edition of The New York Time’s Style Magazine ‘Travel’ edition.
Mark Peterson gives foodies the world over an behind-the-scenes look at “Good Eats with Alton Brown” in the November 2009 edition of Food Network Magazine.
It has been said that a “highbrow is the kind of person who looks at a sausage and thinks of Picasso,” and though the vast majority of us would prefer not to witness how this delightful German-staple is made, Laif photographer Andreas Teichmann turned his lens onto dwindling master butchers of Germany for the January 2010 edition of Smithsonian.
