The Young Film Makers of Tondo
It's The End Of The World As We Know It...
...but I feel fine. Those of us old enough to remember the song find different meanings for it as we go through life, but there is one time in our lives when one world does end and another begins - the end of high school. At it's peak, it is one of the most intense periods in our entire lives. The end of the world as it has always been, and we were (weren’t we?) they are (aren’t they?) so ready for it.
It is a period remarkable for its friendships, hard work, not to mention it's faith in the future. Remarkable too for how many ways it has to express itself, finding form in music and fashion, tests and exams, sport and competititivness, service to others, art and creativity, evolving family relationships. And it’s all connected digitally - no wonder it is a time of such emotional upheaval.
This journal entry is different for me in that it is blatant advertising for high school senior photo sessions. There you go - I’m just going to say it: “Hire me now!!” I'm here asking, "do you know anyone who could use a super fun, creative shoot immortalizing this epic moment in their lives?" I’m hoping you might - it’s one of the most rewarding types of photography I know.
How quickly the world changes, how far away they seem when they are in college. What, or who, they are when they emerge on the other side is unknowable, like the radio silence from the dark side of the moon - you have to trust they’ll come round again without you there.
To someone who has been witness to this end of this epoch for such a long time as an educator, being a photographer seems like the best job in the world. Although it's easy for me to say to parents things like “do you have a graduating high schooler about to settle into university life on a different continent?” or “want to capture them before they fly the nest?” it is more important than that. Much more.
It's important for them as well, years from now when they have kids of their own. I should be saying to their future selves, "Hey, come here, this is the best of times, preserve it forever. You'll be so glad you did when you're my age and can't remember it properly."
Can you remember your own high school experiences, some of the people, the detail? When I went looking for photos recently to use in this post, I found so few it startled me. It's different now in the cell phone era when we photograph our lives daily. But those photos are all so fast, just snaps really, easily lost on a stolen or corrupted phone. This time in our lives can be astonishing in it’s achievements and energy and I think its a privilege to be part of that. As a photographer, making a record of it seems vital. Let’s capture it properly.
Actually, it’s the end of the world as you know it. Do you feel fine ;-)
Easy, fast, fun, oh...and beautiful (of course)
I’m super happy to announce that I’m partnering with the PCA at ISM to provide a ‘get-those holiday-photos-done-quickly-and-easily-this-year!!!’ event called the PCA Holiday Portrait Party. Spaces are limited, so if this interests you I’d sign up soon. The way it works is simple. Pay for your slot/s at the cashier’s desk at school, turn up on the day at the Middle School Courtyard at your chosen time (don’t be late, you’ll lose the slot and have to buy a new one, if available) and I’ll take four professional, super lovely ;-) photos of you & your family. Leave your email with me, and a week later they’ll appear in your own private gallery here on the website. That’s it! Download them, make a card, or don’t make a card and just send them home for the holidays, etc. It will be fun, and a great way to support the fabulous PCA. I very much hope to see you there.
It’s a ‘ber month after all ;-)
BearCat Welcome
I'm super happy to announce that I'll be at this year's Bearcat Welcome at ISM on Wednesday September 5th. There will be (good!) food and plenty of exciting vendors to check out.
It's a great opportunity for me to share my love of photography with everyone. The new school year is a great time to schedule a fun photo session for you and your family, your departing high school senior, or an updated profile picture. I hope to see you there.
You'll have the chance to enter the draw for some great prizes, not least the chance to win a free Creative Portrait session with me. It's a fun, relaxing and out of the box character study for yourself (or as a gift for one of your friends). Be sure to get your ticket!
The Benefits of Fashion
Ever wondered how you can leave a meaningful footprint in life, or how your stay in your host country can be of value to those less fortunate? It's hard to actually find a project that can work around school, family, work, one that actually makes a difference. A few years ago I supervised just such a project, and it turned out to be quite an adventure, and an extremely rich experience.
This project managed to use high fashion to tackle poverty, directed great education to provide training for those with no education, fought severe gender inequality with female empowerment, and mixed overseas vision with local resources. To cap it off, it was served up at a fancy venue and raised thousands of dollars.
When I taught in India I supervised an IB CAS project entitled The Benefits of Fashion. It started when three international school students got together with an idea, a dream really, for a fashion show. When they started to plan this out, the dream quickly stopped being a simple "let's get all glammed up and walk the walk" idea, and morphed into a kusudama of rather large proportions. Undeterred, the girls formed a plan and set to work. Needing a service element to satisfy the IB criteria, they chose an NGO focused on female education, health and empowerment to which they would donate all the profits from the event.
The NGO, Action India, trains women and girls in basic workplace and small business skills, and pays them to work toward qualifications they can use in the real world, such as first aid, reading, writing, typing, in effect to stop them from marrying, or being married, too young. It supports them with university fees and provides invaluable sexual health education, something that alone can change lives dramatically.
Back at the school, the well heeled international girls selected three of their peers to design two fashion lines each. Those designers then had to find local artisans collaborate with, pay for, and manage their vision in order to bring to life their designs. This is no mean feat for anyone, let alone high school students already working flat out on their IB courses.
Once the designers started finishing their designs they used their tailors to mock up their work. As the clothes literally took shape, the designers auditioned for models, arranged for fittings, rehursals, hair and make up.
The group had now swelled to almost ten times its original number, and they often worked late, not only overseeing working on the fashion itself, but arranging sponsors, hunting for a high profile venue, and interviewing hospitality vendors.
I visited to the NGO and made a short promo film for their website to help them with their own fundraising and saw first hand just how impactive their financial support would be, how far a little money could go. This was going to change lives, and likely save one or two. I engaged another IB student, a very talented young filmmaker, to follow the student group on their journey as they developed the Benefits of Fashion identity and headed toward the hard deadline of the show.
The film documented the inevitable setbacks, tears, frustrations, withdrawals and injuries (oh, yes, there were a few injuries - some of these students were also engaged in inter-school sports, one model fell off a practice stage!) that come with such a complex event.
To use words familiar to every IB student, everyone took risks, remained open minded, and proved themselves to be out-of-the-box thinkers, knowledgeable, good communicators, balanced in their approach, reflective, caring and inquiring.
And then at the eleventh hour an ambassador's residence was secured and the fashion show became a garden party event. The hard work, long hours, the stress, had finally came to this.
The daylight dimmed, the spotlights came on and compares introduced the NGO, thanked the hosts and said a little about the project. The first of three high school musicians played an introductory song and then the models emerged onto the catwalk.
The collective intake of breath by the audience told it's own tale.
The models were so professional, so natural. It took a lot of guts to walk a catwalk at a major ambassador's residence, flanked by the high and mighty of the local expat and business community.
Were they nervous? Yes, surely. Did they show it? Not a bit.
The catwalk was a bridge between those who had it, and had the power to create change, to those who had nothing and were powerless.
Ticket sales had been robust and it was great to see the sizable audience whoop and cheer as the models took to the catwalk and made this dream come to life.
The event made a lot of people proud, not least the students themselves, but my big takeaway was the way they exploded people's preconceptions of what a student event could be like. This was more polished, more assured, more profitable, more collaborative than people expected, and there was a palpable sense of how impressed the audience was. It was very powerful.
The designers had created lines that were confident and brave. To have your vision come to life in front of an audience is hugely gratifying and they deserved the ovations they received.
I supervised two of these events and witnessed thousands of dollars being raised to buy health, shelter and education for girls and young women in India.
Many of the clothes on show were actually purchased, the vendors did a roaring trade, and everyone went home richer, safer, more empowered and better educated. What a brilliant way to attack gender maltreatment and devastating poverty.
I've covered some senior events here in Manila since I arrived and they no longer surprise me with the level of what they achieve, of what they create together. The future seems like a brighter place in their hands, I think. When I look at the photos later, I often wonder what they will have become when they are the ones writing blog posts and stories of the world?
Ballerina
Once upon a time I wrote a novel. It was meant to be an allegorical novel for adults but it was not perceived that way. I was upset it didn't get published but even today it remains one of most important pieces of work I have ever produced and I still fundamentally believe in it. The catalyst for the story is a scene between a disillusioned and restless young man and free spirited dancer who is not as free as she appears to be.
"Tell me, why do you dance?” he said once he had caught up with her.
“All life is a dance,” she said smiling in the warm night air. “The children at play; these waves hitting the sand; women laughing as they walk back from market. A bird; it dances through the sky. Everything is movement, movements flowing over and through the world. It is one of the highest endeavours, as high even as dreaming."
She spoke and started to move, slowly now, gracefully, as if each word had a corresponding action: a dip, a bend, a turn, never moving more than a few feet away from him.
“It has form and movement,” she continued. “But it is also still and formless," she stopped and the air paused around her. Her finger traced a line around her face and she looked at him as if he had said something, which he had not.
She suddenly plopped down onto the sand next to him. "You can paint dancers too, and when you add voice and music, you bring all the arts together,” she said. “It transforms the human body into art, but it is so fleeting, just like this moment here with you. It exists like life and death, linking us to the lifecycle. It is control. Poise. Grace, and yet it’s also chaos. It’s the universe itself.”
Let's not pretend I can dance. Or that I am fit enough to keep a dance going for long, but I do admire people who can dance well.
And then there is this other level, this attempt at perfection, that is like an act of love. Watching a ballerina is not only a manifesto for how we should love and live but also an illustration of how we so rarely manage to achieve it.
To photograph this experience is a visceral thing and one cannot approach the performance as if it is any other event. Certain musicians, too, demand the same adherence to this code - it is intimate, responsive, and deeply obligatory: to fail with the image is a betrayal.
The Ballet of Manila is not from Moscow, London or Paris but there were dancers on that stage what demanded this recognition of their work.
"Everything is movement, movements flowing over and through the world...
... it is one of the highest endeavours, as high even as dreaming."
I'm obsessed. If your'e interested, read this.
New School Photos
You all love color. Last year's Flickr analysis of what photos were most popular on it's site were overwhelmingly, color. Yet most of us love black and white as well, and even claim to prefer it on an intellectual or artistic level. So few of my own favorite photographs are in color. Is that because I'm a photographer and purist? Can't say. What do you prefer? I'm interested to explore situations that are normally the preserve of color. Here, I was commissioned to take the annual photographs of a small pre-school and obviously this was a color shoot. The kids were brilliant - a lively bunch of little monkeys and fidgeting clowns. But I also wanted to do something different with the stale form of the traditional school photograph. The school principal, a progressive administrator, agreed to cut me loose as long as the parents were in the end happy. These are a selection of the results.
We all walk into the homes of family and friends and look at their children's school-issue photos, and for me, I have always disliked them. They are reasonably well lit and reasonably well composed images that look EXACTLY THE SAME the whole world over (that said, my own kids' recent school photos at the International School in Manila are wonderful, simply for the expressions the photographer coaxed out of them - that's why you hire a pro ;-)).
Why did I take this risk? Well, for two reasons: firstly, school life is immense and very personal to them. Don't forget how our own experiences influenced us very differently from one another. And yet the photographs that exist from our school years are boring, cookie-cutter, mass produced, monovisual. Secondly, our children are originals and I wanted to try something that captured their depth of character and the nuances of their personality. Truth, not perfection, was my goal.
I'm satisfied with them, and think I met my objective of breaking the mould for school photo day. These will stand the test of time in a world awash with Instagram filters.
Because this is what it's all about - time - photographs that don't just stop time, but elevate that particular moment and turn it into a monument of the person at that era of their lives. The many folds of character meet the persistence of time. The image is therefore not a static shot, but one that connotes movement, growth, acton, our human strength and vulnerability.
Of course, the parents got the color versions as well (and grandparents) and were super-happy, which is all that truly matters. Many thanks to the parents who graciously gave their permission for me to use these photos of their Little Amazings.
Here's looking at you, kid.
It's Only Rock'n'Roll, but I Like It
I like it a lot. Last spring I was asked to photograph the final night of a Battle of the Bands competition at the International School Manila. In hindsight, I'm unsure exactly what I was expecting, but the evening was memorable for the performances and remarkable for the skill of the musicians.
In my day, Battle of the Bands meant thrashing around trying to sound good, being a rebel and making a lot of noise.
It was either denim and leather or hairspray and bleached highlights. Some kids could play a bit, some could hold a tune, but rarely for long and they were never in the same band!
This lot however were, to a person, amazing. The range of skills, the depth of talent, and the coherhance of the bands was a jaw dropping.
These are talented young people who obviously work closely together. It didn't matter if they were older or younger, they were all of a semi-professional standard. They didn't need to be rebellious or try to force anything - they dressed up, stood up and rocked out.
A few performers stood out, of course, perhaps confidence or affinity with the material made the difference.
What's interesting to me is that when I started editing the show I noticed that one band in particular had a disproportionate amount of photographs taken of it, and one person in particular.
This is interesting because this person was involved with many performances and his band won the competition's biggest prize.
The band, United States of Hysteria, was a league apart. The difference between amauter and professional is more than about the quality of voice or musicianship. You need those, of course, But you also need to own it.
USH owned not only the stage but the entire gig. They took the crowd, the judges and the evening into their hands and created their experience. It was a professional show. There was arrogance, skill, uniqueness - wow, that band could play.
I used to photography new bands many years ago - more than I get to now, for sure, and one or two of them stood out as having that something, that invisible invincible stagecraft that said, its only rock'n'roll, but I am it. Bands such Razorlight and Franz Ferdinand on their first album tours come to mind.
For a high school battle of the bands, that was good company to find yourself in. Not that they probably know who Razorlight or Franz Ferdinand are today. Still, I saw, I remembered and I got to photograph this lot under the night sky of Manila and it was brilliant.
What A Great Community
Thank you ISM PCA - I had a wonderful morning at your Bearcat Welcome open house. I met some wonderful potential clients and exciting, energetic vendors. The old phrase, we're stronger together, seems particularly relevant today. I got to have some wonderful conversations with families and their needs, but also got to talk about my NGO work, and promote my new portrait project.
If you were there, thank you for coming by - I look forward to working with you in the months ahead. - Take care - Mark
Where There's a Will
In a recent post I mentioned the importance of extending the reach of good quality education to those who do not have the addcidental good fortune of a birth that drops them into a world of privilege. That privilege does not have to mean mean wealth, it can just be just parents who have access to high quality education. I had also previously promised that I would write about India, and those two things now come together in this post. There is much to write regarding India and this is a pretty good place to start.
The story behind Alpha Montessori school is a remarkable story of one man's change of direction, single minded will, incredible devotion and attention to detail. The founder worked in an industry infamous for its profiteering. Indeed, he was out to make a a lot of money on a deal, and by his own admission, the land deals and housing projects he made his money from were not always in anyone else's best interest.
Then one day he walked past a school and looked through the window. The classroom was in chaos and, the story goes, this hightlighted a naging hole in his heart to do something meaningful with his life. Before long he aquired a building, then set up a school of his own. But that school failed. Kids came, but attendance was patchy and the learning environment was noisy and in his words, "wasting everybody's time". Undeterred, he asked himself why it was failing and when he couldn't fix it, he closed it. Later, as he was walking down another noisy claustrophobic street, he looked through a classroom window and saw students at work, happy, apparently learning, and well mannered. This was a Montessori school and he knew that he wanted to follow that model. What he did next blows me away. A relative in the United States sent him photographs of the Montessori school classroom materials and he engineered his own by himself, by hand, from the photographs. "I calculated the exact measurements of the Montessori materials by measuring the pixels in the photos and transltaing that to a drawing. They are very precise, you know? You have to get it right for them to be classed as proper Montessori classroom materials."
That was a decade ago. From one room on one floor of a delapidated building, the school now occupies four floors and many more rooms. It serves almost 100 kids that would would otherwise be swamped in a system, or not even in school at all, who would be lost to child labour and the cruelest poverty that is India's streets.
Every one of these children has a chance of breaking their poverty trap through education. I have spent a lot of time at this school and the quality of education is good. They do have a chance. Girls especially. Among the poor of the world, girls get the least access to education. In India this is a massive problem. Yet studies show that if we invest in educating girls and women the entire community benefits, from health, family planning, contributions to local economies, and back again to increased participation in education.
Indeed, it is not hyperbole to say that if we want to solve the world's vast problems we might only need to tackle the issue of uneducated girls. The now quite well known benefits to this are deeply penetrating and long lasting. In this school, girls make up a little more than 50% of the school population. Education is far more than letters and numbers - it is a gateway to making a person feel better about themselves. It ripples through families and into their communities. Slowly the world can become a better place.
If achievement brings confidence, confidence enables people to try new things. Success is contagious. We just need to provide it, make it equal, rigorous and compassionate. We need to stick at it and never give up.
If we're going to help solve some of the world's most pressing problems (I saw recently that we are using 60% more of the worlds resources than it can ultimately sustain!), if we are to succeed, some of the many seeds are in schools such as Alpha Montessori in India
Disclaimer: The original article was written in 2013 and has been updated for the new website. The school thrives and I will be writing more in the coming months.
This one applies to all of us, not just writers
I found this recently. There is no need to explain it.
if it doesn't come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don't do it. unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don't do it. if you have to sit for hours staring at your computer screen or hunched over your typewriter searching for words, don't do it. if you're doing it for money or fame, don't do it. if you're doing it because you want women in your bed, don't do it. if you have to sit there and rewrite it again and again, don't do it. if it's hard work just thinking about doing it, don't do it. if you're trying to write like somebody else, forget about it. if you have to wait for it to roar out of you, then wait patiently. if it never does roar out of you, do something else. if you first have to read it to your wife or your girlfriend or your boyfriend or your parents or to anybody at all, you're not ready. don't be like so many writers, don't be like so many thousands of people who call themselves writers, don't be dull and boring and pretentious, don't be consumed with self- love. the libraries of the world have yawned themselves to sleep over your kind. don't add to that. don't do it. unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don't do it. unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don't do it. when it is truly time, and if you have been chosen, it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you. there is no other way. and there never was.
And I got Bukowski and a ballerina on the same page!
Little People, Big World
Its back! The return of color (well, mostly). In the previous post about shooting families (blimey, how that must index on a Trumpian-Moscovite snooping algorithm) I alluded to the parallel worlds in which children exist as we watch over them. Sat at dinner one night, my daughter was explaining the intricacies of how exactly you should deal with a particular dragon species, while my son sat there eating. I thought he was listening, even if his arms were moving a little too much given what was on his fork, but it was fair assumption to think he was locked in with us. Suddenly he interjected, "you know, Batman eats a lot of lobster..."
It started me thinking about how diverse our thinking is, and how I need to remember that the next time I teach a class. There are many ways to link dragons and Batman's lobsters, and in class, I have to hit them all. This thought rolled into another, and later while writing a draft photo workshop outline, I stopped to ponder how right from the beginning of my professional photography life I have taught and photographed for schools. Not just sports or concerts, but new school openings, fundraisers, and in one school, innovative annual student portraits, complete with a black and white set that rocked!
Everything is connected - the photography came first at collage, followed by film making and screenwriting, and then the academic journey through comparative mythology brought me to teaching. From that moment on, life became a continuous braid of the camera, the pen and the classroom. It's not all a bed of rosy idealism, though. A Facebook post of a friend reminded me how challenged some schools are, and an email from another highlighted the work teachers and their administrators put in, and its toll.
The reality is that we live in a world that talks a lot about the importance of education and yet undervalues teachers spectacularly. We talk of the future being in the hands of our children, of your children, but we give them poor tools and old practices with which to create a better world. While many of us go to work in innovative workplaces designed to foster a more productive and constructive world, schools are often a hodgepodge of decaying spaces nobody wants to fund.
But the cliche is right: these institutions and their key population are our future, and we have a pretty serious set of challenges barreling down upon us that we, and our forebears, have brought through the pipe; indeed, the future is here, isn't it? The present is prescient. Can I say that? It makes a kind of sense to me!
There are many people and schools out there working like giants to make this happen, and as an educator of almost two decades, I have been very fortunate to work in some innovative forward thinking schools, guided by empowering leadership and collaborative peer to peer relationships. It isn't rocket science but it is human science and it needs to be treated as such.
We can't change the world alone, but we can support change, recognize like-minded people, and help nudge that change forward. Since my own kids have come along I've been involved in their schools, offering what I can, and always with a camera close by. It is a good way to publicize the schools in their endeavours, tell their stories, share the experience, give something back to the community that does so much for so many.
I have had very close access to my kids in their schools because of their age, but as I write this, it occurs to me that that time is now drawing to a close. My son is in his final weeks of pre-school. This marks the end of an era on many levels: as their primary care-giver, my role, my time, is being transformed. There were days I turned up for a shoot still smelling of wet wipes, or when I berated a high schooler for not getting enough sleep when I had not had any myself for days. Once while leading a workshop that I had glitter in my hair and across my face. There have been many nights spent editing weddings while rocking a baby after a night feed. That's all gone; the older they get the less time at home they spend and the nicer the smells get (for now at least!). And although I will continue to seek involvement, the nature of that involvement is probably about to change, right?
I'm not sure I'll get this opportunity again, unsure the schools will let me get this close. At a certain point parents are distracting and need to let the professionals get on with the job (this is of course before parents become embarrassing to the kids and then no one wants us around!)
What's interesting to me, when I'm in the viewfinder, swallowed up by the moment, watching the story unfold before me, is just how immersed the kids are, how big the world looks to them. And that's when it comes full circle and hits me - all those words about the future and change and need to better value teachers and our education systems - that's when I drop the camera and see that we are out of time, that we have to act now, be acting now. The future is here.
It's easy to be caught in the culture of kids, obsess about our little darlings, but that is to miss the point. It's not about them, this is about solving the worlds problems and making a sustainable future; this is about us, about who we are.
There is so much work to be done. Poor leadership, rotten teachers, lack of money, political interference by people who cannot know what is truly the best way forward but who have enough power to think they do, these people still roam the world in abundance. As a society we need to change our thinking and act: education is the single most important foundation of a true democracy and the key to a sustainable human future.
It's disingenuous to say we have to let go of the past because we have so much to learn from it, but we are not learning as much as we could, and we hold on to too much of what should be let go. We have to embrace the future, of research based, inquiry based, collaborative, reflective learning, that deepens understanding and promotes, compassionate, creative and flexible ways of thinking. My kids are lucky, I believe they have attended a couple of the best pre- and elementary schools in the world in their short journey thus far. That's great for them, but what about the rest? The bigger task is to find a way to extend that to more kids who do not have same accidental fortune of birth as mine had.
It's time to close this post. I think it began as something that intended to value education as a whole but it turned into a siren call, a panic stricken cry, probably based on the nostalgia of this era closing for me and my kids, that era when they were a vehicle for me to get up close to some remarkable education and get the stories out, a vehicle that is perhaps out of gas. But Brexit, Le Pen, my local President, the Trump government, the May government, the greatness that is Russia being completely undermined by Putin - all these things have got to me. It's time to find another way to help get the successful stories told. Wouldn't it be great if a class hired a photographer for the year to document and film their journey? It would be quite the documentary! The reflective power of such a record would be awesome. How can we reach out further and help others? I made a film in India that was intended to be part of a bigger narrative on helping such projects, but I was unable to continue and. Perhaps this is the time to reflect on that experience. Time to get my thinking hat on....
The Family Shoot
Another journal post in black and white! Can't help it. There will be color at some point. I do work in the world of color for my clients (and share their photos in black & white if they want them) but to me the magic of photography is amplified in black and white. This is true for photography that is normally assosicated with color, such as the environmental family photoshoot. No posing, just catching people and relationships interact. People tend to prefer their family photography in color, but given the nature of the subjects, it lends itself to black and white precisely because it draws out that essence from the deep without distraction.
It's a real workout staying ahead of the children while remaining present and still enough capture a glance, a mood change, a pause. Sometimes they play to the camera, mostly they push it aside to let in whatever their game of worlds is running with them at that time. They're not in Manila being photographed for their parent's sense of telling their story, of vanishing time, they're in another realm, in a parallel time. They are not growing up too fast, they are forever in the moment.
Probably my all time personal favorite single portrait from a family session. Taken in New Delhi, India.
Diverse personalities from a recent session in Manila. A dedicated post will come in the near future.
This is not a perfect shot, but I love the story.
It's not all about the kids! Well, it mostly is, but it needn't be.
Life rarely moves slower than a canter and most often at a gallop. Our kids grow up while we are looking away, and work would have us as passing clouds in each other's skies. Capturing a moment of the intertwining journey of a family seems important. We all know it's not all roses, but it is deep: families are that mix of just about everything we have to deal with: love, loss, friendship, trust, betrayal, hierarchy, faith, dreams, security, time, hope.
Perhaps that's why we can't truly ever figure our family out, not perfectly. There are so many contstantly evolving and moving parts, that the combinations of outcomes are infinitesimal. I guess that's what I'm looking for when I'm being that family photographer - the essence, the contradictions, the depth. To tell the story of how those parts are working together at that moment in their journey.
If you're interested in recording a chapter of your family's journey, drop us a line at Mark Cowlin Pictures. We have lots of options here in Manila, not just family photography, but little videos, slideshows, biographys. Hope to see you soon.
A quote from the photographer Art Shay sums it up: "...a photograph is the biography of the moment." Yes, it is.
Life on Stage
Stepping out onto a stage in front of hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of people takes courage. Imagine those final moments backstage, the focusing of the mind, channeling the anxiety, feeling it transform into an edgy kind of power. That last deep inhale of breath, and that final, come first, step out of the shadows and into the spotlight. Then you are, to all intense and purposes, walking out onto the edge of the world. This journal entry is a little self indulgent because the images are black and white. Performances are color and that's great, my clients want and get those, but there's something special to me about stripping away the color of the performance to isolate the focus of the performer.
The performer's journey has in all likeliness taken years to arrive at this point we are witnessing. Parents take their little ones to a dance class, someone insists their child take up a musical instrument because it's good for them, kids sign up for a drama or theatre class to better express themselves: all these events happened years before the curtain goes up. If the child likes the class, then the dreams will grow until, laying in bed at night, waiting for sleep, dreams spring across the twilight. Dancers on invisible currents, musicians at one with instrument and crowd, actors inhabiting other people's souls. And if they're lucky, it carries over into reality for all time.
What is the reason why we enjoy live performances so much? Do we feel the pressure, the taste the closeness of failure, do we share the relief at the end? I marvel at the skill, the control, the ability to do such a thing, the courage.
As a performer, there is always the dream of the breakthrough. If fame and fortune is what you're after, then the dream drives you onwards and you never know, you never know who is watching, or what is waiting for you at the next performance, because just maybe it is the bigtime. Are we watching history germinating, stars born and immortality beckoning? That's when we stand an applaud, jump and scream. They did it! Bravo! We stand and cheer - perhaps glad that we did not have to endure the months and years of sacrifice and training to put ourselves on the line like that - but most of all, it is for the pure joy at sharing such a human experience.
That's when we stand an applaud, jump and scream. They did it! Bravo! We stand and cheer - perhaps glad that we did not have to endure the months and years of sacrifice and training to put ourselves on the line like that - but most of all, it is for the pure joy at sharing such a human experience.
There are more photos to check out on the website gallery page here.
"Always go a little further into the water than you feel you're capable of being in, go a little out of your depth, and when you don't feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you're just about in the right place to do something exciting." - David Bowie
Everything Stopped, then.
This post has taken a while to arrive. Our journey is not clear. The world is unpredictable, a wide pallet on which to leave a trail. Two years ago I was in Paris leading a group of young artists around the established galleries. One day we broke the orthodoxy of that path and jumped the Périphérique and headed to a gallery of modern art, a place not so much out of the box, but one that didn't care so much what the box was. The work was so present, so alive - inspiring stuff. It said: be brave in what you do. Fuck it. Make a statement.
It had been an incredible year that led to Paris that autumn. The early part brought a few photography jobs that had requested that I do just that - be brave. The clients wanted something different, something bold to match their experience. You have to go out on a limb, right, because that's where the fruit is. India is all they say it is - all of it, everyone. They're all right even if two opinions stand beside one another in complete contradiction. Someone said (I can't recall who) that India was the place where you can sit on the kerb and watch the street for an afternoon then go away and think about it for the rest of your life. They are right.
This blog, this website, could devote itself to India for years to come. It's tempting, there is so much to mine; but the urge must be tempered. I'll post some, but curation is a puzzle I haven't even considered yet. But back then the work was starting to flow in this new place of extremes. It didn't know what the box was, and that day in Paris I was certainly outside the walls.
My dad had been sick and was still tired. He was through the storm of cancer and its treatment. The scans saw nothing. It had been two years. We had all spent the most memorable summer as a family. Probably the most tribal, the most relaxed and together since we kids had grown and flown. The sense of growth in our lives was palpable. We basked in the unusually persistent good weather.
This was Enid Blyton, Miss Marple and Inspector morse. Small towns built on books, summer dips in the river, fishing, visits to castles, Scottish lochs, farms and fields. It had the lot. Dad was tired, something wrong with his heart they said, he would get to the bottom of it. It had been a rough spring, but the autumn was going to bring relief and solutions. Back to work for me, and back to the doctor for him.
Work was busy, and then work was Paris. Dad had a solution to his heart problem ( they got the meds right) and now he would feel well again. How could this year get better?
We left the MacVal and returned to the Paris of everyone's dreams. The day was falling. A Gary Winogrand poster looked down. We went inside. Those photographs: lives upon lives, mostly extinguished now, but they live on in these photographs, unsuspecting immortality. The technique, the composition, the light: it was a mind blowing series of images, of past lives - it made me think of my parents as teenagers, when they met. The hair, Elvis, the cars, the Beatles. Unbeknown to me, across the Channel, those memories came flooding back to my parents as well. We emerged as a group, appreciative, high, focused, looking at the street in a fresh way. The Tuileries beckoned winter, the sun cast shadows across the Place de la Concorde. We got a waffle. And then the little cheap mobile phone rang in my pocket as we entered the Metro, and as I shepherded the students into the labyrinth, I took the call.
It was my sister.
That day was my mother's birthday. I imagined that my sister was connecting my mother and me because I was unable to use the phone for personal calls and at that time my mother needed assistance in those things. I had sent an email but she couldn't read email either. But this was not a birthday thing; they had taken my dad back to hospital for a check and decided to x-ray his chest. I'm not sure why. Standard procedure? To this day I can hear my sister's voice. I ran to the surface and the world distorted like a push-pull zoom. What? Dad was full of the cancer the scan has just claimed was not there. How?
It was October. He left three weeks later.
The photo above was taken on the way to the pub for our last pint together during that summer. I knew that we would not get this time again for a year because I live on the other side of the world, and I knew he was still not well; remember feeling that I needed that time to speed up, that if we got to next summer, things would be ok.
That time did not speed up for us. It did for him, all the time in the world rushed at him and sped past and within three months of our drink, three weeks of that phone call in Paris, he had none left. For us time still stretches beyond these words and their ability to describe it.
The last morning I saw him alive was cold and full of luminous dark. The sky was half real, almost like a Klimt, the golds, the darks shiny. And still as if the world was afraid to breathe. Nothing but the trickle of water, the flow of the river below, like sand through the timer.
And that was that. He left and we carried on. The marching armies of small things persist in their governance of our lives took over as I relinquished control. The work stopped. I stopped writing. We travelled to the home of the Dalai Lama and found solace in the mountains. Photography work trickled in. Some here, some there. I made two films for the betterment of the (utterly) poor and shackled.
I keep putting off this post because I'm supposed to be over it and this should be about the photos and the gigs, an improved attempt at journaling; all about the photography. Yet the camera is inseparable from the rest and I guess before I jump this hurdle I better be ready for the landing. He was a good man, the most selfless person I've met, honest and kind, and consistent, oh so consistent. No duplicity, no games. His example of openness and acceptance is brighter than ever in these times of global falsenesses. The world misses him. We all miss him.
