POV: From Afghan Girl To Martin Scorsese?

Photo Courtesy The Guardian -All Rights Reserved
I was saddened by reading an interview with Steve McCurry recently published in The Guardian in which he shares the news that he's preparing a project in which he would be taking portraits of 30 celebrities in their home cities: Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese in New York, Amitabh Bachan in Mumbai. A sort of project that Annie Leibowitz would do...but Steve McCurry? C'mon!

I was also saddened to read that McCurry would be setting the shots, and choreographing the image-taking...the Leibowitz's style. While I'm told by various participants on his photo trips that he frequently stages scenes during his workshops, photographing celebrities requires a different type of discipline, and a different type of mind-set....and is not one hard core travel photographers would be stylistically and intellectually willing to do. Maybe I'm too idealistic?

Naturally, this project will be financially rewarding for McCurry and I wish him the best of luck with it....however, I can't help but feel a twinge of regret (and sadness, as I said twice already) that we are witnessing the dimming of a star.

After all, McCurry is one of the pioneers of travel photography and is an inspiration to many who follow his style....and to read of this new project is an uncomfortable reminder that things are changing in this industry, and that photographers (whether involved in travel, documentary and editorial) need to be sharp, varied and inventive. Resting on one's laurels is always a fatal mistake, and this is especially true in this tumultuous industry.

A photojournalist presented a body of work during the Foundry Workshop in Istanbul, but the consensus was that it was old and passe...and not relevant to the present day and age...photographers or photojournalists clinging to their past are like people breathlessly running after a Third World public bus on a pot-holed road, with young passengers hanging like a bunch of grapes from its doors and windows....and no available toe-holds in sight.

So let's be smart....let's learn multimedia, Final Cut, Adobe Premiere, Soundslides...audio techniques...learn DSLR videography....let's use Twitter & Facebook intelligently...do anything to find a toe-hold. If not, we'll be left inhaling exhaust fumes and waiting for celebrities to show up (if we're lucky).

Jon Guido Bertelli: Last of Zapatistas

Photo © Jon Bertelli -All Rights Reserved
Jon Bertelli is an international photographer, who currently resides in Vancouver, British Columbia, but was raised in Florence and academically trained in the visual arts there and in Oslo.

He lived in Mexico in the late nineties, and documented the last surviving Zapatista fighters; the veterans of the 1910-20 Mexican Revolution of the South, led by the famed (and feared) Emiliano Zapata. While Pancho Villa's revolution was concentrated in the north of the country, Zapata and his insurgents represented the south.

Jon photographed the surviving insurgents; most of which were over 100 years old. These were idealistic men and women who sacrificed their well-being and lives to follow Zapata. Many were decorated as war heroes by the Mexican government, and some have been recognized internationally for their bravery.

You have the choice of seeing Jon's The Last of the Zapatistas on his website, or on FOTO8 where his portraits have been made into an audio-sideshow.

The audio track used is La Soldadera by Garcia-Pujol and Jimenez. While it's a beautiful and appropriately evocative piece, imagine if the audio of the elderly Zapatistas' voices, telling us a bit of their exploits, was also included!!