Photography.
After my spiritual epiphany on 5-MeO-DMT in 2003, I became increasingly occupied by the mystical perspective and those moments grasped outside of our normal space and time, a powerful transition to a new view of reality that is the subject of my book ‘Tryptamine Palace’. Paradoxically, through the same period, I became equally occupied with the art of photography, which I had barely practiced since being robbed of my equipment and portfolio in Copenhagen some where around 1990. While this rekindled interest undoubtedly had something to do with the opportunities now open with digital photography and the ease with which one could now make gallery quality prints, it also was due to photography unique ability to capture a slice of reality so to speak, frozen, inscrutable, and accomplishing that same goal the mystic seeks … stopping the flow of time. Time, the river that never stops flowing, but captured in the moment by the passage of the camera’s shutter.
In this web-site I present a number of galleries of some of my favorite photography subjects.
1. Best of Burning Man 2004-2009. A gallery of the art, art-cars, and people that occupy Black Rock City each year and create Burning Man, an annual art-music-underground culture event in Nevada, USA. With its emphasis on both art and community, Burning Man has become both the first twenty-first century art-movement and a international cultural movement all of its own. I consider myself at the core a Burning Man artist since Burners have my primary audience and supporters, and I have contributed most specifically with my book (Tryptamine Palace) early versions of which I gifted on the Playa in 2006 and 2007, and by building art-cars such as The Lady Sassafras, but I also consider my on-going attempt to document my years at Burning Man – which hopefully I will publish as a photo-book some day – as a contribution to the possibilities of the Burning Man movement
2. The Mardi Gras Indians of New Orleans, an elusive subject since they are essentially black secret-societies (tribes) that ‘mask’ three days a year – Mardi Gras Day, Super-Sunday, and St. Josephs night – and wander along irregular routes through-out the poorer parts of town. These tribes are made up of generally lower-middle class African-Americans who spend hundreds of hours each year sewing their incredible feather and beaded costumes, only to destroy them after Super Sunday each year, only to start work on a ‘new suit’. The chants and tribal songs of the Mardi Gras Indians are credited with inventing New Orleans famed ’second-line beat’, and the Indian inspired bands like the Wild Magnolias and the Wild Tchoupitulas created some of New Orleans best 1970’s funk, and still do today … For me, St Jospeh’s night is my favorite, it is a surreal and some times slightly scary scene watching two feathered ‘Big Cheifs’ squaring off for a shit-talking show-down about how good they can each sew, all while the neighborhood Chris-Rock-with-a 40-Oz is providing a running commentary in the background…. It took me years to start getting decent shots of the Mardi Gras Indians in their natural habitat, and these days Im trying to capture the sense of movement and music that the Indians possess in those magical moments on the streets of their own neighborhoods, right around Second and Dryades …
3. New Orleans Second-Lines and Jazz Funerals. These parades are called “second-lines’ because back in the day of Jim Crow, the parades in New Orleans were separated in two halves – the whites up front, and the blacks in the back. Well, the real party was clearly in the back, and the negro musicians developed a unique beat that has been immortalized their position in those parades – to this day it is referred to as a ’second-line beat’ and all New Orleans funk is based upon it. While raucous second-line parades with hip-hop rhyming brass bands with names like The Rebirth Brass Band and The Soul Rebels are held by ‘Social and Pleasure Clubs’ on every Sunday of ‘Second-Line season’ (Labor day Weekend till early summer hen it gets too hot), a Jazz Funeral is a different kind of second-line that is held in honor of beloved New Orleans musicians when they die. They always start with a slow funeral dirge and then burst into a wild expression of joy and can be remarkable musical experiences since virtually all of New Orleans jazz musicians (and especially the horn players) will come out for a big second-line, and there is nothing like the sound of dozens and dozens of tubas, trumpets, trombones, saxaphones, alto and baritone, blasting down the cobbled narrow streets of the French Quarter. A number of the b/w photos included in this gallery are from the first major Jazz Funeral after Hurricane Katrina, for the Preservation Hall Jazz band trumpeter and band leader, John Brunious.
4. A Gallery I will just title ‘Fabulous Freaks and Festivals’. Here you will find lots of portraits of outrageously costumed characters from Mardi Gras and Halloween in New Orleans, Carnival in Brazil, Burning Man, Lightning-In-A-Bottle, Symbiosis, and beyond ….
5. A Gallery of my travel photography. I have been fortunate enough to travel extensively through-out the Americas, Europe, India, South-East Asia, and North Africa, as well as my home land of Aotearoa in the South Pacific. Here you will find photos of Buddhas – both living and dead – and Indian babas and saddhuss, Peruvian, San-Pedro shamans, Brazilian graffiti, and Haitian voodoun Priests. Taking photographs while traveling is a good way to assure you are never bored, and rarely lonely, and my goal as a travel photographer is to be as invisible to the subject as a ghost.
6. And finally, some of my extreme sports photography. Paragliding, kite-surfing, mountain biking and dirt bikes, skiing, snowboarding, and anything else I can find that rolls or slides …. I have been an ‘Editor-at-large’ for both Cross-Country magazine, which is the largest hang-gliding and paragliding magazine in the world, and “KiteWorld”, one of the most popular international kiteboarding magazines.
