Collaboration with Shirin Neshat

I'm not sure exactly why I decided to post the collaboration art piece I share a credit with Shirin Neshat, but here it is.
We both did it a few years ago, as a contribution for witness.org , an international human rights organization that give video cameras to people around the world in order to document human rights violations, and open the eyes of the world.
The project was produced by Alina Slonim, and directed creativly by another maverick artist, Izhar Patkin.
The spirit of the image is peace between Jews and Moslems.
I shot the image of the hands.
The male is wearing a "Tefillin", which is worn during the weekday morning prayer services of the Orthodox Jewish male as a sign and remembrance that God brought the "Children Of Israel" out of slavery in Egypt.
Shirin Neshat, who was born in Iran, did the Arabic calligraphy on the female's hand in my shot.
The image was printed as an edition of 100 , plus a few arists proof, and I believe that it is all sold out (or almost)
The money of the purchases went to witness.org , although some prints are sold in a second market of auction houses.

It's Amazing_Video

OK, so I know you won't get it...
Neither do I.
Let's pretend that it's some kind of a trailer to an action movie that was shot all on grey.
You'll know more when I'll add a bit text , visual effects, words like "Xenia, secret agent 2", etc. (This is the real name of the actress that swaying her hips smoothly),
etc.
It's pretty much an abstract piece, and you'll probably end up watching it more than once...

Conflict

To end the day with a bang?
Or to quiet down?
A personal conflict.
See visual translation of it above,
circa 1991
Celebration of Urself.
I was taping today the audio portion for the love story images in my "projects' area of my site.
.

Men with black coats in open nature

I love Dan Winters' photography, and I'm a big fan.
It was a nice surprise to see that one of the photos that he did for Time magazine (a portrait of Al Gore) was very similar in style to a portrait that I took about 14 years ago (Oh Lord..time flies...)of Burt Reynolds (for Time Inc as well)...
I guess, Men In Black is still in vogue.

Snow

It's quite late on a Saturday evening...
I picked some amazing images that deal with the social standards in the US...
So I'm not sure why I'm posting these two variations for an ad I did a few years ago for Mr. Coffee that featured (amongst others that I shot)Chris Klug, the Bronze medal winner in the 2002 Olympic Winter Games.
I guess I didn't figure out yet which version is cooler...the one with the painted backdrop, or the one with the plexiglass that I suggested to try for the campaign.

Beautiful

photo©Rafael FuchsDec. 2007
Today was a creative day.
First, finally, Me and my assistant, Meg solved a few Quicktime challenges, and were able to upload videos to my website http://www.fuchs.us.com/
We also uploaded a couple new chapters in the "projects" area...quite difficult images, some from 9/11
So, just to end the working day nice , I wanted to upload an image of a beautiful model (Carly) that I took about a month ago, as a part of a book project (nude).

The Red Bushard Project

Today is an important day, since I uploaded on my site one of the drafts (could be the final, if you ask me)for my first brochure of The Red Bushard Project.
It's in the projects section of one of my websites : www.fuchs.us.com
The Red Bushard project started at around the year 2000, when I got my first digital camera from Fuji, in order to practice and be prepared for the first ad campaign that I shot a couple of weeks later on for that client.
It was really exciting.
Since then I tried various digital cameras of Canon, Nikon,Sony,Olympus Kodak,Hasseblad and more).
The Red Bushard Project is, actually, a personal visual diary, that I keep doing till these days.
Red Bushard is a character in a Western style soft cover books that I used to read as a kid, growing up in Tel Aviv.
Red Bushard was the deputy, and, for me, he represents the hard working cowboy who is behind the scenes, usually, riding high (...I mean fast...), solving the problems, taking care of business,nevertheless that the Sherif (Bill Carter....this was the name of the book series) might get all the glory and the exposure.
Red is , by comparison, the drummer in the band (And there's nothing wrong in being Phil Collins, let's say).
In any case, Red Bushard is a style of photography that I've been practicing since the 80's. It comes and goes...
One of my best series of the "Red Bushard" style is a series of photos I did back then (titled Israel 1983-4), which will see the day of light at some point this year.
The image I have here, in this post, is an image of a woman I took in a Church in The West Village, NY,circa 2002 while attending a wedding of my studio manager,Jennifer Gerardi, at the time.
This is one of the images that the amazing designer Allan Hori at was combinig with another image for the brochure, a very interesting practice he did a few times in the design of the piece.
We never printed the brochure....yet !

Guy Bourdin

photos© rafael fuchs circa early 90's

I wanted to mention a two volumes book by Guy Bourdin that I purchased recently, titled "A Message For You" : The first Volume has images, taken by Guy Bourdin in 1978-80, of the model Nicolle Meyer, compiled by her, and the other volume has sketches and memoires of her, related to his photography.
Apropos Mr. Bourdin, I found in the same box I was talking about in my previous blog post the images I'm adding above, that I took about 2 years prior to the ones in the hotel.
btw, I just lay down the prints and take a picture of them and post it from that file (This is why it's slightly blurry on the blog), rather than scanning them (I'll scan them later on).

Limited edition

It was very liberating to see the joy of my daughter (almost 11 years of age)the other day, when I told her how much the images and my negatives will be worth in forty years, and that she will be the main heir.
She was realistic and skeptical, though, and said: "Maybe...maybe not.."
So, just to assure her, and demonstrate, I pulled one of the (about 600) boxes I have with negatives and archival prints (that I printed myself) of a dear friend of mine, whose portraits I took in the early 90's (I'm shooting mostly digital nowadays, though).
I told her the importance of me signing the images, and that I should do it, while I can ( I also told her the "funny" story I heard a while ago about Salvador Dali's wife, that brought a lot of painting and drawings to her husband to sign, as he was about to pass away).
I did spend some time today , signing (with archival pen, "on the verso") and creating the editions of the C-prints and a few 4x5 B&W polaroids of that specific box of images.
I made sure that the editions of the prints are very limited (sometimes just 2 or 3 prints in an edition), since I'd like these prints to be owned by only a few good people.
I did not tell my daughter that the images of my friend (except for the one with the smoke) were taken at The Chelsmore Hotel (where my friend was staying for about a month...in the early 90's)just a week before she was attacked by a raper who forced his way to her room.
Luckily, she fought back,and the attacker ran away before he was able to commit his ugly crime.

It's Amazing_In progress

Hello World,
Yes, indeed,
It is 2008!!!
And we got so much to do.
So, it was really great to start , actually, editing today the video titled "It's Amazing"
This would be a short video (about 4 minutes), and later on would be a longer video installation in a show I'll have in late Spring of 08 (details will be announced).
It's started in a video casting I did for an ad campaign I shot (stills) for Top-Flite earlier in 07...and this video is taking a surprising direction...
Hopefully you'll be amazed.
See above just a couple "sketches"of images...
(Part of it wil be a split screen).