Recent client work for Tulum’s new boutique hotel – My Way.
Recent client work for Tulum’s new boutique hotel – My Way.
Couple of weeks ago, during Mexico’s Day of the Dead weekend I was visiting my two photographer friends - Masha Osipova and Mauricio Palos - in Merida, Yucatán. We decided to play a 24-hour game. The objective was to:
1. Conceive of an idea for a photo-shoot using historically or culturally significant location
We scouted Merida’s incredible abandoned haciendas left over from prosperous days of Yucatan’s henequén cactus production and distribution (read my previous story about Merida’s significance to the peninsula.) Palos said he knew of one huge house that might work in a place called Cholul on the outskirts of the city.
2. Shoot
We drove on a whim to check the place out and it was perfect. The shoot took four hours to complete and we switched playing different roles – director, model, production assistant, etc. My idea was to turn Masha into a live altar decorated with marigold flowers picked up in a village on the way to Cholul. We also composed a couple of shots of a jungle-ninja character together. The night before we went to see Gravity. Masha was inspired and threw another challenge in the game – to use an element from the film in her image. Mauricio wanted Masha and I to characterize two ghost-sisters, daughters of a European plantation owner who continue wandering around the hacienda until present day.
3. Print
Each of us had to choose two-three final images to print. We found a local printer in Merida who was able to accommodate large format.
4. Exhibit
For the expo we decided to paste our prints on the walls inside the hacienda where we took them (haha, to entertain all the borrachos and drogadictos who may use the house to crash.) At this point in the game I had to return to Tulum for a job, so Masha and Palos promised to complete it without me. A day or two later, my friends organized to make the paste at home, then jumped on Mauricio’s bike and went back to Cholul, taking care of all the remaining business. When the work was finished, they took incredible photos to share with me, which now I’m happy to share with you.
Some image selections from the shoot:
Images of the expo:
Images from my shoot for Fall/Winter 2013 GlamRocks Jewelry lookbook in Chicago.
Links:
www.glamrocksjewelry.com
For the TAO Inspired Living project I was hired to create a library of images that showcase values of connection, inspiration, creativity and compassion upon which this development was built. Located in a stunning jungle landscape along Riviera Maya’s Caribbean coast and designed with elegance and simplicity, TAO is a community of residents who share a common desire for a healthy, inspired life that is in balance with our environment and the greater world.
I’m happy to finally unveil a selection of images created for my latest client – beautifully designed Wellness Center at TAO Inspired Living development in Riviera Maya, Mexico. In the next post I will share photos of private residences, exteriors and golf courses that comprise the rest of the project.
In the beginning of 2013 I took my previously sporadic yoga practice to a much more disciplined level of focus and consistency. It changed my life. I would like to share a few recent images marking my progress.
Earlier this month I had a wonderful time shooting new look book images for GlamRocks Jewelry Spring/Summer 2013 collection. I want to express an enormous thanks to Kristen Davis Molenhouse for trusting me to capture the beauty of her lovely designs, to Mariam Dedyn for her glow and inspiration, and of course to the beaches of Tulum for morning light brilliance.
Links:
www.glamrocksjewelry.com
In this story I’m switching gears to Central Mexico. Two months ago while traveling through Pátzcuaro region in the state of Michoacán I visited a magic little town called Santa Clara del Cobre. Since the Pátzcuaro region is mostly populated by the Tarascan or P’urhépecha people whose ancestors originally settled here in the 12th century, even during pre-Hispanic times many small towns in the area have been known for specific traditional trades functional to this day. Santa Clara del Cobre is one such municipality famous since pre-Columbian era for its masters of copper craftsmanship, with P’urhépecha coppersmithing skills superior even to Zapotec people of Oaxaca, the only other indigenous Mexican group that excelled in metallurgy. After the Spanish arrived, local people had adapted some European coppersmithing techniques and further advanced their industry, diligently passing down their skills to new generations. Dominating in copper crafts during colonial times, the town of Santa Clara del Cobre continued to thrive well into the 19th century at which point the industry almost collapsed due to major economic slumps in the region. It was revived again in the 20th century and especially in 1970′s thanks to the efforts of an American artist and sculptor James Metcalf and his Mexican wife Ana Pellicer who opened and operated a studio there. Today once again most of the population of Santa Clara del Cobre is employed by coppersmith trade with 250 registered workshops around town producing about 450 tons of copper each year. For this photo-story I photographed the workshop and techniques of the wonderful master coppersmith Rafael Zarco Soto and his workers. These guys can really create any item from copper imaginable - from bathtubs, sinks, and kitchen utensils to furniture and even delicate jewelry.
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Undoubtedly, one of the most beautiful and truly unique phenomena in Yucatan are cenotes. A multitude of these fresh water sinkholes can be found throughout the area exposed as a result of limestone cave roof collapse. To the ancient Maya cenotes were sacred points of entrance to Xibalba, the underworld inhabited by death gods and spirits whose stories are told in Mayan creation myth of Popol Vuh. In reality cenotes are a small glimpse into an entire underground river system covering most of Yucatan Peninsula, which actually looks like an enormous subterranean Swiss cheese. What’s even more incredible is that all these caves were originally created by a meteorite impact 65 million years ago, same one that caused mass extinction of the dinosaurs. Scientists actually used the increased density and circular alignment of cenotes to identify the rim of Chicxulub crater, which is more than 180 km (110 mi) in diameter and is one of the largest confirmed impact structures on Earth! These are all the things I think about as I jump in a cenote on a particularly hot afternoon.
If you’ve been following my blog, you may already know that I often hang out with local Tulum kitesurfing friends who flock here from all over the world during winter. The guys at OceanProKite love to put on a show when I bring my camera just as much as I love shooting it, which over the past couple of years led to a symbiotic relationship that always produces beautiful pictures. The kitesurfing session in this story happened on December 21, 2012, at one of the wild Caribbean beaches in Sian Ka’an Biosphere. The wind brought some clouds and rain, and everyone played with the elements like it was their last day on earth – a rather fitting way to celebrate winter solstice and end of Mayan calendar.
I spent the night of December 21 doing what I love most – shooting the sky. Completely impromptu at 1am, I drove with a friend to the nearby archeological site of Muyil, 25 km from Tulum, Mexico, woke up the sleeping Mayan guard and convinced him to let me shoot the deserted pyramid in the middle of the jungle. My friend Masha did an amazing job light painting the pyramid with her mobile phone. Here’s one of the resulting images of winter solstice sky at Mayan ruins of Muyil, Quintana Roo.
Laser light beaming from ‘Time and Space 2012′ – huge international psycho-trance music festival held for three days in Tankah bay. With the help of northern wind, the massive sound from there could be heard as far as CESiaK in Sian Ka’an biosphere 20km south, where I took this photo.
The December 21st star-chasing marathon shooting session ended at 4am in Sian Ka’an biosphere. Many thanks to the Milky Way for revealing itself in full glory above and beyond.
The much hyped about date of December 21, 2012, is a couple of days away. Since I live on Yucatan peninsula, land of the Maya, many people ask me what I think about the Mayan calendar and its prediction of the end of the world. The truth is, since I make the choice to live with total awareness that every single day, not just this particular winter solstice, could easily be my last – I’m simply not worried about predictions and interpretations made by other people, even if they are as fascinating as the Maya. Every day I focus on my own direct relationship with reality, the cosmos, and myself, a process which has already allowed me to fulfill many big dreams and left no room for regret. So if the world does end because of some magic cataclysmic event, then so be it, I’ve certainly lived my life to the fullest. My only hope in that case is to see some aliens involved, to make my last photo-reportage truly worthwhile! And if the world doesn’t end, but changes in any profound way, it won’t be because someone foresaw it, but because enough individuals wanted it to change and used the prediction as a springboard to create their own self-fulfilling prophecy, which in time perhaps achieved a larger scale. In which case too, so be it. Whatever happens or doesn’t happen, the good outcome of all this hype is that the mere thought of the world ending in 2012 made so many people question their priorities and their source of happiness this year. And I’m all for consciousness and truth!
Of course, I am in absolute awe of the Mayan cosmological view and over the past three years have had the privilege of visiting most archeological sites in Yucatan and beyond. Thus, it’s only appropriate that I share here my photos from ancient Mayan cities and sites of Tulum, Coba, Ek Balam, Chichen Itza, Izamal, Campeche, Loltun, Kohunlich, Calakmul, Muyil, Palenque, plus the Mayan wing of National Anthropology Museum in Mexico City.
During the Night of November 1-2 is Noche de los Muertos. In central Mexico’s state of Michoacan, local residents of towns around lake Pátzcuaro with fun-to-pronounce ancestral Tarascan names like Tzintzuntzan, Ihuatzio, and Chucuchucho, take their Day of the Dead traditions very seriously. With great curiosity I joined their annual pilgrimage to nearby cemeteries for all-night vigils in order to honor departed souls. Driving from village to village throughout the night, I was continuously impressed how literally every cemetery in the region was set aglow by thousands of candles, illuminating everywhere the marigold-laden altars carefully erected by living relatives and loved ones of the dead. In some locations the cemeteries were hidden and intimate, while in others they stretched adjacent to town cathedrals and crowded craft markets with live music and countless vendors offering an incredible variety of Mexican street food favorites. Wide-eyed and spellbound I indulged in taking night-time photos, while keeping myself warm by drinking homemade steaming-hot fruit punch prepared and sold everywhere by local Mexican grandmothers. It all went down so well mixed with tequila…
One of the cemeteries still fresh in my mind was a rather tiny one, located on the hill top of Isla de la Pacanda – a small island in the middle of lake Pátzcuaro, which is accessible by boat and populated by only about 200 people from the same 20 families who had probably lived there forever. Gliding through the night across black water toward shimmering lights of the island in the distance, all the while listening to onboard musical score in the form of melodic indigenous Purapecha songs, I thought about how peaceful and appropriate the local attitude towards death was, how devoid of fear, and how radiant of some kind of pure magic… Instead of focusing on emotionally negative outcomes of loss and mourning, the purpose of this holiday was clearly intended to celebrate aspects of death experience that transcend sorrow. By bringing the deceased food and personal items they favored during lifetime, by spending time with them graveside, the local traditions center around honoring personal legacy of the deceased as something that remains alive and present in the living as a result of the gifts of influence the dead had left behind. To see death from this perspective and to be able to relate to the significance of local people’s intimate relationship with it, is to understand the spiritual and transformative power lying at the root of Mexican culture.
I will conclude the second installment of my Day of the Dead photo-story with these beautiful words by Octavio Paz:
“The word Death is not pronounced in New York, in Paris, in London, because it burns the lips. The Mexican, in contrast, is familiar with Death, jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it; it is one of his favorite toys and his most steadfast love.”
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Last week I was sponsored by Mexico Kan Tours, Tulum-based agency specializing in conscious travel, to visit central Mexico’s state of Michoacan for a photo-reportage of the famous Day of the Dead festivities held in towns and villages near Morelia and lake Pátzcuaro. Sharing the same values in travel with my friends at Mexico Kan Tours, I was overjoyed at the opportunity to collaborate because all of us strive to present to our respective audiences a deeper look into Mexico’s complex culture, something sadly missed by vast numbers of visitors to this country who do not venture out of ubiquitous resorts. But all work aside, witnessing Day and Night of the Dead in Michoacan has been my personal bucket-list item for a very long time, therefore I immediately jumped at this last-minute chance to travel, to photograph the celebration, and to ultimately share with everyone what I came to know as one of the most beautiful traditions in the world.
Day of the Dead or Día de los Muertos on November 2 is one of the most important national holidays in Mexico and is a perfect time to observe in action how the beliefs of contemporary Mexican people stem from a foundation based in the blending and layering of complicated indigenous cultures with Catholic traditions of Spanish invaders. Because of the great variety of indigenous groups throughout Mexico, the specific traditions and rituals also vary from region to region. For the most part, the actual Day of the Dead festivities begin on November 1, which is called the Day of Little Angels or Día de los Angelitos, devoted specifically to honoring deceased infants and children. Preparations for celebrating start on November 31, the day when local people gather to decorate the streets with myriads of marigolds and build altars to honor the dead. The variety of altars is creatively impressive since they’re not always devoted to people’s actual dead relatives. Altar-building competitions are held throughout the area’s schools and I have seen altars honoring dead kings, queens, and famous saints like Mother Theresa. Some altars are more abstract and aren’t devoted to people at all. One of my favorites was actually built to honor maize, better known as corn – Mexico’s most important food staple, which someone depicted in their altar as crying and ultimately dead as a result of being replaced by new genetically-modified breeds.
As I allowed myself to be guided by the camera and talked to people in my slowly-improving Spanish, what I saw and what I hoped to capture in my images was the utmost care and seriousness with which people infuse their preparation process. It struck me as pure, meditative and absolutely profound! For this reason I devote the first installment of my Day of the Dead coverage exclusively to day-time preparations.
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From the streets of NYC straight into the tangled jungles of Sian Ka’an biosphere… Admittedly, the transition was rough at times, but in the end came relief of knowing I can handle my extremes. And for that I’m grateful.
Like a migratory bird, I recently flew south to Mexico for winter. But before I switch to posting images of sunny skies, turquoise waves and pre-columbian cities, I want to share these last few night-time photos of New York. To everyone I dearly miss in my favorite concrete jungle – I say goodnight and sweet winter dreams!
I continue my urban image series with these soaring landscapes of New York. Encompassing day and night, earth and sky, light and water, this is my humble homage to the city that knows the secret to remaining beautiful and energetic despite continuous lack of sleep.
Life has been particularly stimulating this summer in New York. After a rather lengthy break from posting new images, I finally return with a new line-up of photo-stories about this dynamic city. The first series is about gritty September skies observed during my recent stay in one of Brooklyn’s most colorful neighborhoods – Bedford-Stuyvesant. Taking full advantage of open city views available from my friend’s building, I once again busied myself with recording daily changes in the sky. With utmost gratitude I’m now happy to complete the circle by sharing these beautiful landscapes.
If like me anyone out there is experiencing serious withdrawal pains from the recently completed 2012 Summer Olympics in London, I invite you to consider this story as a kind of an anglophile placebo. Its subject is gritty and unusual, related to England by way of forever-cool and classic English bikes. What I’m talking about namely is the story of New York City’s beloved British motorcycle repair shop located in Manhattan’s Lower East Side - the legendary Sixth Street Specials.
The man behind the legend – Hugh Mackie, is actually from Scotland. In mid-1980′s, after graduating from Glasgow School of Art and moving to Paris to work on building movie sets for French films, Hugh decided to try his luck as an artist and pursue a new life in New York City. Settling in the East Village, he stayed connected to his life-long passion for English motorcycles by fixing an occasional old bike he found in the city through classified ads. One thing led to another, more enthusiasts sought Hugh’s expertise, and eventually what used to be a hobby transformed into a legitimate business. It’s as if New York’s presumably dead local English bike scene, kickstarted in 1950′s by Steve McQueen, was waiting for someone to come along and revitalize it, to breathe new life into its lethargic old Triumphs, Nortons and BSAs.
The truth is, when Hugh Mackie appeared on New York’s motorcycle scene and established his shop in the midst of Alphabet City, he could never have predicted it would become a legendary New York story, serendipitous enough to make even cynics marvel at deliberateness of chance. Located two blocks away from famous Tompkins Square Park, Sixth Street Specials was always destined to be much more than a place to fix bikes or buy motorcycle parts. From its very inception and to this day the workshop is a greased-down, perfectly preserved time capsule of New York City’s wild underground, a natural point of spirited convergence for local bohemian and bike subculture.
I visited Hugh one afternoon, curious about what stories he might share from Alphabet City’s colorful 1980′s. Never did I imagine I would hear that his late business partner was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s stepson Dimitri Turin! Of course because I grew up in the former Soviet Union, I have a deep appreciation of good and random Russian connections. Yet an even more obvious connection was already in place the first time I set foot inside Sixth Street Specials. The thread goes back to 70′s and early 80′s, when my father used to ride old Eastern European Jawa bikes across Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and the Baltic states. Inside Hugh’s shop every smell and object triggered my own precious memories of my father in his youth, the Russian version of Steve McQueen in our Minsk neighborhood taking me and my friends for rides on the back of his old bike. The story goes that my father actually met my mother in a Soviet motorcycle repair shop, where she worked part-time as a sales girl during university years…
Clearly, the love of open road, bikes and adventure rubbed off on me early in life, so when a dear friend introduced me to Hugh Mackie at Sixth Street Specials, I immediately knew I wanted to return and shoot there. When I did, all personal connections still intact and complementary, I felt like I had cut right through time and for a moment actually became a tiny part of East Village history.
Thankfully, Hugh showed no restraint in helping his workshop space become a treasure trove for photo-junkies and urban anthropology enthusiasts like myself. The neighborhood may have undergone tremendous changes induced by gentrification at the beginning of 1990′s, but in and around the shop the atmosphere itself speaks of those gritty days when Alphabet City was filled with junkies, punk rockers, homeless people, crime, and struggling young artists like Madonna. Sixth Street Specials was there when Tompkins Square Park Police Riot occurred, it witnessed transformation of the neighborhood from tough to unaffordable, and it doesn’t surprise me at all that according to Hugh – if the shop’s walls could actually talk, you might be compelled to close your ears.
Amsterdam is one of my favorite cities in the world. Having explored this northern European urban jewel several times in the past, it was only recently during a very brief summer trip that I felt like I finally saw its true colors. Maybe because this time I was visiting a dear friend and got to experience the place from inside rather than following typical tourist routes. Or maybe it just took so many times to break down the city’s grayscale into its rich components. Of course it could also be that I spent the past three years traveling the world and now my eyes are just better trained to see. Whatever the case, I truly love Amsterdam and wouldn’t mind one day staying a little bit longer. Thank you, Masha, for taking me all over the place on your bike and helping me decipher your incredible city!
I spent the night of December 21 doing what I love most – shooting the sky. Completely impromp…
During the Night of November 1-2 is Noche de los Muertos. In central Mexico’s state of Michoa…
The much hyped about date of December 21, 2012, is a couple of days away. Since I live on Yucatan pe…
In the beginning of 2013 I took my previously sporadic yoga practice to a much more disciplined leve…
In this story I’m switching gears to Central Mexico. Two months ago while traveling through P…
