FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: I Witness

Miami, Florida - Twenty-five internationally celebrated photojournalists have
contributed 50 fine-art images, captured during the historical events worldwide,
to an unprecedented exhibition at the Bernice Steinbaum Gallery.


I Witness explores conflict through the images of these artists, whose work reflects

personal, internal, psychosocial, military, cultural or religious experiences, while maintaining the truthful and  ethical principles of journalism.

In this spirit, I Witness - curated by photojournalist Carl Juste and gallerist Bernice Steinbaum - hopes to engage the international art community with images that merge aesthetic principles of composition, texture and color, with elements of photojournalism, like timeliness, objectivity
and narration.  This exhibition seeks to underwrite the work of artists who are photojournalists and to support the value of freedom of the press and open government.

I WITNESS

What:      I Witness, 50 images by 25 global photojournalists

Where:    Bernice Steinbaum Gallery

                    3550 N. Miami Avenue, 

                    Miami, Florida 

When:     March 10, 2012

                   2 to 9 p.m.

Contact:   Johanna Monserratte

E-mail:     Johanna@bernicesteinbaumgallery.com

Phone:      305-573-2700

Azuauama, Nigera   André Chung                                                     5/5/2006

Catalogues are available upon request.

Exhibited Photojournalists

                          

Lynsey Addario                           Andrew Kaufman 

Kursat Bayhan                            Andrew Lichtensten    

Paula Bronstein                           Pablo Martinez                 

Jahi Chikwendiu                         Saikat Mojumder  

Michael Chavez                           Tom Pennington        

André Chung                               Roger M. Richards          

Alan Diaz                                      Jeffery A. Salter

Hector Emanuel                         Maggie Steber

Colin Finlay                                  Les Stone 

Bill Frakes                                    Charles Trainor, Jr.

Bill Frakes                                    Shehab Uddin 

C.M. Guerrero                             Nuri Vallbona

Andrew Innerarity


 

African Diaspora Panel by Jennifer Kay

On Dec. 3, at the peak of Art Basel Miami Beach, a panel of artists, educators and Miami community leaders met at the Little Haiti Cultural Center to discuss African Diaspora art. 

Among the panelists were Iris PhotoCollective’s Carl Juste and Andre Chung. Other panelists at the symposium entitled “Miami Crossroads: Developing the African Diaspora Art Footprint” included Marshall Davis of the African Heritage Cultural Arts Center, educator Frank Glover, Miami-Dade County community relations leader Larry Capp, Afro-Cuban artist Jose Orbein, artist Bayunga Kialeuka, artist and educator Gene Tinnie, and Marvin Weeks, an artist and member of the city of Miami’s Arts and Entertainment Council. 

The panel considered how to support artists from the African Diaspora, and how to help them make bigger gains in the art marketplace. To make progress, the panel suggested that artists collaborate to educate the public and art collectors, to promote their work and exhibits, to stage their own expos and gallery shows when art fairs shut them out and to support elected officials who work to support the arts.

One hot topic that invited passionate responses from the audience focused on promoting arts centers and galleries in neighborhoods such as Little Haiti or Overtown, which are challenged by the stigma of crime and poverty. If people are afraid to venture into unfamiliar and stigmatized neighborhoods, what can artists do to promote arts events in those neighborhoods or include those neighborhoods in the local arts scene? Again, the solution seemed to be collaboration, reaching out to local businesses and community leaders to help promote arts facilities and events.

The unifying theme of the symposium was “do-it-yourself.” Artists need to promote their individual brands and network to get the word out about art the large fairs such as Art Basel Miami Beach are missing.

Afterward, Iris PhotoCollective’s Carl Juste gave BlackArtInAmerica.com a tour of the IPC Visual Lab’s “Guerrilla Gallery.” The expo of student work -- curated, printed and hung in just a week in the Little Haiti Cultural Center -- illustrated the do-it-yourself initiative advocated by the panelists. Here’s a link to the video: 

Preparing for Concert Photography: Sacha Suarez

I recently received an amazing opportunity to shoot a concert for my company’s site and I was so excited I did not realize the minor details that make or break the assignment.  My purpose was to capture the concert for the fans for my company’s site  to view.   I will walk you through my challenges, my learning’s and finally the outcome.  A couple of challenges I faced were the following:

·                                    •  Access: Distance for stage to properly prepare for the lens    

·                                    •  Equipment: Unfamiliar camera with not tripod

      Access is a big unknown in most of these concerts but if you have experience it helps to know what to look for.This concert was unique in that there was three different artists playing and so I had three different opportunities to go and shoot.  The rules for the press was the first 2 songs for each artist so time was limited and taking the most shots in the short time frame was my goal.  They placed the press in the most distance space possible, behind the sound engineers which is usually in the middle of the center stage.  My lens went up to 200 – 300 and it was just fine.  I setup my camera manually with a high ISO and manually focused which I felt more in control.   Lighting on these stages is amazing and when you capture the wide shot, the set design really kicks in. 

I      

      I tried to capture the essence of each artists by shooting their expressions, body language and overall stage design.  Capturing the tight shot and the wide shot tells the story and captures the feeling of the moment. 

      
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      For example, on top one performer was in action while the other was connecting with the audience.  Another challenge I faced and overcame was that one of the camera’s I used was borrowed and so unfamiliar territory.  I setup the camera as best I knew with an assumed distance and lighting of a typical concert (high ISO and shutter speed greater than 250) and a low F-stop and once we were placed in our assigned Press Area it was very difficult to change the settings in the dark with a camera I was not familiar with.  Solution:  I just shot away for the first song and based on my knowledge it should be right with the lighting and distance and during the second song, I changed the lens to my second camera, in which I was very familiar with.   Once I changed cameras,  this allowed me to view the pictures I had taken to tweak any settings on the spot.  Another challenge with equipment was no tripod.  I saw all the other press representatives with tripods and said to myself “oh boy”.  

     

      At this point in time, I just held the camera as firm as possible and shot away. The result was just fine.  It would have been more comfortable with the tripod and also may have gotten some more focused shots, however; the downside is that it also takes longer to setup as I saw the other photographers go through.  I learned it was a matter of choice and next time I will bring a tripod that is portable and easy to assemble and disassemble.

  

OCCUPY 305

Occupy Miami Rally 
November 17, 2011

I went to the Nov. 17 Occupy Miami rally and march looking for faces, and I found one face everywhere: Guy Fawkes, the “V for Vendetta” mask that has become a symbol of the 99% protests, was reproduced in several forms. 

Some wore the pointed, smiling mask tipped back on their heads, leaving their own faces visible beneath it. The grin was also printed on cardboard with “We are the 99%” printed above its eyes in English and Spanish. One protester even had the image on the back of his smartphone, so it was visible every time he raised the device to take a picture.

I was interested in how the pointy, squinting shape of the Guy Fawkes mask played off the protesters’ real faces, and I wanted to see the protesters used the same image to make unique statements. For each protester that obscured his face with a mask, another stared boldly at the authorities and media around them as if to say that he, and not the image of a 17th century Englishman, was making a statement. 

Apart from the mask, I focused on individual faces in the crowd of protesters, and in the groups of people who watched them march on Miami’s financial district. Two McDonald’s workers caught my eye as the march continued from Little Havana to Miami’s financial district. The pair huddled together in the drive-through window, and the man appeared interested and excited about the protest passing by. The woman frowned deeply, and the exaggerated expression was the upside-down version of the Guy Fawke mask’s broad smile. 

I had a few problems to solve as I looked for faces in the crowd. To start with, I was using a new lens with a different depth of field than the 50mm wide-open lens I normally use. I worked on keeping my backgrounds clean so that each face stood out, but still appeared in the context of a a protest and not as a pedestrian in the street. 

Shot in the Dark

By Jennifer Kay

Photography is problem solving, Brian Smith told us at his Miami launch for his book “Art & Soul.” Photography is creating opportunities out of problems. Lately, I’ve made a point of shooting in problematic situations. I’ve only allowed myself to shoot with available light, which means I’m often shooting in the dark.

Solution 1: Find the Light

 I’ve incorporated a lesson from the spring semester into this exercise -- find the good light, and wait for something to walk into it. One night this week, some of the Occupy Miami activists held a candlelight vigil on the beach. My only light sources were the moon, the moonlight reflecting off the sand, the electric candles and cell phone screens. I set my exposure for those lights and kept my shots wide to allow for as much light as possible, and then I watched for how the activists interacted with the light.





Solution 2: Know What Your Camera Do

 My DSLR can set the ISO as high as 6400. The higher the iso means I can still shoot clear frames in low light, but it doesn’t solve everything. I wanted to make portraits of the Haitian musicians performing on an outdoor stage during South Beach’s Sleepless Night arts event, but I didn’t have the kind of up stage access I had when I shot Shenita Hunt at The Clevelander last month.

My 50 mm lens has a wide open aperture to collect the most light, but it wasn’t getting me close enough to the singers. To get closer, I switched to my point-and-shoot camera, which has a zoom function.
I set the camera to a “high grain” setting with a 1600 iso to compensate for the camera shaking in windy conditions.


Solution 3: Make Trade-Offs

Shooting in the dark means I have to give up some things. Changing the ISO to 1600 or higher means that I lose the mid-tones in my images. The singers appear as bright spots of light and color surrounded by darkness. I also get noisier, grainier images because of the high ISO. I get high contrast, black and white, without soft grays or soft light.

Solution 4: Move My Feet

My 50 mm lens shoots fast, letting in the most light with the widest aperture. On the other hand, it’s a fixed lens. I can’t zoom in, and I can’t shoot wide. The only way to change the perspective is to move. In the Hotel Urbano, a trio sat talking at a table in front of an abstract painting hung on a bold red wall. When I first saw them, I tightly framed the shot on one half of the painting, a sliver of the red wall and a small portion of the table. What made the painting, and the scene, interesting was the red wall framing the painting. In order to get the whole table and painting in my viewfinder, with enough of the red wall framing the scene, I had to physically back up several feet.

Iris Rising: Miami Ironman 70.3

By Jenny Romney/IPC Visual Lab Student


Since its inception in 2006, the Ironman 70.3 series has become the fastest growing triathlon series in the world. Events around the world qualify athletes for the Ironman World Championship 70.3. The grueling Miami triathlon took place this past Sunday, October 30 in downtown Miami and about 3,000 physically fit men and women participated to test their mental and physical endurance. The race started at Bayfront Park with a 1.2 mile swim in the bay waters. Participants then hopped on their bicycles for a 56-mile ride through downtown Miami, Hialeah and the Everglades and all the way up to Southwest Ranches in Broward and back to Bayfront Park for two loops up to to Star Island, completing a 13.1-mile run, which add up to the 70.3 iron miles.

Well, I also had he opportunity to test my mental and physical endurance as a photographer when Carl Juste, who was on a photo assignment for the Miami Herald invited me to come along.

I knew I would have to set up the 2 alarms on my radio and the one on my cell phone which I kept under my pillow. I needed to be at Carl’s house by 5:30 am and it was already 2:00 am when I went to bed after the IPC Masquerade Part on Saturday. When the alarm went off, I jumped out of bed and ran out of the house with two cameras, two lenses, an umbrella and the all-access media pass.



When we arrived at Bayfront Park, I was worried that the rainy day would ruin my motivation to shoot and I was seriously concerned that I would also ruin my cameras. Carl kept saying, what you can’t ruin is the opportunity to make some great photos. And he was right. It was an amazing learning experience that kept on my toes and forcing to be constantly problem-solving. Shooting for news coverage is very exciting and I couldn’t pass up this opportunity!

Inner Vision: Day 66 - 70

Jennifer Kay is a Miami-based reporter for The Associated Press who has enrolled in Iris' IPC Visual Lab. Before moving to Miami in 2005, Kay was an editorial assistant in the AP’s Philadelphia bureau, and previously graduated in 2001 from Dartmouth College, where she was the photography editor of the daily student newspaper. Kay is looking to expand her knowledge of the visual language and to engage in the process of visual story-telling. Her blog has been a common feature for the past several month on the Iris PhotoCollective's Iris Rising series.



Day 66 : Glorious Heat

At Carl's suggestion, I shot the free "road rally" on Biscayne Boulevard for Miami Heat fans, a concert followed by a live broadcast of the game in Chicago outside AmericanAirlines Arena. I thought a lot about what Andre Chung had told me the previous week about grounding the frames for the viewers. I'm still not 100 percent sure of what he means, but I interpreted it as making the scene more clear instead of focusing on abstract elements.

I knew I would have some limitations with my digital point-and-shoot camera with the low natural light and explosive floodlights. So, I tried to stay near sources of light while framing the scene without distracting splotches of white light. I stuck to the automatic setting on my camera because, despite some blurring of action, it was more steady than the manual setting.

I also tried to remember to show the things that make this scene in Miami unique: the good-looking people and the mix of people, excitement about the basketball game, the colors people were wearing and waving around.

There's one question raised to which there is no answer: What is it about T-shirt cannons that makes people lose their minds?



Day 67 : Sinful Pleasures

When: 27 May, 10:46 p.m.
Where: my balcony, South Beach
Inner Thoughts: I got an iPhone! Finally! And so, I get a little lazy, because I've spent most of the evening finding cool apps to download.




Day 68 : Shadows

When: 28 May, 9:01 a.m.
Where: my apartment, South Beach
Inner Thoughts: I woke up early on a Saturday for class, and I caught the curved shadows my curtains made in the morning light. Mmmm, abstract light and shadows, my favorite!



Day 69: Dock

When: 29 May, 9:01 p.m.
Where: dockside, South Beach
Exposure: F3.6 1/2.5 ISO800
Inner Thoughts: I waited so late to pick up a camera today. I think this would have ended up more interesting from a lower angle.




Day 70: Ride

When: 30 May, 6:41p.m.
Where: Venetian Causeway
Exposure: taken with iPhone camera
Inner Thoughts: I don't know if you've seen "The Killing" on AMC, but in the opening credits there's a sequence of a drawbridge and flashing red lights shot through a windshield, and it looks really cool. So, when I found myself stopped at a drawbridge and watching flashing red lights, I tried to make something out of it.

Aaaaand that's it!