What to do on the 5th of July? Smithsonian Folkways Festival.

Image Source: http://startstudioarts.si.edu/2014/07/the-smithsonian-folkways-festival.html

 

Well, as I write this, it's the 4th of July, Independence Day here in the USA. I have time to get out and do some photography tomorrow, but where to go? What to do?

 

While it's not easy to get into Washington DC this weekend, I think I'll explore the Smithsonian Folkways Festival. An annual event, this year's festival is focused on Kenya and China.

 

(Click Here) to read the post on the S+Art blog that got me motivated to fight the crowd tomorrow.

 

I think I'll probably be able to find parking tomorrow if I get into town early enough. Unfortunately, the festival doesn't really start until 11:00AM, when the worst light of the day will be out. But, I'll just get in there early and make the best of the morning light before things get going.

 

Now to decide how and what I want to photograph. I'm sure that the performers will be a great attraction. Maybe I'll shoot Leica. Or, there's that new 35mm f2.8 pre-AI Nikkor that I recently got a deal on and haven't tried yet... Maybe I'll put that on my F2.

 

DMC-365.blogspot.com

 

 

The Whisperers - Kuba Kaminiski's Documentary Project on NY Times' Lens Blog

 

Image Source: http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/at-a-crossroads-of-faith-and-folklore/#/1/
 
As I write this, today is Halloween. I think I found a suitably creepy yet interesting story to relate. Strangely enough, it's true.
 
In a remote village in Northeast Poland, there lives a group of people known as "Whisperers." They associate themselves with the Catholic Church - the Church does not reciprocate. The Whisperers cast spells and take spiritual "patients" who need their prayers and incantations.
 
Kuba Kaminski, a young photographer from Warsaw, decided to document the Whisperers in pictures.
 
(Click Here) to read the whole story on the New York Times' photography blog, Lens.
 
Having no language in common with the Whisperers, Kaminski was able to get close enough to capture some wonderful images of them.
 
The Whisperers receive people from far away, and typically pray to help them. However, there is a dark side; they can also pray to hurt or even kill others. There is a story of a woman asking for a prayer for her neighbor to die. The Whisperer made the necessary prayer, telling the woman that if her neighbor turned out to be a good person, the woman herself would die. Well, you guessed it. The requestor slid under a tractor sooon after and perished.
 
Isolation does interesting things to populations. Just like a group of fish, separated from the main population by large lakes drying up and turning into a series of small ponds, evolves in unpredictably different ways from its neighbors in other ponds, so do people who live insular lives, disconnected from the rest of the world.
 
Cool story. I long for a photo project like that.
 
DMC-365.blogspot.com