If I ever felt that any of my photographs might be considered important, it would be these pictures selected from the from the body of work entitled ‘Naha’.
They were taken during several trips I made to the village of Naha over the past 15 years, as well as at the archeological sites of Yaxchilan and Bonampak in the Lacandon rainforest of Chiapas, Mexico. With the logging of huge portions of forest surrounding Naha and Lacanja, the traditional Lacandon way of life is vanishing as we speak.
The images shown here are the result of meetings I had in Naha with village elders, the late Chan Kin Viejo and Mateo Viejo, then in their 90’s yet still working in the milpa and practicing indigenous, non christian rituals. The Lacandon of today face a constant struggle between their connections to an eternal past, and an increasingly smaller world around them. The originals were shot on color transparency film, scanned and converted into digital duotones.
Emergence Return The Emergence Return Portfolio is about the links between present day peoples and their ancient past. These photographs and digital montages are a response to historical and scientific questions of origin, continuity and change. They portray a continuum…a movement of the soul through space and time.
The camera and computer are much more than instruments of documentation. Photographs are created and manipulated as designed thoughts. Like ancient portraits carved in stone, they authorize a symbolic (if not real) connection between past and present. Ascertaining that the Universe is Flat According to ancient
Maya beliefs, we live in a universe that is flat, with four corners and four directions, each assigned a color. The body of work entitled ‘Ascertaining that the Universe is Flat’ uses this idea as a point of departure. Juxtapositions are are made on the basis of color and continuity at first… a theme and title then emerges and the finished compositions are left open to considerable subjective interpretation on the part of the viewer.
Links:
http://www.jmoorephoto.net/
http://www.galleryprint.com/photographers/johnmoore/flatshow.html
http://gallery.me.com/m3photo#100144
What type of lenses do you use, which do you use most often and why?
Sorry for the late reply.
For the photos in the ‘Naha’ portfolio, I used a Nikon F4 with fixed and a variety of focus lenses, including 85, 35 and 24mm .
The 85 is especially good for portraits, You can keep a comfortable distance from your subject, yet still get incredible detail in the shot.
Nowadays I rarely shoot film due to the convenience and reliability of digital. But I would ever trade of sell my film cameras out of respect for the medium and that fact that I intend to shoot film again at some point.