David Whitman:::photography

The Masked Ones

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 20:05:39 -0700

by Erick Rocha
translated, from the Portuguese, by Sheila Thomson
It was Saturday of Carnival. The city was taken over by a frenzy of blocos and bandas, followed by hundreds of revelers, crammed in the downtown streets and alleys, partying with reckless abandon.
He opened the window and the band sounds flooded the apartment, as if calling to him to join the throng singing and dancing to the marchinhas.
He had promised not to go to Carnival that year. But how could he resist the beat of the surdo drum that seemed to shake him inside the rented studio on the twelfth floor of the Cantone building?
He grabbed a mask that he had kept from an old Estácio de Sá costume and went downstairs to the street. He joined the crowd that was assembling at the corner of his street, waiting for the moment when the band would strike up and lead the revelers through the streets of the Bairro de Fátima, snaking through Lapa, ending with a bang at Praça da Cruz Vermelha.
It was at the end of Rua do Riachuelo, almost turning the corner of Lavradio, that he noticed the other mask. Identical. A twin of his own. Probably from the same Estácio section. The other mask also noticed the similarity and for a while seemed to be asking the same questions that assailed his mind, wondering at the coincidence: Who could it be? Did they know each other? Was it looking at him? He stopped searching for answers and started to notice the body under the other mask. Dark-skinned, tall, lean, wearing colors that matched the mask.
At this point, the Banda das Quengas was entering Rua Mem de Sá, marching towards the end of its pre-determined route. There were five hundred meters left for the two masked ones to meet, before the last beat of the drum and the final dispersal of the merrymakers at the corner of Rua Ubaldino do Amaral and Rua Washington Luis, where he lived.
While he thought about ways to approach the other mask, he saw it getting away from the crowd. He thought it was a sign and followed it. Suddenly the other mask turned around and stopped, waiting for him to come closer.
Standing in this way, facing each other, they seemed gods from an ancient indigenous civilization.
When he tried to say something; a greeting, hello…the other man silenced him with his fingertips on his lips and with his other hand pulled him by the back of the neck, locking the two masks into an ancestral kiss.
PARAM PARAM PARAM PARAM
PAM RAM RAM RAM RAM RAM RAM
The trumpet sound was coming from far away to drag him from the arms of Morpheus. He perked up his ears and listened and remembered: the Band!!!!
He had decided to take a nap before the parade and had almost missed it. He ran to the shower, got dressed, got some money, cigarettes, condom and…the Mask.
Could the dream have been a good omen?
Well, it was Carnival and the masked ones were out in the streets “to watch the band pass by singing love songs!”*
* refrain from “A Banda” [The Band] by Chico Buarque
Erick Rocha

Excerpts from reviews

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 23:12:32 -0800

“David Whitman’s intimate scenes of street and beach are painterly in their vibrant colors and artful compositions. Amid tropical light and color and shadow, these compassionate images of human beauty and warmth stay with us.”
—Sarah Cahill, East Bay Express
“David Whitman’s passion is photography. The subject he has trained a painterly eye upon most frequently to date is Brazil. What that means to him, it seems, is not so much a geographical as an emotional locale where warmth and vibrancy coexist intensely.” —Cathy Cockrell, “Capturing the Soul of Brazil,” Berkeleyan
“O Brasil tem sido uma fonte de inspiração fundamental para o fotógrafo norte-americano David Whitman. Para Whitman, o Brasil é principalmente seu povo de traços às vezes desconcertantemente rudes e maneiras sempre doces, de uma sensualidade que ele localiza junto à areia da praia e à água dos rios e lagoas, o que transforma muitas vezes seus modelos não-profissionais em personagens da mitologia afro-baiana.”
“Brazil has long been the primary source of inspiration for American photographer David Whitman. For Whitman, Brazil is principally its people whose traits are sometimes disconcertingly primitive but at the same time always sweet, with a sensuality that he connects to beach sands and the waters of rivers and lagoons, often transforming his non-professional models into mythological Afro-Bahian figures.”
—Álvaro Machado, editor, Opera Prima, 2002
“David Whitman’s strong emotional connection to Brazil and his flourishing career as photographer are seminally linked. His has always been an eclectic soul—prone to travel and experience based on their own merits.” —Michael Sasser, “David Whitman: Portrait of a Modern Renaissance Man,” The Wire
“I have a variety of photographer idols—personalities that come from a wide array of different areas and artists with often diametrically opposed work methods and focuses. They include Horst P. Horst, Yousuf Karsh, Helmut Newton, Pierre Paolo Pasolini, Leni Riefenstahl and Francesco Scavullo, as well as people like Peter Berlin, Clifford Baker, Peter Beard, Tom Bianchi, Jean-Daniel Cadinot, Michael Childers, Greg Day, Andreas Fux, Greg Gorman, David Hockney, Annie Leibovitz, Hans van Manen, Beatrice Neumann, Dianora Niccolini, Terry Richardson, Andres Serrano, Arthur Tress, Gert Weigelt, and David Whitman.” —Henning von Berg, GaydarNation.com
“David Whitman’s images of Brazil are unique yet familiar. His photographic subjects are ordinary people in their ordinary activities. What surprises the viewer are the details of light, color, and pattern. Whitman’s photos capture private moments without intruding, and thus show the viewer a face of Brazil often hidden behind the spectacular scenery and riotous carnival of more typical shots.” —Norine Berenz, Professor, InterAmerican University,  San Germán, Puerto Rico
“Um americano e uma baiana, ambos apaixonados fotógrafos, revelando a Bahia nas imagens que os arrebataram. O fascínio do movimento da pelada em Itacaré, as fachadas da velha Salvador em detalhes de pura sensibilidade, cenas de cidades e sua natureza viva. As fotos de David Whitman e Valéria Simões mostram quanta arte há no cotidiano.
“As cenas do dia-a dia, que geralmente nos passam despercebidas, foram as que enfeitiçaram David Whitman: homens olhando uma cena de dança, um garoto sentado na borda de uma canoinha, o extraordinário sorriso do vendedor de amendoim…Tanto Whitman quanto Simões festejam as pessoas do Brasil e provam que o belo não só está nos olhos de quem vê.”
“An American and a Brazilian, both passionate photographers, show Bahia in images that captivated them: movement in a beach soccer game in Itacaré, façades of historic Salvador in sensitive detail, scenes of cities and nature. The photos of David Whitman and Valéria Simões reveal how much art there is in the everyday.
“Day-to-day scenes, which usually go unnoticed, intrigue David Whitman: men watching a dance, a boy sitting on the edge of a canoe, the extraordinary smile of a peanut vendor. Whitman and Simões both celebrate the people of Brazil and demonstrate that beauty is not just in the eye of the beholder.”
—Cássia M. Candra, Correio da Bahia, 1997
“David Whitman celebrates Brazil’s people and their world, infusing the work with the sensual pleasures of Brazilian culture.” —Jolene Thym, “Artists celebrate beauty of Brazil,” Oakland Tribune, 1996
”The art of David Whitman is magical. He captures the beauty of the male physique and the essence of masculinity in harmony with other of nature’s wonders. His photographs transport one to exotic places in space and time, and lift the spirits of all who view them.”
—George Neary, Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau
“O fotógrafo norte-americano David Whitman, conhecido internacionalmente, é um amante das belezas naturais do Brasil. Beleza essas que incluem o homem brasileiro, com certeza um dos mais belos e sensuais do mundo.”
“The American photographer David Whitman, known internationally, is a lover of the natural beauty of Brazil. This includes Brazilian men, certainly among the most beautiful and sensuous in the world.”
—G Magazine, 2004
“David Whitman's photographs take us to the heart of Brazil—a heart that is essentially male. Visually the shapes are strong, muscular, powerful. The men are very much at ease with themselves. We see it in the way they touch one another, fling themselves down in the sand, laugh as they plunge into the sea. And there is something very new in the way Whitman captures these moments in their lives. There is no posing, no self-consciousness, no sense that they are aware that they are being watched. That is why David Whitman's photographs are so important. They come from a Brazil that is spontaneous, real, living in the moment.”
—David Leddick, “Approachable Beauty,” Miamigo, 2002
“O fotógrafo norte americano David Whitman é uma figura pra lá de finíssima. Gente boa, bom papo e alto astral; adora o Brasil, fala português, escuta e curte MPB, bossa nova, samba e com seu talento e sensibilidade, registrou por suas viagens ao Brasil as pessoas que encontrou nas ruas, praias e praças.”
“American photographer David Whitman is the epitome of cool. Nice all around, makes good talk, and is very upbeat. He speaks Portuguese and loves Brazil and its popular music, bossa nova, samba. On his many trips to Brazil his talent and sensitivity have recorded the daily lives of people he has encountered on the streets, beaches and plazas.”
—Paul Constantinides, Fotograturas

Soul of a traveler, heart of a Brazilian

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 10:44:27 -0800

by Norine Berenz
from Progreso Weekly
Six years ago Miami photographer David Whitman visited Ilha de Maré, an island in northeastern Brazil. His friend Jorge Antonio Espirito Santo Batista, a teacher there, had promised Whitman a glimpse of a Brazil that was disappearing—an island without cars, where you arrive by boat and wade through the surf to the shore, a place still dependent on the sea and the legendary tides that give the island its name.
As they wandered along streets made of crushed shells and earth, Whitman noticed two barefooted boys playing marbles. “From where I stood, they happened to form a yin-yang shape,” Whitman recounts, “and I quietly reached for my camera, hoping I could record the moment before they shifted positions.”
He did, and the young marble players—Jefinho and Darlei—famously landed on the cover of the International Calendar of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers in 2005.
Jefinho and Darlei inspired the calendar’s theme that year: Harmony in Play. “The two boys playing marbles convey the age-old concept of Yin and Yang—opposites that fit together perfectly to make a whole—a reminder that harmony does not come from being the same. It comes from embracing differences and discovering how we complement and balance each other, thereby making the world a richer place.”
Whitman’s photo—and the story behind it—were featured at the time on Progreso Weekly and Progreso Semanal, and also caught the attention of Alhemar Altieri, the publisher of InfoBrazil, a site that offers independent analysis and opinion on Brazilian current affairs. “With most Brazilians absorbed by the annual Carnival celebrations, we at InfoBrazil decided to break away from the usual political, business and economic content, and asked David Whitman, an accomplished photographer, to reflect on his time spent in Brazil.”
“Alhemar invited me to describe—from an American photographer’s perspective—what I found different and compelling about Brazil,” Whitman recalls. He woke up in the middle of the night with an idea, and by daybreak had completed an essay “as lush and poetic as his photography,” commented one reader. The title: “Yellow is the Color of My Brazil.”
“Surrounded by luminescent blues and greens, yellow is the reigning color of Carnival,” Whitman wrote. “Glorious, exuberant, pulsating yellow announces Brazil to the world. It radiates confidence, attracts attention, seduces. Yellow in Brazil has no close rival.”
“The color yellow flows through Brazil like the Amazon. Even in the countless shades of green, there is always underlying yellow, kissed by blue. Yellow transforms red, too, into rich orange earth and fiery reflections of the equatorial sun rising from the sea. And in the stunning diversity of Brazil’s people, irises from pale green to amber to darkest brown are all tinted by yellow.”
Because InfoBrazil could not include photos with the essay, Whitman asked a colleague in California to design and create a website to illustrate the article. Within weeks, comments started to flow in; Whitman’s photos and observations resonated with many Brazilians and Brazilophiles around the world.
“The first time I saw David Whitman’s photos,” wrote Erick Rocha from Rio de Janeiro, “I thought he was Brazilian and I was enchanted with the way he caught typically Brazilian moments. Then I found out he was from North America. When I met David Whitman, I realized that although he is American, his way of seeing is Brazilian. His photos make me want to feel the emotion of the moment they were snapped. There are no poses in his pictures—only sensations and light, the beauty of day-to-day life. His play of shadow and light capture the beauty of common situations: two boys playing in a park, a fisherman at work or a game of capoeira on the sand. Yes, yellow is Brazil and David Whitman is yellow. His eyes shine and make our trivial day-to-day shine. The photos are beautiful, as is his way of looking upon us, Brazilians.”
Last November, Whitman returned to Ilha de Maré during a four-week photographic journey through Brazil. As he was walking along the same road where he’d encountered Jefinho and Darlei six years earlier, he passed two boys—about the same age as the marble players had been—seated at a cement table. He gave them each a keyring from Miami, and asked if he could take their picture, the first shot of the day. That photo (above), “Best Friends,” became the announcement for a Miami exhibit of Whitman’s work, called “Luminous Youth.”
Reviewing an exhibit of Whitman’s work in Berkeley, California, Stephanie Hornbeck, now a conservator at the National Museum of African Art, wrote, “Whitman’s photographs evoke a gentle world. Beneath leafy trees in sunny, seemingly carefree settings by the sea, warm smiles and bright eyes engage the viewer directly. He focuses on the inner warmth and outer beauty of his young subjects, separating them from their often sad circumstances.”
Norine Berenz is a professor of linguistics at InterAmerican University in Puerto Rico.

Luminous Youth

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 22:57:36 -0800

by Orlando Rodriguez
Photographer David Whitman is adept at capturing gentle flares of human vitality. With a painter’s eye, he records the world around him in compositions that are at once dreamlike and organic.
Possessed of an insatiatable wanderlust, a love of nature and a keen eye for light and shadows, the Miami resident says he eschews generic “postcard photography” in favor of meditations on private moments that convey a sense of warmth and spontaneity—in “Rui waiting for the rain to stop,” for example, a shirtless boy lingers in a doorway with his back turned to the dimness of the interior as he peers longingly at a tapestry of green plants obscured in the distance.
“For me the most important record of a journey is the people I meet,” Whitman explains.
Whitman’s artful photographs probe the secret world of sideway glances and introspection by depicting people in outdoor settings—in “Barquinho,” for instance, a barefooted lad in yellow swim trunks sits in a weathered rowboat gazing downward at the rippling aquamarine water.
“He is the master of portraiture, most especially in the area of capturing a subject in available light,” says Coconut Grove artist Lisa Remeny of her close friend Whitman. “His empathetic spirit for all humankind is often translated through his lens. He possesses a warm, generous soul with an innate ability to put his subjects at ease, and this is apparent in his results.”
Rather than staging photos, Whitman prefers to aim his eye toward life’s visual poetry while educing the inner luminescence of his youthful subjects. “I like to record what exists in the world: Natural light, natural people,” says Whitman, who in recent travels has captured different elements of Brazilian culture: colorful landscapes, the fishing villages and the bright tropical colors that help define the South American juggernaut’s national character.
Whitman’s images depict regular people in ordinary situations. Many depict youth at play. “With children,” says Whitman, “there is a sense of light emanating from within.”
“Luminous Youth” showcases Whitman’s ability to discover beauty in everyday life with an exhibit of 17 images, each printed on watercolor paper. “I am very excited to show David’s photographs,” Biscayne Nature Center director Theo Long says enthusiastically. “I found David’s photos to capture the essence of children outdoors enjoying our natural environment.”
Early on, Whitman’s fondness for travel took shape in the form of academics. While in high school, he traveled to Belgium as an exchange student. Later, he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in St Lucia, where he plied his talents in forestry and bio-diversity. More recently, he spent four months teaching English to college students in Brazil. “Being outside of the country for an extended time allowed me to see things in a different perspective in a way that has really informed the rest of my life,” says Whitman, who speaks six languages, including Portuguese and Dutch.
In college, Whitman’s love affair with the visual arts evolved alongside an appreciation for wilderness. A one-year stint at the University of California Santa Cruz, a campus surrounded by redwood forest, inspired Whitman to transfer to UC Berkeley to major in forestry.
Throughout Whitman’s college experience, tree classes coexisted with music appreciation. Attending a Wednesday afternoon concert series on campus became routine. “I’d sprint in my hiking boots across campus to make it to these free classical music concerts,” he recalls. From music concert afficionado Whitman moved to behind-the-scenes player when he became the manager of the famed Hertz Concert Hall.
Much of Whitman’s spare time revolved around developing as an artist. He studied watercolor painting with Karen Frey and music with the late concert pianist Barbara Shearer, two artistic mentors who influenced his artistry. Painting with watercolors showed Whitman how to see “color and composition, light and shadow” in a way that prepped his eye for photography. “My eye developed in a way that helped me in photography,” he says. “My visual artistry developed from painting into photography.”
Whitman first ventured to Brazil in 1991, buying a camera for the trip. Besides run-of-the-mill sightseeing, he toured the shanty towns of Rio, also known as favelas, in the company of an anthropologist who was researching women with HIV. Sadly, Whitman’s visual diary of the trip was decimated, along with his home and possessions, in the Oakland hills wildfires of October 1991, this less than two months before a second trip to Brazil.
During a visit to a Red Cross aid station, a rescue worker noticed the Portuguese study book tucked under Whitman’s arm. Dolefully, Whitman spoke of his decision to cancel his upcoming trip. The aid worker dissuaded Whitman from wallowing in the aftermath of a life-altering blaze.
Inspired, Whitman returned to Brazil, where he let his shutter go wild. One of the images from this sojourn was selected from 20,000 submissions in National Geographic Traveler’s amateur photography contest. Titled “Barquinho,” the image depicts a small boy in a rowboat, lost in the “tranquility of moment,” Whitman says. The recognition not only helped erase some painful memories but also reinforced Whitman’s blossoming romance with photography. “In a way, it validated my passion,” he says.
Whitman experienced a “sense of renewal, of not being encumbered by any possessions” when he returned home from Brazil. “I kept a positive spirit and what it did is it reinforced my nonmaterial nature,” he says. Whitman’s minimalist approach to life became further ingrained when he nearly died in a riptide during a 1996 visit to St. Lucia.
In the wake of this near-death experience, Whitman began to reexamine the meaning of his quest on earth. “At that moment I decided to try to achieve things in life without waiting because it was a day I almost died,” he says.
The lyrical quality of Brazilian Portugese beckoned like a siren’s call, and Whitman soon found himself teaching English at a private school in Rio. During his six-month trip, Whitman began to recognize the importance of the color yellow to the Brazilian identity.
“Yellow is ubiquitous in Brazil. It is a dominant force in the culture, in the psyche, in the physical environment and in the people of the country,” he says, speaking enthusiastically about “the color of joy.”
Succumbing to his affinity for subtropical climes, Whitman moved to Miami nine years ago. Career-wise, he was hired as the director of the Miami Beach Cultural Arts Council. Four years ago, Whitman was hired by Fairchild Tropical Garden to oversee the Fairchild Challenge, an outreach program for teens that emphasizes creative environmental learning. “It combines science and the arts in a way that never should have been separated because the two are interconnected,” he says. “We are able to reach out creatively to 45,000 teenagers and get them excited about environmental learning.”
A resident of Surfside, the oceanfront enclave directly north of Miami Beach, Whitman loves shooting at sunrise or sunset on the beach. He embraces a “simple lifestyle,” one marked by an aversion to pop-culture transmissions. He doesn’t own a television, but reads “voraciously.”
He also spends a lot of time thinking about Brazil, a country that has always seemed familiar to him. “It’s an amazing country, with truly diverse cultures,” Whitman says.
The Islander News, September 6, 2007

Yellow is the color of my Brazil

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 18:52:36 -0800

by David Whitman
The idea that a place could be identified with just one color came to me while reading about someone spinning around high on a hill overlooking Rio de Janeiro, taking in the dizzying images of sky, bay, buildings. She described her sudden realization that Rio is a “blue” city. I intuitively understood what she meant, for I often see the world in the colors of an artist’s palette.
If Rio is blue, then yellow is the color of Brazil. It is everywhere, announcing itself radiantly and unselfconsciously. Luscious yellow fruits, flamboyant yellow feathers, ubiquitous yellow soccer jerseys. Flowering trees, wooden boats, beach umbrellas, passion fruit, gold, parrots, buildings, swimsuits, license plates. The word in Portuguese, amarelo, even contains the verb amar, “to love, to adore.”
The color yellow flows through Brazil like the Amazon. Even in the countless shades of green, there is always underlying yellow, kissed by blue. Yellow transforms red, too, into rich orange earth and fiery reflections of the equatorial sun rising from the sea. And in the stunning diversity of Brazil’s people, irises from pale green to amber to darkest brown are all tinted by yellow.
Surrounded by luminescent blues and greens, yellow is the reigning color of Carnival. From Rio’s Sambódromo to São Luís do Maranhão and beyond, glorious, exuberant, pulsating yellow announces Brazil to the world. It radiates confidence, attracts attention, seduces. Yellow in Brazil has no close rival.
Brazil has given me a profound appreciation of yellow, and I’ve surrounded myself with the color here in Miami. Accent walls in my beach studio are yellow, and outside are yellow-green coconut palms against the ocean, where yellow mixes with blue to create Caribbean turquoise and sea-green. Even my car, the “mangomobile,” is orange-yellow. At the tropical garden where I work, I often see the sunlit, brilliant yellow and contrasting blue feathers of wild macaws flying overhead, reminding me of Brazil.
It’s the color of joy, yellow…and the color of my Brazil.
“Yellow is the color of my Brazil” appeared originally on InfoBrazil.com, a site dedicated to independent analysis and opinion on Brazilian issues and current affairs.

Passionate about Brazil

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 15:41:02 -0800

by Pedro Stephan
Californian artist David Whitman belatedly discovered his talent for photography, and today dazzles with his distinctive, exquisite and sensual images of the male form.
Photographer David Whitman is living proof that to create great photos you need neither paraphernalia nor expensive, state-of-the-art technology. Using an SLR camera with regular 35mm film, without flash, without assistants, without professional models—the majority of them being common folks—without a studio, without make-up, Whitman creates photos that could easily appear on the cover of any chic and stylish magazine.
Whitman, who grew up in California, began photographing at age 36 when he came to Brazil on vacation. Since then he has had a brilliant career as an artistic photographer. With several exhibits in the U.S. and Brazil, Whitman’s talent soon was recognized internationally with a prize, from more than 20,000 competing entries, in the 1993 National Geographic Traveler photography competition—no small achievement.
Passionate about Brazil and the men here, perhaps the best of his photography work are his studies of Brazilian men. It is interesting to note in those photos uncluttered composition with minimal scenic elements, good contrast, and movement. Whitman conveys in his images a personal and local identity through expression, light, and color, with extreme charm and fluidity, always avoiding cheap exoticism. This gives his work an added dimension.
Interview with David Whitman
What is your goal when you photograph masculine beauty? What are you trying to record?
I try to show real life focused on the spirit—that is, emotions, desires, feelings—and not to treat the body as just an object. I don’t work in studios or with professional models, and I record just what interests me. My models are people whose paths have crossed mine and who have an intensity about them.
What is your concept of beauty? Of masculine beauty? What do you find beautiful in a man?
I search more for innocence and naturalness than for overt eroticism or so-called conventional beauty. It’s important that the model be comfortable with his body, and that he trusts me. I try to capture qualities of each individual, incorporating elements of mystery into my work; for example, photographing models from behind or in shadow.
How and where do you find your models? How do you make them appear so relaxed and spontaneous in the photos?
All of my models are people who did not know, when we met, that I’m a photographer. When I photograph them, there already exists a friendship and sense of trust that, I believe, can often be perceived in my work. In the end, for me the entire experience of the photo session and interacting with the model is what’s most important. It’s what endures and what fascinates me.
—Homens, March 2002

The Popsicle Cart

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 13:16:47 -0800

by Edinaldo Benicio
translated, from the Portuguese, by Sheila Thomson
Hey, Mister! Mister! Hi, tell me! Do you know of anyone who needs someone to do housecleaning, by any chance?! No. I don’t. You don’t happen to have a yard that I can weed, a tree to cut, something that I can do? No, I don’t. I don’t even live around here. It’s just that I’ve spent the day looking for work and nothing. I’ve just talked to the priest here at Candelária, but he doesn’t have anything either. I don’t understand life, I really don’t! I’ve been looking for a job for a year and a half and there’s not a single soul that can find me a real job. I have four kids and only one of them gets this money from the government. Eighty reais. That’s all for one of the kids. Can anybody support a family with this kind of money? No way! But I do miracles. If a person makes a lot of money, it’s never enough. But a poor person has to do miracles everyday. I don’t know where this world’s going. I’m a family man, an honest man, and nobody wants to help me. I’m sorry, but I can’t help you now. I know, that’s OK! That’s life. I need sixty reais to buy a popsicle cart and nothing. But it’s not your fault. I went out and my wife said that she was going to pray for us to get this money. Now, you see how things are, sixty reais for a popsicle cart and the guy gave me until today to get this money. Try to tell him to wait until tomorrow! No, he put me ahead of a guy who’s got the money already. Did me this favor. Today, when I left the house I went to Chapinha’s. Those popsicles, you know? Yeah, I know! Well, the owner told me that I could put two hundred popsicles in that cart. I could sell everything on the beach, the street, at parties, schools, everything really. Look at my wallet to see I’m not lying to you. What’s this?! Of course I believe you! Look, Mister! I opened my wallet and took out five reais. Take it! I can’t give you more. Even if it doesn’t look like it, my life is hard too. I’m still a student and I know it’s complicated to make money. I know that you can’t buy your popsicle cart with five reais, but I think it helps a little. It sure does. I won’t buy the cart, but I’ll buy food. How much food do you think you’d buy with five reais? Two kilos of rice and two of beans. My wife can cook one kilo of beans and that’s enough for two days and the rice lasts a little longer. I’m happy, then. Thank you, you made my day. What do you mean?! Don’t do that! Go try and get some more money. I hope you can get more. If God doesn’t get me sixty reais it’s because it wasn’t meant to be. He told me to go with God, too, and went away walking quietly, head down, maybe thinking about telling the same story to some other person he met on the street.

International Calendar

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 11:28:31 -0800

from Progreso Weekly
Photographer David Whitman's portrait of two barefooted boys playing marbles has been selected by the Returned Peace Corps Volunteers of Wisconsin-Madison for the cover of their award-winning International Calendar.
Whitman's photograph, titled “Jefinho and Darlei,” underwent a rigorous screening process, rising to the top of nearly 400 entries from active and returned Peace Corps volunteers to become the 2005 cover shot. The photo coordinator for the calendar project, Jo Thomson, observed that the composition is striking for its “spontaneity and beautiful balance.”
The calendar photo was taken on Ilha de Maré, a small island in the Bay of All Saints near Brazil’s colonial capital Salvador, that “seems to be in a time warp,” says Whitman. “Although a major city looms on the horizon, Maré is an island of traditional fishing villages. It has no paved roads, no cars, and, until recently, had no running water or electricity. The people I met there were proud, friendly, and seemed to be living in harmony with their natural environment.”
From classrooms to boardrooms around the world, the 2005 calendar represents communities where Peace Corps volunteers have served. More than 170,000 volunteers have worked in 136 countries on such issues as health education, information technology, and environmental preservation. Whitman worked as a Peace Corps forester and teacher for three years in the eastern Caribbean. He now coordinates an environmental education outreach program at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Miami.
Whitman first received artistic recognition a decade ago from National Geographic Traveler when another photo of his was one of just 35 selected from 20,000 competing images on the theme of travel. Since then, his work has been exhibited and published in the U.S. and Brazil. Previewing an exhibition in Oakland, California, critic Sarah Cahill wrote: “Whitman's intimate scenes of street and beach are painterly in their vibrant colors and artful compositions. Amid tropical light and color and shadow, his compassionate images of human beauty and warmth stay with us.”
The calendar project is a volunteer effort by the Returned Peace Corps Volunteers of Wisconsin-Madison. About 40,000 calendars are printed each year, with proceeds going to grassroots projects around the world. The calendars are sold at universities, bookstores, and by Peace Corps groups throughout the country. Six thousand are given annually as an educational tool to teachers in the Peace Corps’ World Wise Schools program.
“The Peace Corps is the most powerful symbol of non-military service in our history,” says Senator John Kerry. “If there was ever a time when everyday people in the most deprived countries, cities and villages of the world need to see idealistic Americans working to help them, it is today, when we are engaged in a struggle to win the hearts and minds of people everywhere.”

Jefinho in 2006
(upper right player on  the calendar cover at top)

Paint and Shoot

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 10:40:40 -0800

by Sarah Cahill
A young boy sits in a small weathered boat, its peeling green paint echoed by the clear turquoise watery expanse that fills the photograph. Two capoeira players, a teacher and student, one dreadlocked and dark brown, the other a light taupe, strike unbelievably graceful poses, holding hands as they stand upside down, balancing on one hand each. These are two of thirty-three photographs you can see this weekend, and through March, by Oakland artist David Whitman, who in recent travels has captured what he calls “Brazilianness”: the tropical colors, the gestures, the unposed stances on the street and beach that reveal the essence of the country.
“Bahia: Figurative Imagery,” which opens Saturday, March 2, at 2:00 p.m. at the 60th Street Gallery in Oakland, celebrates Brazilianness not only through Whitman’s intoxicating photographs but also in the watercolors of well-known Oakland painter Karen Frey. Winner of numerous awards and a Signature Member of the National Watercolor Society, Frey has been Whitman’s painting teacher since they met through Pro Arts Open Studios in 1986. In “Bahia,” Frey has responded to Whitman’s photos, not reproducing them photorealistically but creating visions of light and color that evoke the same warmth and beauty and compassion. While the subject of this show is Brazil, it also speaks to the reciprocal relationship between painting and photography, and between two artists who have added a dimension to their friendship by responding to each other’s work.
Presentiment of the exotic
“Brazil has always seemed familiar to me,” says Whitman. “I’ve always loved Brazilian music and the lyrical sound of Brazilian Portuguese. The film Black Orpheus gave me my first visual impressions of Brazil and the presentiment that here was an exotic, fascinating, pulsating, irresistible world. In Brazil there is a samba refrain ‘não existe pecado ao sul do equador’ [‘sin doesn’t exist south of the equator’]. Destiny called.”
Whitman first traveled to Brazil in 1991, purchasing a camera for the trip. Tragically, all his photographs were destroyed, along with his house and possessions, in the Oakland hills fire. One of the photographs from his next trip was chosen from 20,000 submissions in National Geographic Traveler’s amateur photography competition. Last June he celebrated his fortieth birthday by spending two months in Brazil with his camera. He returned with 2,000 photos, most taken in the northeastern state of Bahia, and sent copies to everyone he had photographed. One man wrote back: “I was very happy when I received your photos. It was emotion for me. You don’t get to think how we was surprise. You are my friend and brother forever.”
Brazilian moments
The Brazilian residents’ acceptance of Whitman, who often took photographs in small towns and remote villages, comes through in the ease and unselfconscioness they convey in these pictures. Whitman attributes to Frey his interest in capturing “the moment,” of recognizing an image and spontaneously reproducing it. Frey has often worked from photographs she takes, but says what really interests her is “a perfect light or a moment that I want to paint. I’m interested in balance of color and shape and value. It’s about developing relationships: textures, colors, rhythms.”
East Bay Express, March 1, 1996

Art and the Café

Tue, 9 Dec 2008 10:36:35 -0800

by Stephanie Hornbeck
Seventeen of David Whitman’s color photographs, taken primarily in a Rio shantytown and a remote village in Bahia, Brazil are presently on view at The Musical Offering in Berkeley. The photographer has chosen these images—mostly portraits of one, two, or three youths—from among hundreds of photographs shot on three different trips to Brazil.
Whitman’s photographs evoke a gentle world. Beneath leafy trees in sunny, seemingly carefree settings by the sea, warm smiles and bright eyes engage the viewer directly. In one photo, a young boy wearing a straw hat and smiling broadly, leans against a Matisse-blue plaster. In another, a child crouches on a wooden dock with a circular fishing net outstretched over docile dark green water.
Whitman focuses on the inner warmth and outer beauty of his young subjects, separating them from their often sad circumstances. In one image, two bare-chested young men lie face up on white sand and wrestle while laughing naturally.
One striking composition illustrates two boys facing each other but with faces turned away, the forms of their dark, bare torsos partially in shadow against the bright white backgound. Another depicts a grinning boy, perhaps six years old, hands gripping the perimeter of a large rusted vessel, a subtle allusion to the poverty of his surroundings.
Whitman was recently notified that he is one of 30 award winners (out of 20,000 entries) in National Geographic’s annual photography contest. His photo, Barquinho, of a young boy on a little boat—among those on display at The Musical Offering—will be published in the January 1994 issue of National Geographic Traveler.
Cups, October 1993
Stephanie Hornbeck is now a conservator at the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC.

Poems inspired by Whitman’s images

Mon, 8 Dec 2008 17:34:00 -0800

The Pharaoh’s Gold
Who hasn’t been a slave at times,
bowing to love’s imperious decrees?
Who hasn’t served on bended knees,
chained lightly by a bond sublime,
enthralled by his own captivity?
The pharoah, love, says choose but one—
a life of gold servility,
or a lifeless wandering, held by none.
O Ouro do Faraó
Quem não se tornou escravo um dia,
curvando-se aos caprichos imperiosos do amor?
Quem já não serviu de joelhos,
sutilmente acorrentado por elo sublime,
subjugado em sua própria servidão?
O amor faraó decreta: elege uma só alternativa —
uma vida de magnífico servilismo
ou a peregrinação vazia, e por ninguém presidida.

Epic
Restless as the sand they’re made of, our reckless bodies hurl wonderfully together, epic loves, afraid of nothing— not salt, not blood, not sun,  not the waves marching thunderfully to sack the small castle we become.
Épico
Incansáveis como a areia de que somos feitos,
nossos corpos temerários precipitam-se
admiravelmente juntos, amores épicos,
sem medo de nada — de sol, de sal ou de sangue,
esquecidos das ondas avançando ribombantes
para pilhar o frágil castelo que nos tornamos.

Green
Everything seems to give fruit here, nothing holds back  its mystery from the shifting greens and pea-black shadows. No flesh is ever shy in its ripening. Even  the plucked jade plantain, drooping in indolence,  will glory in a raucous goldening until its skin  splits, helpless to contain such muscular succulence.

Verde
Aqui nenhuma natureza nega fruto, e saca seus mistérios desde verdes inconstantes e sombras untuosas.
Toda carne brada o seu despertar.
Mesmo a ousada bananeira cor de jade,
se esparramando em indolências, gloria-se
roucamente em ouros enquanto rasga a pele,
incapaz de reter tanto substância muscular.

What Goes Around
Plato told that we’re like eggs cut in two looking for the half that will complete us.
Lao Tsu knew every me has its you— and when we mix, nothing can defeat us.
Every up contains its down, every yin its yang, every stillness its unseen trouble.
And so I’m of two minds: do I lose, or do I win, do I give you, or gather all the marbles?
Winner Take All
A fistful of marbles, glinting in the sun. The shooter takes aim. Soon there will be none.
The cat’s eye glances, picks off another one. The rest all scatter. Soon there will be none.
The hard eye holds what it knows will be undone. The small hands empty. Soon there will be none.
Gabriel Spera’s first collection of poems, The Standing Wave, was selected for the 2002 National Poetry Series and published in 2003 by HarperCollins (New York). The book also received the PEN Center USA Literary Book Award for Poetry in 2004. His work has appeared in journals such as Carolina Quarterly, Chicago Review, Crazyhorse, DoubleTake, Epoch, Folio, Greensboro Review, Laurel Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Missouri Review, New England Review, Ontario Review, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, and Southern Review as well as The Best American Poetry 2000 and The POETRY Anthology, 1912-2000. Spera lives in Los Angeles.