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Showing off some work
Jun. 17th, 2008 11:28 amI usually try to keep work and fan space separate, but I've talked here recently about some projects I was working on, especially one for the crazy French clients. It finished last week, as the site went live and the exhibit opened at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., and I thought I'd share a bit with you because it is such a cool project. In fact, if you're anywhere in the DC area, check out the exhibit if you can. It's really fascinating, mixing standard photography with video and narrative. For my friends who are into photography, and you know who you are!, it's a lot to look at in one visit to the site, but it's worth watching all the essays.
The project is called Access To Life, and it was a joint project with Magnum Photos (my clients) and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Magnum is the famous photography collective started after WWII by photographers like Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson. To say that their photography is stunning is quite an understatement. The project features 8 photographers in 9 different countries, documenting the lives of people living with AIDS and how access to free antiretroviral drugs has changed their futures.
My crazy clients weren't really crazy -- it was mostly the deadlines and the speed that made me call them that, they were wonderful to work with, but unfortunately, the large charity this project is for didn't really understand workflow for this kind of thing, so I often turned around copy within minutes that should have been delivered sooner. The poor Magnum staff were working 24/7 on these things to meet deadline, and copy was flying around in all sorts of states. A lot of what I edited didn't make it into certain pages. In fact, on Magnum's own site, the copy that's there, in all its typo-ridden glory, is from a pre-copyedited point, sadly. At times it was almost impossible to keep track of what was flying around. Initially I tried to get them to fix the foot and inch marks for real quotations and apostrophes, but they were so far behind, they just couldn't do it. I felt really bad for them. I'd get emails at midnight, which was 3 a.m their time.
And they were French only in that a lot of the staff comes from Magnum's Paris office, but they were in NY, which was how I got connected to them, from my time at Slate. Sometimes, though, this caused me trouble in that I couldn't always parse what was being said, but we persevered, and I think that I was on the right wavelength with my contact, so even if I wasn't sure I understood correctly, I usually did, just sort of psychically, I guess. And some of the translations (from native speakers through translators, sometimes into two more languages -- talk about a babelfish!) were incomprehensible -- in fact, India was so bizarre that I often warned them I was shooting in the dark in rewrites, which they had given me carte blanche to do. I think it turned out really well, though, and even the oddities make at least a little sense now.
It was hard to look at, sometimes. The one on Rwanda... geez. It has some of the best photography: Gilles Peress, the photographer, had been there in 1994 during the genocide, so it includes some of his own work from that period, and it is just... the beginning is really difficult to watch. But it has the most hopeful stories of the people whose lives have been transformed by the ARVs, so stick with it if you can. South Africa also has one that left me in a pretty bad state. But so many of the stories are really touching -- there are deaths, and serious tragedy, but there is also hope and a future. The motorcycle messenger in Rwanda was such a doting father, and his story is so hopeful, that it kind of changes the equation a little bit.
Anyway, I think it's really valuable, and fascinating to look at if you appreciate photography simply as art, but if you like human stories that affect how you look at the world or are interested in the AIDS crisis, it's worth seeing all these stunning essays. But please don't judge my editing skills by some of these -- there are lots of places where they used stuff I hadn't worked on, so it's not always me! Generally, if there are typos or missing/misused words, you can bet I didn't see it. ;-)
The project is called Access To Life, and it was a joint project with Magnum Photos (my clients) and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Magnum is the famous photography collective started after WWII by photographers like Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson. To say that their photography is stunning is quite an understatement. The project features 8 photographers in 9 different countries, documenting the lives of people living with AIDS and how access to free antiretroviral drugs has changed their futures.
My crazy clients weren't really crazy -- it was mostly the deadlines and the speed that made me call them that, they were wonderful to work with, but unfortunately, the large charity this project is for didn't really understand workflow for this kind of thing, so I often turned around copy within minutes that should have been delivered sooner. The poor Magnum staff were working 24/7 on these things to meet deadline, and copy was flying around in all sorts of states. A lot of what I edited didn't make it into certain pages. In fact, on Magnum's own site, the copy that's there, in all its typo-ridden glory, is from a pre-copyedited point, sadly. At times it was almost impossible to keep track of what was flying around. Initially I tried to get them to fix the foot and inch marks for real quotations and apostrophes, but they were so far behind, they just couldn't do it. I felt really bad for them. I'd get emails at midnight, which was 3 a.m their time.
And they were French only in that a lot of the staff comes from Magnum's Paris office, but they were in NY, which was how I got connected to them, from my time at Slate. Sometimes, though, this caused me trouble in that I couldn't always parse what was being said, but we persevered, and I think that I was on the right wavelength with my contact, so even if I wasn't sure I understood correctly, I usually did, just sort of psychically, I guess. And some of the translations (from native speakers through translators, sometimes into two more languages -- talk about a babelfish!) were incomprehensible -- in fact, India was so bizarre that I often warned them I was shooting in the dark in rewrites, which they had given me carte blanche to do. I think it turned out really well, though, and even the oddities make at least a little sense now.
It was hard to look at, sometimes. The one on Rwanda... geez. It has some of the best photography: Gilles Peress, the photographer, had been there in 1994 during the genocide, so it includes some of his own work from that period, and it is just... the beginning is really difficult to watch. But it has the most hopeful stories of the people whose lives have been transformed by the ARVs, so stick with it if you can. South Africa also has one that left me in a pretty bad state. But so many of the stories are really touching -- there are deaths, and serious tragedy, but there is also hope and a future. The motorcycle messenger in Rwanda was such a doting father, and his story is so hopeful, that it kind of changes the equation a little bit.
Anyway, I think it's really valuable, and fascinating to look at if you appreciate photography simply as art, but if you like human stories that affect how you look at the world or are interested in the AIDS crisis, it's worth seeing all these stunning essays. But please don't judge my editing skills by some of these -- there are lots of places where they used stuff I hadn't worked on, so it's not always me! Generally, if there are typos or missing/misused words, you can bet I didn't see it. ;-)
