Jesse Kalisher's: Story Behind the Picture

Hell’s Angels in Merida, Mexico

Helen, the kids and I were in Merida earlier this year – a fabulous town in Mexico worth visiting on the weekend when they shut down the town square and turn it into one big festival complete with street food, live music and more. We were having dinner one night in a local near-dive when the Hell’s Angels rolled into town. For a few minutes, the group stopped just outside our restaurant as they decided where to go next. I admired their jackets and their bikes and considered heading outside with my camera… but then it was dark and the timing seemed all wrong – they were attracting a lot of attention and the last thing I wanted to do under those circumstances was pop up with a paparazzi-like camera and start taking snapshots while the riders and the folks on the sidewalk were probably all a bit tense. At least that struck me as a bad idea at the time.

The next morning, however, I headed out for an hour or two of shooting on my own while Helen and the kids enjoyed a leisurely morning at the hotel. That’s when I saw these three guys on the street, not on their bikes. I had my camera slung around my neck and my camera pack on my back as I crossed the street and in my very basic Spanish asked if they spoke English. Not only where two of the guys from the U.S., but one of them grew up a few blocks from where I did in Washington Heights (Manhattan).

I told them I wanted a shot of their jackets, which they referred to as “Colors” (enough said) and they gave me less than 30 seconds to get a shot. I wanted the backs of their jackets – but this one guy turned to face me and that was it, the magic moment. I do like everything about how this turned out… the way it’s framed  with most but not all of the guys and their jackets, the expression (or lack of expression) on the one man’s face. It all works for me.

Parkstone Press Pays Up!

Newslfash… if you read my previous post about my images being stolen by Parkstone Press, they’ve just paid us. I’m not happy that the pictures were used without permission, and I’m not happy that they were cropped and put into a compilation book about Buddhas. That said, they’ve paid what we invoiced and this is, so far as I’m concerned, entirely behind us. I will add that one of our lawyers had drafted a demand letter and was prepared to serve papers in New York and the UK – but all of this was, thankfully, avoided. Sometimes, truth and justice do in fact prevail.

My Proudest Moment

This is really a blog post about living up to my mom’s high moral standards and a touching email I received.

But first… how it all came to pass: In 2001, Helen and I traveled overland from Turkey to Egypt with plans to fly to Tanzania. Helen pointed out that she wanted to see Lalibela and the other famous rock-cut churches in Ethiopia, but I felt we had enough countries planned and I didn’t want to add another. Then one night in Cairo we had dinner with a Norwegian couple who told us how excited they were to visit Ethiopia. They said there were reports that the local kids would throw stones at the tourists which we all agreed sounded adventurous. I woke up the next morning, turned to Helen and, as if out of the blue, said, “Let’s visit Ethiopia.” I said this with straight face as if it had been entirely my idea. Needless to say, Helen laughed and we ended up going to Ethiopia. BTW, the kids did throw stones. Only they were pebbles. And only at our backs. And never with intent to hurt. Believe it or not, it was charming.

I took this photograph at a local grain market that we stumbled upon. We were driving along a road that was, near as we could tell, little traveled by tourists, never mind by white folks. And so we were a curiosity as we ambled out of our Land Rover and mingled amidst the crowd. I had learned a bit of Amharic, the local language, and passed through the crowd saying hello and making (very) small talk. No one objected to my taking pictures and I was invited to pass through the market as I pleased, capturing whatever images I liked.

I returned home in 2002 and in the following years – thanks entirely to Helen – began posting images to my website. My proudest moment as a photographer was when I received an email in 2006 from an Ethiopian woman – her email helped me realize that I was living up to my mom’s high moral and ethical standards.

My mother, married and divorced from my photographer father, used to tell me “Photographers don’t give pictures… they take them.” It was mom’s way of telling me that she didn’t appreciate photographers who use their subject matter. I have always tried to live up to her values, be it when shooting pictures or pursuing anything else in life… and Lula’s email let me know that, at least so far as my Ethiopian pictures were concerned, I was on the right track.

You have beautiful pictures and I am glad that there are some photographers
out there that do not depend on their success based on a person’s tragedy..
specifically Ethiopia’s poverty, famine.. etc. Although you do have some of
these pictures.. you have actually captured beauty. Girls with cross-
tattoos on their face is a symbol of beauty.. and you have clearly  captured
that. Thank you.. you’ve made me more proud to be Ethiopian.. Wellay.. my
tribe. - Lula

My mother, Ilse Kalisher, died of lung cancer, a result of smoking in the summer of 1984. She was 54 and I had just turned 22.

Ansel Adams, Lost Negatives and Hate Mail

I received hate mail today for having agreed to print a few magnificent 90-year-old glass negatives. For those who don’t know what the story is about, Google “Ansel Adams lost negatives” and you’ll see that a construction worker purchased 60 glass negatives in a garage sale 10+ years ago, and now his lawyer has introduced them to the world as possibly being the lost negatives of the iconic and important American Photographer, Ansel Adams.

I have spoken with Ansel’s grandson Mathew Adams on several occasions about these negatives. Last year, I helped facilitate a meeting between Matthew and Norsigian’s lawyer in which Matthew was able to look at the negatives and all the evidence that the lawyer had accumulated.

In my conversations with him, Matthew concluded that we’ll never know for sure who created these pictures – and he shared his perspective that he firmly believes that his grandfather didn’t create them. Bottom line, he can’t and won’t authenticate them.

No worries. Matthew’s right… we’ll never know who took the pictures. And for me, it doesn’t matter.

When I was asked to print the negatives, I agreed with the understanding that I wouldn’t be asked to authenticate them. They are magnificent negatives, negatives that should be well looked after and preserved. I’m honored to print them… whoever happened to take the pictures.

Just to be sure I wasn’t running afoul of the Adams legacy, I checked with Matthew one more time before agreeing to print the pictures. Matthew agreed that printing these negatives would be a real treat and that his fight, if there is to be one, would be with the folks who might misuse his grandfather’s name… and not with me, a photographer and artist in love with the detail and texture in these images.

Of course some will still disagree with the choices I make… that’s fine. I just like to think that those folks can be a bit more civilized in their discourse.

Half the Sky

In 2001/02 Helen and I traveled overland through Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Israel and Egypt. We flew to Ethiopia and then to Kenya, went to Tanzania and Zanzibar and then flew onto India.

In any story I might tell, there is the risk of being accused of selling a stereotype. And there are always exceptions that stand in stark contrast to whatever I might write here.

Women in Istanbul lead a substantially different life than those in Sanlurfa. An orthodox Hassidic woman in Jerusalem leads an entirely different life than that of a Tel Aviv socialite.

But that doesn’t change what I saw and how I felt. In nearly a year of travels, I witnessed women being treated as second-class citizens in country after country after country. I’m not talking about not getting equal pay for equal work. I’m talking about getting no pay and not being allowed to work. I’m not talking about not getting on the ballot because men won’t vote for women, I’m talking about not being allowed to vote in the first place.

In an earlier trip to Vietnam I wondered why women were doing all the hard labor, even on construction sites while men smoked cigarettes and drank coffee. I don’t know the answer, but I do know what one Vietnamese man told me. “Because the men are saving themselves in case something important comes up.” That was 1996. Perhaps things there have changed.

By the time Helen and I had traversed overland from Istanbul to Cairo, we realized that we had hardly seen any women in a place of business. Women didn’t work at the restaurants we ate at. They were never at the front desk of the hotels we stayed in. They didn’t drive buses or taxis and they didn’t work in –or even drink at – the myriad of cafes we saw everywhere. Where, we wondered, were the women?!

In East Africa women had a singular job no man would undertake. They carried sticks on their heads and backs, often for miles. Day after day after day.

I came home affected by what I had seen. I wanted to make a difference in the lives of women. If the women I had seen were black and their male counterparts white the world would have called this apartheid and an international uproar would have ensued. Where, I wondered, was the outrage?

“Women hold up half 
the sky,” is an old saying and is now the inspiration for the title of a best-selling book 
by Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn. Their book delves into detail what I witnessed 
on the surface in my travels and is our newest best hope to bring attention and 
subsequently real change to the plight of women in developing countries.

This collection 
of photographs is a tribute to my mom, Ilse Kalisher, to my wife Helen and to my daughter 
Tamar. It’s my view of the divergent lives that women lead today. It’s my pebble in the 
pond. It’s my contribution to Half the Sky.

See the collection.

He’s Asleep!

I took this picture on my first real trip to London in 2000 (not counting the 6 hours I spent in London in jet-lagged haze in 1994). Taking pictures of the Queen’s Guards at Buckingham Palace is a bit crazy the first time. I remember trying to figure out where they would be coming from, where they would be marching to and, of course, where I would need to stand to get the best shot. Once the guards enter the boulevard, there are restrictions on where one can move – in fact, I was charged and yelled at by a Queen’s Guard carrying an automatic weapon for stepping too far out into the street – I was looking through my camera and didn’t realize what was happening until the Guard was two feet in front of my face yelling at me in full boot camp throttle. Someone somewhere undoubtedly has a great snapshot of me as the unwitting tourist photographer.

Ultimately, I ended up against the gate looking to see if there were pictures of the band I wanted to take. This was back in the days of film and before I carried a proper camera backpack with me. Helen couldn’t quite get to where I was stood – she was a few rows back, but we could see each other and she held a film canister in her hand which she was prepared to throw to me as soon as I ran out of film and waved for it. At one point, I noticed this one particular guard… asleep. Something about the Queen’s Guard who is able to stand at attention while sleeping is not only funny, but a perfect metaphor for what we all are, human. No matter how perfect we want or expect someone to be, at some level, we’re all reduced to being remarkably identical. In any event, I was surprised to see this and was thrilled to get the picture.

My Images Were Stolen!

In 2006, Chronicle Books published my collection, “if you find the Buddha” as a book… needless to say, the images were registered with the U.S. Copyright office.

Earlier this year, I noticed that “if you find the Buddha” and my name came up in the bibliography of another book, “1000 Buddhas of Genius” published by Parkstone International in 2009. So naturally, I ordered a copy of that book… Guess what I found? Two of my pictures were cropped and used in “1000 Buddhas of Genius” and without my permission. I contacted Chronicle Books to see if they had sold the reproduction rights without letting me know (per the contract, they had some limited rights to do this, but would have had to pay me additional usage fees).

The folks at Chronicle were as surprised as I was.

And so I contacted Parkstone International (in the U.K.) and followed up with an email back on March 17th. After three months, eight emails and more phone calls since my initial contact with Parkstone, the publisher has still not responded to me.

I need to be clear… we register all of my images with the U.S. Copyright Office. Our next step is to send a Demand Letter and from there to pursue legal action. Such a waste of time and energy… but we are required to defend our copyright whenever it’s infringed or risk losing rights to our images.

Barton Springs Pool, Austin

There is so much to like in this picture. The juxtaposition of the adults in the water, doing what adults do, apparently calm, adjusting their goggles and taking a break, with the dancing child off the left – he, completely uninhibited and full of joy. HIs captured moment reminds me of what we all should feel like at least once a day. I also like the way the lines work, drawing us down from the bottom right hand corner up through the center of the image. The clouds are wonderful. Read the rest of this entry »

Mayan Pyramid at Cobá, Quintana Roo, Mexico

First let me say that this is one of the few remaining Mayan pyramids that you’re still allowed to climb. That’s great news if you enjoy climbing ancient structures and not so great news if you’re either a) a photographer who likes to photograph ancient ruins without hoards of tourists on them and/or b) a parent of young children who like to climb things but who may not realize how easy it is to lose one’s balance and tumble down to earth with less than ideal consequences. I have the not entirely unique distinction of falling into both categories. And so, to start with, in order to get this shot, we stayed at a hotel just outside the gates to Coba, got up very early in the morning and were on line waiting to enter the ruins thirty minutes before they unlocked the gate. My only mistake was in not renting a bicycle or paying a cylco driver to take us the 1.5 miles from the gate to the pyramid. Read the rest of this entry »

Keep Austin Weird

Austin’s slogan is “Keep Austin Weird” and I tend to think that’s supposed to refer to their powerful indy rock scene. But walking through Austin’s South Congress district I enjoyed seeing a range of eclectic and wonderful shops and restaurants. In settings like this I usually put on my 200MM lens and look for small pieces combined with interesting angles that combine to tell a story. Read the rest of this entry »