Photographing Spirits of Carnival

The photographers I am exposed to by doing this show never cease to amaze me. Recently, my buddy Ian Spanier told a friend of his that he should be on the show, and gave him my contact info. At that point, Jason Gardner reached out to me, and when Ian, who has been on the show a few times himself, suggests someone I need to pay attention.

Jason is an interesting photographer. He has galleries on his site for Editorial, Events, Personalities, and Lifestyle, and the work is fantastic. Honestly, there were a few of his lifestyle images I really wanted to cover on the show, and hopefully we get to revisit that subject one day. For this show though we look at a project Jason has been working on for years, a lot of years.

For over 15 years, throughout 15 countries, Jason has documented the ritual and festival of Carnival, focusing on traditional, folkloric, and community celebrations. The resulting images, which are the subject of his second book, We the Spirits, and a window into how humanity, worldwide, celebrate life, tradition, and folklore. Photographs from We the Spirits were displayed in the exhibition Costume and Masquerade: at the Stadhaus in Ulm, Germany, and the project was selected to be exhibited at the Mois de la Photo OFF Photography festival in Paris, and that’s just two of the many exhibitions that Jason’s work has been displayed at, and in fact the images from We the Spirits will be on display again for an exhibition at Ted and Nune Studio, Street Hastings-on-Hudson, NY from April 6 – May 19.

With a client list that includes Con Edison, HBO, TED Talks, Dassault Systèmes, Electrolux, Grand Central Station, Samsung Corporation, N-Y Historical Society, Freshworks, Ogilvy & Mather, Direct TV, Pfizer, Big Brothers Big Sisters NY, and Human Rights Watch, it’s no wonder Jason has seen the success he has. Seriously, go check out his Lifestyle / Editorial work, or his Personalities gallery. So good.

Getting back to that term “Visual Anthropology”, Jason describes it this way:

“In my practice, I document visually various aspects of a culture, and how it is celebrated, both venerating traditions and looking forward.

I am interested in what constitutes cultures and most especially how they are celebrated, from honoring traditions to envisaging the future. By focusing on cultural manifestations such as music, dance, festival, and spectacle, as well as symbols, street art, glyphs, costumes, or shrines in a closet, I capture the intangible, visually translating the symbolic connections of what might not be visible at first glance.

Placing my photographic practice within the framework of Visual Anthropology, I hope to tell stories by focusing on cultures, traditions and practices which often happen behind the public’s view. I capture things that build up to define the cultural milieu and community’s regional identities. I look for that ineffable moment of transformation in a ceremony, the traditional song or costume epitomizing regional pride and identity, a symbol representing a culture, these all combine to reflect the culture.

I wish to reveal some of the diversity of the spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional landscape of a community. Making the connections among the various manifestations, to show their relationship with each other, and how they interlock, helps to form my view of the culture I am documenting. These displays of culture are significant, to me, in that they represent one of the more profound ways that humans can express themselves.”

And I think all of that comes through in his work.

Join documentary photographer Jason Gardner and me as we talk about his “Visual Anthropology”, and as we dissect one of the images from his travels documenting the ritual and festival of Carnival throughout 15 countries, on this Behind the Shot.