(Article courtesy of Breach Bang Clear)
We’re going to be trying a few new thing now that SHOT show is behind us — one of those will be a February – long look at some great photographers…or, as the well informed call them, soulstealers.
Why soulstealers? Because some primitive societies (note: like the Mayan Chiapas, not sniveling Berkeley students) believe a photograph will seize and abscond with your soul.
Grunts: abscond.
Although not as widespread as some might believe, the fear of a stolen soul is a Real Thing, as Patricia Marks Greenfield discovered discovered while studying Nabenchauck in the ’60s. She had to give the locals a Polaroid, to restore the missing piece of their soul.
For instance the University of Chicago Press in the Maya of Chiapas, Patricia Marks Greenfield was tstdying the Chiapas Mayan community of Nabenchauk in the latter half of the 20th century. In 1969 the locals thought it would steal the sould, ut she gave them a Polaroid to keep, to restore the missing piece.
Others have run into similar problem; Isolde Brielmaier in Mombasa, Christraud Geary in Cameroon, and Buckley in post-colonial Gambia. Dont’ believe us? Read Tamar Garbs Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive, or Peffer and Cameron’s Portrait and Photography in Africa.
Anyway, today’s Soulstealer is, fittingly enough, a talented American Jedi named Chris Kamyszek of Chris K Photo.
A Michigan based, medically retired special missions aviator (and an in-flight engineer before that), Kamyszek is an H&Kophile, and a father of three (though you wouldn’t know it to look at their sublimely beautiful mom — who you’re seeing in some of these photos). Like most of us us at Breach-Bang-Clear, he is also an AIWB carrier.
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Photos courtesy of Breach Bang Clear
