Book review: Striking Balance by Dinesh Boaz

Posted on April 7th, 2019 by Cary Benbow

In The Wild – Othonoi, Greece

The coffee-table quality book Striking Balance by Dinesh Boaz contains striking, saturated, color images of our world as seen from above. Boaz creates these aerial images in beautiful places around the globe: Hawaii, California, Arizona, Utah, Greece, Sri Lanka, New York City, and Florida.

Photographs from Striking Balance have been featured in Conde Nast online, and shown in scenes of a glam NYC apartment make-over in Martha Stewart online. The visual impact of Boaz’s photos lend themselves easily to decorating with large colorful photographs that add vibrant visual punch, or to serve as an escape to imagine oneself hovering above a Hawaiian beach. Boaz’s book introduction catchline of “Manifestations of the power of water, wind and time” even feels epic.

While doing some research to learn more about the book and the photographer, I read a feature on Boaz’s work. According to a certain camera manufacturer website, which states he is a compensated professional photographer for them, Boaz makes comments about his creative process. I feel I was better off not knowing some of the lucky happenstance events that came about to create these images. The process involved simply trying a couple different settings on the camera, or deciding to ‘slow down’ instead of selecting burst mode for capturing the images on a certain trip. The decision to turn around and ‘get lucky’ with a shot behind the helicopter was especially notable. The un-pedantic process and verbose self-centered accolades detracted from my initial reaction of genuine interest and liking the book. I guess I’d rather not know how the sausage is made; I’ll just enjoy the snack.

All in all, I can’t deny the impact these images make. The photographs of beaches, mountains, and even tennis courts at night lend us a viewpoint many of us will never have in person. I can appreciate his images of patterns and rhythms made apparent from an aerial view. I imagine it is thrilling to lean out of an open cockpit to capture scenes such as these. So perhaps it is best to read Boaz’s own words, as he describes his project in this way: “The feeling of the works I have shot between 2016 – 2018 is to show that people, water, rocks, and metal elements can work together when viewed from above. The photos sometimes show chaos and disruption, while some show serenity and bliss – in the end, no matter what the subject portrayed – there is a unifying beauty in shapes, emotion, and stillness. The balance of these diametric forces is what is to be experienced when viewing the works.”

Layers in Movement – Moab, Utah

Blue Dream – Calypso Cave, Othonoi, Greece

Lucky In Love – West Side Highway, New York

Warriors on Water – Banzai Pipeline, Hawaii

Desert Isle – Kane’ohe Bay, Hawaii

Burners – South Beach, Florida

Striking Balance by Dinesh Boaz
Designed by Adam Osadon, printed by Edition One Printing
Hardcover, 78 pages
Limited 1st edition (2018)
ISBN-10: 1532397267

To learn more about Striking Balance or see more images by Dinesh Boaz, visit his website. All images shown are © Dinesh Boaz

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Book Review: Moon Shine by Rachel Boillot

Posted on April 6th, 2019 by Hans Durrer

Banjo-pickin’ Wade Hill. Knoxville, TN. 2014

In order to survive, we human beings do just about everything. We’ve even invented time – an organisational tool that is immensely useful (and secures Swiss watch makers a decent income) but also terrorises us. From Lisa Volpe, who contributed the essay “Natural Rhythms: Time in the Cumberland Plateau” to this tome, I learn that time has a different meaning in this area in east Tennessee, “nestled amid the Appalachian Mountains, some of the oldest mountains in the northern hemisphere. The sensuous, gentle curves of the ancient range stand hard and resilient against the eternal sky. This landscape of soft daylight, mature green glades, and misty mornings has a particular subtlety and rhythm that is neither hurried nor lacking.”

Although the musical tradition of the Cumberland Plateau was the catalyst for this work, Lisa Volpe identifies time “as the major theme of the series and Boillot’s treatment of it is both subtle and shrewd.” Is this a photo book about time then? Well, sure, every photograph is (also) about time but photographer Rachel Boillot expresses it very personally by, for instance, photographing Tom McCarroll with his instruments and later on in his casket with his fiddle near his hands.

Rick and Gunsmoke the Cat. Wilder, TN. 2017

I very much warmed to Rachel Boillot’s “Author’s Note” in which she describes how this book came about. “I first went to Tennessee in June of 2014. My intention was to spend two months making photographs for a park ranger. The subject matter was opaque to me, but I needed a gig. Folkorist, naturalist, and musician Bob Fulcher, who currently manages Tennessee’s Cumberland Trail State Scenic Park, was initially dismayed by my lack of knowledge regarding old-time country music. Turned out this was the focus of the job. Bob believes that preserving cultural resources is just as important as land conservation in this region, which is the more explicit prerogative of the parks system. But in Tennessee, music is ‘in the water’, as the saying goes. I had absolutely no knowledge of country music – not to mention its history and the old-time traditions that preceded contemporary country music.”

Opal Playing Handmade Gourd Instrument. Jamestown, TN. 2017.

I can’t imagine a much better way to approach a photographic assignment. I’m not joking, not at all, for I believe to approach something without prior knowledge or, as the Zen Buddhists say, with a beginner’s mind, can be highly rewarding – and in the case of Rachel Boillot it indeed was. The story of her time in Tennessee and of her encounters with the folks living there are a fascinating read, not least because of her unpretentiousness.

Eugene Hensley and Jobie Pray. Wilder, TN. 2017

The last section of “Moon Shine” is entitled “In their own words” and that describes aptly what it is – oral histories that Rachel Boillot gathered during the process of filming the ‘Cumberland Folklife’ series of documentary films that she co-produced with Kyle Wilkinson. These stories give a good insight into an America we rarely get to read about in the mainstream media. Many of the photos in this section (from family archives) are in black and white.

The photos (in colour) depict the landscape and people in different postures, often with eyes cast down or together with their instruments, nobody’s smiling at the camera.

Moon Shine
by Rachel Boillot
Daylight 2019
www.daylightbooks.org

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