I first met Michael Nguyen on a beautiful spring day in Tokyo, the flowers in bloom. We were in a Shibuya park on Meiji Dori, where an anti-nuke rally climaxed in a costumed hippie drum offensive, bursting in the dappled light. If I remember correctly, Mike had a can of beer and a cigarette (he [...]
November 11th, 2012 was the 37th anniversary of Angola gaining independence from Portugal. But independence sparked off a long and bloody civil war between the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) against the the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), [...]
“Live an interesting life and you’ll take interesting pictures.” – Jim O’Connell You know the photographer Arnaud De Grave from such HESO projects as the interview with Christiania documentary photographer Charlotte Østervang as well as his in-depth gastronomic reportage on French Truffles and the simple art of Gnocchi. Of course. The French-born, raised and educated [...]
As the sparse synthesizer and video games breaks beep to life on the first track of The Stone Collection Of Tim & Puma Mimi we hear a Puma Mimi ask a question, “Acchi, kocchi, acchi, kocchi, dochi ni ikou?” (Here, there, here, there, which way to go?). It is unclear if she’s asking us or [...]
Third-party marketing content, Wikipedia-plagiarized articles, hateful commentary, Fox News–it’s easy to be negative about the internet. It’s also impossible to deny its positive impact. Whole photographic communities have formed due to the largesse of Flickr and Instagram, to name a few. Yet the net that spreads wide also has large holes. Many talented, young artists [...]
HESO: Who are you and where are you from? Give us some background please. Julia: I was born an only child in an ordinary Soviet family from Kazakhstan. I graduated from the Faculty of Journalism and worked as an editor in glossy magazines for a long time. I had no dream of becoming a professional [...]
HESO: When did you first pick up a camera? Edward: Very late on, but I’m not looking back. I’m looking to keep taking my photos to the next level and to move all my old pictures just as far round the world as they can go. Sometimes I look back at old photos and think [...]
This has never happened before. I don’t really know how to proceed. It is the internet age after all and who does interviews in person anymore? What small media outlet can afford to send a staff writer and photographer anywhere these days, let alone out to Singapore, where despite the allure of talking to burgeoning [...]
In the old days, when a man was building his credibility as an artist, he did so rather anonymously. There might be a break here or there in this or that magazine or fashion catalogue but it would be difficult for this person to build a public name outside the small circle of his metropolitan [...]
It goes like the joke: A guy walks into a bar in Tokyo, orders a beer and looks around for people, mostly men, fondling, mostly large, black, analog, cameras. Eyes peer up over pint glasses as the man approaches with his own large, black, analog camera and sets it and the beer down with satisfying [...]
Even as it becomes more mainstream, the lines of modern documentary film are ever blurring. No longer is documenting, “what is real?” the most apt, but rather, how do we instill the viewer with a big enough sense of awe at the world (and universe) around them to get them to become activists themselves? [...]
On Gebrüder Teichmann‘s latest album, They Made Us Do It (Festplatten, 2011) the Teichmann brothers point the way to the future by melding an understanding of the past with thick dance-y beats that make you want to question the present…on the dancefloor. Being designated Germany’s electronic musical ambassadors by the Goethe-Institut has not only not [...]
HESO:Can you tell us a little bit about the name “Lomodachi”? What does it mean? Where did it come from? Who are you? Lomodachi: Lomodachi is almost like an alter-ego that was born in Japan sometime in 2004. It’s a portmanteau combining the Japanese word for friend (tomodachi) and Lomography…which I got into back in [...]
Why do some races of people seem to have an advantage over others? Why are some countries rich and others poor? Why are some people haves and others have-nots? For argument’s sake let’s say that having (education, health, work) is the ostensible goal of human society on earth and not-having (basic somatic needs insecure) is [...]
