However, the focus of this project is somewhat different. I believe that we come to know a city through the people who live there, so my goal is to depict the city of Charlottesville through its inhabitants. I intend to make portraits of as many Charlottesvillians as possible and share them, along with a little bit about each person, on this photoblog.
Feel free to contact me at cville.people@gmail.com if you would like to be part of the project or know someone who would.
You can see more of my photos on my other blog The Things I've Seen and on my Flickr stream. You can also follow me on Instagram (K_A_Sprouse) or Twitter (@K_A_Sprouse).
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Abdessamad, the incense vendor
There are a number of different vendors who set up tables or stands on the Downtown Mall, and their wares include things like hats, scarves, jewelry, and even incense. I tend not to be the biggest fan of incense, but Abdessamad’s products are quite extraordinary; the incense he sells is made by members of his family, and he has been selling it on the Downtown Mall for the better part of a year now. He explained to me the process for making it, and he let me take a sniff of a few different varieties, all of which had a sort of clean, pure scent to them, not the heavy aroma that I typically think of incense as having. Abdessamad is originally from Morocco, and in addition to his incense, he sells leather goods — Morocco is known for its fine leather work — jewelry, scarves, and some other art work. Next time you’re on the Downtown Mall, you should stop by his table and check it out.
Downtown Mall in Charlottesville, VA
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Alwin, the tourist
As I photographer, I often tend to notice other people who are walking around with cameras, and Alwin was hard not to notice, since he had a monopod attached to his. As we walked beside each other along the Downtown Mall, I struck up a conversation, and he immediately began asking me questions about Charlottesville. It turns out that he was visiting Charlottesville for the week and was hoping to do some street photography on the Downtown Mall, since somebody had told him that it was the place where you find the most people out and about. Normally that’s true, but on a quite hot and humid Sunday afternoon, there just weren’t that many people out on the Mall. I explained to him that he would have much better luck late Friday afternoon or on Saturday, told him about Fridays After Five, and suggested that he might try the Charlottesville City Market on Saturday morning, if he’ll still be here next weekend. He told me that in New York, he works as a transplant coordinator, which means that he works with the individuals and/or the families of individuals who have volunteered to donate their organs and are near death or have died. He said that it can be quite difficult work, as you might imagine, but that he feels good about the fact that seven or eight people may end up benefiting from the kindness and generosity of just one donor.
Downtown Mall in Charlottesville, VA
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Dylan, the renaissance man
One of my few vices is that I like to smoke the occasional cigar, and my favorite places to do so in Charlottesville are outside at Miller’s (www.millersdowntown.com/Millers_Downtown.html) or the Cville Smoke Shop (www.cvillesmokeshop.com). I met Dylan at the cigar shop, and he’s one of those people who seems to be able to do a little bit of everything. He’s from New York, originally, and he studied visual arts in college, but now he works in a highly technical field that combines intellectual property law and finance. He has a website where he shares his creative works (www.studiodk.org), but as for his day job, I’ll let you ask him about it, since I have no doubt that I wouldn’t explain it clearly.
Downtown Mall in Charlottesville, VA
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Tammi, the artist
I had just finished making a portrait of Josh, the advocate, when one of the other volunteers at the voter registration booth made a comment about my having approached a stranger to ask for a portrait. The first thing that I noticed about Tammi was her energy — you could almost feel the positive vibes flowing from her friendly face — and when I explained my project to her, she agreed to participate. Different people respond quite differently to my little blurb about the Cville People Project, and Tammi seemed to be genuinely interested in it as an artistic project. She is the first one who actually asked me what I was hoping to do with it, what direction I thought it might take, which was both refreshing and a little disconcerting, as the only answer I could give was that I started with the idea of getting to know Charlottesville through its people but that I hadn’t considered what, if any, the end product would be beyond a series of street portraits and descriptions of the people I encounter. I wasn’t particularly surprised, then, to learn that Tammi is an artist, a painter, which fit perfectly with her openness and engagement with my project. She told me that she doesn’t have any of her art for display on the internet, since she’s not particularly tech savvy and hasn’t been able to build a site that she’s happy with. I hope that she does, though, because I have a feeling that her art is as unique and full of life as she is.
Charlottesville City Market in Charlottesville, VA
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Josh, the advocate
Virginia has been a battleground state in the past couple of presidential elections, and with another one on the horizon, the Obama campaign has already started registering voters, both in the Obama campaign headquarters on the Downtown Mall and in other places, such as the Charlottesville City Market. Josh was one of the volunteers working at the registration both at the Market today, and when I asked him why he was willing to stand out in the blistering heat and wilting humidity to register voters, he told me that he thinks that it’s important to do something to help bring about some changes in how things are done in Washington. He specifically mentioned that he’d like to see the tax code reformed to be more equitable, so that those who have great wealth would pay higher taxes and those who are struggling would pay less of their income to the government. He was also against the high level of defense spending that diverted funds that could have been spent on social programs and the educational system in order to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Whether or not you agree with his politics, you have to admire people like Josh who don’t simply sit around complaining about things they don’t like but actually get out and actively participate in changing them.
Charlottesville City Market in Charlottesville, VA
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Frances, the shy one
When photographing strangers, I am occasionally struck by how people’s perception of themselves differs from what I might have expected. Take Frances, for example: when I asked her if she would be willing to participate in my project, she agreed, but she told me that she didn’t think that she was particularly photogenic. While I understand that some quite attractive people don’t look as good in photos as they do in person, I was pretty sure that she would be a great portrait subject, and I think that her portrait reflects that. After I made just a couple of frames, though, she told me that she was beginning to feel uncomfortable in front of the camera, so we stopped, I gave her my card, and she went on her way. If she sees this photo, I hope that she’s happy with it, since despite her protestations to the contrary, I think that she’s quite photogenic.
Downtown Mall in Charlottesville, VA
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Sakeena, the peaceful one
One of the things that has come from working on my street portraiture project is that I find myself paying more attention to the faces of people I see as I go about my daily life, not just looking at their facial features, but also trying to look beyond their outward appearance to try to get a sense of their personality by noticing how they carry themselves, how they choose to dress or wear their hair, and how their expression might indicate something about who they are. When I first saw Sakeena, I had this impression of a calm intensity — calm and intense not usually being words that one thinks of as going together — and I immediately wanted to make her portrait. I approached her and explained my project, and she agreed to participate. When she told me her name, I asked her what language it came from and what it meant in that language. She explained that Sakeena is an Arabic name and that it is related to the Arabic word for peace or serenity or tranquility, which seemed to fit her perfectly. She doesn’t speak much Arabic, although part of her ancestry is Iraqi, but she is studying it now and hopes to spend a year between graduating high school and beginning college studying the language in the Middle East. When she told me that she was a student at the Renaissance School, I wasn’t entirely surprised, as all of the alums of that school that I have met seem to be really interesting people.
Downtown Mall in Charlottesville, VA
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Sam, the art student
A lot of photographers are obsessed with camera gear, and on various websites you can even find blogs devoted to “camera porn”: photos of cameras and lenses taken by the most devout gearheads. I am not as obsessed as most, although when I’m out and about, I do tend to notice people who are wearing cameras. I saw Sam wandering down the Downtown Mall, stopping here and there to take photos with his medium format rangefinder camera, and since that’s not the sort of camera I tend to see on the Downtown Mall — low-end DSLRs, point and shoots, and iPhones are the order of the day — I decided to investigate. It turns out that Sam is a second year Art Photography student at Bard College, which means that he has the good fortune to study with people like Stephen Shore, Larry Fink, and other well-known photographers, and he seemed well aware of how rare such opportunities are. I explained my project to him, and he was willing to participate, so we found a wall to use as a backdrop, and I made a few photos. You can check out Sam’s Flickr stream here: www.flickr.com/photos/arrestyourself
Downtown Mall in Charlottesville, VA
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Josh, the traveler
I give each one of the participants in my project a sort of nickname or handle, and sometimes it can be a challenge deciding what to choose. Not with Josh, though, who pretty quickly uttered the sentence “I’m a traveler” and went on to explain that he has already lived in 10 states and is soon going to be leaving Charlottesville to add at least a couple more to his list. He works at Chaps and can often be seen outside staffing the coffee cart. In addition to slinging java, he’s a photographer, although he said that he hasn’t been taking many photos lately. Maybe what he needs in order to revive his photography is just a change of scenery, a little trip somewhere, an opportunity for some travel?
Downtown Mall in Charlottesville, VAPhoto with 8 notes
Tristan, the psychobilly rocker
Have you ever heard of psychobilly? I hadn’t either, until I met Tristan, who was playing his acoustic guitar on the Downtown Mall. I liked his style and went up to ask him for a portrait. He was a little concerned, at first, because he didn’t want to walk off and leave his guitar and his guitar case, where folks had been tossing in dollars and change for his musical efforts. Luckily my wife was with me, and she agreed to watch his things for him while we walked over to a less sunny patch of pavement for a portrait. Tristan is the lead singer for a band called Rock n Roll Cannibals, and they play a type of music called psychobilly, a sort of twisted relative of rockabilly, and they just released their first album, entitled aptly enough, Blood and Pommade. Tristan had the sort of presence that made it clear why he’s the frontman of a successful band, and he was a wonderful portrait subject. Plus, as is so often the case with the people I’ve met on my project, he taught me something new and intersting.
Downtown Mall in Charlottesville, VA
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