A stunningly-illustrated interweaving of first person narratives, photographs, cultural commentary and soundscapes, Bright Balkan Morning provides an unprecedented view of settled Romani lives in the Balkans and the unique roles of "Gypsy" instrument players in the region. These Romani instrumentalists from Iraklia, an ancient Greek Macedonian crossroads and market town that is home to about 2,000 Roma, provide the sounds that facilitate parties and rites of passage, performing an essential and highly valued service for their multicultural neighbors. At the heart of the book are ten first-person Romani life stories. Charles and Angeliki Keil situate these personal accounts within the cultural, historical and economic setting of Greek Macedonia, and provide an overview of musical events in diverse localities. The 161 black and white photographs by Dick Blau include parades, parties, weddings and wrestling matches; portraits of the musicians and their families; studies of domestic life in the Romani neighborhood; reproductions from Romani family albums and other historic images. Steven Feld's soundscape CD features the voices and instruments of people whose stories are told in the book. Familiar sounds of markets, church, neighborhood and countryside set the context for exuberant performances at home and at parties, cafes and nightclubs. CONTRIBUTORS: Angeliki Vellow Keil, Charles Keil, Steven Feld, Ian Hancock.

Bright Balkan Morning: Romani Lives and the Power of Music in Greek Macedonia

Arts & Photography

Dick Blau

Charles Keil

Steven Feld

Angeliki Vellou Keil

Photography & Video

Wesleyan University Press

Photography is usually written about from the point of view of either the photographer or the viewer. Living with His Camera offers a perspective rarely represented—that of the photographed subject. Dick Blau has been making art photographs of the people he lives with for more than thirty years; cultural theorist Jane Gallop has been living with him—and his camera—for twenty years. 
Living with His Camera is Gallop’s nuanced meditation on photography and the place it has in her private life and in her family. A reflection on family, it attempts—like Blau’s photographs themselves—to portray the realities of family life beyond the pieties of conventional representations. Living with His Camera is about some of the most pressing issues of visuality and some of the most basic issues of daily life. Gallop considers intimate photographs of moments both dramatic and routine: of herself giving birth to son Max or crying in the midst of an argument with Blau, pouring herself cereal as Max colors at the breakfast table, or naked, sweeping the floor. With her trademark candor, humor, and critical acumen, Gallop mixes personal reflection with close readings of Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida, Susan Sontag’s On Photography, Kathryn Harrison’s novel Exposure, and Pierre Bourdieu’s Photography. 
Presenting his photographs and her text, Living with His Camera is a portrait of a couple whose professional activity is part of their private lives and whose private life is viewed through their professional gazes. While most of us set aside rigorous thought when we turn to the sentimental realm of home life, Gallop and Blau look at each other not only with great affection but also with the keen focus of a sharp, critical gaze.

Living with His Camera

Gallop, Jane

Duke University Press Books

The wildest carnival in Europe explored in sixty color and black and white photographs by Dick Blau, a revealing historical and cultural essay by Agapi Amanatidis and Panayotis Panopoulos, and a complimentary CD and a DVD by Steven Feld.

Skyros Carnival

Agapi Amanatidis

Panayotis Panopoulos

VoxLox

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Books by Dick Blau