Gore's Art: Made in the Ghetto

Please visit my NEW SITE and read about Russell there!

Russell Gore

While walking through the French Market in New Orleans during my recent trip, hoping for inspiration for our photo assignment, I spotted Russell Gore. His bright green shirt and the gold medallion around his neck are what drew my eye initially. He was sitting at a table laid out with his artwork and was finishing some additional pieces while waiting for customers. He calls his business Gore's Art: Made in the Ghetto and he designs and makes jewelry. He uses colorful strips of plastic, molded together, to create bright and funky pins. I liked them so much I bought two of them.

Russell is a passionate golfer who plays whenever he has time to get out on the course. His green shirt is significant in that he always wears it on the Sunday of The Masters if Tiger is in the hunt. I don't know if he'll be wearing it today or not! He hopes to see Tiger competing for the green jacket again but confesses that he thinks it may be a while before that happens again.

When I asked if I could take his picture, I told him that the shirt and the medallion were what had originally caught my eye. He said, "There's a story about the medallion." I asked him to tell me and he suggested I take the picture first. I should have taken the hint but I insisted that he tell me. That medallion you see in the photo is made from his wife's gold. She died in his arms during Hurricane Katrina. After her death, he gathered it all up and turned it into that medallion. He finished by saying "You can take my money and all the rest that I have and I'll go on. If you take my medallion, I'm coming after you." Somehow, I had trouble focusing the camera to take his picture after that.

As I took my leave, he gave me a reproduction of a newspaper article that had been written about him. When I finally got a chance to read it on the plane home, I discovered he was even more remarkable than I had first thought. Credit goes to Dre Dorse, the author of that article, for the following tidbits:

• He was born and raised in the St. Thomas housing development in New Orleans, otherwise known as the projects.
• He studied commercial art and photography in college and worked as a graphic artist before setting out to start his own business.
• He spends at least two days a week back at the St. Thomas projects working with kids to try and keep them away from drugs and other destructive behaviors

Russell truly is a remarkable, humble, thoughtful man and it was a real pleasure to share a few minutes of his time. His art is cool too!

New Orleans: Day 1

First things first: I had a wonderful time in New Orleans on my National Geographic Weekend Photo Expedition. I met some great people, both as part of the program and the locals, learned a lot, and got better (I hope). It was wonderful to meet Tyrone, Jennifer and Krista and they worked hard to make sure we had a good time and a great experience. I'm already trying to figure out which one to do next. Tucson or Santa Fe look mighty interesting... There is far too much to detail in a single post so I'm going to be writing about the weekend for several posts to come.

How it worked: For the 2 full days of the workshop, we went out to shoot with a specific focus in mind. We were out for 3-4 hours and then returned to the classroom to review our take. We were each expected to pick our top 20 images from the day and then sit with one of the instructors (Tyrone one day, Jennifer the next) to critique those 20. As part of the critique, they would pick their top 3 or 4 images to be displayed for comment to the entire group. The critiques were an extremely useful vehicle for learning what to look for in a photo, particularly as we were encouraged to listen in on each other's critiques when we had the time.

Day 1 officially began at 9am. However, about half of us met Tyrone in Jackson Square at 5:45am to catch the sunrise and beautiful early morning light. I ended up selecting a couple of these in my 20 for the day (more in a future post), including this one of the St. Louis Cathedral.

Off to New Orleans

I had another blog post planned for this week (a shoot involving colored gels on the flash) but I ran out of time to write it. It will still be there to write when I get home. This post is guaranteed to be my shortest yet!

I'm on the plane (and hoping that blogger works well enough on the iPad to let me post this) en route to New Orleansa by way of Atlanta, for a National Geographic Weekend Photo Expedition. I turned 50 last fall and this trip was my birthday present. It took a while to find the right expedition but this is it. I'm at once excited and terrified.

I hope to have lots of good images and stories to share on the blog after this weekend. As the cliché says: stay tuned...