Our road trip across America officially starts on October 1…We are trying to decide now whether we go from east to west or west to east…It doesn’t really matter. Nor does it really matter if we even make it across. All the way is a loose goal but not a requirement. The only “must” is that I manage a few good images. Off For A Family Drive is most surely based on family. That is the whole point. Yet “family” is loosely interpreted. Panos Skoulidas, Antoine D’Agata and I were most certainly a bonded family as we crossed North Dakota last spring as part of Magnum’s Looking for America project. We laughed together , we got so so frustrated together, we got scared together, and we suffered together. Our project pretty much fell through. Antoine did not take a single picture for it, and I took very few. Busted. It happens. At the same time, we became friends. Sure we were friends before, but we became the kind of friends you become when stuff goes wrong.
You find out about people when things go wrong.
Things will go wrong on the trip upcoming. We know damn well they will. That’s ok. We just need more right than wrong. So I am stacking the deck for right, but with a team that can handle wrong.
Candy Pilar Godoy, my first assistant in New York, and muse for (based on a true story) and I are building a team for the trek across. Panos will join us at some point to shoot video, help drive , and just do his best to do what he always does and put things right out there on the edge. Candy and I have obviously collaborated a lot. First in the Rio shooting itself, and later in the editing process where she proved herself a terrific editor as we created the Rio book along with Eva-Maria Kunz, Diego Orlando and Bryan my first born. So that was a family too. We have since traveled to Australia for the opening of (based on a true story), to Look3, and France for a projection at Arles of Tell It Like It Is, my first published family story.
This audience can watch it all here. Just like the audience that followed us for the making of the Rio book, you can see how I try to build a narrative etc for Family Drive. Sure a diary, but hopefully educational in nature for all. Just like with Rio, I am now looking at a blank canvas. I got nothing going. Nothing. Not a picture yet. 6 weeks in front of me and not only nothing , but with this audience watching. You can watch me nosedive to earth! For sure some of it will be a disaster as was our trip to North Dakota.
On the other hand, I like the hard edge. The abyss. The fear. The ecstasy. Why do you think I even do this?
Find out more. Join us on Oct 1 (more or less) and we will show you how it is done. I am joking of course. I have no clue what will happen nor how I will do it. Not a clue. I wake up in the middle of the night now thinking about it. Fear? Oh sure. Yet not of expectations from this audience. Fear of my own expectations is THE fear.
This could be epic, this could be another disaster. I have failed regularly throughout life. Mostly failed actually. Yet that is part of the deal. Part of the art. The way I like it.
-dah-
