The Ritual of Danger and Style; Virna Haffer (w/ Ed Pavez) - Episode 78 | All Through a Lens: A Podcast About Film Photography

Show notes and photos here: allthroughalens.com

On this episode, we’ll be talking to photographer and playwright, Ed Pavez (@edpavez on IG). We’ll also be telling you about the many varied styles of mediums of Pacific Northwest photographer Virna Haffer. Oh, and Eric visited the Contact High exhibit! We’ll push the button on the answering machine and have a little bit of fun along the way.

Eduardo Pavez Goye

We were honored to have Ed Pavez as a guest on this episode. Ed is a film photographer, playwrite, musician and traveler. We talked about photography, of course, but also growing up in Chile, protesting, zine making, creative ruts, and whether raisins belong in empanadas.

IG: @edpavez

YouTube: Ed Pavez

Web: eduardopavezgoye.com

Here are a few selections of his photographic work:

Virna Haffer

Unless you were from the Puget Sound area in the first half of the 1900s, you probably haven’t heard of Virna Haffer. She was a Tacoma, Washington area photographer whose variety in both style and medium should be celebrated far more than it is today.

Virna showed us that we should not be limited by age or even camera. We shouldn’t confine ourselves to a single medium or format. She even called into question the importance of having our own specific style. She began with photography from the age of 15, and sixty years later had evolved her work into something entirely new. She was constantly experimenting, changing and allowing her art to express whatever worlds she could imagine.

She produced so much variety! Here’s a smattering of it…

Contact High

Eric visited the Contact High exhibit at Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture. The exhibit features over 100 contact sheets taken of the hip-hop community.

The show was mostly old school, golden age – Grand Master Flash through Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul, but also covered Missy Elliot, Tupac, Mos Def.

He also picked up the Contact High book by Vikki Tobak, which contains most of the contact sheets (no De La Soul, for example). Plus many more. Usually shows a full page version of the most popular frame from the sheet. While the show was heavier on the golden age, this has a lot more 90s and 00s.

Each contact sheet has a blurb by the photographer. They often tell which cameras they were using, but generally talk about the shoot.

Here are some cell phone shots from the museum: