Originally comprised of the three Hackney brothers - Bobby, Dannis and David, the band Death has to be the greatest musical re-discovery in recent history. Punk without even knowing it both sonically and symbolically, Death was doomed to obscurity when refusing Clive Davis' (of Columbia Records) request that they change their name. They pressed 500 copies of a 7 song EP on their own Tryangle records then disbanded the band by moving away from Detroit.
Brother David passed of cancer in 2000, but before his passing he urged his brothers to hold on to the master tapes, as one day "the world would coming looking for them."
David's prediction came true and more than thirty years later, thanks to the help of Drag City records, Death has been resurrected in the form of re-issue of the original 7 song EP, …For The Whole World To See. Death has since enjoyed a new found and quite unexpected bit of fame, the New York Times called them "the band that was punk before punk was punk," and Mos Def has a documentary about them in the works.
Uber hip music festival Fun Fun Fun in Austin hosted one of their select few reunion shows, I was lucky enough to hang with the guys before they hit the stage and shoot their set. Links to music and articles after the (hand developed)photos.
NYT Article.
Guardian UK.
Mos Def doco.
PEACE to you all!
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Death Is The Most Important Band You Have Never Heard Of
Saturday, November 14, 2009
FFF Film 09 1
Fun Fun Fun, quite possibly my favorite music event of the year went down last weekend. This is the third year I have shot FFF for Skope Mag and Meow Poww Media, and every year it gets better. Growing so weary of digital, I shot mostly film this year - lots of black and white which I have yet to process and a few rolls of C41 and E6. The C41 I sent to the lab and unfortunately the entire roll is underexposed - my fault, changed film too fast and had the ISO set in manual at a stop under the rating of the film. However, just got the E6 roll back from the lab and I am pretty excited. Next week I will do a full FFF recap and write up, but for now here are my favorite shots - 7 shots out of a 36 exposure roll, not a bad hit rate. Many more photos - film and (bleh) digital.
PEACE to you all!
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
Maui Rollin
Was in Maui for a day helping a friend trying to find a new place and we found this gem (actually there was two of them) parked out front of one of the apartment complexes we looked at. One day I would love to do a photo story on the real Hawaii - it's not all mai tai's and luaus. Thanks to the perfect weather and the tremendous high cost of living, there is staggering poverty and drug abuse. Here is a great photo story on the tent cities of Waianae.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Out of the Shadows
Captured this one with my handy little Petri 35mm camera, C41 developed by hand. To get the funky print look around the register, I used artists tape to tape the strip of negs to the scanner's glass instead of using the crappy neg carrier that came with the scanner.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Testing 1,2,3
While the love of my life is off traveling half way around the world - I have decided to confine myself to the darkroom for the next month. This is a test strip from a print I ran on Saturday. 
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Fresh Batch
Spent about 3 hours on Monday evening developing seven rolls of film, then spent a subsequent 3 hours yesterday morning cutting, sleeving and scanning. I am pretty stoked on the results, but probably won't post to many of them here. Hand developing film makes the connection to the images so very personal to me, and just scanning many of them does not do the images justice. So, over the next few weeks I will be sneaking into the lab to print them by hand. 
Thursday, June 25, 2009
NYC MOMA
Snapped this strange little image using my old school Petri, which can be hit or miss, on my last visit to NYC. This as en E6 image (notice the E100G registration stripe) that I hand processed with C41 chemistry.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Unseen, Continued
In an earlier post I introduced you to those I called the Unseen during Bay to Breakers. Here are a few more images from that series - a few C41 images that I just developed at home.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Love Is a Battlefield
Last night I developed six rolls of color film at home, and just cut and scanned the results. I have a very cheap scanner, so a lot of the images appear to be color shifted but I am pretty sure that that is the annoyingly horrible automatic exposure correction.
The images below I shot back a few months ago when Israel was bombarding Palestine and a large rally was held in downtown SF. I was shooting with my Petri Color35, an old boutique automatic camera from the late 60's. The film as usual, was far past it's date of expiration. 
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Screen Snap
Working on a video tutorial on how to develop your own color film at home. My first foray into video and Final Cut Pro has made me realize why I love still images so much :)
Friday, May 22, 2009
M O S
Mates of State
Chromogenic Print
1/3, Artist Test Print
Registration is misaligned, but can be cut down.
$100 UPDATE: This print has been sold and is no longer available.
ryan.chahanovich@gmail.com
Monday, May 18, 2009
Unseen
Yesterday was possibly the most debaucherous day of the year, known fondly as Bay to Breakers. As tens of thousands of partially clothed and fully intoxicated people trashed the streets of San Francisco, few noticed a certain brand of "entrepreneur" quietly sifting through the refuse left behind. At each major trash dumping station those who make their "living" or at least a good part of it from collecting and recycling cans were hard at work sorting through the garbage searching for glass and aluminum.
I shot 5 rolls of film yesterday and have already developed and scanned one (BW). The other rolls are C41 and E6, so they will be developed later. Of course I took plenty of not safe for work images (!), but when it comes to B2B those are a dime dozen aren't they?
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Clothing Optional
Well, again this space has been unused for sometime and this time I am not going to apologize. As of late I have been spending less and less time on the computer and actually taking the time to enjoy life outdoors in the wonderful city I live in, I highly recommend it! Have been creating a lot of images though - all film - and developing rolls as well. Here is a shot of me at work with my Mamiya 645E manual out in Wilbur Springs.
Here is a link to a few more images from Wilbur.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Thoughts on Paying Attention
Let me start by saying I am a huge nerd, and I love all things web. Blogging, Twitter, RSS feeds, Crackbook - it is safe to say I spend a lot of time broadcasting my life and tuning in to the lives of other's on the web. But, while at SXSW, especially the Interactive session I noticed that people get so wrapped up in broadcasting every moment that they forget to actually slow down, be in a moment, and absorb an experience as it happens.
The more I reflect on this, the more I feel like detaching (to an extent) from technology, and just BE in a moment. To me, shooting film is perfect for such a mindset because after depressing the shutter there is no instant review. For better or worse that moment of light is captured. A few days or weeks down the road when the film is developed and scanned/printed and enough time has separated you from the event you can reflect and transmit. Shooting film means being present and aware, in my own little world at least.
With that here are a few rough images from SXSW Music, three of my favorite performances captured as moments of light. Bear in mind, this film had been expired for several years!
Circle Jerks at Emos, I flipped my shit when they played Coup D'Etat and I hopped in the pit and am quite sure I hit several people in the head with my camera.
The Great Lakes at Red 7. I could have gone either way until at the very end the guitarist hung his guitar from the rafters while it fedback like a banshee, he then climbed the rafters himself hanging above the crowd - awesome!
Efterklang at Habana Calle. Considered by many to be the Beatles of Denmark, the performance was overwhelmingly beautiful.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
God Bless Texas
Let me start by saying thus far I love San Francisco and all, but my heart and soul will forever reside in Austin, Texas. It was wonderful to be back, it felt like I hadn't missed a step. Moving to SF was the right thing to do for now - but it will not be home forever.
So, here are a few snaps of two Texas icons - the Lone Star Flag and Kinky Friedman. The images are super grainy, I was shooting ISO 3200 Kodak that had been expired for over 5 years. In retrospect I should have hit it harder (more exposure time, wider aperture) and possibly dipped it another minute or two in the D76 developer, but oh well.
Also, as promised my write ups for film and music are on the way. Getting ready for a photo exhibition in the Haight, preparing negatives, master files and mounting is keeping me super busy.
