Lateinamerikanisches Wochenende — Event photography
Festival and event photography at the Latin American weekend at Schlachthof Wiesbaden. The Latin American Weekend at the Schlachthof in Wiesbaden. In…
The Latin American Weekend at the Schlachthof in Wiesbaden. The reportage takes both halves: the stage under the roof in front of the graffiti wall with an audience whose arms are up throughout, and the dancer in a turquoise and orange feather costume with the space in front of the banner to herself. In between, the market — empanadas on a paper plate, silver bangles with blue stones on blue cloth, patterned textiles at a stall.
A cultural festival has no center, and the pictures come from alternating between the stage and the lane. Twenty minutes at the front, twenty minutes among the stalls, and round again. Stay at the stage and you go home with a concert set, having missed the festival.
The frame taken over the heads of the crowd is the most important of the day, even though nobody in it appears large. It gives the measure: how many people are on the square, that the stage is small, and that the tower block behind belongs to the picture. That is the frame an organizer needs for the report — not a portrait of a musician that could have come from any summer fête.
At a daytime event the light is the real difficulty. The stage sits in shade under a roof, the audience stands in full afternoon sun, and there are a good two stops between them. Both at once is not possible. So the stage is photographed once the sun has moved off the square, and in the meantime the afternoon belongs to the audience and the stalls.
Feathers, in turn, only work against a quiet surface. A costume of two hundred turquoise and orange feathers dissolves completely in front of a graffiti wall. The printed banner is the only smooth surface on the whole site — which is why every dance frame is taken against it, and why the lettering on it is a gain rather than an intrusion.
- Place
- Schlachthof Wiesbaden
