photo book

Truly Blessed - Slide Show, Book Talk and Closing Reception /  by Chris Suspect

The Community Church of Washington, DC, Apr. 20, 2014 © Chris Suspect 2022

This coming weekend will be a busy one. On Saturday, June 29, I will be presenting a slide show and book talk about Truly Blessed at Maryland Meadworks in Hyattsville, Maryland. The event starts at 7pm and I will narrate the photographic process behind the making of the book. After the slide show there will be a conversation with Jason Hamacher of Lost Origins Gallery and Bilal Ali, book contributor and photographic subject. We will discuss, race, sexuality and faith, and the discrimination that faces queer African Americans on all three fronts.

On Sunday, we will celebrate the closing of the exhibit for Truly Blessed at Lost Origins Gallery in Mount Pleasant, DC, with a special live podcast of Stage Craft with legendary DC music producer Don Zientara and Alex Vidales of the band Pilot Waves. Zientara and Vidales will not only discuss the exhibit but also my early music career as a member of The Suspects and owner of Torque Records. Bilal Ali will also speak to the exhibit.

Details

Truly Blessed - Slide Show and Conversation with Bilal Ali and Jason Hamacher

Saturday, June 29th, 7-9 pm
Free

Maryland Meadworks
4700 Rhode Island Ave., Suite Bee
Hyattsville, MD 20781

Truly Blessed - Closing Reception with the Stage Craft Podcast

Sunday, June 30th, 3-6 pm
Free

Lost Origins Gallery
3110 Mt Pleasant St NW, 2nd Floor
Washington, DC 20010

About the book and exhibition

“Truly Blessed” documents a marginalized community’s response to racial and religious discrimination. Working closely with the Community Church of Washington, Suspect uses his camera to contrast the sacred and secular.

“Sometimes it is only through photographs that we can see the sacred in the secular, or the secular in the sacred. This collection, Truly Blessed, uses photography to forge a conversation between the sacred black church and secular sexual/erotic spaces, capturing sites where the body, mind, and spirit converge. Suspect’s attention to the subtlety of the performances of everyday people—engaging in rituals of their own choosing—illustrates the diverse and dynamic realities of being black and queer in America.”

– Jeffery Q. McCune, PhD Frederick Douglass Professor of American-American Literature and Culture, University of Rochester.

For more info visit
https://lostorigins.gallery/exhibitions/truly-blessed/

To see a selection of work from this exhibit visit
https://www.chrissuspect.com/truly-blessed

"Path to Insurrection" Exhibition Catalog for Flashback Museum, Torino, Italy /  by Chris Suspect

The exhibition catalog for my “Path to Insurrection” exhibit is now hot off the presses. It contains all 115 images from the exhibit in Torino, Italy, at Flashback Habitat museum. The exhibit spans 5 rooms and 3 terraces and is divided into 6 sections, “Election Night,” “Trump’s Inauguration,” “Women’s March,” “Protests from 2017 - 2020,” “Biden Wins,” “January 6,” and “Biden’s Inauguration.”

The forward is written by Jim Bourg, Reuters Photos Editor in Charge of Washington. Bourg served throughout the 2016 election, the Trump administration and the tumultuous 2020 presidential election and its aftermath.

Chris Suspect’s gritty, in your face, in the midst of the action style was a perfect fit as he set out to capture the chaos and conflict on the streets of Washington throughout the 4 years of the Trump administration and at the end of the 2020 U.S. presidential campaign, with its contentious and at times violent aftermath. Renowned war photographer Robert Capa said back in 1954: “If your photographs aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.” This has never been a problem for Chris. His work in PATH TO INSURRECTION consistently takes the reader into the midst of the action. Some of his images harken back to the stark black and white realism of Weegee, the bizarre and sometimes shocking street portraits of Diane Arbus, or the street photography of his classic inspirations Elliot Erwitt, Josef Koudelka and Garry Winogrand. Not considering himself a news photographer or constrained by specific assignments or deadlines, his motivation is consistently to just to make the most compelling, interesting and unique images possible.

The catalog will be available soon by mail order world wide from King Koala Press in Italy.

The exhibit itself is wild! When one enters the hallway to the exhibition rooms, you are greeted with the sound of protest, a police light, and smoke from a fog machine.

It has been featured in all of Italy’s national media and in several international art publications. From TV to radio to print, it has been getting a lot coverage.

The exhibition runs through June 2 and then will travel to another country in Europe in November, TBA!

How Truly Blessed Came to Be /  by Chris Suspect

Produced by King Koala

In this video filmed and edited by Yu Sung Cho for King Koala, I discuss the origins for my new photo book, Truly Blessed, which literally happened by accident! It’s a powerful visual story about a community’s response to discrimination, both racial and religious. And the background story behind the book is pretty amazing.

Published by King Koala Press in Italy, this 128 page volume features 60 striking black and white photographs using the deepest black ink available in the world by one of Italy’s finest book printers.

DCSPC Presents King Koala at Slash Run, Thursday, May 18 /  by Chris Suspect

Join the DC Street Photography Collective and Chris Suspect in presenting King Koala from Italy at Slash Run in Washington, DC, on May 18 at 7:30pm. King Koala is a DIY publisher of art books out of Milan, Italy, specializing in erotic, edgy, punk rock and forbidden photographs, stories, and art projects.

Call for Entries

In celebration of King Koala’s first American tour, we are announcing a call for entries, “Send us your n00ds!” We are looking for candid or posed, suggestive, erotic, and punk rock  photography that is sex positive, LGBTQ+ inclusive, with artistic sensibilities. Yes, that picture you took at Pride is fine, yes, that sexy drag performer photo is welcome here, yes, your kinky bedroom antics imagery will be accepted with open arms, that band you shot last weekend is cool too, and those secret polaroids in a shoebox under your bed, well, we want to see them! 

Please send no more than 5 photos 2000px on the long edge at 72dpi to gratuityincluded1@gmail.com by Midnight EST on May 11. Please label your files in this manner. First Name_Last Name-Number.jpg.

Want to remain anonymous? Yes, you can! While you do need to submit via email to gratuityincluded1@gmail.com, please request that we not use your name (in case it’s obvious in the email address) and you can title your image file John (or Jane) Doe-Number.jpg. The only catch is that if you win the competition and you really want that camera we are giving away (see below), I ask that you discreetly let me know shortly after the photo slam section of our event.

About the Event

On May 18th selected photos will be shown to a jury of your peers in front of a live audience. Jury members include Jacopo Buranelli from King Koala, DC-based photographer Diriki Rice, Nymph the Enchantress, and one more TBD. Each judge will briefly comment on the image and give it a rating from 1-5. The Winner, who must be present in person, will receive a brand new Lomography Belair X 6-12 film camera.

Following the photo slam, Jaco from King Koala will give a presentation on what it’s like to be a publisher, the artists he works with, and what he is looking for in photography and art.

Then Nymph the Enchantress will grace us with a photo op not to be missed with a real live BDSM demonstration.

And, to top off the evening, Jaco, an established DJ in Milan will be gracing us with a set of down and dirty hip hop.

Tickets are $15. 18+ Arrive early as there is limited seating.

Schedule

7:30 Doors
8:00 Photo Slam
9:00 Jaco from King Koala
10:00 Nymph the Enchantress
10:30 DJ set by Jaco from King Koala 

Dress to impress!

Location

Slash Run
201 Upshur Street Northwest
Washington, DC, 20011
(map)

Google Calendar / ICS

About King Koala and Jacopo Buranelli aka Rudeboy Jaco founder of King Koala 

Jaco is a publisher, DJ and social promoter. In 2020 he created King Koala Press to work with independent artists on editorial projects related to erotic, inclusive, uncensored and no-prejudice photography. Always in the underground world, he lived between Italy and Japan for almost 17 years until, together with Andrea Costarelli, he created the Lito studio for the promotion of art, the headquarters of every King Koala initiative.

King Koala is an independent collective focused on publications of underground culture with the aim of recovering the physical use of art. The book, the publication becomes a physical (not virtual) experience both in its print nature and in the photographic contents ranging from the fetish magazines Badseed Magazine and YSM up to projects related to graffiti (Greatest Hits, IMAGES YOU SHOULD NOT MASTURBATE TO) and to the musical galaxies (Anthem).

This event was possible thanks to the donation made in memoriam of Steve Nickerson

Old Customs on the Leica Camera Blog /  by Chris Suspect

Very excited to have my work featured this week on the Leica Camera Blog. I have been using Leica Cameras since 2012, specifically the M9 and the M-P (Typ 240). I can’t imagine shooting with anything else.

Having grown up for a time in Russia, Suspect was aware of the ideals and ideology prevalent in neighbouring Romania, and was keen to get a sense of their current attitude towards life and what remained of Communism. The format he used for his photography was new for him, combining a mixture of street photography and conceptual art. His Old Customs series, that has been published as a book, presents observations made on the beach of a town that, of itself, has a very special vibe.

Click here to read the full story and interview.