Atlanta-based photographer and LUCEO Images co-founder David Walter Banks traveled to Venezuela and took photos of the Via Crucis in Petare, Caracas.

Given my obsession with The Fourth Wall, and our society’s interaction with altered theatrical realities, I was in heaven, so to speak, as I watched Jesus drag his cross through the barrio El Nazareno in Petare, Caracas, Venezuela.  I was on visual overload as I watched the passionate reenactment unfold through this small corner of the largest slum in Latin America.  It was like a perfect storm of culture and social interaction for my taste.

Normally I would have been in production mode, blocking out everything, and searching feverishly for a photograph.  But that is not why I was there.  I was there to teach, and not to produce.  This gave me the license to simply take in the scene, absorbing it in a way uncommon for me when in ‘work’ mode.  Without the pressure to produce, I was free to really see, and only shoot when the urge pulled the camera to my eye instinctively.  I was able to shoot in the way I document my personal life – without rush, without agenda, and merely on a guttural or instinctual level.

Continue reading and see more photos on the LUCEO blog.

Atlanta-based freelancer Kendrick Brinson shares photos from her trip to Caracas, Venezuela.

Creativity comes and goes in waves. I try to be patient in the slow, dry times. I just wait for it to return.

David Banks and I recently went to Caracas, Venezuela to lead a workshop, give a talk and for a gallery exhibition of our work. The students in our workshop were a mix of teenagers and lawyers, doctors, dentists. I was excited to go, but didn’t have huge expectations from their photographic work because for most of them, photography isn’t their job.

That was a mistake.

The majority of my time is spent working. I don’t have a lot of friends where I live because I’m often traveling and often working. A lot of the people who I stay in touch with outside of close old friends and family are professional photographers, often they’re photographers who work for the same people I work for, who see and shoot similarly to the way I shoot. The conversations are about photography or some variation of it. All of this can be very limiting, though I hadn’t thought of it much.

Continue reading and see more photos on Kendrick’s blog.