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CONTRIBUTORS
Jendella Benson Anton Diaz
Cormier Claude M'y
Cordelle smith
Donna Jaye
Dr. Nicole Swiner
Dr. Jessica Ann
dr. Miodrag Stojanovic
Gordon Trujillo
©Miodrag Stojanovic I spent most of my 22 days of travel time in the cities of Havana and Trinidad. Both places are really great and of course Trinidad is much smaller. I would wake up early in the morning when no tourists were on the street and only Cubans were active. The light is great in the morning and the place looks much better with no tourists. GR: How did the picture that is now our logo for Griots Republic come about? The picture of the old man in your GR logo was taken in the Cuban city of Trinidad early in the morning. I remember like it was yesterday. The old man was standing in front of his home on a hilly street with no asphalt and smoking a selfmade cigar. I said to him “hello” and started a conversation. This is one of the most important things if you want to take a good portrait of a stranger. First you have to talk with them, to relax them and to gain their confidence. After that, you can ask to shoot them and hope that you do it the right way. The guy was very friendly and I asked him about his cigar. I asked him where he bought it. He was smiling and told me that he made it for himself. After that, I asked him if I could take his portrait and he was ok with that. The light was perfect and I just asked him to smoke his cigar. He was
so natural and I did a great job. GR: Is there a particular photographer who has inspired your work to date? In what other ways do you use your photography skills? In the past 10 years, one of my biggest inspirations has been Annie Leibowitz. She is such a talented artist. Her work is so easy, but so different. She uses great studio settings where the main object is a canvas backdrop. This was inspiratio n for me and a few years ago I founded a company called Gravity Backdrops (www.gravitybackdrops.com) that makes hand painted canvas backdrops with very reasonable prices. The same quality is three times more expensive elsewhere. Now my company is world famous with hundreds of satisfied customers. For the last 5 years I have been involved in photo schools in Serbia and have a lot of students that are now p rofessional photographers. At one point in time I worked for Playboy and did a great story about our prime Minister where he was talking about wine production and not politics. I also did a story on a really special biker with an interesting life story.
BLACK HISTORY
©Nisa Ahmad
©Nisa Ahmad