The Californer - After Four Decades 'Overlooked History' Revealed

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Photographer Carl 'Djinn' Lewis Brings to Light 'Captured' Laser Images

OAKLAND, Calif. - Californer -- Over the last four years Carl Lewis and Lenape Creative Group have contacted domestic and international repositories of photographic history, art collections, institutions, museums and curators researching if anyone else in the world had accomplished his same feat. To date none of the respondees, from the Creative Center for Photography and Eastman Museum to the Royal Photographic Society and National Science and Media Museum in Britain, have any photographic imagery similar.
During 1979 Mr. Lewis 'captured' 20 x 40 foot, live, in concert laser illusions with an analog Canon F1 on slow, still film. Controlled by a laserist slices of light would dance around the space, the overlapping primary hues producing secondary ones, http://www.imajinnation.net. The dynamic colored light patterns existed only in two places, the back of the viewers' retinas and on his film.

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Images from this facet of Carl's oeuvre reside in the permanent collection of the Amon Carter Museum as part of the behest of photographer Carlotta Corpron. Other photographic works are represented in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum and Museum of Fine Art Houston, and referenced in Deborah Willis' Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present.
"The last twenty years of my 'Average Life' has been a 'walkabout'.", says Djinn. For this producing artist one of the consequences has been very few exhibitions over the last two decades. As operations director for North Bay music academy, Miraflores Academie, his creative focus has been divided with a good percentage on the music industry and marketing. The industry relationships has allowed him to photograph legends across the genres. From the Latin Legends of the SF Mission District and Potrero Hill to Blues, Jazz and Reggae musicians of international repute, these faces are part of his 'MugFiles'. The MugFiles facet includes notables like 'Overlooked History' Dr. Robert Powell, Sr. mathematician, physicist and author of Beyond Pythagoras, Jesse Jackson during his run for President, epigeneticist Dr. Bruce Lipton, and artists in entertainment like Harold Nicholas, the Tap Dance Kid, actor Albert Popwell, and the visual arts like Robert Colescott and Robert Rauschenberg to name just a few. Several of these have been Carl's mentors.

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Of late the vintage laser laser imagery have been being digitally manipulated and incorporate realtime, 'fly on the wall' musician shots, or extrapolated and extracted anthropomorphic characters creating 'tumbler'-like narrative tableaus from the visual assets. These new images combine Carl's love of cartoons with esoteric icons, cultural sigils and glyphs.
New media company, Lenape Creative Group, brings marketing and public relations resources to assist the imagery coming back into the real world. Spearheaded by actor/producer Sebastian Galasso Lenape Creative adds its energy and opportunities in virtual and augmented reality.