The Art of the Personal Project: Stefan Falke

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

Today’s featured artist:  Stefan Falke

Moko Jumbies

“Dragon” Glen de Souza founded the Dragon Keylemanjahro

School of Art & Culture in Cocorite, a suburb of Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad and Tobago in 1986. The main purpose of the school is to keep children off the streets and away from drugs. Searching for artistic activities to engage them in, he rediscovered the art of stilt-walking, a tradition known in West Africa as the Moko Jumbies, protectors of the villages and participants in religious ceremonies. The art was brought to Trinidad by the slave trade but was forgotten soon after. Dragon Glen De Souza can be credited with bringing this tradition back to Trinidad and Tobago in a large-scale fashion. Today his school has over 100 members from age 4 and up. The stilts are made by Dragon and his students and can be as high as 12-15 feet. The children show their artistic talents mostly at the annual Carnival (celebrated in Trinidad and Tobago on February 12 and 13), which today is unthinkable without the presence of the Moko Jumbies. A “band” can have up to 80 children on stilts and they have won many of the prestigious prizes and trophies that are awarded by the National Carnival Commission. Designers like Peter Minshall, Brian Mac Farlane and Laura Anderson Barbata create dazzling costumes for the school which are admired by thousands of spectators. Besides stilt-walking the children learn the limbo dance, drumming, fire blowing (often all done on stilts) and how to ride unicycles. Between 1997 and 2004 New York City based photographer Stefan Falke took countless trips to Trinidad and Tobago to work on this essay which resulted in the book “MOKO JUMBIES:

The Dancing Spirits of Trinidad”, published by Pointed Leaf Press.

The images were in the official selection of the photo-journalism festival Visa Pour L’image in Perpignan, France, in 2004. This is the first time they’re exhibited in New York.

Between 1997 and 2004 New York City based photographer

Stefan Falke took countless trips to Trinidad and Tobago to work on this essay which resulted in the book “MOKO JUMBIES: The Dancing Spirits of Trinidad”, published by Pointed Leaf Press. The images were in the official selection of the photo-journalism festival Visa Pour L’image in Perpignan, France, in 2004 and at Deutsches Haus at NYU in New York in 2018.

Stefan Falke is a German born photographer who lives in New York City and works for international magazines, film studios and corporate clients. He has published four books: “MOKO JUMBIES: The Dancing Spirits of Trinidad“, about a stilt walking school in Trinidad, and “LA FRONTERA: Artists along the US-Mexican Border“, for which he photographed 200 artists on both sides of the entire 2000 miles long US-Mexico border to document the vibrant cultural activities in that region. His last two books, “Keep Going New York !!” and “Reflecting New York” where self-published on Blurb.com.

To see more of this project, click here

Interview

Instagram

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world.  She has been involved in the photography and illustration advertising and in-house corporate industry for decades.  After establishing the art-buying department at The