Photographer Carl ‘Djinn’ Lewis Brings to Light ‘Captured’ Laser Images
Oakland, CA Jan. 1, 2021 –
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 foot by 40 foot, live, in concert laser illusions with
an analog Canon F1, a 100 mm. macro lens on slow, still film. Controlled by a laserist slices of
light would dance around the space, the overlapping primary hues producing secondary
ones. The dynamic patterns of colored light existed only in two places, the back of the
viewers’ retinas and on his film.
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 a few. Several of these have been Carl’s mentors.
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.
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Notes to editors
For more information please contact:
Lenape Creative Group
Email: aaron@lenapecreative.com
Visit the newsroom of: Carl Djinn Lewis
