Desperately seeking B-Girls.

I'm lucky enough to be exposed to creative cultures and communities. My boyfriend can dance, in fact, we met on the dance floor 10 years ago. Yeeeears ago he started Djing for a weekly B-Boy practice session through a Youth Advocate program. Since then he has stabilized a place within that community, thrown and been a part of major B-Boy events, and traveled to New York to practice and learn from some of the earliest "Rockers." Up-rocking is a type of urban dance generalized within break-dancing, with a very interesting history, and is my favorite. He is creating a history in this city, and I usually go along for the ride.

This past weekend we went to the second annual Don't Mess With Texas B-Boys event in Austin. Jay Djs the event, and my camera and I have a field day.

I have some opinions regarding B-Boy culture, the presence of B-Girls within that culture, and how a patriarchal society is played out within it. It's a very masculine dance, or is it? Every event I go to I anticipate seeing B-Girls , and almost every time I walk away disappointed. There are always so few females within the crowd, and even fewer B-Girls dancing. I understand there is a huge B-Girl community, I just don't have access to it at the moment. I crave it when I go to these events, and nothing makes me happier than to see strong females create their own space within a community that is male dominated.

I have developed a theory in photographing B-Girl/Boys. It is a definite luxury to have a very large/fast camera and a equally large flash. But, I have neither. So along with some technical tools, I use the music to help me photograph. I'm familiar with B-Boy jams, I know some of the more popular songs, and I understand musical arrangement, drops, breaks, etc.

So, I use the coupling of the dancer and the music, how the dancer responds to the music, and I try to anticipate moves. I follow the dancer with my camera, angle it according to my taste, try as best I can to focus, and when I feel a move coming on I press my release...and hope for a good photo.

So in the end I rely on my camera, and my camera relies on me. It doesn't do all the work for me, which is the case with so many photographers, in my humble opinion. I have never been comfortable with referring to myself as a photographer. It's almost as if I felt I didn't yet deserve the title. But when you go to bed thinking about photography, and you wake up at 7 a.m. in anticipation of the photos your gonna take that day, or the projects your gonna work on, and you start theorizing about photography at any open opportunity, and when you get to the point where you see a photo you have taken and you get emotional about, be it good or bad, or you have the audacity to think that maybe what you love to do could help the world around you, you start to become comfortable with the label, you deserve it. I hope I deserve it.

Here are a few from the event. Enjoy..