As we float through the turmoil of the modern world looking for interesting things to photograph, and looking at all of the things we thought would provide fun images for the foreseeable future, we see that many are now vanishing. SXSW in Austin started as a music showcase for up and coming bands. Edgy bands. Bands looking to get their first contract. The first show, in 1987 drew a total audience of 750; more or less, and the sponsors were local magazines, night clubs and a handful of shops.
The conference took off. By the end of the 1990s it was the place to be for a week in March every year. Twitter launched there. A ton of other tech launched there. Big name, long tenured rock bands made appearances. And then, in another evolution, the originators of the music festival turned it into something even bigger. It became a full on conference with speakers from the left side of the political spectrum, zany billionaire entrepreneurs, and a raft of tech bros too numerous to list. They also added a film festival to the roster --- and then an education component that starts a week before the "real" conference.
The conference hit its stride and its highest attendance numbers around 2007-2016. The downtown area of Austin was packed with sleek, young, wannabe rock stars, wannabe tech bros, wannabe movie directors and even aspiring writers. Everyone had an invention idea in one pocket and a movie script in the other pocket. Corporate showcases were rampant, ubiquitous, unavoidable. Traffic almost unbearable. Concession prices for bad coffee were off the charts. And in every hand --- the newest iPhone. In every backpack--- the newest laptop. And black. Everyone wore black.
The swag was off the charts good back then. Free food and alcohol everywhere. Free hats and t-shirts. Free phone chargers. Samples of the latest energy drinks flowed like Niagara. And the whole bubbly, frothy event was always well documented by flocks of photographers and videographers.
One year I worked for Sony Music and shot all the main stage music acts for three long days (and nights) in a row. Another year I worked for Samsung in one of their giant venues (free phone charging and all the free coffee anyone wanted to drink). We did a year for a P.R. agency that sent a New York pastry chef who made "Cronuts" for the first 1200 people to wait in line at the Stephen F. Austin Hotel. Dominique Ansel... I think.
But most years I just headed down to absorb the Zeitgeist. To feel the carnival spirit of several hundred thousand young people (and more than a few old timers) who had recently escaped the leashes of parents and college to coalesce around the idea of "the next cool thing" and maybe discover great new music. In some sense people rightly saw the event as a potential career builder. And they were probably right --- back in the day. All the biggies from Dell to Samsung to Microsoft had big footprints...
Sadly, this is the last year the event will be held in the "ancient" (22 year old massive) Austin Convention Center. The city is demolishing it in order to build one twice as large --- you know: "build it and they will come." But we'll be flying without an enormous venue for at least three years...
I guess it will all work out. The attendance for the last couple of years has been dismal. The vendor showcase (the Expo) is a tiny fraction of the size it was in the last decade, and now, instead of wild new tech products the mix of vendors is similar to a typical tired, bad convention. Beauty products, travel agencies, dolls for kids, vague software applications that aim to "bring all your management tools together in one place!!!" No. I have no idea why I need or would want that. Is life so complicated that you need a whole program to figure out where to have dinner tomorrow or when to pay your Netflix bill?
In the expo today companies were hawking electric bikes, ear cleaners, Korean advertising agencies, captioning services and stand up desks. One small booth even had a machine that would allow you to press your own vinyl records. They didn't seem to understand the original appeal of records as relatively uncompressed data. They were busy telling potential buyers that it would be easy to pull music off CDs and press an original 33.3 vinyl record. Compression at every end of the process.... And who has CDs anymore?
The show this year has far fewer attendees. Not so easy to sell all show passes once the buy-in price tops $2,000. And your economy is fast-tracking towards recession. You have to have a pretty cool job at a really young age to ante up for that, along with the over-priced Austin hotel rooms, and the outrageous local restaurant prices. Oh....and the $20 cocktails.
It's kinda sad for me to see bright eyed, optimistic people who chased the latest thing replaced by the same folks you see manning the black draped booths at car shows or boat shows or, God Forbid, RV shows. Passing out free samples of skin cream and packets of stickers for your kids. The old guard of the show didn't have kids --- they were having too much fun. They didn't push face cream they were busy marketing dreams.
So, I've been downtown for three days this week trying to find the fun that used to saturate the previous SXSW events. It's elusive. If I hit the music clubs at night it might be more lively but the photo opportunities more vague.
The first day I went down with a Leica SL2 and the Sigma 85mm lens. It was a good combo. Good shots in a previous post. But nothing off the chart exciting. The next time I went down it was with a Leica M240 camera and a Zeiss 50mm lens. That was good too. Today I knew I was going to spend the bulk of my time there in doors at the expo. I brought an older SL along with an AF 50mm lens from Panasonic. It worked pretty well and even the photographs I did at ISO 1600 look fine and dandy. A paean to 2015 technology...
I'll give the show one more go. An evening adventure on Sixth Street. I hope the fun, Hip Hop artists and various indy bands make it out into the streets as they have in years past. They had the energy and they made for good photographs. But it feels like the last year here.
If they do hold the event in Austin, Texas next year they'll have to break up the conferences, workshops, expos, etc. into a bunch of smaller venues. Something that comes with its own set of problems. Like getting from one place to another, parking, and smaller crowd sizes also means cheaper speaker options, etc.
But like everything there is a parabola to the trajectory of most events, businesses and undertakings. You start small, then you hit your stride, then you leverage your success, glide for a while, lose the energy and start to fade. I've seen it in my fellow artists and in big, commercial clients. Everything ebbs and flows.
Maybe it's the best thing a conference could do; go out on a high note. Their timing was off...
the venerable music poster show...
Sixth Street gets shut off from car traffic every evening for the run of show.
Gypsy banks set up impromptu performances in the street. All fun but not lit well for
great photos....
I think this shows a man giving up a DNA sample in order to enter the temple of National Defense contractors. At least that's how it seemed...
This is not the original Vulcan Gas Company. The namesake was over about a mile away on North Lamar Blvd. It's where I used to go to hear Janis Joplin, King Crimson and other fun acts play.
Always a struggle to come up with that $3 cover charge but at least the Lone Star beers was only fifty cents. Ah, the good old days.
tuesday's camera and operator.
Yes. Out of tens of thousands of attendees several had real cameras.
Congress Ave. is closed for the week from the Capitol to 6th St.
Not much else to report. Swimming every day. Walking a couple miles in each direction to the SXSW event. Playing with different cameras and lenses every day. Watching the stock market shrink my savings on a daily basis. Hoping everything works out.
It's going to get really, really interesting if the republicans cancel Medicare and Social Security. We'll still be okay here but a huge chunk of Americans will feel tremendous pain. Could happen. Hope it never does...
As Julie Andrews sang in "Mary Poppins":
A spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down. The medicine go down....
