Photographer's Log Photographer's Log

Mardi Gras Dancer

Cambridge Fireworks Display, July 2007

This is one of my “ladies”. They are portraits of women, which I create from photographs I’ve taken of objects somewhere in our Valley. You have seen one or two in the past 2 years and I now present another for your amusement.
Her headdress, earrings and necklace are comprised of fireworks from the Fourth of July in Cambridge last summer. As I worked with the brilliant rocket display I suddenly began to see several kinds of exotic bird’s feathers and thought of Mardi Gras: the time of lights and music and dancing.

I can see her now, aflame with joy, passionate festivity, dancing through the streets of New Orleans or Rio, beautifully alive and lost within the throbbing rhythms of drums. In her vivid mystery she calls to other revelers in the streets to come join her dance-- they follow, hypnotized by the brilliance of her costume and fluidity of her movements. I can hear the music; feel the heat of climate and crowd. My eyes squint through the dazzling lights and colors trying to see her as she disappears down the street amidst a vast bouncing, undulating, locomotive sea of people all moving as one great beast down the tunnel of the street into the night. Ah, to let the soul move the body again. --June Mohan
Photos: (Copyright Mohan 2007) To contact the artist, please send email to: junemohan@hotmail.com.