ESL: The Photo Book. Photo courtesy of Maria Izarraulde
MARIA “JPEG” IZAURRALDE’S VALENTINE TO THE EIGHTEENTH STREET LOUNGE
When the world-renowned Eighteenth Street Lounge opened in 1995, “it felt like we were putting all of our chips on one number,” says Thievery Corporation’s Eric Hilton in his foreword to ESL: The Photo Book. Little did the young co-founders – Hilton, Farid Nouri and Yama Jewayni – know that their dream would become an institution with an international impact on electronic music.
In ESL: The Photo Book, DC photographer Maria Izaurralde immortalizes the building at 1212 18th Street, NW and the global musical family that proliferated within it.
Izaurralde – born in Cordoba, Argentina, the second of four children – grew up between Argentina, Kansas, and Alberta, Canada. She attended the University of Alberta and Hebrew University of Jerusalem before moving to Bethesda and earning an economics degree from George Washington University. But picking up a camera in 2008 led to a new life from passionate amateur photographer (noted by the Washington Post) to award-winning professional.
Izaurralde’s early work caught the eye of Alex Solmssen, a professional photographer based in New York whom Izaurralde regards as her mentor. Says Solmssen, “I have enormous respect for the dedication and commitment with which Maria trained herself in photography. She forced herself to use her camera with all manual settings and shooting constantly – it seemed an extension of her arm. She was never without it! She’s an accomplished painter so I think that many aspects were already in place, but she trained like a prize-fighter to make the camera work the way she wanted, to make it innate. She drank in information but always made it her own. I found it so inspirational the way she just fell in love with shooting – it was contagious! She made me remember that need, that insatiable urge to capture one’s vision of the world. She had from the beginning an amazing eye and trained herself to make the images conform to a higher standard.”
Izaurralde’s color and black and white photographs are grouped in five categories: “The Surrender” captures the joy and abandon of dancing to the spells cast by ESL’s deejays and live musicians. “The Mansion” takes us up staircases, through intimate elegant rooms, to hidden spaces and out on the rooftop deck. “The Music” presents a cavalcade of distinguished deejays including co-founders Farid Nouri and Eric Hilton, Dubfire, Sam “The Man” Burns, Thomas Blondet, Kenny “Dope” Gonzales, Nickodemus, and Quantic, and live musicians including Junior Marvin, Storm, and Thunderball. “The Impulse” freeze-frames ESL staff, regulars and musicians chilling, and “The Revolution” re-creates “a night in the life” of the Lounge.
What emerges throughout this priceless record of a magical place in DC cultural history is a close community that thrives on shared love for and appreciation of great music, and a rich palpable sense of Home.
Farid, who curated the collection, says, “To narrow the photos to 350 was not a small feat. It took us about a year and a half to edit and plan enough photos to showcase ESL’s events, personalities and physical place. I feel this book is very representative of everything ESL. Although the photos were taken within the last two years, Maria manages to capture ESL’s charm and nuances, which are timeless.”
On Tap met with Maria Izaurralde at Kramerbooks over organic tea to discuss her new book:
On Tap: What forces shaped you as an artist?
Maria Izaurralde: When my younger sister was seven she was diagnosed with a brain tumor and was different after her operation. It was really hard for her. After she graduated high school and I came back from Jerusalem, her tumor came back. My father got a job in DC and we all moved here and she was operated on at Johns Hopkins. My parents had hope but she died a year later. For about ten years I was in darkness. My brother Octavio, a street artist in Argentina, is the biggest artistic influence on my life.
OT: How did you discover photography?
MI: When I was younger I used to draw portraits and make photo mosaics by hand that took a long time, but I didn’t really like it. I’m a spontaneous person and I’ll start something on a whim and by the time I finish I hate it. I was dating a guy who knew I had this artistic thing going on and he gave me a Nikon D40, a beginner’s DSLR, in the fall of 2007. I was intimidated at first. After we broke up in 2008 I put it on manual and figured out shutter speeds, aperture, how much light to let in. The learning process was fun and I started clicking whenever I saw something cool and posting pictures online.
OT: How did you hear of the Eighteenth Street Lounge?
MI: I started going out with friends in 1998. A lot of places come and go but ESL’s always been there. My relationship with ESL really started though when I started bringing my camera because people started tagging each other in my pictures and that’s how I met people. The world seems smaller when you have that kind of thing going on.
OT: What attracted you to electronic music, and did you have favorite ESL nights?
MI: There’s something very tribal about it and something that makes you feel connected to people. It’s positive, upbeat, infectious and makes you want to dance. I liked Sunday nights but when I was working, starting Mondays kind of tired wasn’t good, but by the time Wednesday came around I was ready to go. People from other countries know about ESL and when they come to DC they want to go to ESL and bring it home.
Maria Izaurralde
OT: How did your ESL book come about?
MI: I approached Farid because people had been commenting on my photos and there was this momentum. I had pictures from different places but the ones from ESL felt like a body of work. I had thousands and it was really hard because some I was attached to didn’t go in which was almost sad. In the pictures of Wednesdays and Sundays there was a lot of emotion so the first theme was people into the music. No matter what night, everybody’s united by the music: Sunday’s like church, Wednesdays is a Jah Worship thing. It’s spiritual for some to go when they feel they need to be recharged, so we made the first chapter “The Surrender.”
Tango night was interesting because I’m Argentinian. Dancing with a partner never appealed to me, so when people would say put the camera down and dance, I was always like, I’ll just watch. After a while I let my guard down and tried it and really liked it. It felt kind of primal, like the house beat. It looks controlled, but it feels very natural. When I go to other countries I always end up meeting my kind of people who like reggae or house, and people who like tango are the same way. There are tango nights in every major city. Tango was born on the streets of Argentina, out of poverty, and kind of like break-dancing, it’s gone all over the world underground. It brings all ethnicities together, but it’s a particular kind of person – analytical, intellectual types like engineers and Ph. Ds.
OT: Do you always stay till the end?
MI: Yeah, the end is always the funnest part. Sometimes I just arrive late. This was a really hard book to finish because I still go to ESL and get new pictures, and my favorite pictures are ones I haven’t seen in a long time or recent ones, the ones that feel fresh.
OT: What new projects are you working on?
MI: Last September I bought a DSLR that takes video and Googled tutorials and taught myself how to edit. What’s cool about video is that it’s dynamic. I’m currently working on a video for Thomas Blondet.
OT: What’s the most rewarding thing about your work?
MI: The difference between before and now is not having a purpose in life and photography being something I get lost in. When you don’t have a vocation it’s harder to find fulfillment and there’s a tendency to be defined by consumerism or relationships. I was never personally satisfied with goals of having stuff. I love taking pictures and video adds a lot to your creative process but my goals are changing. Like a lot of us, I’m becoming more socially conscious. I wasn’t thinking about politics and the economy, but I’m paying attention now and it would be cool to do work like Adbusters. I made a New Year’s resolution to vote with my money which is why I’m trying to eat organic. This book is more than I dreamed of so I’ve decided to donate any profit from it to sustainability. I’m trying to learn how to harness my frustration and cynicism and make it into something positive.
ESL: THE PHOTO BOOK by Maria “Jpeg” Izaurralde is available in hardcover and digital format at: www.eslthebook.com. To view photography from the book and other subjects as well as video please visit: mariajpeg.com
