ICE ON FIRE - Press Release by Harun Mehmedinovic

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Director: Leila Conners

Producer & Narrator: Leonardo Dicaprio

Tree Media & HBO & Appian Way Production

ICE ON FIRE, an eye-opening documentary that focuses on many never-before-seen solutions designed to slow down our escalating environmental crisis, goes beyond the current climate change narrative and offers hope that we can actually stave off the worst effects of global warming.

Produced by Oscar®-winner Leonardo DiCaprio, George DiCaprio and Mathew Schmid, and directed by Leila Conners, the film will have its world premiere at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival as an Official Selection on Wednesday, May 22. ICE ON FIRE debuts TUESDAY, JUNE 11 (8:00–9:35 p.m. ET/PT), exclusively on HBO.

The documentary will also be available on HBO On Demand, HBO NOW, HBO GO and partners’ streaming platforms.

Eleven years after Conners’ first collaboration with DiCaprio on The 11th Hour, which emphasized the problems of climate change, ICE ON FIRE instead focuses on the cutting-edge research behind today’s climate science — and the innovations aimed at reducing carbon in the atmosphere, which could pave the way for a reduction in the global temperature rise and a benefit to the planet’s life systems.

“My partners and I made ICE ON FIRE to give a voice to the scientists and researchers who work tirelessly every day on the frontlines of climate change,” says producer and narrator Leonardo DiCaprio. “We wanted to make a film that depicts the beauty of our planet while highlighting much-needed solutions across renewable energy and carbon sequestration. This film does more than show what is at stake if we continue on a course of inaction and complacency — it shows how, with the help of dedicated scientists, we can all fight back. I hope audiences will be inspired to take action to protect our beautiful planet.”

With sweeping cinematography of a world worth saving, ICE ON FIRE was filmed across the globe, from Norway to Alaska, Iceland to Colorado, Switzerland to Costa Rica to Connecticut. The film highlights firsthand accounts of people at the forefront of the climate crisis, with insights from scientists, farmers, innovators and others.

ICE ON FIRE emphasizes the importance of an immediate, two-pronged approach to reversing the crisis: reducing carbon emissions through traditional renewable energy sources and new ones, like tidal energy, and implementing “drawdown” measures, focusing on methods for drawing down and sequestering carbon, including direct air capture, sea farms, urban farms, biochar, marine snow, bionic leaves and others.

While much of the political and economic focus has been on the energy sector, the film points out that drawdown (pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere and oceans and sequestering it underground or into new materials) is perhaps the best hope for mitigating climate change.

The film visits places such as: the Usal Redwood Forrest Foundation in northern California, highlighting a carbon-storage project that focuses on reforestation and creates “biochar” to put CO2 back into the soil; Ron Finley’s urban farm in Los Angeles, where members of the community grow food that takes carbon out of the air and is nutritious; Climeworks’ nimble direct air capture machine in Zurich; and Thimble Island Ocean Farm off the coast of Connecticut, where owner Bren Smith grows shellfish and seaweed that soak up more carbon than land-based plants and can be used for food, animal feed and fertilizer.

ICE ON FIRE finds that while the risks and urgency may be higher than ever today, there are also greater opportunities for innovative solutions, offering a realistic but hopeful perspective on a key global issue that demands our attention.

ICE ON FIRE is directed by Leila Conners; narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio; producers, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mathew Schmid and Leila Conners; executive producers, George DiCaprio, Roee Sharon Peled; cinematography by Harun Mehmedinovic. For HBO: executive producers, Nancy Abraham and Lisa Heller.

OUTSIDE TV: THE DEFENDER OF DARK SKIES (VISIT ARIZONA) by Harun Mehmedinovic

Harun Mehmedinovic is perhaps more familiar with the country’s dark skies than just about anyone. After establishing himself as an award-winning filmmaker and photographer in Los Angeles, Mehmedinovic now splits his time between L.A. and Flagstaff. But he’s best known for his Skyglow project, a light-pollution awareness campaign highlighting the importance of dark skies and featuring Arizona’s incredible views of the cosmos.

PODCAST INTERVIEW:HARUN MEHMEDINOVIC by Harun Mehmedinovic

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Starry Starry Night with Harun Mehmedinović

Digital night photography is relatively easy – but finding the best spot to shoot and getting there often is not. In this episode, Canon Explorer of Light Rick Sammon talks with night sky expert Harun Mehmedinović about his work and his awesome Skyglow project.

https://skyglowproject.com

To listen, visit: http://picturingsuccess.com/blog/2018/06/042-harun-mehmedinovic-interview-rick-harun-skyglow/

EVENT: Skyglow at The Annenberg Space for Photography by Harun Mehmedinovic

SKYGLOW: PHOTOGRAPHY AND FILM SCREENING 

Skylight Studios welcomes photographers and filmmakers Gavin Heffernan and Harun Mehmedinovic for an evening of stargazing as seen through a presentation of their timelapse photography films and stills from their expeditions in search of the most breathtaking night skies in the United States.

In 2015, Heffernan and Mehmedinovic collaborated on SKYGLOW, a crowdfunded book and BluRay set that tackles the rising danger and damage of urban light pollution. The fundraising campaign generated a tremendous amount of publicity and ended as the fourth most successful Kickstarter campaign in the Photobooks category.

Pre-sale ticketing ends on December 4 at 11:30pm at Skylight Studios. Tickets also for sale at the door pending availability. All ticket sales are final. No refunds, exchanges or returns are permitted.

 

REGISTRATION

Cost: $10.00. Pre-sale ticketing ends on December 4 at 11:30pm at Skylight Studios. Tickets also for sale at the door pending availability. All ticket sales are final. No refunds, exchanges or returns are permitted.

LOCATION

Skylight Studios
10050 Constellation Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90067

New BBC Earth timelapse "Tempest Vermilion" in collaboration with Sunchaser Pictures! by Harun Mehmedinovic

Shot and Produced by Gavin Heffernan (www.SunchaserPictures.com) and Harun Mehmedinović (www.Bloodhoney.com) Created in association with BBC EARTH (bbc.com/earth/world). Now available in 1080 HD! Music: "White Dwarf 2" by Terry Devine-King. Performed by Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Please like the Facebook page for our exciting upcoming Kickstarter venture SKYGLOW (https://www.facebook.com/skyglowproject). Launching April 3rd, SKYGLOW is a unique Kickstarter quest where Gavin and Harun will explore the most exotic dark sky locations in North America, while examining the complex biological and psychological impacts of light pollution on society. Vermilion Cliffs National Monument in Arizona hosts some of the most unique landscapes on the planet, from the red iron oxide cliffs of its namesake, to the Jurassic-era petrified sandstone of White Pocket. This area features what some have described as "brain rocks" and "cauliflower rocks," possibly formed through earthquakes after the landscape was lithified from sand into rock. White Pocket sees very few visitors, due to an hour-long drive by strenuous sand roads often impassable due to rain and snow. As the second part of a BBC Earth timelapse trilogy, our shoot consisted of two days and two nights of intense conditions, including high winds, thunderstorms, fog heavy rain, and other obstacles. Despite the adversity, the tempest broke and some incredible stars shone through to put on a show. Shot on Canon DSLR Cameras. Star trails created using rotation of earth's axis and STARSTAX. Wide motion control cliffs shot achieved with Dynamic Pecrception Stage Zero Dolly. Stills and Behind the Scenes Pictures Available at Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/50014474@N05/sets/72157650577597300/ The first timelapse of the BBC Earth trilogy (WAVELIGHT) is available here: https://vimeo.com/112008512 Thanks: Michron by Alpine Labs, Matt Walker, Thomas Martin, Vermilion Cliffs, NAU, Ty McNeeley, Greg Horvath

Shot and Produced by Gavin Heffernan (SunchaserPictures.com) and Harun Mehmedinović (Bloodhoney.com)
Created in association with BBC EARTH (bbc.com/earth/world). Now available in 1080 HD!
Music: "White Dwarf 2" by Terry Devine-King. Performed by Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Please like the Facebook page for our exciting upcoming Kickstarter venture SKYGLOW (facebook.com/skyglowproject). Launching April 3rd, SKYGLOW is a unique Kickstarter quest where Gavin and Harun will explore the most exotic dark sky locations in North America, while examining the complex biological and psychological impacts of light pollution on society.

Vermilion Cliffs National Monument in Arizona hosts some of the most unique landscapes on the planet, from the red iron oxide cliffs of its namesake, to the Jurassic-era petrified sandstone of White Pocket. This area features what some have described as "brain rocks" and "cauliflower rocks," possibly formed through earthquakes after the landscape was lithified from sand into rock. White Pocket sees very few visitors, due to an hour-long drive by strenuous sand roads often impassable due to rain and snow.

As the second part of a BBC Earth timelapse trilogy, our shoot consisted of two days and two nights of intense conditions, including high winds, thunderstorms, fog heavy rain, and other obstacles. Despite the adversity, the tempest broke and some incredible stars shone through to put on a show. Shot on Canon DSLR Cameras. Star trails created using rotation of earth's axis and STARSTAX. Wide motion control cliffs shot achieved with Dynamic Pecrception Stage Zero Dolly.

Stills and Behind the Scenes Pictures Available at Flickr:
flickr.com/photos/50014474@N05/sets/72157650577597300/

The first timelapse of the BBC Earth trilogy (WAVELIGHT) is available here: vimeo.com/112008512

Thanks: Michron by Alpine Labs, Matt Walker, Thomas Martin, Vermilion Cliffs, NAU, Ty McNeeley, Greg Horvath

 

New BBC Earth timelapse "Wavelight" in collaboration with Sunchaser Pictures! by Harun Mehmedinovic

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A stunning geological formation, known as the Wave, has been captured on film as never before.

The Wave is found in the desert of Arizona in the US. It is an undulating formation of sandstone rock formed by erosion during the Jurassic period, which lasted from 201-145 million years ago.

The film is actually a series of still photographs, over 10,000 in total, painstakingly stitched together by film-makers Gavin Heffernan and Harun Mehmedinović.

Shot and produced by Gavin Heffernan (SunchaserPictures.com) and Harun Mehmedinović (Bloodhoney.com)

Music: NEBULA by Mark Petrie (markpetrie.com). Courtesy MONTAGE MX

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141021-spectacular-new-desert-time-lapse

Bloodhoney* Timelapse Collaboration with Sunchaser Pictures a Viral Hit! by Harun Mehmedinovic

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Just a few days after the launch, a Timelapse collaboration between Bloodhoney* and Suncahser Pictures has reached nearly 100,000 views and has been featured by USA Today, Yahoo, The Weather Channel, among others!

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PRESS LIST

YAHOO TRAVEL “#Daydream: You Must Watch this Epic Video from Arizona’s Grand Canyon National Park” https://www.yahoo.com/travel/were-obsessed-with-this-epic-night-and-day-time-85535229927.html

USA TODAY “Photographer Gavin Heffernan sent these gorgeous photos to us.” http://usatoday.tumblr.com/post/85644648932/photographer-gavin-heffernan-sent-these-gorgeous?sf26133821=1 VIDEO: “USA TODAY Three-peat” http://youtu.be/9vs5DfpgzQE

NPR “Look Up in the Sky and Live Big” http://n.pr/1ob9vI5

CNET “Stars, Milky Way captured in stunning time-lapse photos and video” http://www.cnet.com/news/stars-milky-way-captured-in-stunning-time-lapse-photos-and-video/

DAILY MAIL “Hypnotic timelapse pictures capture stunning shots of the sky at night over the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley” http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2632585/Amazing-timelapse-pictures-capture

SLATE “Stunning Time-Lapse Video of Arizona's Milky Way” http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/05/13/time_lapse_animation_the_milky_way_over_arizona.html

UNIVERSE TODAY “Stunning Timelapse: Arizona Sky of Clouds and Stars” http://www.universetoday.com/111858/stunning-timelapse-arizona-sky-of-clouds-and-stars/

THE WEATHER CHANNEL National Interview on Weather Center LIVE (05/16/14) http://youtu.be/KYk5O2AEkQ8

CTV CANADA National Broadcast: “Kevin Newman LIVE” (05/14/14) http://youtu.be/bUsLNC-q-30

PHOTOGRAPHY WEEKLY Image Used as Cover Photo for May 15th, 2014

BACKPACKER MAGAZINE “Watch an Inspirational Desert Timelapse” http://www.backpacker.com/news-inspirational-timelapse-grand-canyon/destinations/18606

ABC 15 – Arizona “Arizona timelapse video shows off beauty of our state” http://www.abc15.com/news/state/arizona-timelapse-video-shows-off-beauty-of-our-state-video

MOTHER NATURE NETWORK “Time-lapses reveal dazzling starscape over Grand Canyon, Monument Valley” http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/blogs/time-lapses-reveal-dazzling-starscape-over-grand-canyon

io9 “You've Been Looking At The Grand Canyon Wrong” http://io9.com/youve-been-looking-at-the-grand-canyon-wrong-1575679472

EPOCH TIMES “Incredible Time-Lapse Video of Milky Way, Grand Canyon” http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/671492-incredible-time-lapse-video-of-milky-way-grand-canyon-that-which-awaits-the-dawn/

TUCSON NEWS NOW “Amazing time-lapse of Arizona's dramatic landscapes” http://www.tucsonnewsnow.com/story/25524171/amazing-time-lapse-video-of-arizona

LE SCIENZE (Italian Scientific American) “Monument Valley e Via Lattea, il timelapse dà spettacolo” http://www.lescienze.it/news/2014/05/17/video/timelapse_monument_valley_navajo-2144338/1/

KOTAKU JAPAN “Time-lapse of milky way too beautiful Grand Canyon” http://www.kotaku.jp/2014/05/milky-way-america.html

PIJAMASURF “8 timelapses que te volarán la cabeza” http://pijamasurf.com/2014/05/8-time-lapses-que-te-volaran-la-cabeza/

L.A. Magazine: "The Last Romantic: Nature Meets Art in the Stunning Photos of Harun Mehmedinovic" by Harun Mehmedinovic

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The Last Romantic: Nature Meets Art in the Stunning Photos of Harun Mehmedinović murielle3c

With Bloodhoney* the photographer shatters the monotony of everyday life and tempts fate as a matter of principle.

by Theis Duelund

Growing up in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War, Harun Mehmedinović and his friends often made a game of daring each other to run across the wide empty boulevards known as “sniper alleys.” “I lost friends that way,” says Mehmedinović. “But as terrible and irrational as it sounds, it helped us stay sane. It was a way of rebelling against what was happening and trying to live in the moment.”

A desire to escape the horrors of routine has shaped the 31-year-old filmmaker and photographer’s Bloodhoney* project, a series of portraits featuring Mehmedinović’s friends posed against stunning vistas in the great American landscape. Mehmedinović, who divides his time between Los Angeles and Flagstaff, where he teaches photography and film at Northern Arizona University, decided to compile the images in a coffee table book. The first title, Séance, came out earlier this year after one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns ever. The next book, Persona, will be out in August 2014.

“Whenever I visited my friends they complained about how their adult lives were chained to routine,” Mehmedinović says. “I suggested a photo shoot in which the setting would be determined by whoever I was shooting. They picked a location and I just went along with it.” Last April, Mehmedinović discussed his work in a TEDx talk, "Living in the Moment," at Atlanta’s Emory University.

Bloodhoney*, the literal translation of the Turkish word “Balkan,” is about breaking free of self-imposed restrictions and being present in the now. The subjects sometimes wear beautiful gowns, in other cases they're completely naked. The models themselves, however, aren’t the most transfixing element of Mehmedinović’s images; instead, the viewer’s gaze is drawn to the compositional harmony between subject and nature. In one shot, a woman in a white dress is enveloped by a blizzard, her ghostly figure the focal point in a wintry landscape. Another shows a woman standing on a rock in the surf, her stance recalling a figure in one of Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich's works, which often depict a lone man contemplating his smallness in the face of nature.

To call Mehmedinović a Romantic isn’t inaccurate; like the nineteenth-century artists and writers (Byron and Goethe among them) who fled civilization and embraced nature in search of a more authentic life, he has spent much of his time looking for new ways to connect with his surroundings. As a student at UCLA, he often took solitary road trips across the country, stopping only when the environment beckoned. “In Oklahoma I once saw a tornado up close. It was a surreal image. Looking in one direction the sky was clear and the sun was shining. When I turned my head, I saw a tornado come barreling across the flat land.” Mehmedinović stopped his car and got out his camera. “It was dangerous, but I just found it so appealing to entirely disconnect from being a modern human being.”

Abandoning the structures of everyday life has been transformative for Mehmedinović and his subjects. “We did a shoot in an old bunker in Virginia, close to Mount Vernon," he says. "I asked the model if she had any dilemmas in her life, and she explained that she had married a man she didn’t love in deference to her parents. She said it was like being a prisoner in her own body.” The bunker, which had previously been occupied by squatters, was filthy and reeked of human waste. “When the model saw it she said, ‘I love it. I want to do the shoot naked,’” Mehmedinović says. “When I saw the photos afterwards, I understood. That space perfectly expressed how she felt about her marriage.”

Another shoot involved venturing out onto the ice of Boston’s frozen Charles River. “When we got back to shore I threw a rock and it crashed right through the ice,” Mehmedinović says. “People watching us probably thought we were insane, but it was quite beautiful, one of those rare moments where you’re able to completely take your life into your own hands.”

While Séance focused on the process itself—following the models around for hours at a time, allowing them space to find themselves in front of the camera—the second book, Persona, will center on how Mehmedinović’s subjects perform their own identities. “I would ask the models to come as they were but many showed up in a favorite dress or other items that functioned as a kind of mask,” he explains. “I found this layer interesting and decided to focus on it.”

The beauty of impulse is the organizing principle for Mehmedinović’s work. “People are miserable because they never get a chance to show who they are,” he says. “You have to be able to lose yourself sometimes and forget about time and all the other things that order your life. You have to embrace chaos.”

You can read the full article at: http://www.lamag.com/laculture/culturefilesblog/2013/12/23/the-last-romantic-nature-meets-art-in-the-stunning-photos-of-harun-mehmedinovi-

Blindfold Magazine Volume VII profiles Bloodhoney* by Harun Mehmedinovic

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Grab your copy of the Blindfold Magazine, Volume VII at the official magazine website.

Bloodhoney* Print Store by Harun Mehmedinovic

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The new Bloodhoney* Print Store is up! Check it out at: http://prints.bloodhoney.com

The Huffington Post profiles the Bloodhoney* Project by Harun Mehmedinovic

by Michael Juliani The Huffington Post: Photographer Harun Mehmedinovic Seeks the Sublime With Bloodhoney* Book Project

For 60 days, the photographer Harun Mehmedinovic is focusing on his Kickstarter campaign and not much else. He usually doesn't sleep much anyway, a habit he's had since moving to the United States at 13 after surviving four years of the Bosnian War. Living in Flagstaff, Arizona, teaching film and photography at Northern Arizona University, he spends most of his days sending messages to hundreds of people, asking them to pledge to buy something from his campaign to fund the printing of his second book, Persona. Most people don't respond.

There are misconceptions about contributing to a Kickstarter campaign, that it's like donating to a cause. And because you're buying a product directly from the person who made it, there's an anxiety about his self-indulgence. The price that Harun set for the reward of one digital copy of the book and one print copy ($50) is likely less than what it'll eventually be sold for in a bookstore. The minimum monetary goal for funding his project, $20,000, actually lies much lower than what he hopes to make, about $35,000. Whenever people contribute, Harun thanks them publicly on his Facebook, always adding the link to the Kickstarter page.

I'm part of Harun's project. After I wrote an article about him for the Los Angeles Times in May 2012, we kept in touch and worked together on a photo and text essay about rites of passage for an issue of Blindfold Magazine. He decided to launch a series of books about his photography project, Bloodhoney*. He asked me to edit the text that would accompany his images. Through Kickstarter Harun was able to fund the limited printing of his first book, Séance. This September he distributed print copies to those who had backed the project while simultaneously launching the second Kickstarter, for Persona.

COVER-PERSONA

Harun and I first met because of his father's writing. I had been reading the book Motel Chronicles by Sam Shepard all fall of my junior year in college. A smattering of poems, short stories, monologues and dialogues, it unlocked a certain vault of my subconscious. It seemed so personal that I thought it must not exist for anyone else. In an interview I found, Shepard was asked about other writers he admired. He mentioned Semezdin Mehmedinovic, who he said was Serbian, and had written a book called Sarajevo Blues:

"He accomplished the kind of book I've always tried to do and haven't totally succeeded at, which is a combination of poetry, prose, short stories, diary, all thrown into one thing. I love that form. He actually managed to do it with Sarajevo Blues. During that horrible conflict he chose to stay there in the city. He had a wife and kids and decided to stick it out. It's an amazing account of a writer under fire."

Enough said. I went online and ordered the thing after learning that no local bookstores had it in stock. Rooted in Mehmedinovic's reading of translations of American literature, including Jack Kerouac's Mexico City Blues and, yes, Shepard's Motel Chronicles, Sarajevo Blues collects dispatches from a shattered world, Sarajevo during the city's four-year siege in the Bosnian War. In fact, Mehmedinovic decided to stay in Sarajevo with his wife Sanja and nine-year-old son Harun (they were not, as Shepard thought, Serbian).

When I read Sarajevo Blues for the first time, it was 2012. I wondered what had happened to the Mehmedinovic family, who had supposedly come to the United States. Through Google I learned that Semezdin's son, Harun, who made poignant appearances in Sarajevo Blues, including a scene where Semezdin finds gray hairs in the 10-year-old boy's head, had attended UCLA film school and the American Film Institute. He had made a short film about the Bosnian War and was now in the middle of a photography project called Bloodhoney*. He was on Facebook and was now 29 and living in Los Angeles like me. I was taking a feature writing class for school at the time and needed a story to tell. I wrote Harun an email.

We met up at a Brazilian restaurant in Culver City. I brought Harun's father's books with me along with notepad and tape recorder. Dressed in black with a messenger bag slung over his shoulder, Harun was tall and lanky with his hair pulled back in a ponytail. I had never known anyone who had survived a war, never mind one where children were prime targets for snipers. To rebel against the most terrifying aspect of the war, Harun and his friends used to tempt the snipers by running across streets where bullets often flew. They'd play rock-paper-scissors for who could go first, when the sniper wasn't paying attention. The others would follow. Though many kids died playing this game, Harun told me that such rebellion against the status quo of fear was necessary to keep sane.

At the Brazilian restaurant, we ate and talked for four hours, till the waiters locked us out.

Harun's photography project proved to be about more than capturing the saturated, incandescent beauty I'd seen in shots posted on his website. At dinner Harun explained that his project was rooted in the sense of adrenaline he'd had as a kid during the war, amidst the collapse of the social fabric. He had spent his adolescence in Phoenix and then in Alexandria, Virginia, and he had been lonely, angry, and frustrated by his inability to match the primacy of the war zone. In school he argued with teachers, got in fights, and kept to himself, watching films and planning his own path to Hollywood.

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After some success with his short film, In the Name of the Son, Harun kept crisscrossing the country, traveling ceaselessly as he'd done since landing in the United States, taking pictures of landscapes and skies. In his mid-twenties he found himself more cooped up than usual, reading lots of articles on the Internet, working on film scripts, realizing that he'd worked himself into an uncomfortable isolation. On the film festival circuit he reconnected with friends from college who were broken down by nine-to-five jobs.

Over a series of hours-long interviews I did with Harun in March and April 2012, I began to see how he had combined his filmmaker's sense of vision and intellectual grasp of philosophical sources like Joseph Campbell and Rumi with a deep personal need to re-connect with the end-of-the-world adrenaline of those four years of his youth. Realizing that a film project would be too difficult to manage, Harun grabbed his camera and asked friends to pick any location they wanted and any clothing they wanted. He would follow them for up to 15 hours straight, giving time and space for them to dissolve the anxieties of their day-to-day lives. After doing dozens of these shoots all over the continent, he could pinpoint certain series and images that had captured some sublime quality reminiscent of the open-world beauty present in chaos.

In the United States, stability is often promoted as wellbeing. The privilege of being able to live mostly free from violence and societal chaos allows people to rest on what they have. There are rarely opportunities to challenge this way of life unless a person faces himself and breaks down some very tense barriers. Even though I hungered to break down my own walls, I intrinsically feared the ardor and instability it would require, even for just 10 hours. When I interviewed a handful of people who had been subjects of Harun's shoots, I heard about the difficulty some had had becoming vulnerable. Some even recalled specific images that cropped up: the bar scene, their families, the clothes they wear to work.

One of my favorite passages from Séance was the story of a 21-year-old woman named Bri.

When Harun got in touch with Bri, I remember him telling me that her parents had grounded her. "She's 21!" he exclaimed. "How do you ground someone who's 21?" Wholeheartedly in love with and in need of dance in her life, Bri's passion had interfered with her family's hopes for her future. She told Harun about having to hide her dancing, containing it to private moments in front of the bathroom mirror and even on her way to school, where she was free to act as she pleased. The first shoot Harun did with her was in a lake, where she contorted her body as if moving to music. A far-off kayaker sat and watched, and when the shoot wrapped the kayaker applauded.

I could tell that Harun cared a lot about Bri's story. Bri was a free spirit trapped by her circumstances, by a situation that continued to deprive her of control. Even though their backstories were so different, and even though the plight of an American millennial seems to pale in urgency compared to a refugee's, I could see the frustrated child in Harun connecting with Bri's desire to break free. At the root, they had known the same frustration, and their acts of rebellion were identical if not exactly in scale.

"In America, you are taught to fear and obey, same as in any other place," Harun told me. "My rebellion was against fear and so is theirs. They are, in essence, afraid to live. The sniper bit is a thing a child would do, and in itself it means keeping the youth alive. For most people, that experience on the shoots is about childhood, literally. They become children again. It means that certain fears just slowly vanish."

Persona will focus on a specific element of the project: some people show up to shoots dressed as a sort of character. This element bothered Harun at first, begging him to wonder whether the characters represented a more authentic representation or a retreat from who the people really are. Harun said, "Let's face it; we all wear masks every day. We probably wear a different mask for every person we meet. We probably wear a mask for every place we go. Very rarely do we share with others who we really are. Very rarely do we feel confident and courageous enough to just be ourselves." The book will explore the shoots where this was relevant, providing details from the lives of the people involved.

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I have yet to experience a shoot--we've made plans, but Harun's travels are so impulsive that he's often only in town somewhere for a night or a couple of days. I've realized that the deeper I become entrenched in Harun's perspective on the world, the more I benefit from it. For awhile, before I knew him, and when I was getting to know him, I still felt like his frame of reference wasn't so foreign to me, even though he had survived one of the most drastic wars in recent history.

I think, more than anything, the Bloodhoney* project offers people the chance to have a transcendental experience. The name itself refers to the word "Balkan," a combination of the Turkish words for "blood" and "honey." Harun said that if you are living a full life, it will be bittersweet. You will be feeling the good things and the bad things, and you will have escaped the monotonous gray area where nothing is felt at all.

Having found an outlet during the war, Harun found that vein again here, where rebellion against the status quo isn't as easily pronounced. And instead of coveting it, he offers it to anyone who has a free day, some favorite clothing, and an ideal location in mind.

The Huffington Post: Photographer Harun Mehmedinovic Seeks the Sublime With Bloodhoney* Book Project

Bloodhoney* Exhibition & Book Reading by Harun Mehmedinovic

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Harun Mehmedinovic will be presenting the Bloodhoney* project at a Gallery exhibition at Galerie in La Jolla, California! Simultaneously, there will be a Bloodhoney by Harun Mehmedinovic book "Seance" reading and signing at the legendary Warwick's bookstore on November 7th at 7pm! Address: 7812 Girard Ave, La Jolla, California, 92037. Bloodhoney* by Harun Mehmedinovic "Seance"

Please visit the event page at: http://warwicks.indiebound.com/event/harun-mehmedinovic

To keep up with the updates, please visit https://www.facebook.com/blood.honey.by.harun.mehmedinovic or www.bloodhoney.com and give it a "like."

You can learn more about the Bloodhoney project by watching the TED Talk by Harun Mehmedinovic:

or reading the L.A.Times Article about the project: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/03/entertainment/la-et-bosnian-photographer-20120503