The first work by David Alan Harvey I remember seeing was some of his pictures from Cuba. I still really don’t know how he finds such powerful colour and at times I think he lives in some parallel universe where things are rather less grey than here. Cuba may well be a pretty colourful place, but I think what we see in his pictures owes more to him and his way of seeing than to the subject matter.
There are over a hundred pictures from his Cuba book on the Magnum web site, (Harvey joined Magnum in 1993, becoming a full member ub 1997) where you can also see much of his other work and he also has his own site with some interesting work on it, including some by other photographers, as well as information about the workshops he runs. These are not cheap, but I’m sure if you are ready for them could be very much worthwhile.
You can also learn more about his Emerging Photographer Fund, started in 2007, which gave its first annual award of $5000 this year to young British photographer Sean Gallagher to encourage his work on the encroaching desert in China. Gallagher is based in China and has quite a lot from there on his site, as well as some interesting travel photography from other places. Born in 1979, he became a photographer after graduating in Zoology in 2002. He spent a year as a Magnum intern in 2004-5, and his colour work shares some of Harvey’s energy and use of unusual foreground which shows us the subject in a different way.
But perhaps the most interesting part of Harvey’s site is the blog, Road Trips. Harvey often doesn’t write a great deal on it, but what makes it interesting (and at times infuriating) are the comments. Not just the odd comment, but literally hundreds of them (and yes, some of these are odd.)