Let America be America Again

February 14, 2010, at 1:22 am

Let Amer­ica be Amer­ica again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pion­eer on the plain
Seek­ing a home where he him­self is free.

(Amer­ica never was Amer­ica to me.)

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Black History Month

February 4, 2010, at 10:04 pm

It took me a long time to learn how to read. By the start of grade two I still couldn’t really make head or tail of words. I got lucky; my poor read­ing was noticed. I was doubly lucky to go to a school where a spe­cial­ist was avail­able. I took remem­dial read­ing through­out second grade. It wasn’t until grade three, Ms. Cromwell’s class, that read­ing took flight. Ms. Crom­well was a young black woman from Nova Sco­tia. She was, is, a fant­astic teacher. With her, I learned to love read­ing. Eman­cip­a­tion from slavery and eman­cip­a­tion from illit­er­acy are fun­da­ment­ally inter­twined ideas. Ms. Crom­well had a remark­able way of explain­ing both to 8 year olds. I owe a remark­able debt to her tal­ent and caring teaching.

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Invisible Cities

January 26, 2010, at 7:23 pm

What was it that the Decentrists desired when they dreamed of the city as a garden? What did Le Cor­busier see when he ima­gined the towers of the Radial City, ges­tic­u­lat­ing like giant fin­gers in some obscure salute? Did any­one think to ask people how they wanted to live? Did any­one look around, to see the value of the city as a social and eco­nomic envir­on­ment? Now that the giant social hous­ing pro­jects are crum­bling, are we poised to make the same mistake?

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Being There gets Healthy

November 11, 2009, at 10:29 pm

I see faces light up when they see our pho­tos. Jackson’s shots help people to get an under­stand­ing that as Abori­ginal people, we don’t fit into the ste­reo­types that so many hold about us. Not all of us are brown or red, and some of us even have blonde hair and blue eyes. His images help every­one (includ­ing me!) to ques­tion our ideas about what we think about Abori­ginal people.

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In and out of darkness

November 1, 2009, at 11:15 pm

I’m always try­ing to under­stand what my pho­tos mean, bey­ond the mere con­ceit of the image. Look­ing back over the thou­sands and thou­sands of pho­tos I’ve shot over the last eight yeasrs, I’m start­ing to see some trends. Most of the time, my pho­tos are about boundaries.

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Screen Time

October 26, 2009, at 10:04 pm

As a pho­to­grapher, I feel some­times that I’m exper­i­en­cing the world from behind a fil­ter. I won­der if look­ing at the world through a key­hole is lim­it­ing. But then, think­ing back through photo-school, to my days at the night lab, I remem­ber the won­der­ful feel­ing of dis­cov­er­ing pho­to­graphy. It was more like dis­cov­er­ing how to see critically.

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MSF Photo Fundraiser

September 12, 2009, at 12:40 pm

a lost white diaper sits on the pave­ment out­side the First Baptist Church, corner of Elgin and Laur­ier, Ottawa

In just under two weeks, I’ll be par­ti­cip­at­ing in a fun­draiser for Méde­cins Sans Frontières involving many of Ottawa’s best pho­to­graph­ers. Held at Ottawa’s most pleas­ure ori­ented gal­lery come party spot, it’s shap­ing up to be a […]

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Neda and the News

July 12, 2009, at 7:03 pm

I got up from my com­puter, shuffled to the kit­chen, put the kettle on, and had a little sob by myself. I’d been writ­ing about women join­ing the protests in Iran, and of the import­ance of pic­tures of young, attract­ive, female pro­test­ers, when I saw the video. I had been glued to the com­puter, read­ing everything and any­thing I could about Iran. It was power­ful moment recor­ded in shaky video. Power­ful enough to change the world, and I knew it, but I didn’t tell anyone.

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Photos from the streets of Tehran

June 17, 2009, at 1:04 am

In the tur­moil and con­fu­sion of the post-election Iran, strict con­trol of inform­a­tion is a key tool in quash­ing dis­sent. Media access is severely restric­ted, for­eign journ­al­ists are con­fined to their hotels, and com­mu­nic­a­tions net­works are being dis­mantled. There are even reports of mili­tias con­fis­cat­ing satel­lite dishes. The cur­tain has been drawn on Iran. It is, how­ever, already too late.

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Something is happening in Iran

June 15, 2009, at 12:03 am

Today, the con­flict between rad­ical Islam and reform leaped from the impli­cit to the interne­cine and all too real. Kaplan con­tin­ues:
…the issue of “fun­da­ment­al­ism” in Iran, and the West’s pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with it, was about to be over­taken by lar­ger shifts in the political-historical land­scape that few could yet fathom.
It took twelve years for Kaplan’s pre­dic­tion to come true.

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