Being There

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?

“We were blown away,” said biol­o­gist Mark Nor­man of dis­cov­er­ing the octo­pus behav­ior off Indone­sia. “It was hard not to laugh under­wa­ter and flood your [scuba] mask.”

I am inspired by my friend Josée’s report­ing from the Copen­hagen Cli­mate Sum­mit, so I thought this would be a good time to focus on issues of envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice. For too long, we have lied and exter­nal­ized the true costs of doing busi­ness. That loan is now being called in. It will be poor people […]

There is a fre­netic, agi­tated, almost crazed energy just below the sur­face of Bieke Depoorter’s photographs.

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.

See­ing all the sports­fans asert­ing their cit­i­zen­ship with head-to-toe Yan­kees gear was pretty sur­real. Their ver­ti­cal pin­stripes aligned per­fectly with the con­verg­ing lines of stone, steel, and glass of the tall tow­ers all around. Those tow­ers rep­re­sent an incred­i­ble amount of power, and the aspi­ra­tional nature of life in New York and the United States in general.

My arm is aching from the H1N1 vac­ci­na­tion, and I’m feel­ing woozy. I just worked 13 hours. My feet are swollen and my head is throb­bing. Can I have a day off?

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.

I’ve always loved rid­ing the metro. The train is a great place to sit and to think. Of all of the great moments of clar­ity in my life, three have been on the sub­way. In 2005, on my way to Coney Island in the late after­noon, I watched a butch latina and her femme girl­friend talk and smile. The intox­i­cat­ing pace of the crazy big city started to sink in, and I knew I was hooked on cities.

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.