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? The failures of the Robert Taylor homes in Chicago and Clichy-Sous-Bois in Paris are resounding examples of the general failure of the social housing projects of the 20th century to adequately address the housing needs of citizens of the city. The planners tried to build utopia, but forgot to account for the nature of people.
We may be poised to make the same mistake. Regent Park in Toronto is being torn down, as are thousands of other aging or unserviceable social housing complexes. They will be replaced with condominiums. A massive relocation is under way, with social housing mega-blocks swapped for social and economic “diversification.” We are conducting a large, living social experiment played out on real human beings.
In the inner-city housing project of Toronto’s Regent Park, Kendell and Mikey, like their surroundings are in the process of transformation; the environment and social pressure tempting them to make poor choices, their mothers and mentors rooting for them to succeed. Turning his camera on the often ignored inner city, Academy-award nominated director Hubert Davis sensitively depicts the disconnection of urban poverty and race from the mainstream.
Here’s a fantastic little video via my friend HelloHellaStella about octupuses that use coconut shells as portable housing:
“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.”
The highlight, for me, comes half way through when the little guy tucks himself inside two shells. When another scoots her way across the ocean floor is pretty cool too! This video does not contain sound.
Who said we coudn’t have a little fun around here, eh?
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 who pay our debts, in deteriorating health, longer commutes, higher food prices, or the eradication of fertile soil and potable water. There really are too many ways to list how the situation facing poor people is unjust. A lot must be done.
Mass action has for a long time been the only real tool for regular people to change things. So too for climate justice. I believe that mass action is an important part of political and economic support of environmental change. On that note, I share with you documentation of two mass-actions that make a call for radical, but reasonable, changes in the way we conduct our daily lives.
The following are videos of two protests on either side of the United States involving cyclist riding with cars. They share a similar message about the unsustainable design of the a car-based city, but that is where the similarity ends. The videos use two different styles (so do, as you will see, the actions), but their message is equally strong. The first for it’s classic call for justice and solidarity, the second for it’s insanity.
P.S. While mass action, culture, and an affordable press have long been tools available to working and poor people, accessible broadcast media is new. The ability for normal lay people to produce quality propaganda like the above is a novel and exciting development. What this access will actually mean is anyone’s guess.
Oe Menia by Bieke Depoorter recently won the Magnun Expression Award. I am encouraged that this series beat out a strong showing of predictably outstanding , typically hard-core, but otherwise boring “photojournalism”.
Those other stories included a bunch of poor people in a variety of locales, all looking poor. There are pictures about drug addicts, abused miners, and survivors of war. There are pictures made at great risk, and pictures made in incredible places. The also-ran photographers are all supremely talented in their own right, but their work falls short for the same reason: it is impersonal.
Depoorter’s approach was different too:
“I am looking for a place to spend the night. Do you know people who would have a bed, or a couch? I don’t need anything in particular, and I have a sleeping-bag. I prefer not to stay in a hotel, because I don’t have a lot of money and because I want to see the way people live in Russia. Could I stay at your place, perhaps? Thank you very much for your help!”
What Bieke Depoorter has, and the others lack, is a fundamentally social approach to photography. Her photos are documents of a social experience first, and photographs second. Yes they are beautiful, but their power is that they embody a relationship. There is nothing special about the places Depoorter went to, but we will never be able to visit. Her photography is unique, a record of an event and a relationship that is impossible to receate. Yes, her people are poor too, but the photos aren’t cloying or sterotypical. They describe, with respect, a particular human experince in the specific and the general. They do not abstract and isolate, they connect. When I look at these photos, I feel a frenetic, agitated, almost crazed energy just below the surface. I cannot say the same for the others.
And as a supplementary series, I find her pictures of sleeping places a perfect counterballance.
Credit to my friend Saty for the heads up about this work.
Today, I turn Being There over for a rare guest post from my friend and colleague Melanie Ferris. Melanie is an Aboriginal Health Promotion consultant, editor, rockin’ momma (I’m not joking about the rockin, she used to be a concert promoter and band manager) and general force of nature. I asked Melanie to talk about the work we’ve been doing together. What she wrote is below. Over the next couple of days I’ll respond to some of the questions that she raises.
Telling our Healthy Stories
Photographs tell us many things about the past — what our ancestors looked like; how our cities or towns once appeared; or who was present at important political events. People look to their photographic archives for their history. Yet when Aboriginal people look for images of their ancestors, what their communities looked like, or important historical events in their lives, the records become scarce. We are more familiar with the stereotypes of the Indian chief and squaw, the Eskimo, or Half-breed, than engaging with them as real people.
~Jeff Thomas (Iroquois), in Where are the Children? Healing the Legacy of the Residential Schools (published by the Legacy of Hope Foundation, 2003
For the past several years, I’ve been immersed in developing useful health information for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people across Canada. I’m passionate about making sure that Aboriginal people in Canada get information that empowers them to think about achieving good health in their traditional ways.
My good friend Jackson and I have an ongoing dialogue about what it means to be healthy (and ultimately, happy). While my own perspective as a mixed-race First Nations woman is unique from Jack’s, our common bond is that we both understand first-hand the issues that Aboriginal people are dealing with — isolation, poverty, healing.
As an inter-generational survivor of the residential school system (and the foster care system, and the sixties scoop, phew!), I grew up surrounded by a lot of anger, guilt, abuse, and mistrust. As I grew into a young adult, the act of creating became very important for me to deal with all of these emotions. Jackson is a person who gets the importance of being creative along the healing journey, and thankfully, he has often been the impetus for my creations.
That’s why I asked Jackson to join me on my research journey this year. Thanks to a Trillium grant, I’ve been looking at what we can do to help prevent obesity in Ontario’s Aboriginal communities. People kept telling me, “We need to see people who look like us.” So many books and reports that aim to help Aboriginal people actually serve to reinforce many of the stereotypes that aren’t exactly helpful.
I discussed this with Jack. He knows me well, and he knows I’m a stubborn force when I’m working to achieve my visions. I knew he would be able to understand, respect, and most importantly, help me to achieve my vision when it came to putting my friends and other people I love in front of the lens.
We’ve now collaborated on several photo shoots in Toronto and Ottawa for my research. Jackson’s images help me turn my words into something that people can actually use, something that inspires them. 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.
Getting this far wasn’t easy. There is no guidebook to producing useful images of Aboriginal people in a culturally appropriate way. Most of my friends don’t have handlers, and I had no budget for lighting, locations, or much of anything else. Jackson had to get up close and personal with many of the children, aunties/uncles, parents, teachers, and grandparents. He couldn’t walk into a room, shoot the children, and leave. He actually had to engage.
One warm, summer evening I invited Jackson to meet some of my close friends for the first time, a beautiful Métis family that I love dearly. They had arranged a delicious feast for all of us to enjoy together. As we sat down for our meal, their 4-year-old was smiling wildly and climbing all over Jackson as if he were a jungle gym. His parents smiled warmly at me, and I was clear on the fact that everyone knew we were safe with Jack. For us, this child’s act spoke volumes — we believe that children are closest to the Creator, and they know when they are safe.
My research isn’t over, and neither is my collaboration with Jack. Many people are excited about this work, so I’m aiming to expand it and get us up north to meet the Dene and Métis people in the Northwest Territories. It’s sort of selfish, I guess — having Jackson around helps me feel safe. It means there is someone sensible to listen, give useful feedback, and help me to stay inspired and sane.
For now, I present to you what we have achieved so far. Jackson’s photos provide the beautiful images for this video, and the backdrop for the research I’ll present at the Our People, Our Health conference in Ottawa in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for more or visit my website, beststart.org for more information.
The Yankees won the World Series, and yesterday the city was covered in pinstripes. The revelers in blue and white were brilliantly coordinated and chaotic in their homage to the baseball heroes. Everyone was proud to be a New Yorker. They were proud of the power and glory of this city, which is really a country unto itself. Seeing all the sports fans asserting 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. Too bad I missed the parade.
It seems fitting that I’ve had too much coffee. This city is hyper.
Instead I spent the afternoon in The Strand. What a fantastic bookstore. My best friend’s father worked in New York for some time, and when I asked him what I should do here (the last time I was here, in 2005), all he had to say was “go to Strand.” I could spend all day and all of my money there, perusing their 18 miles of books. Among the gems I’ll be bringing home is The Photographer, a book by the graphic novelist Emmanuel Guibert about the French photographer Didier Lefèvre’s trip to Afghanistan with MSF in 1979. The book is an interesting combination of photographic contact sheets overlaid by graphic panels. It works well, the story is funny and engaging. The artwork by both men is subtle and evocative. I’m looking forward to reading more on the flight home. Funny that the subject most interesting while I’m here in New York is the focus of the “War on Terror” and the most un-urban of places.
Alright, this every day thing is just not going to work.
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? Nobody wants to read my half-baked late-night ramblings. How about I promised to write when I’m inspired?
I really did have the best intentions, but there’s really nothing left in the tank. Except for this:
Here’s a fascinating website sent to me by my friend Saty about a The Willard Suitcase Exhibit. The back-story:
When Willard Psychiatric Center in New York’s Finger Lakes closed in 1995, workers discovered hundreds of suitcases in the attic of an abandoned building. Many of them appeared untouched since their owners packed them decades earlier before entering the institution.The suitcases and their contents bear witness to the rich, complex lives their owners lived prior to being committed to Willard.
And what a witness it is. This is a rich and complex story, with a large website, and I had to revisit it a few times. It was worth the time invested. The photographs are fantastic, full of life and mystery. Plus, the website includes some eighteen oral histories.
The Willard mental health institution has an important place in the history of forced treatment for mental health issues. This exhibition does a very good job at illuminating that history and humanizing its characters. It is a rare and beautiful example of history that is worthy of being called art.
November 1st, first day of National Novel Writing Month (or should that be International). In the spirit of the month, I will endevour to write a post every day. Let’s hope this doesn’t kill me!
This week: lots more craziness, including a conference I organized, two new portfolios (2!), and a trip to New York. That’s the Big Apple, we’re not talkin’ Syracuse here. Not that I have anything against Syracuse, I once heard some wicked-awesome jazz clarinet there.
Editing down to a new portfolio is a tough process. It requires a lot of self-knowledge and introspection. At least it does when I do it. Its always a little bit nerve-wracking, but fun in the end. I use a trick I learned a long time ago (but was reminded by Don Weber of how important it is): I print out every photo I think has a shot at making it to the final edit. Even some oddball ones, photos where you think “what was I getting at here”, or photos you think don’t belong with any others. I print them all out, and lay the proofs on a big table. Then I push them around. I sit some by others, I make little collections, remove a few. As everything slides around the table I start to see connections, relationships between the ideas. That’s how a story comes together.
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. No surprise there, I’ve been struggling my whole life to overcome isolation, abuse, and poverty.
I used to focus on the external world. My photos were accessible, they employed easy metaphors that related to concrete limitations. I photographed things like fences and birds to illustrate my desire to break free. Then I started to look at internal limitations. For a long time I used blurry, foggy, murky photos to exercise my ghosts. On my vacations I went to places where people had been trapped: Granada and Sarajevo. I think I’ve finally gotten rid of most of those ghosts. Lately I’ve been thinking about interpersonal boundaries. Poverty is essentially an issue of social restriction (based on identity), so I’ve been taking pictures of people. My pictures of people are the most explicit of the photos I’m making now. I’d struggled to photograph people for a long time, but I think I’m finally starting to find my groove.
In all of this, it is my desire to make dark places accessible. I want anyone looking at my photos to understand what it feels like to long to be free, to feel haunted, or to be isolated. I want to suggest ways out of darkness, and to give hope.
For about a week, I’ve been working my way through the video archives of the International Centre for Photography. They have a series of recorded artist talks that are simple but very well done. I was really taken by Jeff Liao, a young photographer in New York. His “Habitat 7″ photos are a series of high resolution (wall-sized) panoramas taken of, from, or about the number 7 subway line from Queens to Times Square. Liao uses the commuter train-line as a lovely metaphor. He likens it’s course to that of a river valley, along which can be found the myriad of communities that make up the living city. He puts it better than I ever could:
Like river valleys that flowed through and gave birth to early civilizations, the IRT 7 train of the New York City subway system serves as the conduit that connects many ethnically diverse neighborhoods in northwest Queens to the heart of Manhattan. While I’ve been living along the “International Express” for years, I am still constantly awed by the complexity of the communities formed alongside it as well as the harmony so many people of distinct ethnic backgrounds are able to live in. I’ve come to see the 7 train as a “habitat” of these immigrant settlers who pursue the typical “American Dream” way of life while upholding their ethnic traditions.
I’m heading to New York for a visit next week. I’m looking forward to riding the subway, with Liao’s beautiful photos tucked in the back of my mind. I’d really like to see these pictures in person. The internet just doesn’t seem to do them justice.
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. A few years later on a gray New Year’s in Paris, on my way to pick up barbecue pork, I realized that I was actually enjoying traveling alone. A few days later in the tube in London I had the startling sensation of being at home in a completely new place. I love the train as a way to understand the urban social and architectural environment.
We just don’t do subways right in Canada. We don’t do transcendent subways . You might think we would, what with the blistering winters we endure. And really we should build better subways, but Canadians live in car commuter cities. We’re not even close to being ecologically friendly, let alone multicultural in our approach to public transit (although that point is debatable for all colonial cities, of which I include American ones). It’s a shame to live in a country with an abundance of real rivers but so few social waterways.
A blog by photographer Jackson Couse about using photography to understand and talk about the world.
I write about images and current events, examine the construction meaning using images, and try to understand the increasingly important role visual culture plays in life.
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