Heads up, good stories!

July 14, 2009, at 8:56 pm

After a long and ram­bling post the other day, I’ll keep it short this time — I have a couple of read­ings worth your time. I’m not totally con­vinced by the online magazine. It’s a format in infancy, the kinks haven’t been worked out yet. And yet, this week two online magazines caught my attention:

Rooftops by Ernesto Ramirez

First up, 7.7, a web­site pro­duced by a col­lect­ive of pho­to­graph­ers and photo-pros from Bar­celona. Of artic­u­lar note is Close to Heaven by Ern­esto Ramirez (report­age num­ber 4).  This is a sur­pris­ingly subtle and intim­ate med­it­a­tion on the flat-top roof. Shot in black and white pan­or­ama format, the series explores the elev­ated sanc­tu­ary of the big-city rooftop. As a side note, to my neigh­bors in Montreal: your mid-night roof-top soc­cer was not equally edifying.

Lorena Ros' "A fate sealed with voodoo"

Second, a web mag called 100 Eyes. Pro­duced by pho­to­grapher Andy Levin, 100 Eyes pub­lishes col­lec­tions of pho­to­graphic essays on a topic or theme. This edi­tion is called The Migrants. It is a brood­ing, scath­ing look at one of the defin­ing char­ac­ter­ist­ics of globalization. More people than ever find them­selves stuck and work­ing in a limbo; divorced from their homes, them­selves, and com­munity. Whether a migrant or not, global migra­tion is chan­ging the world we live in. 1000 Eyes: The migrants is a crit­ical depic­tion of the real and per­sonal effects of migra­tion, and, by extension, the dangers of glob­al­iz­a­tion. In por­tray­ing the isol­a­tion of this dislocation, Lorena Ros’ series on Nigerian women is par­tic­u­larly damning.

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Neda and the News

July 12, 2009, at 7:03 pm
Neda Agha-Soltan

I got up from my com­puter, shuffled into the kit­chen, put the kettle on, and had myself a little sob. 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. There were a mere 300 views at the time, before the young woman had a name.  Watch­ing the reac­tion the next day in the news, I wished that I had kept on writ­ing. With time, the import­ance of that moment has only grown. With more time, it will come to be a defin­ing image, not just of the pro­gress move­ment in Iran, but for mod­ern soci­ety and the world in gen­eral. Neda Agha-Soltan’s death, and the way in which it was recor­ded, holds an import­ant mes­sage and a lesson.

–

A few months ago, I went to a con­fer­ence for pho­to­journ­al­ists. At that con­fer­ence, Brian Storm gave a stir­ring present­a­tion about the future of journ­al­ism. His com­pany, Mediastorm, is an industry leader in mul­ti­me­dia pro­duc­tion, and has been for some time. When Brian Storm talks about the future and poten­tial of mul­ti­me­dia, people pay atten­tion. They don’t always like what they hear, but they know he’s prob­ably at least half-right. I recor­ded part of that present­a­tion, and pos­ted the video online. In a few weeks, it received 12 view­ings, most likely all of them were by me and the two people I sent the link. Viral video, this wasn’t. No, it was a grainy, dark, and muddy sound­ing seven minute record­ing, eons by You­Tube stand­ards. Then I received this:

Hey man, I get paid lots of money to give my present­a­tions and it doesn’t help me to have this on You­Tube. Can you please remove it?

Brian Storm says the news­pa­per is dead. Actu­ally, he uses the words “death spiral.” I think he is right. As he would say, the busi­ness of ship­ping dead wood to sub­scribers is inef­fi­cient, out­moded, and old-fashioned. New, money-making forms of journ­al­ism have not yet come to fruition, but they will soon. To some, this is a scary time to be in journ­al­ism. For oth­ers, like me, it is most excit­ing. There is a real oppor­tun­ity to tell stor­ies in new and enga­ging ways. What I find inter­est­ing, and I think Brian would agree, is the abil­ity of new media to inter­act with audi­ences. Here, in the new, confabulatory, media, is where the death of Neda Agha-Soltan is a defin­ing moment.

Brian Storm makes “plat­form agnostic” videos and inter­act­ive mul­ti­me­dia present­a­tions. Although many involve pho­to­graphy, they are essen­tialy of three storytelling tra­di­tions: the slideshow, the doc­u­ment­ary film, and the map. The video of Neda Agha-Soltan is none of these things. It is a single shot, too short to give nar­rat­ive or con­text. Although details did emerge, the video itself lacks intro­duc­tion or nar­ra­tion. Like a pho­to­graph, the power of the video is in the raw emo­tional con­tent and the imme­di­ate impres­sion of the scene and events. In this way, the video is more like a pho­to­graph than a film.

There has been great pres­sure over these last few months and years for pho­to­graph­ers to pro­duce pho­to­graphs and videos at the same time. Clearly, we are poised for a revolu­tion of mul­ti­me­dia con­tent. Most of my cli­ents are ask­ing for video, even the most inter­net un-savvy ones. The appeal of video is undeni­able. But how are we sup­posed to do it?  How, after spend­ing years devel­op­ing ones’ eye for the still image, are pho­to­graph­ers sup­posed to make the trans­ition to video?  Neda shows that there is a third way. The qual­ity of the video is actu­ally sec­ond­ary, what mat­ters is that it is now pos­sible to make video any­where. Pho­to­graph­ers should leave the film-making to doc­u­ment­ary film makers, and focus on what pho­to­graphy is good at: giv­ing a power­ful impres­sion of what it is like to be in a place, as some­thing is hap­pen­ing. We can do this in video.

It used to be that gov­ern­ments had a near-monopoly on sur­veil­lance, or at least an easy time of stem­ming the flow of inform­a­tion. This is no longer true. Every­one, every­where, is now a watch­dog. Sur­veil­lance is ubi­quit­ous and ever present, and the abil­ity of indi­vidual people to dis­trib­ute inform­a­tion is unpre­ced­en­ted. Nowhere in pub­lic is there ever really pri­vacy any­more. As the video of Neda Agha-Soltan illustrates, surveillance and com­mu­nic­a­tion tools in the hands of indi­vidu­als do affect the beha­viour of gov­ern­ments in the exer­cise of power.

The role of open trans­mis­sion net­works is as import­ant as the dis­trib­uted pro­duc­tion of con­tent. How­ever, this omni­pres­ence of record­ing and easy dis­tri­bu­tion cre­ates a lot of “noise”. Bal­anced, researched, and trust­worthy report­ing is even more import­ant today, but lost in a sea of per­son­al­ized RSS feeds and status updates. News organ­iz­a­tions are bur­ied, they’re in a crisis of rel­ev­ance. They must adopt and adapt by first accept­ing that con­tent is more import­ant than style, speed trumps accur­acy but accur­acy is essen­tial, and invest­ment in innov­a­tion and youth are needed. If they are going to sur­vive, as Brian Storm would say, news­pa­pers need to recon­sider who they are talk­ing to, and remem­ber that advert­ising is valu­able only so long as it is rel­ev­ant. There is no reason, other than short­sighted­ness and cal­ci­fic­a­tion, that indi­vidual blog­gers should be more rel­ev­ant than news­pa­pers. They are, because news­pa­pers have failed to “talk” to an increas­ingly frac­tured and isol­ated read­er­ship. This needs to be over­come. Why can’t I read my local news­pa­per in Face­book? News­pa­pers used to have it right: they hit people where they lived. Now they don’t talk to any­one. People live online.

Neda Agha-Soltan died June 20th, 2009. Events in Iran con­tinue to develop. While the world of news and inform­a­tion may be changed by her death, we will likely have to wait until the 40th day of the mourn­ing cycle to see what she will mean for Iran. That day is com­ing soon, and there will be thou­sands of people with cell phones to record it.

bonus:

more on MediaStorm http://dwmojos.wordpress.com/interviews/brian-storm–mediastorm/

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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.

A man with a briefcase prepares to throw a peice of concrete during post-election protests in Tehran, Iran

A man with a briefcase pre­pares to throw a peice of con­crete dur­ing post-election protests in Tehran, Iran

Defin­ing images of the con­flict have already been pro­duced. Some of the best come from French pho­to­grapher Olivier Laban-Mattei, a staff pho­to­grapher for Agence-France Press. He seems to be every­where at once in these pho­tos, like some sort of all-seeing super-human.

Pho­tos from protests, even viol­ent protests, are often all the same: masked pro­test­ers, scary riot police, outraged march­ers, hoo­ligans. These pho­tos trans­mit noth­ing more than the basic and obvi­ous: some people are upset. Here is an image that oper­ates on a higher level. Laban-Mattei’s photo of a cement-throwing office worker gives us much more than a simple story of anger and viol­ence. In effect, the story of the pho­to­graph extends far past the bor­ders of the frame.  It raises ques­tions. Why is this man dressed for work?  Was he com­pelled to join on the way home from his job?  What is in the briefcase?  What would com­pel a seem­ingly nor­mal per­son to engage in pub­lic violence?

A young Iranian man covers his face with a blood soaked hankercheif

There is incred­ible sym­bolic con­tent to the photo of the young man cov­er­ing his face with a blood-soaked ker­chief. It appears that he is cry­ing tears. There is also a reflex­ive qual­ity to this pho­to­graph, in the sense that you can feel the pres­ence of the pho­to­grapher in the situ­ation. I think that this qual­ity, pres­ence, is an integ­ral part of effect­ive pho­to­graphy and hon­est report­ing. The truth and value of pho­tos like these is in the feel­ing of intim­ate real­ity that they provide. Only pho­to­graphy can do this, freez­ing forever that moment, so that the exist­ence of this frac­tion of a second can­not be for­got­ten or refuted. In a sense, this photo is not really about the young man. He is an object, a per­son without past or future bey­ond this moment. What is real, and tran­scend­ent, about this pho­to­graph is the rela­tion­ship between the pho­to­grapher and the sub­ject. View­ing this photo, I feel like I am there.

Defeated Iranian presidential candidate Mousavi waves to supporters at a mass protest in Tehran, Iran

Defeated Ira­nian pres­id­en­tial can­did­ate Mousavi waves to sup­port­ers at a mass protest in Tehran, Iran

Pho­to­graphs like these will come to define the con­flict in Iran. Already, the pho­to­graph of the young man covered in blood has been turned into posters car­ried by march­ers. Ira­ni­ans face an extremely chal­len­ging situ­ation. SMS (text mes­saging) ser­vices, cell phone ser­vice, radio trans­mis­sions, and Inter­net are being jammed. Still, mes­sages are escap­ing the fil­ter. An extraordin­ary num­ber of mov­ing videos and pho­tos have been recor­ded and uploaded by pro­test­ers them­selves. For the regime, it is already too late, pho­to­graphs like these have escaped to expose the con­flict to the world, and more import­antly, to Ira­ni­ans. Whatever the out­come of this crisis, it will be impossible in the com­ing years to deny the viol­ence and injustice of these days. The regime will be changed by the test­a­ment of doc­u­ment­ary photography.

I under­stand that Olivier Laban-Mattei is now en-route back to France.

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Something is happening in Iran

June 15, 2009, at 12:03 am
In 1996, Atlantic con­trib­ut­ing editor Robert Kaplan pub­lished a whirl­wind travelogue named The Ends of the Earth: a Jour­ney to the Fron­ti­ers of Anarchy.In the chapters cov­er­ing Iran, Kaplan writes:
“The bor­ing truth about the Islamic Revolu­tion is that the rich are still rich, and the poor are still poor. The only real change is that the middle class was largely des­troyed. True or not, the poor feel that Iran lost the war with Iraq and the clergy are to blame. What you have left is an alli­ance between rad­ical mul­lahs and the secur­ity ser­vices. Together, these two groups can do things like help ter­ror­ists abroad and try to acquire a nuc­lear bomb– actions which allow them to pro­claim that the revolu­tion is still alive. But their sup­port is increas­ingly thin, and the soci­ety at home is headed in a com­pletely oppos­ite direction.”
In other Words, the battle between East and West was not being fought between the United States and Iran but inside Iran itself, between Iranians.”
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.

This change was a long time com­ing. In fact, some Iran observ­ers were sur­prised by the swell of sup­port for the Mousavi from young, urban, and middle-class Ira­ni­ans. We should not be sur­prised. The move­ment toward cul­tural and polit­ical mod­er­a­tion has long been brew­ing. Shortly after The Ends of the Earth was pub­lished, reformers under Khatami cap­tured 70% of the vote and a major­ity in the Ira­nian par­lia­ment. The women and young people who voted for Khatami’S Second of Khordad Move­ment almost a dec­ade ago are still voters today. Fol­low­ing the dis­qual­i­fic­a­tion of most pro­gress­ive can­did­ates, the elec­tions which brought Mah­moud Ahmad­ine­jad to power were largely boy­cot­ted. This time around, how­ever, things were dif­fer­ent. Although he is more con­ser­vat­ive than most Ira­nian pro­gress­ives, sup­port coalesced under Mousavi. Like in the United States, new tech­no­logy ener­gized and engaged pro­gress­ive Ira­ni­ans, and played a pivotal role in Mousavi’s cam­paign. Urban Ira­ni­ans were ready for change — a smooth, demo­cratic one.

But, as Kaplan says, it is not the city that makes a coun­try mod­ern, it is the town. Rural and urban Ira­ni­ans live in dif­fer­ent worlds. Iran is a coun­try of young people, where the cit­ies mod­ern­ized at an extreme pace under the Shah (even­tu­ally con­trib­ut­ing to the 1979 revolu­tion), and a dis­con­nect exists between the city and the coun­try. At the same time, the city and the coun­try are increas­ingly in contact. Migration has swelled Tehran alone to more than 13 mil­lion and put strain on nat­ural resources. In the last dec­ade, lit­er­acy rates, and the expect­a­tions that go with edu­ca­tion, have risen. Recently, how­ever, infla­tion has hit hard. The con­di­tions seem sim­ilar to those which lead to the 1979 revolution. The elites of Iran are con­ser­vat­ive, coun­try people, who over­threw the Shah. They will not let mod­ern­ism hap­pen easily.

At the time of this post­ing, a crack­down is underway. It appears all per­mits to for­eign journ­al­ists have been revoked and report­ers will face jail if they con­tinue to oper­ate, as did one Globe and Mail reporter. Demon­stra­tions are sched­uled to take place today, and a gen­eral strike tomorrow, with or (likely) without gov­ern­ment per­mis­sion. Young people in Iran will risk their lives to make their voices heard. The world needs to watch, listen, and learn: this is a con­flict that will define how human­ity nego­ti­ates the trans­ition to modernism. Will the regime back down?  Will the assembly of experts (the rul­ing clerics) intervene? How will the needs and desires of the city and the coun­try be balanced?  Will East and West meet peacefully?

For cov­er­age on the state of affairs in Iran, see Andrew Sul­li­van at the Atlantic. The CBC has two report­ers in Tehran.

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Fried Brains

May 17, 2009, at 9:34 pm
Old sunglasses at Abbas Grocery, Ottawa

Old sunglasses at Abbas Gro­cery, Ottawa

Well, my brain is cooked.

I am in Toronto again this week­end, the third time in a month.  I should have ren­ted an apart­ment!  I’m in town for a work­shop with Don­ald Weber, Cana­dian doc­u­ment­ary pho­to­grapher and mem­ber of the VII Network.

Don reviewed my work in 2007, at a con­fer­ence called the Great White North Work­shops. I showed him a port­fo­lio of my “I am Free” series (ori­gin­ally called “Departs”). Nobody else at the con­fer­ence really “got” my pic­tures at the time, or engaged me hon­estly. Don did, and his advice at that time changed my dir­ec­tion in pho­to­graphy. He told me to start pho­to­graph­ing people. He told me to get over my fear, and get closer. Two years later, at a con­fer­ence last month, he remembered my work.

Scrap metal at Baker's in Ottawa

Scrap metal at Baker’s in Ottawa

This time, he kicked my ass a bit. I have been shoot­ing people. I’ve been get­ting a lot closer lately. I’ve worked hard to be cog­niz­ant and crit­ical of my sur­round­ings, and the people in them. What Don did, and what I am grate­ful for, is called me out for not shoot­ing true to my vis­ion. He is right.

Some­where along the way, I trained myself to ignore my instincts. I focused on style and tech­nique over sub­stance and mean­ing. I lost focus of why I love pho­to­graphy. I’ve been sup­press­ing the emo­tional, non-technical, and intu­it­ive way of shoot­ing that is actu­ally my strength. Des­pite count­less hours work­ing on other types of pho­to­graphy, I keep com­ing back to doc­u­ment­ary pho­to­graphy. I can’t stay away, and it’s time for me to be hon­est with myself about that. It’s time for me to make the jump, I just needed a little push from Don­ald Weber.

So if it’s all about the people (or, more spe­cific­ally, rela­tion­ships), why did I choose two pho­to­graphs without people in them?  I just star­ted a new pro­ject. These pic­tures are part of it, but I have to keep the people pho­tos to myself for a while.

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Personal Documentary

May 8, 2009, at 2:42 pm
the crowd at Fait Maison 11

The crowd at Fait Maison 11

Pho­to­graphy is often a sol­it­ary occupation.

First, there’s the many hours spent search­ing for the per­fect pic­ture. When you do find one, you have a split second rela­tion­ship with your sub­ject. This is not a true rela­tion­ship, it is one medi­ated by the cam­era. Pho­to­graphy a moment­ary reflec­tion of real­ity. Then come hours spent alone in front of the com­puter, mak­ing everything just-so: an ideal­ized ver­sion of real­ity. When people finally do look at your pho­tos, they see that split second rela­tion­ship again. How­ever, by this time, the ver­sion of real­ity cap­tured in the moment is a former one, a reflec­tion of some­thing that once was but is no more. Pho­to­graphy is frus­trat­ingly real and unreal at the same time. After almost a dec­ade of tak­ing pic­tures, I still have trouble com­ing to terms with this disconnectedness.

I see loneli­ness in my work, and a cer­tain absence of per­sonal rela­tion­ship. This empti­ness goes along with the way I use the medium — a little heavy on nos­tal­gia. There are parts of this that I like, but at the same time, the empti­ness both­ers me. Pho­to­graphy can be a lonely pur­suit, but it doesn’t have to be one all the time. I want to use the medium to explore con­nec­tion and com­munity, as well as loneli­ness and dis­con­nec­tion. Both each is a part of the human condition.

Next week, I will start the first of a series of in-depth per­sonal mini-documentaries. Some­thing like embed­ding, but without going to war. I’ll be spend­ing the week with one per­son, all the time. Hon­estly, I am scared. I don’t know what to expect. Each per­son will be dif­fer­ent. I am hop­ing to be sur­prised. I am hop­ing to learn. I hope to fall in love, in a small way. It’s time to get up-close and personal.

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Tamils protest in Toronto

April 29, 2009, at 4:22 pm

The con­flict in Sri Lanka is raging. Canada is home to a sig­ni­fic­ant num­ber of people from the island off the tip of India. Almost a quarter of a mil­lion Tamils live in Canada, 200,000 of them in Toronto. I was in the city this week, for a con­fer­ence. On my way home, I walked into a protest by Tamil Cana­dians against the war in Sri Lanka. I have never been to Sri Lanka. I am neither Tamil nor Sin­halese. I do know people who are; people I like very much.

The Lib­er­a­tion Tigers of Tamil Elam are a sep­ar­at­ist rebel group lis­ted by Canada as a ter­ror­ist organ­iz­a­tion. Unfor­tu­nately, they are also the focal point for con­cerned Tamils in Canada. As I walked through the crowd, I could feel their boil­ing rage. These were not young hoo­ligans, the crowd was made of des­per­ate grand­moth­ers, old men, and chil­dren. In the middle, men on mega­phones led a chilling call and response. Tamil Tigers flags were everywhere.

Here is what they called:

“Recog­nize Tamil Elam” (The state they desire)

“Our National leader — Prabhakaran” (Leader of the Tamil Tigers)

“Sin­halese stop using chem­ical weapons”

“Sin­halese stop killing inno­cent Tamils”

“Cease fire”

The unity of the call and response was over­whelm­ing.  Their anger and hurt was palpable.

As I walked through the crowd, I was ter­ri­fied. Not for myself, I was going home. I was scared for my friends. Scared for their fam­il­ies in Sri Lanka. Scared for people who live and belong to Canada, but who’s real and imme­di­ate fears are being ignored.

The world is small. There are no far-away con­flicts any more. I don’t know what the proper response to the con­flict in Sri Lanaka is, but I do know this: there must be an offi­cial response. No Cana­dian, born here but with roots afar, is truly divorced from alle­gi­ances out­side the coun­try. We went to war twice to fight for those alle­gi­ances. Why do we now refuse to acknow­ledge the transna­tional nature of our country?

It is not enough to bury our heads and wish our prob­lems away. It is not enough to pre­tend that the battle isn’t being waged here too. We should remem­ber Air India, and real­ize that a safe and healthy Canada needs to acknow­ledge every­one, white, brown, or oth­er­wise. Refus­ing to listen to the legit­im­ate fears of a sig­ni­fic­ant num­ber Cana­dians is dam­aging to the unity of our coun­try and the prin­ciples of equal­ity and mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism upon which it is built.

The Tamil Tigers is, leg­ally, a ter­ror­ist organ­iz­a­tion. They use abhorent tac­tics. The Sri Lankan gov­erne­ment, how­ever, is no model cit­izen either. There needs to be dia­logue. Canada could be a leader, the leader we used to be. What happened to Pearson’s Canada?  What happened to the coun­try that beleived in talk­ing towards peace?

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Sticks and stones, names and words

April 23, 2009, at 3:27 pm
This game goes by many names - I call it king square

This game goes by many names — I call it King Square

I met Melanie when I was 17. I was work­ing at a photo lab, the night shift. Melanie rode by, looked in the win­dow, and decided that I would make a good date for her friend Reg. I didn’t make a good date for Reg, although he is a swell guy. Last night, Reg and his band played at Zaphod’s in Ott­awa, to some crit­ical acclaim. Tomor­row I’ll be tak­ing the train to Toronto to visit Melanie.

After Melanie moved from Ott­awa to Toronto, we lost touch. A couple of years passed. Then, on a trip back to Ott­awa, she told me she was get­ting mar­ried. I laughed. It was the kind of thing she would have said in jest. I felt embar­rassed, but I was happy for her. I shouldn’t have been sur­prised when she told me she was going to have a baby.  And what a baby!  Tarig is one wacky little kid.

The bike racks are new

The bike racks are new

Hunt­ing­hawk Com­mu­nic­a­tions is owned and run by Melanie. Melanie is an ardent advoc­ate for health through her work with Hunt­ing­hawk, in her com­munity, and as a mother. Melanie’s deep under­stand­ing of health changed my opin­ions about Indi­gen­ous people, and the role that words can play in peoples lives. Melanie sees lan­guage as a key ele­ment of health. She helps gov­ern­ments com­mu­nic­ate with First Nations, Metis, and Inuit people about health. Melanie is inspiring.

If you are inter­ested in Indi­gen­ous health, or the inter­sec­tion of lan­guage and health, check out Melanie’s blog. Melanie is also an avid cyc­list! (although I hear her bike needs repairs)

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When I get older

April 23, 2009, at 1:36 am

If you get the chance, do it.

I went to Cambridge, the other one

I went to Cam­bridge, the other less fam­ous one

Some­times I for­get where I come from. Nine months ago I moved back to my old neigh­bor­hood. Wed­nes­day of last week I went back to my old grade school.  It felt funny to walk through the same cinder block halls, only a couple feet taller. It felt like com­ing home. I’ve grown a lot since grade six.

I walked into the office and the sec­ret­ar­ies recog­nized me imme­di­ately. Con­sid­er­ing how much time I spent in the office this is not really sur­pris­ing. I got into a lot of fights, and did a lot of things that I am not proud of. I was a prob­lem, we all were.

I got lucky. I was a white kid in a brown neigh­bor­hood, a false minor­ity in a mixed com­munity. I grew up in one of the most Cana­dian neigh­bor­hoods in Canada. How can I pos­sibly make that claim?  The Canada that our par­ents, grand­par­ents, and many of my peers were born into does not exist any­more, at least it won’t for long. The future of Canada is mixed, a lot more mixed than it is today. We need to learn from places like Cam­bridge Street Pub­lic school what this means, and how to adapt.

Don’t believe me?  Richard Florida’s “Ontario in the Cre­at­ive Age” report says that we are in the middle of an full-scale eco­nomic trans­ition, one that will place even greater import­ance on the con­tri­bu­tion of new Cana­dians to our soci­ety. The dynam­ics of immig­ra­tion are reshap­ing our cit­ies, big and small. In their report “Immig­rants and Their Com­muni­tites — Strug­gling to Keep Up”, the Fed­er­a­tion of Cana­dian Muni­cip­al­it­ies describes the increas­ing chal­lenge faced by cit­ies to integ­rate new­comers. Schools like Cam­bridge prove that we are doing a good job. Still, we need to do better.

As a young white man, I am priv­ileged. Nobody ever ques­tions my attach­ment to Canada, my her­it­age, or my cit­izen­ship. I’m not an out­sider. People don’t see me as a prob­lem. Not every­one has this priv­ileged oppor­tun­ity. This is why I star­ted volun­teer­ing. Inequity is why I am inter­ested eco­nom­ics, soci­ology, and pho­to­graphy. What keeps me going back though is the kids. The kids are amazing.

Cam­bridge is an incred­ibly diverse school. In its hall­ways, chil­dren from every regional, cul­tural, and eth­nic group share cubby holes. Let­ters home to par­ents are sent in mul­tiple lan­guages. It is a chal­len­ging place. Many of the stu­dents face bar­ri­ers. Some are far behind because they are new to Eng­lish, or have a dif­fi­cult home life. I was one of those kids. If my grade two teacher had not sent me to remedial read­ing (which was avail­able in the school), my life would be very dif­fer­ent now. Early inter­ven­tion in the lives of kids makes a huge difference.

Eco­nom­ists are start­ing to under­stand this. James Heck­man, from the Uni­ver­sity of Chicago, has done pion­eer­ing stud­ies of early edu­ca­tion. Geof­frey Canada (great name) lives this idea with his Har­lem Children’s zone. Both men believe we need to invest in children.

But what does this have to do with pho­to­graphy? Everything.

At it’s core, pho­to­graphy is the act of see­ing. When you take a pic­ture, you immor­tal­ize the action of see­ing some­thing, whether a per­son, a land­scape, or kit­tens. Pho­to­graphy is based on the very basic rela­tion­ship of say­ing “I see you”. This activ­ity gives you and your sub­ject power.  Really see­ing “the other” is an essen­tial step in under­stand­ing. By legit­im­iz­ing the unseen, pho­to­graphy and act­iv­ism are fun­da­ment­ally linked.

I love work­ing with the kids. I do it because they are awe­some people, and I care about them. I volun­teer because I want to pro­mote the idea that kids, these kids, are import­ant. I believe in kids too. My pas­sion about Cam­bridge informs my pho­to­graphy. This is why it is important.

If you’re going to do some­thing, love it. I care about cross-cultural bridge build­ing and under­stand­ing. I want to use my pho­to­graphy as a teach­ing tool, to show people “the other” and dis­solve barriers.

Pho­to­graphy is a skill, not a job. The photographer’s role is much wider than simply click­ing a shut­ter. Whether you are a doc­u­ment­ary pho­to­grapher or a com­mer­cial shooter, people are the most import­ant part of pho­to­graphy. Under­stand­ing people, talk­ing, and listen­ing is the job. Pho­to­graphy is just the man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­cess, we pro­duce a trans­la­tion of real­ity. I think we should use this power for good.

Do what you love, it will make your pho­to­graphy bet­ter, and make a bet­ter world.

Bonus:

Do your­self a favour, listen right to the end of K’naan in con­cert at SXSW ’09. This per­form­ance includes a spe­cial ver­sion of Wavin’ Flag, one that sent shivers up my spine.

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Crunch crunch crunch time

March 30, 2009, at 12:33 am
I am constructing it

The Eng­lish work­ing class

Some­how, this turned into a crazy week. My life has been one big long crazy week lately, it feels like. Here goes, in reverse order, what went down:

- Met with two couples for wed­dings this sum­mer (fin­gers crossed, they are all awe­some and would be great to work with).

- A photo shoot at the Brook­street Hotel in Kanata. Lamb tagine and the oppor­tun­ity to shoot video made this one extra-fun.
 – Pitched a photo show for Fest­ival X Ott­awa in the fall. Early stages still, but I am optimistic.

- A photo shoot at the Car­leton Uni­ver­sity Art Gal­lery, which is always inter­est­ing.

- Signed up to play hockey this sum­mer, yay!

Oh, and I went to school some­where in there!  Tomor­row I have an eco­nom­ics present­a­tion on the role of immig­rant artists in Canada, and the situ­ation in Ott­awa in particular.

the view from the day bed

the view from the day bed

It’s hard to keep things in bal­ance, and to be hon­est, a lot of times this year they haven’t been bal­anced. Jug­gling my edu­ca­tion and employ­ment has been the most chal­len­ging. Although some­times it feels like I am doing neither prop­erly, ulti­mately I’ve been doing a pretty alright job. I’ve learned, from being busy, that a big part of bal­ance is set­ting bound­ar­ies and ask­ing for what you need. This applies in pro­fes­sional cir­cum­stances just as well as it does in the rest of life.

Some things slipped a little along the way. My house was a mess (I am lucky to live with an under­stand­ing and ridicu­lously tol­er­ant room-mate). The gro­cery situ­ation was, well, a situ­ation. My bike wheel was stolen, my land­lord is insane, and I put my foot through a board on the porch. Things were start­ing to fall apart, literally.

At the same time, they are com­ing back together. I am late on two papers, but they will be done, and they will be good ones. I am a bet­ter, more con­fid­ent pho­to­grapher . I have ideas. I know that sounds funny, but the exper­i­ence of the last year has gal­van­ized my com­mit­ment to pho­to­graphy, and given me insight into what I care about.

I thought, going back to school, that I would have to even­tu­ally choose one or the other, work or school, pho­to­graphy or soci­ology. They are actu­ally the same thing. I look at pho­to­graphy as soci­ology, and I look at school as research for pho­to­graphy. The chal­lenge isn’t to choose one thing that I love over the other, it’s to integ­rate the two. The chal­lenge is to find a balance.

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