Archive for the ‘Photojournalism’ Category
Some love from CTV,
CTV BC has posted a web gallery of my photos from Brazil. I was there this past December shooting for the Vancouver Campaign for Children. The picture above was shot in the home of one of the poorest families I have ever met. The visit was quite heartbreaking especially when this little one flashed me such a playful look. Mi Jung Lee (a CTV news anchor) tells the story best here.
I also encourage you to watch the videos on the main page. They do a good job of showing what the conditions are like in the favelas where the children live and how World Vision is helping to make a difference.
Restless/ Unrest
During the post election ethnic riots in Kisumu Kenya, Sister Philomena wouldn’t let the children of St. Clare’s orphanage outside. She was afraid a Kibaki’s police would kill them. The children had plenty of time to think. Their lives are hardly ideal, but they want to be engineers, doctors and teachers and pilots.
Months later I was at the orphanage for six weeks, and time after time I saw the juxtaposition between the children’s most freeing moments and their most bored. Slices of their environment tell of a general restlessness. The boys are mostly pensive and graceful; the girls strong and bold like the housemothers that are raising them. They all seem to be waiting to grow up so they can carry on with life.
The dichotomy between freedom and boredom fascinates me because it mimics a trait that I see in my peers at home. They too seem to be waiting to grow up and have freedom even though they are for the most part in their mid-twenties.
Good Ole Yeller - Break (it) down.
I remember the first time riding in Ben’s car. It was early -7 am? The Kisumu sun was coming up orange and we were riding around photographing a Celtel promotion. Steve said I should name the car - so I coined the yellow Peugeot “Ole Yeller” (the boys had never seen the movie but they humored me). There was another time we were driving up a hill the back door flew open and Joanna almost fell out - seat belts save lives…
The photographs above are from a memorable afternoon with Ole Yeller (the same afternoon that I shot these.) The car was leaking gas and we ended up broken down in the hot hot sun. So while Ben made the trek to get more fuel we played with some neighbourhood children. Their laughs of delight as I popped up from behind the car door to photograph them are permanently etched into my memory. What had begun as a sad morning has ended up as a fond memory. Good Ole Yeller.
Kiss Kisumu Hello,
Kisumu, has been on my mind lately. Here are some shots from my time there.
Brasil Outra Vez
You’ve asked and here they are, a few more shots from Brazil. The children living in this area were a delight to spend the week with. It was sad to say goodbye.
It’s amazing that we’ve been back for two weeks already. My colleagues are busy putting everything together, and I couldn’t be more excited for February.
Bonito em Brasil.
Many of you know that I am in Brazil, and I have benefited tremendously from your emails and encouragement! The shoot is almost done, and I am proud of what the team has accomplished.
Pictured above is one of the grandmothers that we spoke with as she looks out at her grandchildren playing in front of their house.
Everything Political
We all had election fever is some capacity. When Obama won I called my parents to see what they had to say, I wrote on Obeto’s page - “Kisumu forever”, and called Dardana at the Smashing Pumpkins concert to make sure she had heard. (She said Billy Corgan had told her.) In the subway that night we sat beside two men that did not know each other. Both African American, one was dressed in an America suit/ costume and the other in jeans, a beanie, and Bob Marley pictures hanging around his neck. They spoke hopefully about the spirit of Jesus Christ, and how Moses came down from Mount Sinai glowing from being in the presence of God.
I wish I could photograph this glow. I came downstairs this morning and it struck me how much more political my life has become since June. It started with Kisumu, and the remnants of the riots that affected a country and the lives of many friends there. It continued through Nairobi where I chatted with development workers whose cynicism ranged from hopeful to robotic. It moved through me when I came home and went to the World Youth Congress. Hundreds of kids marching through the streets waving the flags of justice, peace, equality and love. I saw K’naan perform and talk about coming to Canada as a refugee, and saw when he and the Right Honourable Michel Jean looked at each other with some knowing secret (as she danced beside me in the crowd.) It continued through my travels to South Africa where I saw the effects of the economic crisis in the tangible form of hunger and starvation. I saw the Taxi Wars first hand, the corruption and apathy. I came home to the cries of Wall Street, a historical financial bail out, the Canadian and American elections. Life revolved around getting home on time for SNL political specials, talking on panels about the global village, facilitating heated arguments about voter apathy and repetitively listening to songs with lyrics like, ”I can say I hope it will be worth what I give up, If I could stand up mean for the things that I believe.”
My best friend is staying with me right now. She just spent the last year working and living in a refugee house. I come downstairs to tell her about a story that I just read in a book a friend recommended to me. I want to tell her about a young Jewish man who was arrested for refusing to join the Apartheid Army in South Africa almost two decades ago, but she interrupts me because she wants to talk about a letter Harper wrote to the Washington Post in 2005. It takes a long time to work through both of our political interests, and how they converge.
I’m saying all of this because I’ve been sitting on a series of images that I shot in Kisumu. I look at them from time to time, but more often than not I close the window and continue on with life as I can. It hurts to see them, it definitely hurt to shoot them. They’re of the graffiti sprawled on the walls of houses burnt during the riots in Kisumu. The owners long gone fearing for their lives, the perpetrators triumphantly spilled their hatred around with cliches from American movies. My hope is that where ever there exists extreme hatred there will be extreme love. As journalists and story tellers I think we are called to show both. We see horrible things, we experience them and we record them because we want to see the situation evolve into something different. So here are the images. Perhaps I thought that finally showing them would allude to this idea that I understood something, but rather this post and these images are an effort to understand everything political around me.
I photographed these boys right after the former images, just a short walk down the road.
