Category: Travel

November 7, 2008

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.

POSTED BY Alyssa AT 3:33 pm || No Comments »
POSTED IN Photojournalism, Travel

Field fire, Stanger side, the port and good night.

South Africa so far.

Kenya 2008

I am currently in Africa with TCP (see post below). My blogging for the next month will take place on our team blog which you can find here

Above you can see a photo of 8 month old (although born pre-mature) twins. Clare & Clarette.

And the story continues,

Even though I went to Ethiopia for World Vision’s magazine Childview a year ago, I am constantly amazed at how relevant the trip has been to my life on a daily basis. Everyday I think about the communities I encountered, the stories I learnt, and the girls I had a chance to get to know. To many aid workers I encountered, hope was and continues to be a lifestyle. I was awestruck to see the incredible impact World Vision had in the communities from food security to maternal health to AIDS awareness and education.

The article called Scarred by Tradition was about Female Genital Mutilation. Recently I was pleased to learn that designer Carol Moskot and I won Canadian Church Press awards. First place for Feature Layout and Design (Magazine), and Second place for Colour Photo Spread (Magazine).

Above you’ll see two photos from the spread. You can also check out the original article in Child View written by Nicolette Beharie here (pages 16-21)

World Vision Maternal Health Gallery

A few people have asked where they can see more of the photographs I shot while in Ethiopia. World Vision has put a few more of the up on their site in a gallery about Maternal Health:

all eyes

all eyes,
looking behind,
trying to make sense
of this wild ride.
as they move forward.
i’ll stand still.
picture after picture.
my eyes filled,
with the hope on faces,
as lives rush by.
we’ll know places.
where we met eyes.

It’s crazy how vivid my time in Thailand is in my memory. I can put myself right back on the bridge snapping people on the train as it flew by. I walked the bridge end to end even though I was petrified off the height and water below me. It’s strange how when we’re over seas we push ourselves to face our fears and really live life for all it’s beauty and wonder.

Tips for a more natural sky:
Often when we expose for a dark subject (in this case the train and the people inside of it) we are met with the difficulties of a blown out sky. It is important to shoot with a polarizing filter when outdoors because it provides detail that can often be recovered later. In the case of this photo the sky was barely existent, but in photoshop I created a brightness/contrast adjustment layer setting my brightness to -150 and my contrast to +100. Adjustment layers automatically creates a mask which you can use to select the areas that you want to be affected. Select the mask in your layers window, and using your paint tool paint absolute black on the areas that you do not want to be affected by your adjustment layer. To create a soft transition between your adjustment layer and your original photo make sure that your brush is set to a lower opacity and is at a minimal hardness.

Alyssa Bistonath Photography: Of Life After 24,

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