Posted on Leave a comment

Exploring Love, Compassion & Character w/Cory, Ketanji, Chris, Jada, Will

In this video I explore love, compassion and character through recent public interactions with Senator Cory Booker, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, Chris Rock, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Will Smith.

“I want the world to see your character.” ~ Sen. Cory Booker

Definitions

Compassion: sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others

Character: the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual

Love: an intense feeling of deep affection

“I want to be a vessel for love.” ~ Will Smith

Reference verses:

Philippians 2:1-4 (love and compassion)

1 John 3:12-16 (love and compassion)

1 John 4:7-11 (love)

Romans 5:3-5 (character)

Posted on Leave a comment

Pyramids: Uxmal, Chichen Itzá, Teotihuacán, Giza

Click to listen to podcast of post.

All my travels are planned with the intention of conducting myself as a cultural photo-journalist of sorts. However, without fail, I return home, transfer my travel photos to my hard drive and essentially forget about all the good intentions I had for my images and travel notes.

This week, I’ve been focused on creating an attractive online portfolio to better promote and share my work. While reviewing example portfolios, I came across a lovely minimalist style with simple headings: People and Objects. I have a lot of work to do before I can trim down to that level of simplicity, but I can work with the spirit of the concept and have begun organizing my work under People, Places, Things, Ideas, Change and Books.

Pyramids at Giza

While sorting through years of images to select portfolio samples to represent my work, pyramid shots from my 2019/2020 trip to Egypt stood out. Giza was the third pyramid site I’ve been to, which led to a search for pictures from prior visits to other pyramid sites.

Pyramids at Chichen Itzá and Uxmal

My first flight and international trip was to the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico for my high school senior trip. We spent a morning at the ancient Maya city-state Chichen Itzá site and honestly, that was the day I fell in love with Mexico. Fourteen years later, I visited a friend in Mexico City and we took a day trip to Teotihuacán, an ancient Aztec city.

“The Maya originated around 3,000 years ago in present-day Guatemala, Honduras, Belize and Mexico.”

Chichenitza.com

Correction: My photo albums are in storage but I took pictures of my high school scrap book on my phone. Another Maya site, Uxmal, was also visited. The below images were taken on 35mm film, possibly on a been a Fuji in 1993.

“[Uxmal] is the largest, most elegant, and most important ruin site in the Puuc area. The Pyramid of the Magician is a truly magnificent structure….The majority of the structures seen today date from 600-900 A.D..”

The Mayan Ruins Website

Pyramids at Teotihuacán

By the time I got to Mexico City in 2007, I had been living in New York City for two years and I didn’t think there was another city that could blow my socks off. I’ve been happily mistaken several times on that score. Americans talk about being the best and biggest at everything and I never realize how indoctrinated I am with such rhetoric until I explore other environments. Mexico City secured Mexico as one of my favorite countries. The architecture, colors, style, sounds, history is so present and available every where you look – and it’s a short flight from anywhere in the United State! During my visit I got to see an excavation site in the center of town where the ancient city Mexico City was built on was discovered. Amazing!

“Teotihuacan was founded as early as 400 B.C., though the largest structures of the city weren’t completed until about 300 A.D.”

History.com

The below images were taken with my Olympus digital camera that held a whopping 1mb memory card at the time (2007). I had never edited any images from this trip until now, they were all hazy, flat, and mostly uninteresting. I certainly didn’t capture the awe of the place. I didn’t do much editing, but removing most of the haze was enough to make them look good. Lightroom does wonders! I stitched some together in Microsoft ICE, adjusted color and sharpness on all and did some final touch-ups in Photoshop. Fourteen years after they were taken with a digital point and shoot. I’m so glad I don’t delete images! 🙂

#phototographer #photography #travelphotography #pyramids #ancientcities #citystates #giza #teotihuacan #chichenitza #uxmal #mexico #egypt #culture #photoediting #archives #revisiting #oldwork #portfolio

Posted on Leave a comment

Treaty-breakers: The Genocide of the First Peoples by the U.S. Government

Red Cry – Today’s Genocide in America

I know of no other instance in history where a great nation has so shamefully violated its oath. Our country must forever bear the disgrace and suffer the retribution of its wrongdoing. Our children’s children will tell the sad story in hushed tones, and wonder how their fathers dared so to trample on justice and trifle with God.

Henry Benjamin Whipple, Negotiator for the U.S., Bureau of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1876

[The Indian] must be imbued with the exalting egotism of American civilization so that he will say ‘I’ instead of ‘We’ and ‘This is mine’ instead of ‘This is ours.’

John Oberly, 1888, U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs

Posted on Leave a comment

Book Review: BORN A CRIME by Trevor Noah

Born a CrimeBorn a Crime by Trevor Noah

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In the back of the book, his bio states simply: Trevor Noah is a comedian from South Africa.

Enigmatic is a word I would add. This is not the story of Trevor Noah’s rise to fame. Indeed, there’s no clear connection from the stories he shares to where he is now.

I’m sure a great deal of the book was intended to be humorous and purposefully irreverent, but I read undercurrents of resentment and extreme selfishness. At some points there was incredible incongruity in the retelling. He writes that he felt (and still feels) no guilt for the enormous repercussions others faced for his actions (i.e. unemployment, homelessness and jail time)…. when those others were Black South African domestic workers and their children. However, he then writes how guilt ridden he was when one of his buddies brought him a stolen digital camera to resell (as part of his regular hustle) with images of a white family vacationing. He actually went into detail about how that one thing, so insignificant compared to other stories he shared, had the power to make him evaluate the direction his life was going in. He was devastated by the thought of a well-off white family being robbed of their vacation photos… even as he sat on a corner in the Alexandra slums taking advantage of his fellow oppressed Black South African neighbors. That was difficult to read and hard to swallow.

Instances like this and others made it feel as if he were playing to an audience. Throughout the book, he played to several different audiences: Americans, Black Americans, the World, South Africa, white people. All large scale and somewhat large in scope with little to no intimacy.
That being said, Born a Crime is a good read. The pacing is consistent throughout. Noah’s commentary on various cultural and societal norms as well as the history of South Africa is insightful and at some times, eye-opening. There’s no real chronology to the stories, he actually jumps around quite a bit with no solid grasp of time period or age, but the stories flow well together.

Early on the book comes across as a loving tribute to his mother. He shared some beautiful moments and teachings from his mom. Towards the middle the underlying resentment becomes quite prominent. I got the sense that there’s quite a bit he has yet to come to terms with, to accept or to forgive. He explains situations and rationalizes experiences but he doesn’t really express any real understanding or empathy for the people he’s writing about. Which is surprising, considering how he prefers to talk about his mother’s courage and devotion to providing for and protecting her children. There are also stunning moments when he belittles his mother on the sly… while propping himself up. His intelligence. His speed. His independence. His logic and realism. Eventually, at a very young age, he became better than his mother. He doesn’t explicitly say this, but it is implied throughout. Ironically, one of his biggest tributes to his mother is her insistence that he learn to think for himself, that he question authority and systems. It becomes evident that his critical thinking and questioning led to an internal rejection of his mother, her faith and cultural beliefs. Due to the way life flows, there is also hope that his thinking will bring him full circle to a wholesome appreciation for everything his mother is and represents.

Common Themes:

Church and faith: Christianity as a white man’s religion. Trevor Noah appears to have equal low regard for the practice of Christianity and tribal mysticism. He writes a great deal about his mother’s faith but nothing of his own. In this way he provides the scope of a panoramic image (mother, tribe, cultural history) without the intimacy of his details (is he a Christ believer, follower, practitioner?).

Critical thinking and breaking cycles of bondage: Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah is a rebel with a cause. She didn’t so much spend time questioning the systems and norms as much as figuring out how she could get around them to live her life on her terms. From an early age, she made decisions for her life and grew from the consequences and results of her decision. She was determined not to live in her mother’s home on tribal homelands in obscure servitude as the second girl child in the family. She was even more determined not to raise children who were beholden to the past and the tribe. Her intelligence, her perseverance, her dexterity, her independence allowed her to venture where most Black people did not dare in apartheid South Africa. Bit by bit, Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah carved out a space for herself in a world that was completely against her. Then she made room for her son, Trevor. Eventually, she enlarged that space to include her growing family. When I first read the below passage, I thought, “Even if showing Trevor that the ghetto was not the world was all she had done, she would have indeed accomplished a great deal.”

People thought my mom was crazy. Ice rinks and drive-ins and suburbs, these things were izinto zabelungu – the things of white people. So many black people internalized the logic of apartheid and made it their own. Why teach a black child white things? Neighbors and relatives used to pester my mom. “Why do all this? Why show him the world when he’s never going to leave the ghetto?”

“Because,” she would say, “even if he never leaves the ghetto, he will know that the ghetto is not the world. If that is all I accomplish, I’ve done enough.”

Ms. Noah, you’ve done a superb job!

Independence and outsider: Trevor Noah writes about being an outsider everywhere he went at each stage of life he shares about. Perhaps more from that feeling than his mom’s teachings, he grew to be fiercely independent. It also seems clear that his fondest days were when it was just him and his mom. Before the family expanded and he became an outsider in his own home. In some instances it seems the idea of independence and being an outsider morphed to mean the same thing and become somewhat interchangeable in the retelling of his stories.

Power and impact of choice: At one point he writes: “Nobody wants to be rich. People want to have choices. Money gives you choices.” Perhaps overall, he dissected his movement through the world as varying levels of opportunity and choice. On some level, he may truly believe that money equals choice and translates to power. Perhaps he thought as he took advantage of his opportunities he could create the power to choose his life as well. Ultimately, he has. However, the glaring power moves he made in Born a Crime were when he accepted the benefits of being mixed/colored/lighter skinned in black and white communities when doing so put other black people at a severe disadvantage and occasionally harm’s way.

My mother used to tell me, “I chose to have you because I wanted something to love and something that would love me unconditionally in return.” I was a product of her search for belonging. She never felt like she belonged anywhere.

Love, discipline and rebellion: Noah thinks his mother was too hard on him, but it seems like she let him get away with a lot just from exhaustion. In many ways he parallels his life with his mothers’ life. Her quest for love and belonging became his. Her need to discipline him birthed his need to out-maneuver her and perhaps show her how little he needed her in general. On the flip side, he also viewed her rebellion as his natural inheritance.

Freedom: There is a strong cord of freedom flowing throughout the stories Trevor Noah shares. As a concept, reality, illusion, wish, hope… as something somehow always out of reach. A couple of times, regarding his own troubles and the poor Black South African community in general, Noah writes, “They’re free, they’ve been taught how to fish, but no one will give them a fishing rod.” At one point, he thanks someone from a privileged class for giving him a rod. The analogy has a false ring to it. Or perhaps it’s simply incomplete. The poor, oppressed and disadvantaged people of the world are not incapable of enjoying their freedom because the lack the tools to nourish it. The poor, oppressed and disadvantaged people of the world are prevented from accessing resources (farmable lands, drinking water, washing water, bodies of water with fish, etc.). He actually writes about how the South African government purposefully removed groups of people from their tribal lands and forced them onto near barren lands and locked them in with walls and guns. When apartheid fell, the people pretty much stayed where they had been put for the last century, i.e. Soweto and Alexandra. The irony of looking to your oppressor for a handout is painful. The way around that is to exercise your freedom. Make your way to the resource you need and figure out how to nourish yourself with the tools on hand. Usually the only tools we have are our own two hands. However, necessity is the mother of invention. The poor, oppressed and disadvantage people of the world have been made to think that their better life is on the other side of a wall. In other words, that they need their oppressors. They don’t. They only need access to resources that cannot be owned, but that men the world over continue to capitalize on and create barriers around.

Language and Communication: One of the most beautiful illustrations in Born a Crime, is Trevor Noah’s use of language. He speaks several languages and learned at an early age that language, not skin color is the true indicator of belonging and community. When you speak a person’s language you are able to speak to their heart (paraphrased). Even as he shared how he was able to switch from being an outsider to an insider by speaking the language of the group he was attempting to appear like or to infiltrate, he also showed how speaking the same language with no common understanding is as disastrous as speaking different languages while working towards the same goal. In some ways, Born a Crime is a micro study of how communication between and within groups can go awry and also how it can tie us all together.

View all my reviews

Posted on Leave a comment

Exhibit: UNDER THE MEXICAN SKY

Exhibit closed June 27, 2015

I wandered into this exhibit on Saturday while walking around my neighborhood. It is a truly magnificent portrayal of the evolution of a creative life. As I told someone in the gallery, “Gabriel Figueroa sounds like someone I have heard of, but I would not been able to pinpoint why…. Though I am absolutely sure he has been referenced in countless works I’ve seen, heard or read.” The exhibit explores his career from the beginning as he learned photography by doing studio head shots to his transition into film with still photography and onward to creative collaborations with directors and other artists.

If you are in New York City and have any appreciation for photography or cinema, I encourage you to go see this exhibit before it closes on Saturday, June 27. It’s on display at El Museo Del Barrio, 1230 Fifth Avenue at 104th St. http://www.elmuseo.org