Sunday morning

Copyright © 2008 Liz Kuball

Interview: Justin James Reed

Batting cleanup is Justin James Reed, just about the nicest guy in the world and a damn fine photographer to boot. His responses were so good I smiled the whole way through reading them. I hope you do, too.

Liz: You were Shawn Gust’s best man, right? How or why did you end up living in Idaho?

Justin: Ha! That is pretty great that you found out I was Shawn Gust’s best man—you jogged my memory there. Idaho has always been a special place for me. My family is originally from Spokane, Washington, which is right across the Idaho border from Coeur d’Alene, where I lived for a little more then a year. I had been visiting Coeur d’Alene for my entire life, spending every summer out there, and ended up living out there really by chance. After I graduated from college, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, I had a number of jobs and they helped to solidify my interest in attending graduate school. When the opportunity came up to live at the family lake house on Lake Coeur d’Alene in the middle of the woods, I couldn’t pass it up. I knew that at no other point in my life would I be able to just up and leave, and to do something so spontaneous. On top of that, I also felt that challenging myself to create an entirely new body of work (my Westward series), with which I planned on applying to graduate school, would push me, and my photographic practice. My work had always inherently been about traveling, and by taking this chance I was consciously testing myself. This is something I picked up working with Alec Soth, that you had to have conviction and a strong belief in yourself, otherwise you didn’t stand a chance.

L: I read somewhere that you worked as a printer for Alec Soth. What was that experience like? What did you learn about your own photography working for Alec? I’ve always wondered if, after working so closely with a photographer whose work you admire, you end up sort of imitating them, consciously or not. (When I was in high school, my handwriting changed from one class to the next, because I was actually imitating the teacher’s handwriting on the chalkboard, without even realizing it.) Did that happen for you, and if so, how did you work past that?

J: Working with Alec was undeniably a major defining experience in my life. I had originally seen Alec’s work at my college in a faculty show. I initially approached him about possibly TAing for a large-format class he was instructing. Over the course of the class, we developed a rapport, and he eventually asked if I would be interested in helping him print at his studio. This was right around the time that he was finishing his Sleeping by the Mississippi project.

Printing for Alec was a pleasure. It was always a relaxed atmosphere, and not at all intense. I started by making contact sheets for color proofing purposes, and then making large prints for his gallery, then Yossi Milo, and shows. He had a color processor right in his studio, so throughout the printing process we would work closely together, talking about color and other techniques.

But probably the best part of working with Alec was just being able to talk to him on a regular basis. As everyone now knows from his blog, Alec is not just a great photographer, but also probably one of the most inspiring voices in contemporary photography. I was struck by how closely his blog mirrored just spending a few hours interacting with him. He offered me not only some of the best advice about my own work I have ever received, but also, by far, the most critical. Alec had a way of getting right to the crux of the matter, and asking questions about my work that still haunt me. I learned that photography is not just something you do, it is something that comes from inside of you. It is a singular experience that requires patience, dedication, and, above all, a belief in yourself. Seeing how Alec worked, how dedicated he was, made me push myself that much harder. Seeing his evolution and success also solidified my interest in not working for another photographer, and pursuing it for myself.

Before I met Alec, or had even seen his work, I was shooting landscapes mostly but had been interested in portraiture. When I saw how easily Alec oscillated between portrait, interior, and landscape, I knew that is what I wanted to do. He encouraged me to start taking portraits, and offered me some of the best advice I have ever gotten regarding portraiture: He suggested not approaching a subject with the camera, as it can be too intimidating, especially when shooting with a large-format camera. However, the large format affords something incredibly unique when taking a portrait. It forces the photographer to take their time, thus allowing the subject to relax and appear more natural. You get to interact with the person for a few minutes while you set up, and under the dark cloth you can closely scrutinize them without them knowing you are staring! However, the advice that I still cherish today, and share with all of my students, is how willing and giving people can be, that you will always be surprised how often people will say yes to having their picture taken, as I know you now know from your recent “portrait-a-day” project.

In terms of influence, I think it is the most important factor in any photographer’s career. I encourage all of my students to seek out the photographers they admire, figure out exactly what it is that they like about these other photographers’ work, and then try to use this understanding to create a unique body of their own work. My aesthetic is less an influence of Alec, and more a similarity that we both share. Hopefully, my work is distinguishable enough from his work, but I won’t deny that I don’t sometimes think about it.

L: I love your South Philadelphia project, the mix of portraits and landscapes. You said in your HHS work statement:

I moved to South Philadelphia about two years ago from rural Idaho. It was quite a shock to be in an urban inner city again, and I was surprised by how put off I was by the environment. It was only until I started exploring this specific part of Philadelphia at dusk that I was able to approach it as a photographic subject. Exploring streets and finding isolated moments of serenity became my way of coming to terms with this city. I became interested in the relationship between evacuated spaces, and contained lives in the cityscape. Focusing on the young people that live here is another way of revealing quiet beauty under a rough exterior. Through juxtaposition of portraits with the lived environment a more personal vision of this hostile terrain presents itself. By focusing on South Philadelphia’s individual aspects I am documenting the place that I see, and am now proud to call home.

I really relate to that feeling—that sense of finding your place in a neighborhood or a city by photographing there. Do you find, now that you’ve lived there for a couple years, that your photographs of South Philadelphia are changing in some way, and if so how? How do you know when a project like this is “done”? Or will it continue as long as you’re living there? Also, what other projects are you working on now?

J: First, thank you for your kind words about the project. As I mentioned before, traveling has always been a large part of my photography. It took me a while to realize that I could photograph my immediate surroundings, and as I alluded to in this artist statement for HHS, it took me a while to even consider South Philadelphia as a subject. I was so put off by the environment that I didn’t take a picture there for about a year. However, my photographic curiosity got the better of me, and I found myself bringing the camera along because I was seeing photographs everywhere.

Copyright © Justin James Reed

Copyright © Justin James Reed

In terms of having it change as a photographic subject, I think no matter what, as you continue to shoot something, it changes. You develop a new understanding of it, and no longer approach it in the same way. This is a double-edged sword though. On one side, you gain a deeper understanding of your subject, and how to approach it in order to make strong, meaningful photographs. On the other side, you are more aware of what you are doing, and the initial thrill of discovery can dissipate.

So, how do know when a project like this is done? One of my good friends, who is a painter, once told me that he knew a painting was done because he felt like it was. I think that is a good description. Inherently, I believe you know when a project is done. Sometimes, of course, it is a change of location, but most of the time I think you can no longer approach the same subject again and again in a fresh and exciting manner. I make lists as I drive around of photographs I see, in order to go back and shoot them later. As the list starts to feel more like a chore, then you know it is time to stop. The South Philadelphia series is at that point. I believe I am close to having shot the rest of the series, and am in the process of editing. On top of that, I am planning on moving this summer, so all of the signs are there.

I am glad you asked about my new work. I have been shooting a lot and am focusing more on landscapes—no portraits for now. I am planning on updating my Web site soon but am more then happy to share some of my new work with you here. I see this work not so much as a continuation of my New Cities project, but as a continuation of the subject matter. I am approaching some of the same subjects in a new way, stepping back, and looking at their striking presence in the contemporary landscape. This project has become a new challenge for me in terms of light and composition. I hope you like them!

Copyright © Justin James Reed

Copyright © Justin James Reed

Copyright © Justin James Reed

Copyright © Justin James Reed

L: You were a Hey, Hot Shot! in May 2007. (Congratulations again!) I’m curious about the whole HHS experience. Had you applied before, or did you get in the first time you applied? Has being a Hot Shot opened any doors for you that you’re aware of? What’s your take on contests like this in general? Do you recommend applying to them?

J: HHS was a great experience. Jen Bekman is awesome, and it gave me a ton of exposure. My Web site and blog traffic exploded, and I think it helped me get my name out there to a certain extent. It is impossible to gauge if it “opened doors” for me, but the exposure and experience was irreplaceable. And, of course, it is always encouraging to receive recognition for your work.

This was the second time I applied, however with different work (the first time was with my Westward series). I definitely felt ready and more prepared the second time around, which I believe came through in the work and statement. Jörg [Colberg] was a juror, and had just been kind enough to feature some of my photographs on Conscientious. So, I also knew that he was aware of and liked my work. All of this goes into my feelings about these kinds of contests. They are incredibly necessary for beginning photographers to get exposure—I kind of look at them as the initial testing grounds. However, they are very subjective, so knowing who the jurors are, and applying with the appropriate work, will increase your chances of success. Of course, because these contests are so subjective, I think it is important to not give up and keep applying if you do not succeed at first. This is something I have to remind myself of all the time. There are so many amazing photographers out there that being a juror must be so hard. However, if you believe in your work, and keep plugging away, you will prevail. And hey, if you don’t, well at least you had a blast and made some damn fine photographs!

L: I just got a US$37.50 store credit from photo-eye. What one photo book should I put that money toward buying? And why?

J: Oh man, just one? Well, I will use this as an opportunity to drop a few of my favorite names.

I noticed that you could backorder Katy Grannan’s new book The Westerns. This body of work from Grannan is stunning, and I feel pushes her to the top of new contemporary photographers.

If you were willing to throw out a couple of more dollars, you could pick up Richard Renaldi’s Figure and Ground. Renaldi’s portraits kind of sneak up on you, and the sheer amount that this guy shoots is insane. I also think he is the new August Sander.

And if you were feeling flush you could throw down for one of my most recent acquisitions, Alessandra Sanguinetti’s On the Sixth Day. This body of work is touching and poignant. It features some of the best portraits of animals, and our relationship with them, I have ever seen.

Collect this: The Seeming Impenetrability of the Space Between

Photographer and blogger Colin Blakely’s image The Seeming Impenetrability of the Space Between is my latest 20x200 acquisition (such a big word for such a tiny apartment). Get it here.

Copyright © Colin Blakely

Timothy Briner in the house

Well, not in the house actually, but in town. Tim was on his way up to Boonville, California, and he stopped in Santa Barbara for breakfast Monday. In between my keeping Boo occupied and away from other people’s food, we had a great conversation about photography and traveling and projects and school. I wish I’d had my camera with me to get a shot of the back deck of his car: an Ilford box, Susan Sontag’s On Photography, and sundry other photo-related items.

Thanks for stopping by, Tim! Come back any time.

Interview: Mrs. Deane

Third up: Mrs. Deane (a.k.a. Norman Beierle and Hester Keijser).

Liz: According to your site, “Mrs. Deane is a blog run by Beierle + Keijser, visual artists from, respectively, Germany and Holland. It is named . . . after a spiritistic medium from the beginning of the twentieth century. For us, Mrs. Deane stands for the ambiguous and the undecidable that one finds oneself confronted with near the borders of the perceptible and the probable. Here, every man has to decide for himself what he holds to be true and what not.” I get all that, but how do you run this operation? Do you both do the writing? Will the real Mrs. Deane please stand up?

Hester: I didn’t realize you believed in resurrection. If the “real” Mrs. Deane decided to answer your call I would be quite shaken. But seriously, “Mrs. Deane-the-Blog” is pretty much a joint venture, with both of us contributing in our own way. I do all the actual writing, but that’s merely a matter of convenience. I studied for two years in the States at a dreadful, posh, all-girls finishing school college in Virginia, making me a bit more comfortable with the language than Norman. Content (raw text) is contributed by both of us. Norman will give me a rough draft, which I then tame into something readable. Finding new stuff is something we both spend considerable time on, somewhere between one and three hours a day. Sometimes we discuss our findings between ourselves before deciding to post about it or not (yet). All this intertwining makes it impossible to say who is “writing” Mrs. Deane, which is why we prefer to keep it open and let Mrs. Deane be our mouthpiece.

L: One of the things I’m most impressed about when reading your blog—and this probably says more about me than anything I’ll ask you about—is how often you’re on vacation/holiday. What’s a day, a week, or a month in your lives like? Are you working artists? Do you support yourself with any kind of day job(s)? How do you make a go of it?

H: That’s hilarious! Of all things, I’d never imagined people would be the most impressed about our periods of absence. How impressed will you be if we’d take a permanent vacation? It’s true we were away a lot last year, but not all these absences were real vacations and often involved working very hard in a place with no (fast) Internet access or good computers.

Norman: We are not the typical holiday-type people. Roasting in the sun on a beach isn’t an “activity” both of us would enjoy. Traveling through Europe is often connected with (art) business. We feel comfortable to bring business and personal things together, so when we visited my brother in Berlin, we also took photographs of exhibition spaces in that city. It’s a common practice for full-time artists to combine business and private matters.

H: Like most full-time self-employed visual artists, we’re overworked and underpaid with the one luxury: that no one tells us when to work and when not. If we feel like skipping a day or two, that’s fine. We’ll make up for it later by working sixteen hours a day or more if need be.

What a month looks like depends very much on the projects we have on the go at the time. It can be quite hectic, like last January and February when we worked nonstop on a commission, three exhibitions, a catalog, and preparing for our guest lectures in Rotterdam, but there have been more quiet times, allowing us to develop work and try new things with the financial backup of a stipend. We’ve always supported ourselves with public commissions, sales, lectures, and stipends, but there’s a serious financial dip looming in the not-so-distant future we need to start worrying about pretty soon, apart from buying lottery tickets.

Copyright © Beierle + Keijser

L: Your blog has really become an authority of sorts. You’re linked out the wazoo, read around the world, celebrities in the photoblogosphere. Knowing what I know about the two of you, you’re probably already blushing in embarrassment if you’ve even read this far. Why did you start your blog, and what do you get out of the blogging experience as artists?

H: I don’t feel that way at all, like a celebrity or an authority. That’s what other people make of it, like the assistant photographer we met last winter in Budapest who almost fell out of his chair when he learned we were “the” Mrs. Deane. I was very embarrassed and told him to get off it, which he luckily did. I feel admiration or a wrongly attributed sense of authority gets in the way of having a normal conversation with another. At the same time, having a blog out there that people read has taken away previously existing barriers as well. In that sense, it’s an excellent business card. But whatever we may think, we’re all pretty much nobodies in this world, especially in the art world, which often forgets how tiny it really is compared to the world of politics or billion-dollar multinationals. What also prevents any hubris to grow, is that in Holland this whole photoblogging thing doesn’t have the same status it seems to have acquired in the States. Honestly, I’m always a bit flabbergasted with the importance attributed to blogs and bloggers in the States, or with the disappointment of bloggers who don’t get the following they hoped for.

To tell you the truth, I really can't remember why we started this blog, which was first published in Dutch only and initially covered a wider range of topics than just photography. Let’s say it just happened one day and move on to the next question.

Copyright © Beierle + Keijser

L: What do you get out of the blogging experience as artists? Do you have a love/hate relationship with your blog? I see that all over the place . . . people taking breaks from their blogs, people starting over with new blogs, people calling it quits and returning to the “real” world. Do you have any of that angst, or does all that vacationing you do pretty much take care of whatever blog-related angst you might be plagued with otherwise?

H: Blogging is a natural extension of our art practice, I don’t see it as something I do on the side. Looking at and discussing the merits of other people’s work and photography in general is something Norman and I did a lot even before blogging. We hardly ever get to do this with Dutch colleagues, who somehow shun such discussions about art. With the blog, we tap into a community with whom we can share this need for an exchange of thoughts. The relative popularity of the blog has made me feel less like the odd one out and more confident about my work.

Also, externalizing thoughts on a daily basis in a format intended for publication is like casting a ruthless light on creatures otherwise kept in the comfortable darkness of one’s private opinion. It helps to expose weaknesses and inconsistencies, it shows where you might be too harsh and where greater sharpness in vision is needed. Writing daily also makes it easier to formulate such odious things as press releases or motivations for one’s work. Discipline is as important in the arts as it is in music or theater, and being able to express yourself in words as a visual artist has (some would say unfortunately) become vital for survival in the current landscape of contemporary art.

None of that love/hate stuff. Of course, there are always times when it’s hard to find stuff to write about or when you feel you’re not exploring the right avenues. Then I have to push myself to reinvent or relocate my initial enthusiasm for blogging about photography. Making up silly projects like the fashion week helps to break any rut I’m in. I still feel Mrs. Deane can be a whole lot better than it is and I am far from satisfied with the scope of my writing. As long I have this vague notion of where it is I ought to be heading with the blog, I don’t think I’ll call it quits. Not yet anyway, but ask us again in a year or two.

L: Your Web site has an incredible variety of work, and I find your work as hard to categorize as Mrs. Deane herself. Talk to me a little about your photography, in particular, and what projects you're working on or care about right now.

H+N: I suppose a lot of our work, both photographic and non-photographic, can be called “site specific” in the sense that, when making work for a show or a presentation, we incorporate in our plans the specific site where everything is to take place. We will take into consideration such variables as the size of the space, the size and number of the images it allows, the kind of light available, what the physical experience of standing in the space and viewing the images will feel like, the demographics of the visitors to be expected, the occasion for which we were invited, the specific prestige (or lack thereof) of the venue and sometimes even the amount of press to be expected. These variables are like pieces of a large puzzle that all need to fall into place. About 80 percent of our shows and presentations, including the publicity, are orchestrated by us from A to Z, even though the public is not always aware of having been part of the plan.

Coming from a background in site-specific installations and public art projects, we apply the same approach to our photographic work, which draws on our passion for (the history of) photography and the context in which photographs appear. Our interest in photography certainly doesn’t stop with taking pictures and making prints of the work. Curators can’t come shopping in our studio for work they’d like to exhibit in whatever venue they have in mind. When invited for a show, we will often make work geared toward the occasion. When making work, we—and especially Norman—always have a very clear idea how the presentation will be in its entirety. Perhaps you could say that the individual objects on display are actualized or come to life by being presented to the public.

The drawback of working with photo-based site-specific presentations (I wouldn’t quite call them installations) is obvious: You can’t simply transplant work from one presentation space to the next. Presenting the same photographs in different places often means finding a new context for the work that is as viable as the original one, and I can imagine going so far as to reprint works in a different size if the space asks for it. When viewing our online portfolio, you miss out on this site specificness of the work. We consider the Web site as a kind of documentation of our work rather than as a presentation in some sort of virtual gallery.

Currently, we’re making tests for an upcoming show in Hamburg with prints developed in a bath of instant coffee, washing soda, and water. The final prints, which have coffee-table decoration as their subject, will be mounted on a piece of wood covered with typical tablecloth material matching the prints. This project was fueled by something we saw at a photo fair: an unusual Belgian frame, which used folded art nouveau decorated wallpaper as a background for presenting rows of small photographs that were stuck in the folds of the wallpaper. We liked the strange combination of the wildly decorated background and the fact that the photographs retained their distinct materiality and their character as “objects for use,” something which contemporary framing methods using Dibond or borderless mounting on aluminum tries to conceal as much as possible.

L: I just got a US$37.50 store credit from photo-eye. What one photo book should I put that money toward buying? And why?

H: If I were you, I’d try to get a refund on that credit or else sell the voucher to someone. Use the money instead on books with photos that can be had for anything between one dollar and five dollars at thrift stores, charity shops, or second-hand book shops. We often get more inspiration out of books with old product photography or ancient color reproductions of gardens and flowers; illustrated user manuals; obscure catalogs of forgotten exhibitions about Gothic cathedrals; scientific publications on crop research, ocean-bed vegetation, or something as odd as paranormal photography (although the latter tend to be expensive). In short, anything in which the photographer wasn’t consciously trying to make “art,” yet which we find striking or intriguing. Fine-art photo books are made by artists, but not necessarily for artists. That’s not to say we haven’t any art photo books in our collections, but the ones we most frequently consult are not those. Having said this, probably the best thing we scored last year was the publication by the Albertina in Vienna, The Eye and the Camera: A History of Photography from the Collections of the Albertina.

N: I think I would get The Thornton-Pickard Story by Douglas Rendell . . . also not available from photo-eye. I’m very fond of my T&P Junior Special Reflex camera. Apart from our “modern” Pecoflex, it’s the first (and also oldest) 6 x 9 SLR we bought without the “usual” shutter-curtain damage. It’s my task to keep the technical gear running, so it was a pleasant surprise to get a full working (tilt-and-shift) camera with original and supple curtain shutter and sufficiently accurate speeds. I feel the Thornton-Pickard reflex cameras are underestimated and that’s why there is hardly any coherent information about them. Ideal would be an exhaustive pictorial chronology about Thornton-Pickard reflex cameras, like you get with Leica cameras listing every single little difference between the models. I haven’t seen the book inside, but I would give it a try.

Interview: Kate Hutchinson

Second up to the plate is Canada’s very own Kate Hutchinson.

Liz: I came across your work via Conscientious. Do you know how Jörg found out about your work, and what was your reaction to being mentioned on his blog?

Kate: After reading Jörg’s blog about bookstores in Massachusetts I felt compelled to e-mail him about a bookstore in Maine that I love. It’s a huge place called Big Chicken Barn. I also included a few photos that I had taken there. Jörg kindly e-mailed me back, and then two days later my work showed up on his blog. I was completely surprised and very excited.

L: So what’s your background or history with photography? How long have you been doing it? Is this how you make your living?

K: When I was ten, I got a point-and-shoot camera for Christmas. In two days, I shot all four rolls that were included with the camera. From then on, I was addicted to the process. I was a yearbook photographer in high school and got my first SLR when I was sixteen. Then I took the safe route and did a biology degree in university. I really didn’t think that it was feasible to work as a photographer at the time. There are no artistic types in my family, so it was not something that seemed possible or was encouraged. Toward the end of my biology degree, I decided that I didn’t want to pursue the sciences after school was done and so in my last two years of university I took every photography and art-history course that I could. At this point, I knew that photography was what I had to do. And so after university, I did Dawson College’s photography program. I finished that four years ago and I am very proud to say that I have been making a living solely off of my photography (and some photography teaching) since then.

L: My favorite project of yours is Why Am I Marrying Him? Did you start this project as a way of answering, for yourself, that question? You didn’t title the project, “Why I Am Marrying Him.” There’s a question mark there. Questioning relationships is completely natural for me—probably for most people. I think you’ve really hit on something truthful with the question and your photographic answers. I can tell from looking at the photos—where your fiancé is hanging out, being goofy, being the way with you that people are when they’re in love—why you’re marrying him. (There’s a question in there somewhere, I think.)

Copyright © Kate Hutchinson

K: The Why Am I Marrying Him? series started out somewhat accidentally. When I see an interesting setting or beautiful light, I usually throw the nearest person into it and try to make a good portrait. Often that person is Chris, my fiancé. And so I ended up gathering a lot of good portraits of him. Then last summer I started putting these images together and realized that, through these photographs, I seemed to be trying to understand who he was and why I had chosen him. Since becoming conscious of this project, I have photographed Chris a lot, in an attempt to answer some of the questions I had. In the end most of the images in the series come from this period where I was consciously photographing him with the intent of answering the question, “Why am I marrying him?”

I am definitely someone who constantly questions relationships. I think that any relationship is a balancing act, and I wanted to make sure that I took a good long look at our relationship and our motivations for getting married before jumping into it. I feel that the images reflect this. There are the funny moments when he definitely makes me laugh, and in contrast there are the moments when he is sullen and quiet and nothing can change his mood. I wanted to show all sides of his personality and see if this was what I wanted in life. Just so you know, the answer was a resounding yes, but even so there are still parts of him that I don’t necessarily love and I think that that’s only normal and that it’s healthy to recognize this. The wedding is in May, but I’m hoping that this series won’t stop there. I think I will constantly be learning new things about Chris through the photographs, and in living our everyday lives, and so I will probably always photograph him.

Copyright © Kate Hutchinson

L: I love your blog because it’s so apparent from looking at it—and this could be especially true because I read the entire thing, from your very first post to your most recent one, on one Saturday afternoon—is how much you love photographing (verb, not noun). Do you carry a camera with you everywhere you go, or does it just look that way?

K: I do love the act of photographing. Recently, I decided to enjoy the moment and the act of taking the picture as much as seeing the resulting print. In a way, I need to do this because often the results are not what I am looking for, so it is important to me to enjoy the journey as much as the end result. I think that this is possibly one of the reasons (but not the main reason) that I still prefer film. With digital, seeing the results right away takes away from this process. As for having my camera with me all the time, unfortunately I don’t, mostly because the projects that I am working on right now are deliberate and somewhat thought out before the shooting. I do bring my camera whenever I go somewhere interesting or do anything out of the ordinary, and that can often lead to good images and occasionally start me going in a whole new direction.

L: Where are you hoping to go with your work? What’s your photographic dream? Museums? Galleries? Books? World domination? Only making it big after you die?

K: Right now I just feel happy that people like my work and are willing to pay me for it. In the future, I know that I will always want to pursue personal projects and would definitely like to exhibit more and eventually be represented by a reputable gallery. In the fall, I will be having a solo show of my Why Am I Marrying Him? series in Montreal at an artist-run gallery, and I’m really excited about that. Although I would love to make a living solely off my personal work, I think that that may not be possible, or at least would take a very long time to happen. And so I will always need to supplement my income with other work. This other part of my career can go in one of two directions: Either I’ll teach more and do less commercial work, or I’ll do more commercial and editorial work and, therefore, teach less. I think I’ll have to see what comes up and what ends up stimulating me, and my work. And, of course, I share every photographer’s dream of publishing a book some day. Either self-published or through a publisher, I know that I’ll make that dream come true at some point.

L: I just got a US$37.50 store credit from photo-eye. What one photo book should I put that money toward buying? And why?

K: Well, my all-time favorite photographer is Sam Abell. (I hope to take one of his workshops sometime soon.) I bought my first photo book at the age of sixteen and it was Sam Abell’s Stay This Moment. Anything by Sam Abell is always a must for me. His quiet but powerful imagery is what I am always striving for. But right now the next photo book that I want to buy is Josef Sudek’s The Window of My Studio that just came out this year. In a similar vein, the last photo book I bought was Laura Letinsky’s Hardly More Than Ever: Photographs 1997–2004. [I couldn’t find that exact title at photo-eye, so I linked to another Laura Letinsky book that seems to contain photos from that project. If you’re interested in the specific book Kate mentions, you might be able to get it here.—Ed.] Both are very different interpretations of still life taken in the artists’ personal spaces, something that has been a recent interest of mine. I’m glad that you brought up photo books. They are a constant source of inspiration, and they are always furthering my photographic education.

Interview: Jennifer Loeber

Kicking off my interview series is quick-on-the-draw-and-always-accurate Jennifer Loeber.

Liz: I first saw your work, I think, on the Hey, Hot Shot! blog. (We’re both HHS blog alums who never made the final cut.) I really love your portraits—they feel really natural and easy-breezy, even the photos from your Zeig Mal (Show Me) series, where all your subjects are nude. How or why do you think this is? Have you put a lot of effort into making it look effortless? Do you think your natural charm just puts people at ease? ;-) It seems like, especially photographing people who are naked, it’d be difficult to achieve, and yet you do, every time.

Jennifer: I like to set the tone with the nude shoots by saying, “Nice to meet you! Remove your pants please,” within the first five seconds of meeting. It always takes a beat for people to realize I’m joking. So yes, it must be my natural effervescent charm!

Kidding, I guess it’s a combination of things. I’m not particularly precious about equipment so I don’t show up loaded down with unnecessary stuff. I shoot with available light and carry only my camera and possibly a tripod. The fussiness of twelve different lenses and endless gadgetry to fiddle around with doesn’t interest me. My own personal hell would be a conversation about lens speeds or metering sensors. I spent most of my art-school days shooting with a used Rolleiflex from the forties with a sticky shutter and no light meter. Being forced to make do and learn how to think on my feet definitely impacts how I approach work now. I tend not to belabor a shot or linger in a moment that I feel isn’t working. The moment I’m looking for presents itself to me and I know it immediately—if not, I move on, try something different. It involves a lot of fast creative decision making that I think results in a nice feeling of casualness to my subjects.

Copyright © Jennifer Loeber

L: Tell me a little about your background. You were a photo editor, right? For which publications? And you’re now freelancing as a photo editor to pay the bills?

J: Short version: art school, pro lab printer, paparazzi photographer, photo-agency worker bee, magazine photo editor, disillusionment, freelance photo editor. I’ve worked for some big names (Allure, Glamour, InStyle, Us Weekly, to name a few) over the years. I learned a great deal but eventually realized I was just not invested in photo editing the way I was in my own photography. I went freelance about two and a half years ago so I could focus more on my own work.

L: You seem to strike a great balance between business and art. I know you’ve been hitting the pavement and showing your book to editors and such, and your personal work continues on. I guess I’m curious how you seem to do it all. How do you make time for your photography and still have time to pay the bills?

J: Well first off, I love that you make me sound like some sort of modern version of Mary Tyler Moore. If you could see me now, I would be spinning around throwing my hat in the air to theme music while wearing super-cute mod flats. [Click here for sixty seconds of seventies flashback. To get the full effect, I recommend letting it play in the background while you continue reading.—Ed.]

In all honesty though, it’s tough. My husband is also a freelancer (writer), so we like to joke that what we really need to do is jointly marry a nice hedge-fund manager. I take freelance editing work for half of each month to pay the bills so that the other half can be spent shooting, getting my name out there and pounding the pavement. It can be incredibly discouraging trying to make a life in one of the most expensive places in the country and simultaneously starting a career as an artist. In times of exhausted frustration, I have been known to succumb to pity parties and declare I’m pulling up stakes to become a cheese maker or alpaca groomer or something. A recent bout of woe-is-me’s was interrupted by the purchase of some of my photographs by Adobe for a new product line. So that’s a really nice reality check that yes, someone out there likes what I’m doing and maybe this craziness will actually pay off eventually!

L: If you’re given a piece of cake (whatever flavor you like best—I choose chocolate), with frosting that’s to die for (again, any flavor—I choose chocolate, again), do you eat the cake first or the frosting? This isn’t as random as it sounds. My Aunt Nancy, when I was about ten, taught me how to wield my fork to chisel out the several layers of cake from my slice, eat that first, and save the frosting (the best part) for last. For all I know, she may have taught that to my sisters as well, but it was an approach that was perfectly suited to my little organized ten-year-old brain. I am big on the whole save-the-best-for-last bit. The problem with this is that, in the whole being-an-adult thing, there’s so much damn cake and not nearly enough frosting. So I spend all this time getting rid of the cake (working, paying bills, cleaning up dog shit, doing the dishes) that by the time I get around to the frosting (photography), I don’t have any more room. I think if Aunt Nancy had taught me to start with the frosting, my life could’ve taken an entirely different path. (Okay, that may be a slight exaggeration, but you get my point.) So which comes first for you: cake or frosting? And what does that translate into in terms of decisions you make or things you’ve accomplished.

J: Well, I’m not a big fan of typical birthday-party-style cake. Ice cream cake? Bring it. Pie? Definitely wouldn’t kick it outta bed. Sheet cake with chocolate frosting? Not so much. I think all this says about me is that sometimes I’m forced to wait until what I really want is more firmly in my grasp. Not many birthday parties feature pie, ya know? I would ultimately rather go without on occasion than live a life I am not excited by. My accomplishments in photography may come much slower than someone who can focus 100 percent on their own work, but I feel somehow more appreciative of them because of how hard I have to work to make it all happen.

L: I just got a US$37.50 store credit from photo-eye. What one photo book should I put that money toward buying? And why?

J: I think I’m going to have to suggest the Helen Levitt book. I was lucky enough to catch an exhibit of the images from Helen’s book while in Paris this past November. Her work is beautiful, quirky, so full of humor and just about perfect in my opinion. Had my need for a cafe creme not been so extreme, I may still be there, staring open-mouthed at her heavenly greens and oranges and chickens.

Secret

Someone I love more than anything in the whole wide world told me a secret today, and I’m so happy for her, even though she’s all practical about it. Congratulations, Piglet!

I’m back

In early January, I attended Review LA, a portfolio review sponsored by Center and held in conjunction with photo la in my old neighborhood, Santa Monica. This was my first official portfolio review, and I came away with concrete advice on places to send my work, images to cut from my portfolio, approaches to take going forward—it was everything I hoped it would be.

And yet, since then, I’ve been stuck in the doldrums. Just in the past few weeks, I’ve bemoaned my apparent inability to get anything done, thrown in the towel (at least temporarily on my In Store project), tried to get going on something else, all with lackluster results.

Today I realized that I haven’t been wasting time these past couple months. I’ve actually been processing everything I’ve learned—I just didn’t know it.

I went out this morning on my second shoot for a new project I’d been thinking about for a while (and on which I’d gotten some strong encouragement at Review LA from Kristine Wilson of Ogilvy & Mather). It’s the kind of project that looks good on paper but doesn’t hold as much promise in the execution. I may give it another try, but I identified some critical issues with it that just aren’t going away, so if you’re placing bets, I’d bet against my resuming it anytime soon.

The good news is that, while working on this new project, trying different approaches, thinking about why it wasn’t working for me, I defined more clearly for myself what my In Store project is about for me and why I am (present tense, not past) passionate about it. I’d gotten some feedback from people that they wanted to see more images of the items in storage, images with people in them. In fact, Portrait Month was all about my getting comfortable with making portraits, in an effort to prepare myself for incorporating portraits into In Store. I had so much fun in December, and I’m really pleased with some of the portraits I made. But I don’t think portraits belong in In Store, and here’s why: That project, for me, isn’t about the people who have stuff in storage. It’s about the places where we put our stuff. I say in my project statement, written before all this talk of portraits began, that for me it’s about “imagining what’s behind closed doors.” Imagining. Not literally finding out. For me, the magic of these places is more real when I focus on the buildings and structures themselves, telling myself stories about what’s there and why.

When this dawned on me this afternoon at coffee with S., I could feel the wind pick up and my sail caught that wind, and that was all I needed.

I went home and took a fresh look at the images in the project, and I could see that, of the forty-five images on my site right now, only about fifteen of them are ones I consider good. The rest are lacking in some way. But that’s okay—I’ll keep working on the project, swap out the images that aren’t working with new ones that do, until I have the project where I want it to be, until it’s done.

Another agenda item: Read more poetry. (Who doesn’t need more poetry in her life?) Step away from the television and PDN, and pick up a book, something that has nothing at all to do with photography. David McCullough’s 1776 has been on my shelf for a long time. So have Pablo Neruda and Coast of Dreams. Maybe I’ll start there.

I’m back.

FotoFest: A review

I know a photographer who just got back from FotoFest in Houston and sent an e-mail out to her friends about her experience. With her permission (and all identifying information changed), I’m posting her e-mail here, as an inside look at the experience for all who’ve never been. (My only portfolio review experience has been Review LA, held in January in conjunction with photo la and sponsored by Center, which was much, much, much smaller than FotoFest and a really rewarding experience for me, although I haven’t done jack shit since being there—more on that later.) I’m sure there are as many stories about an event like FotoFest as there are people in attendance. For a different point of view, check out this post from Sarah Sudhoff. Meanwhile, I’m turning the mic over to Anonymous.

Hello, friends.

I am writing this while all the memories are fresh. . . . I thought a lot about all of you over the course of this week . . . about how much I encourage you to do things like this and I often felt like screaming, “It’s lies, all lies!”

I would very much weigh whether to do this review again. . . . It was held in a huge, anonymous hotel in downtown Houston, with views of a parking lot under construction and the freeway. The air was heavy and humid and going out for fresh air, meant going under ground to the six miles of pedestrian walkway tunnels to avoid the heat. There was nothing to see or do and if you didn’t have a car, you were screwed. We did get out a couple of times—interesting to see HCP—a nice space (could have been a car dealership or something) in a funky area. I must say there was photography everywhere—in restaurants, office building lobbies, and the TPS show was in a hair salon (I didn’t see it) . . . but getting to all these venues would have been a full-time job and we didn’t have any extra time.

The event was a bit disorganized, and information was never shared—we had no idea if a good restaurant was nearby or more importantly, a Starbucks. Evening activities were announced at the end of the final session each day, and if you didn’t have a review at that time, you were out of the loop. Some people got four reviews a day, others, five . . . and a woman was keeping a list for spur-of-the-moment reviews, but that was kept quiet.

Some of the reviewers had already been there for two weeks and, frankly, were exhausted. They were seeing about twenty photographers a day, and you were cursed if you got a late-afternoon slot. And because there are four review weeks, I think over five hundred photographers were working the room . . . you get the picture. This review experience felt completely different from Photolucida and Review Santa Fe.

I know that I brought too much work—I did cut back on the amounts for each series, but because my work is so varied, I thought something might work for someone. In fact, in two back-to-back reviews, I had one reviewer tell me that I shouldn’t have brought Project X as it was weaker than the other work, and the next tell me Project X was their favorite series. It was an emotional roller coaster. I met with a number of European reviewers, and sometimes language was a problem, but a few really got my work and that was nice. The reviewer most in demand was _____, and I managed to get her one afternoon. She had two men with her and spent the time answering two cell-phone calls—“I have a day job, you know”—and waving to people in the room. . . .

The best part was meeting other photographers, and seeing work I had admired in print and seeing who was attached to it.

My final review of the event was with a curator-not-ever-to-be-spoken-of-again who left me devastated. I went back to the room to pack and tried to hold it in, but thank god I had a window seat on the plane because I wept quietly the whole way home.

I am currently in a mental fetal position and plan to give up photography and get a job at Crate & Barrel. But that’s what you get when open yourself up for critique. And spending two thousand dollars to offer your work up on a plate to a broad array of photo personalities is something to really consider—I know it’s all part of the process and it helps clarify your mission and forces yourself to believe in your work, dammit. Maybe this will motivate me into a new place and someday I’ll be writing her a thank-you note . . . but I think I’ll skip reviews for a while.

Love to all and I’m ready to drink heavily next Saturday. And to think I could have purchased a cool camera with that $$$. . . .

Watch it, read it

Or do both. This is why I voted for and am campaigning for this man. Because he talks to me as an adult. Because he recognizes that we are complex citizens of a complex nation. Because he has substance and intelligence and dignity. Because if he were my president, I would be proud to have him represent me and my nation to the world.

Enough already, people. We have the president we need; now we just need to elect him.



Remarks of Senator Barack Obama: “A More Perfect Union”

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
March 18, 2008
As Prepared for Delivery

“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution—a Constitution that had at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part—through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk—to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign—to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together—unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction—towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners—an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles, and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts—that out of many, we are truly one.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.

On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely—just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country—a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems—two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health-care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and YouTube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way.

But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth—by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day-care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters. . . . And in that single note—hope!—I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories—of survival, and freedom, and hope—became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about . . . memories that all people might study and cherish—and with which we could start to rebuild.

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety—the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gangbanger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming, and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and, yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions—the good and the bad—of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother—a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America—to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through—a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.

Legalized discrimination—where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments—meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families—a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods—parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pickup, and building-code enforcement—all helped create a cycle of violence, blight, and neglect that continue to haunt us.

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it—those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations—those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white coworkers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience—as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero-sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk-show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle-class squeeze—a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns—this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naive as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy—particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction—a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people—that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that, in fact, we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances—for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs—to the larger aspirations of all Americans—the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man who’s been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for our own lives—by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American—and yes, conservative—notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country—a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black, Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old—is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know—what we have seen—is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope—the audacity to hope—for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination—and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past, are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds—by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil-rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal-justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand—that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle, as we did in the O. J. trial, or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina, or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a twenty-first-century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the emergency room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for president if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation—the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.

There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today—a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.

There is a young, twenty-three-year-old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents, too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”

“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the 221 years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

Interviews

This week, I read the following post on Mrs. Deane.



As you can see, Jörg threw down the gauntlet and suggested I conduct some interviews myself, and I figured what the hell.

Can’t seem to find an e-mail address for my fellow Indiana University alum The Sartorialist, but I contacted everyone else and they were all game. I’ve sent questions to most of them already, and I’ll be sending questions off to the last few over the weekend.

Tune in to see the results in the coming days and weeks.

Experiment

I’m trying out PhotoShelter Collection, the free-for-photographers branch of PhotoShelter where your images have to be accepted by editors in order to be added to the site. Seemed like an interesting way to make some money with images that I had just sitting around, and some that are part of larger projects. So far, I’ve only uploaded about thirty, and I’m still waiting to find out about ten or so of them. (The editors are apparently swamped.) I have no clue whether this’ll turn into a source of income, but I thought it might be a good way to at least get my name on the radar of some photo buyers.

I’ll post about this some more if anything comes of it. In the meantime, go here to see my PhotoShelter Collection page.

Wake-up call

While eating my Lean Cuisine macaroni and cheese, I watched one segment of 60 Minutes, a segment on the importance of sleep. I don’t have to tell you what it said: Sleep is important, get enough sleep, blah blah blah. I usually get six or seven hours a night, almost never the recommended eight. Not only do I like sleep, but I understand the importance of it. (I’m not one of those, “Eh, scientists—what do they know?” types.) And yet I never get enough sleep.

I also know how good I feel when I take an hour out of my day to go for a walk or get some form of exercise. I feel really good, actually. And yet I often have to struggle to make time for it. Even on a Sunday.

And I love photography, and I feel good when I’m doing it. Looking at Kate Hutchinson’s blog yesterday has left me with this incredulity that photography is not part of my daily life. (Reading blogs about photography doesn’t count; only photographing does.)

Why is it so hard to incorporate in my life—literally, “to put (something) into the body or substances of (something else)”—the one thing that means most to me? Sleep, exercise . . . whatever. But photography? Come on, kid. Wake up!