"Che" photo turns 50 today

Feliz Cumple...

Albert Korda's iconic image of Che Guevara is 50 years old today.

Susan Sontag "On Photography"

(I think I walked past this bookstore in SF this summer. Photo Credit: Temporary Transfer)

Thinking about this:

"A way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a way of refusing it--by limiting experience to a search for the photogenic, by converting experience into an image, a souvenir. Travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs. The very activity of taking pictures is soothing, and assuages general feelings of disorientation that are likely to be exacerbated by travel. Most tourists feel compelled to put the camera between themselves and whatever is remarkable that they encounter. Unsure of other responses, they take a picture. This gives shape to experience: stop, take a photograph, and move on. ....

"Photography has become one of the principal devices for experiencing something, for giving an appearance of participation. … While the others are passive, clearly alarmed spectators, having a camera has transformed one person into something active, a voyeur: only he has mastered the situation. … Taking photographs has set up a chronic voyeuristic relation to the world which levels the meaning of all events. ...

"Photographing is essentially an act of non-intervention."

Peru relief effort: My work on A Developing Story

 

Weavers in Patacancha

It's been almost a year and I still haven't written anything about my experience taking pictures for the NGO Awamaki in Peru. But with recent catastrophic flooding in one of the areas I was staying, I submitted this post to the photojournalism blog A Developing Story. 

In the Peruvian village of Patacancha, people live the same way as they have before the Inca, with only satellite TV and Protestant religion showing the passage of time. They speak Quechua, a language that for each statement you make requires you to qualify how you know it (either “I know for a fact,” “I heard,” or “most likely”). The traditional alcoholic beverage is chicha, a beverage made from corn fermented with spit. (Dogfish Head is taking note.) The women spend much of their time weaving intricate fabrics, while the men often supplement their farming as porters on the Inca Trail.

To help keep this way of life, the women formed a weaving cooperative. A group called Awamaki assists the women in fair-trade marketing and has helped them build a weaving center in which natural dyes are grown. Awamaki also places volunteers in schools, preschools, and health clinics in nearby towns.

Last week, the area was hit with severe rains and flooding. In the nearby town of Ollantaytambo, where Awamaki is headquartered, houses, fields, and roads were all gravely damaged. Awamaki is organizing a relief effort to help families rebuild their homes, providing them with construction materials and technical assistance for safer constructions. They are also working to ensure that families have sufficient food and that displaced children have the school supplies they will need for the upcoming school year, which begins in several weeks.

Please visit Awamaki to learn about their work and the relief effort in Ollantaytambo.

And once I get my hands on my notebooks from Peru -- they're across the Caribbean at the moment -- I will write more about that experience. (In the meantime, there are photos on my Flickr!)

Lately (if you were wondering)

I've been taking pictures of weddings with Ryan Sigesmund, writing scripts for Pittsburgh Genius, working on the Pittsburgh-Aguascalientes Sister City project, getting together with other local science writers, and showing photos at Art Cubed. Oh, and I went to Mexico.

Enough about me... here's something to ponder:

Here lies, extinguished in his prime, / a victim of modernity: / but
yesterday he hadn't time--- / and now he has eternity. -Piet Hein, poet and
scientist (1905-1996)

One of my photos was included in an Etsy 'treasury'!

Thank you to Luna (faroutbabe) for choosing me to be in your treasury (collection of favorites) on Etsy! I am honored. The other work is beautiful.

The collection will be displayed till 3 pm Friday, February 29. Check it out and if you like what you see, buy something :)

Local anthropologist/feminist activist passes away

When I interned at the Post-Gazette in college, one of my assignments was an obituary of an Oakmont doctor, T.J. Ferguson. I was really nervous about the assignment because it's a tall order to sum up someone's life, especially who you've never met.

But it turned out to be one of my favorite assignments. By the end, I was wishing I HAD met Dr. Ferguson.

That's how I feel about this woman, whose obit ran in the PG today: Carol McAllister.

She was a professor at Pitt, which is how I first noticed the item at all. But wow -- it sounds like she did some truly amazing things:

• director of the University of Pittsburgh Women's Studies Program and was active with the Thomas Merton Center, the Women's Resource Center for Greater Pittsburgh and the Social Justice Action Team of the First United Methodist Church, Pittsburgh
• work with Early Head Start, a component of Head Start which helps low-income mothers and families prepare sooner for the health and education of their children.
• gave the children in these communities disposable cameras and told them to chronicle their lives. Her work and their photos were published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2005.
• organized a conference with speakers from Rwanda, Israel and Canada that focused on the roles that women can play in conflict resolution and rebuilding war-torn communities.

I am so sorry for her family's loss, a loss for the community and world as well. And, I find her story truly inspiring. I would be proud to do half as much in my own life.

Run For Your Life

Run For Your Life
Originally uploaded by sgm1410

At the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix

(brag alert!)

My photo of the trees outside the Carnegie Library is featured in the Pittsburgh Flickr group as photo of the week.


Now I have to choose next week's photo - this is gonna be tough!