Available Light
Who are the savages? Parallel histories of Indigenous genocide
So clear to me is the historical parallel between Israeli settler colonization of Palestinian land and European and then American settler colonization of the Americas, known as Turtle Island to its Indigenous peoples—that I do not understand how anyone can see it otherwise.
Family Stories—Inherited Silence and The Cost of Free Land
Two recently published books describe the authors’ surprising revelations about their ancestors’ settler colonial pasts.
Painted ponies go up and down
Please come visit Peel Gallery’s carnival-themed “Carousel” slideshow and exhibit at The Northside District Restaurant. An opening reception will be held Thursday, October 26 from 6-9pm and the art will stay in that space through the end of November.
A letter to my Congressional representatives
…I said I would post the letter I wrote to my Congressional representatives. I imagined writing the most beautifully persuasive letter…
Land Justice and the 2023 Farm Bill
Access to farmland is challenging for young farmers, and particularly so for those who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC).
Paris. Photo.
What was Paris Photo to me besides an excellent reason to visit my good friend Sarah and my favorite city of Paris? Besides an overwhelming kaleidoscope of human interaction around the material and conceptual stuff of photographic art?
New exhibit: Landscapes of ancestral migration
My ancestors drew me to landscapes they inhabited before and after over a hundred of them emigrated from Europe to this continent during the 17th, 19th, and 20th centuries. I traveled to and photographed these landscapes in the Netherlands, Germany, and England, on one side of the Atlantic, and on the other, to Virginia, Iowa, New York, and North Carolina. In those places I often felt a quiet knowing inside myself that specific ancestors had been where I was standing, sensing their presence in the present as I felt the hard edges of my linear sense of time dissolve.
More than we can see—Dorothea Lange’s ‘Migrant Mother’
Learning more in Linda Gordon’s biography of Dorothea Lange, A Life Beyond Limits (NY: WW Norton, 2009) about the history this photograph—Migrant Mother—made me consider my own photography practice in light of hers.
Just Us: An American Conversation by Claudia Rankine—A review
Claudia Rankine searches for conversations about white people’s complicated understanding of white privilege in Just Us, a beautiful book of poetry and essays accompanied by curated imagery.
Listening to Richie Havens sing “Helplessly Hoping,” New Year’s Day, 2022
Creative inspiration often takes its time meandering over multiple paths around my consciousness—certainly more often than it arrives quickly on a straight path from desire. After any angsty, confusing search, when I finally get to the idea I was looking for, I usually am certain that I got more from a slower, richer process and am grateful for what I saw along the way.
Book review: Clint Smith’s How the word is passed
How the Word Is Passed is a first-person account of Clint Smith’s travels to places in this continent and Africa to uncover stories that have been lost or hidden about the tragic legacy of slavery in this country.
Reading family photographs
“I thought about how there is so much information in a photograph--especially in a family photograph--that we never get it all in one go. We rarely see the same picture exactly the same way twice.”
Being here
…travel is central to my investigation of my ancestors' lives, particularly those who left Europe to settle this continent.
