________________________

AN INTERVIEW WITH

ROY DECARAVA

By Dread Scott

In February, 1996 a major retrospective of Roy DeCarava’s work had just opened at the Museum of Modern Art. DeCarava has been making photographs for almost fifty years. He is one of those rare artists who is a true master of his craft. His art is about people and the world we live in. Although he received a Guggenheim Fellowship four decades ago has collaborated with Langston Hughes, and has work in significant collections, it is only now that he is starting to get the recognition he so richly deserves.

Well, I started out loving learning. I went through the New York public school system and I did a lot of drawing, some later as I got into the classes. There was always a lot of art, even in kindergarten, so that I was always involved in making images one way or another, as a child, in high school, then after high school, Cooper Union, and that’s been the story of my life. Everything else, well it doesn’t bear too much relevance to what I do, in the sense that times are always hard. Manifesting who you are is difficult whether it’s hard out there or not.

At some point I decided that this relationship to art was the way for me because it made me feel most comfortable. Much of my decision was a reaction to the world as I saw it. Art provided me with another kind of forum or relation. Then after a while, of course, the value of art in itself began to take hold in a positive viable way. Art is really a fundamental activity. That justifies or in a way explains this interest in it.

Every human being has a history. It’s very hard to interpret from that history, why or what they do. We’re all shaped by our experiences and of course in some areas it helps to know how one became that way. But essentially, it’s what people do that really counts. So I like to talk about photography. I don’t like to talk about my history.

I think that human beings are essentially social. Not even essentially, absolutely social, in the sense that it takes more than one for a society to exist. And as long as there’s more than one, there’s social interaction between those two people. But whether it’s one or two, or thousands, or millions, if we don’t communicate we can’t learn from the experience of the past or the experience of the present. Suppose I don’t know how to hunt, who’s going to teach me? I can learn by myself, but it’ll take a long time, and I might just get killed by the prey before I learn. So if I talk to this hunter who’s just come home, with a bag of whatever, and I ask him how he did it, and he tells me, that means I don’t have to go through that other process. But how is he going to tell me?

I know that the word communication has a connotation of utmost utilitarianism, but if you think of communication in the real sense of the word, and that is, an exchange between two people, this makes sense. Human beings talk, not only with the tongue, they talk with the body in their actions, their moves, and maybe they talk with electromagnetic waves. So you don’t know what the nature of the communication is exactly, but the point is that there’s an exchange.

Art is the ultimate in communication because art aspires to be the absolute only consideration, and therefore as pure, as pristine and as valuable as possible. There are all kinds of symbols that people create with art. You don’t have to know the specific language. The only language you have to know is vision through your eyes, or sound through your ears, or physicality by touch. Of course I’m leaving out writing, but I just mean the physical properties of a given fixed symbol, as opposed to more or less freedom of the artistic symbol, which varies from time to time, not only from person to person, but within the person himself. Artists change symbols with the abstract forms they use to express given ideas.

Well let’s put it this way; let’s be accurate: at that age, I didn’t know what it was like except that it was wonderment, or ignorance. Not knowing can be a strong feeling akin to not liking. The fact of actually not knowing can be unpleasant.

Yes, that’s very much a part of what I do. My work is propelled by a belief system, which is very strong and it propels me to get through difficulties to the things that I think are important. I happen to believe that one’s sense of belief has a lot to do with how one functions and what one does. By belief I don’t mean indefinable belief, or mythological, but normal belief, the belief that a person has, and the person himself might not even be aware of, or fully cognizant of it. The more things of value a belief system has, the more weight it has, the closer to the truth it is, the stronger it is.

One of the strongest values we have is this democratic ideal, for want of a better word, of the value of the many, the value that the will or the goodness of the majority is important, even more important than the individual. I believe that, and I believe it not because somebody told me, but because somewhere in my mind I thought about it, and I realized that the collective unconscious, for one thing, is much more profound than one individual. So I don’t have any problem about being second place, because that’s what we are talking about. Either you think of yourself as the beginning and end of all things, or there is a greater something which you are part of. I’m another individual who has the potential of doing any number of things, in a lifetime that adds to the collective intelligence of our species.

From any civilization we learn essentially about its values through the products which survive. The products that it values and that survive are its art. Art is the highest form that a civilization can attain; and it uses art to define itself. If you work on something over a long period of time, and you put everything you’ve got into it, you do it for a reason; because what you’ve done defines your whole sense of value, what you think, what is important, what you are, and somebody else coming and seeing it can also draw those conclusions.What it is really about is: ramifications of the self within the whole, and one’s contribution to the whole, and therefore ones contribution to the self.

That’s exactly what I was trying to do. With one exception. Ordinarily I am among my friends. I don’t think of them as being Black; they’re friends until somebody else tells you they’re Black. So it’s very difficult for us to discourse, without getting involved in the racial war, and the war affects us even internally. When I photograph people, even when I alluded to their Blackness, and the best part of their heritage I was looking at people as human beings, I was, looking at them at the stage before they were called Black. The color of one’s skin has been used as a device ever since it was discovered, to confuse us, to demean; and when I say us, I’m talking about EVERYBODY. It’s a sickness that touches us all, and I think we have to be careful that we don’t embrace it. My militancy was always curbed by a sense of, ‘Well, yes, it’s important that I know this, but it’s more important that I do this — that I resist.’ So that kept me quite political, in the soldier sense: committed to social change. There isn’t anything that isn’t political.

It makes me feel like embracing the underdog. We were very poor, short of being on the street or without a home; and the funny thing, in those days, there were not any homeless. This country has become similar to India with begging on the street, the Untouchables; we’re not too far from that. What I wanted to do was to give people a reason for being alive, a reason to feel good about themselves. And that’s very deliberate on my part. More deliberate than the question of race. I mean that. Part of our problem today is there’s no hope — I know about that, I see it before my eyes everyday. I’ve lived here 25 years and I’ve watched kids grow up and its devastating. They’re not dead but some are near it; they’re walking zombies, and these are teenagers, young kids. When I work, I want to show them what’s beautiful. I know there are ugly things out there and they know too. What they don’t know is that they can be free, at least within the context of their own minds, and that they can do what they believe in their minds. That’s a form of freedom. I made a choice not to get caught in the meanness; I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in the possibilities.

No, its not about pretty pictures, because it’s not about pretty. It’s about truth. And truth is a many splendored thing — a multi-faceted thing. It doesn’t have to be pretty to be true, but if its true it’s beautiful. Truth is beautiful. And so my whole work is about what amounts to a reverence for life itself.

You see, they’re determined, and they’re angry and they’re sad, and they’re beautiful. Is there anything else? Their determination is not defined, and it doesn’t have to be defined unless you define it.

It’s affected me in that I’m not surrounded by the same kind of people that I was surrounded by when I was coming up. People had hopes and there was a certain discipline to life. There were certain things that you were not supposed to do and you didn’t do them. And there were things you were supposed to do and you did them. Today that discipline is not there. There is a self indulgence, as though Armageddon is tomorrow, let me live today. But not so noble. This makes it hard for me to see the things I want to see.

That’s one side. But the other side is that I’ve grown, I’ve changed. And I no longer look for the same things. I know what’s out there, but I have to go on. There are still many things I don’t know, and I have to learn more and experience more. Those are the unknowns. This is the way my work is going. I don’t know what to photograph, but it doesn’t bother me the way it would have because I know whatever it is, it’s out there. And I know I’ll get to it. We’re looking for truth and truth is living, so we find truth in living. So that’s what helps me make pictures now, not the given and the known, but really the unknown. I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m going!

It was part of my lifestyle, and how I was living determined the photographs that I took. If I were in the house of a friend’s family, I was taking pictures. If I went to a nightclub I was taking pictures. So it wasn’t ‘I’m going to pursue jazz, I’m going to pursue families.’ It was from a kind of total consciousness.

My earliest picture of that was in 1949; I took music before and after the ’60s. There are times, when things are so classic and so strong, that one just can’t let it alone and then it reverts to a bygone sense of perception or, way of doing things. The subject could be a political statement, an obvious political subject, but I couldn’t resist it. Those pictures had all the other things that were important to me as an artist and as a human being — it’s there in a man sleeping in a box in the park. I’m searching for beauty and I’m searching for truth, and to me, the two are really one and the same thing, truth is beautiful; I don’t mean in a literal sense, I mean in the sense of a perception of perfection. There are images that come to me like that no matter what their subject.

Absolutely, oh it affects me 100%. When I gave up one process — painting — I never gave up art; I simply changed brushes, as though I went from a piano to a guitar. It was still about making music, so that, when I decided to go into photography, I went in with all my existing knowledge about art. I consciously said to myself, ‘I’m not changing much, just the process, I like this process better than the one I was using’. But my fundamental thinking hadn’t changed. Time had to be spent to increase my knowledge and master another set of symbols, another set of procedures, but I still had the old ones. And the old ones applied to the new process.

Yes and unfortunately this tends to stagnate the discourse in the photographic community. There is not much meaningful discussion about photography: it’s always about the process or about the subject. It rarely goes into any of the things that we’ve touched on in this exchange. I constantly look for signs, that somebody is out there thinking pictures — or that somebody out there is feeling.

Well, I think I was influenced the most by Langston because I knew him as a friend, and as an artist. I was attracted to him because of his writing and I trusted my work with him. Van Gogh was important to me and still is to this day. I tend to like those artists who are emotionally involved — who had an intensity and had visible humanitarian perceptions. There’s a woman that I frequently mention, and that’s Käthe Kollwitz.

Marvelous. That’s almost all she ever did, was to draw. Have you seen the ones in the Public Library?

Yes, big original lithographs, all you’ve got to do is go up to the main library on 42nd street. There’s a whole portfolio of them. I first saw her in a book, and I loved her work, it is just beautiful. Now Orozco — his intensity is more internal almost like a burning inside rather than a burning outside. I was also influenced a great deal by the written word.

Well, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Marx, Lenin. Hegel and Lenin’s dialectics. And also Nietzsche from whom I got a concept — not of the evil, but of the will, the idea of the will. I think what he did was show me the importance that the will can have.

There was one. I regarded Henri Cartier-Bresson well. I liked him because he had this combination of humanness and a lyrical sense, a kind of poetic vision, if you will, which, I think, he eventually lost. But in the beginning that was what moved me a good deal. I also like some of the early photographers — but there are very few that I can take en masse. I find that the greatness is slight. Even in the photographers that are supposed to be “great”, you get past the first few dozen pictures, and you’re in no- mans land. It’s difficult to make good photographs. I like Ansel Adams. I like — is it Brassaï? Yes, Brassaï's pictures. I like Salomon, an early German. but my really important influences were primarily painters.

I happen to believe that photography is not about black and white; it’s about grays. If you think about black and white, you can be satisfied with woodcuts, etchings and engravings, since they’re all black and white. The fact that they are put together with thin lines to make a gray is not the same thing as a gray in a photographic scale. A photographic scale has no edge; it’s a smooth transition from white to black, and it’s certainly not digitized. The standards that have been set for photography are essentially standards that the manufacturer imposed on the process. And it was the manufacturers who said that a negative has to be a certain way, has to have this, that, and the other to be viable, but I don’t believe in that. I believe that what I say is correct, and when I want a picture, I don’t care how dark it is. I believe that if I feel something, and I have my camera, I should try to capture it. Even if I have to hold the camera still for two minutes, I will try.

Also, you have to understand that the places that I go were not lit for TV They were lit for economic reasons, or for visual reasons. In the homes that I visited, electric light was important, and expensive: with one family I photographed, the lights were turned off. The only way I could get a photo was to use flash, and so I used flash, with bounce strobe all throughout the interior. Looking at the picture, you don’t know that that’s what it is, but that’s what it was. So I don’t ever allow the process to limit me. When it comes down to it, I love looking at those dark tones and the grays. It’s so sensuous to me. There’s a point when you’re printing a photograph, and one minute it looks dark and then one minute more it looks dead, another two seconds it’s alive again — the same photograph. One is exposed for 8 seconds and one for 10 seconds, or 8½ seconds, but this one looks right, correct! But this one looks alive even though you see less! Why is that? I don’t know. But I’m certainly not going to throw it away: that’s the way I judge.

>via: http://web.archive.org/web/20050223050109/http://www.tribes.org/cgi-bin/form....

Dedoceo Habi explores juvenile rape

January 5, 2011 4:54

by Lee Hubbard

In this video, “Mystified – Tell Somebody,” Dedoceo Habi helps us see that we should embrace young victims and encourage them to tell what happened and we should counsel the perpetrators so that the community can heal itself.

The critically acclaimed film “Precious” dealt with the touchy subject of family incest and how it affects people, from the instigator to the survivor. Within the Black community, incest – unwarranted or wanted sexual contact between an adult and a minor – is a subject that often is a secret tightly held within families.

It’s an area Dedoceo Habi, an Oakland based activist, wanted to address and start a conversation about. He is doing this with his production of a rap song and music video, “Mystified – Tell Somebody,” which tells the tale of a juvenile rape in an east Oakland neighborhood by a well respected businessman.

“I am a community activist and filmmaker and I thought the rap and video would be the best way to get the message across to the Black community,” said Habi. “This was brought to my attention by youth and survivors of juvenile rape, so I decided to do it.”

Habi said that incest and juvenile rape by adults is “more prevalent then we think,” and he believes this crime has a spillover effect that impacts the community.

“If we look at many of the others crimes we see going on, it’s based on a violation of trust,” said Habi. “A lot of the youth who just don’t care and are acting wild on the streets are survivors of youth rape and incest. They mask their pain through anger and the disregard for social norms.”

Habi is a 46-year-old Black activist from Savannah, Georgia. He has been an Oakland resident for the past 15 years and has worked in a variety of grassroots community issues. He has worked with America Speaks, a national non-profit that brings communities together around socially relevant issues. He created the “Get Screened” campaign, which dealt with HIV testing and AIDS awareness. He is also the chairman of the San Pablo Corridor Coalition, a grassroots organization made up of service providers, residents and businesses working to improve the area.

“I got into activism because I felt that a lot of other issues were not being addressed,” continued Habi.

“In Mystified – Tell Somebody,” the song features the lyrics from rapper Naruak Wina and a soulful chorus by Yolanda Davis, belting out “Walks in the ways of hell” to describe the youth rape. In the 5 minute video, when members of the neighborhood find out about the juvenile rape from the young female survivor, a group of men go to the perpetrator’s house, gather him up and make him turn himself into the Oakland Police Department.

The video is on YouTube, having just been released, and it has over 1,500 hits so far. The goal for the song and video is to raise awareness on the issue.

“We want to link the survivors of youth rape and incest to free counseling and help start the healing process,” continued Habi.

To watch the video, go to www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6DJPJ3IIm4 or go to www.sfbayview.com.

Lee Hubbard is a Bay Area journalist who is well known to longtime Bay View readers. He can be reached at superlehubbard@yahoo.com.

Grain Magazine Announces its 23rd Annual
SHORT GRAIN (with Variations) CONTEST!

Grain's annual writing contest is now open!
$4,500 in prizes to be won!

3 prizes will be awarded in each category:

1st Prize: $1,000
2nd Prize: $750
3RD Prize: $500

Categories:

Poetry (up to 100 lines)
Poetry of any style including PROSE POEM up to 100 lines.

Short Fiction (to a maximum of 2500 words)
Short fiction in any form including POST CARD STORY to a maximum of 2500 words.

And the Judges are...

Poetry: JERAMY DODDS
Author of Trillium Award-winning and 2009 Griffin Prize-nominee Crabwise to the Hounds.

Fiction: ZSUZSI GARTNER
Author of All Anxious Girls on Earth and editor of the acclaimed anthology Darwin's Bastards.

Entry Guidelines

1. The basic fee for Canadian entrants is $35, payable in CDN funds, for a maximum of two entries in one category. The fee for US and International entrants is $35, payable in US funds. Make your cheque or money order payable to: Short Grain Contest
.
2. Every entrant receives a one-year (four-issue) subscription to Grain Magazine.

3. All entries must be POSTMARKED by April 1, 2011. Entries postmarked after this date will not be accepted.

4. Each entry must be original, unpublished, not submitted elsewhere for publication or broadcast, nor accepted elsewhere for publication or broadcast, nor entered simultaneously in any other contest or competition. Work that has appeared on the internet is considered published and is not eligible.

5. All entries in this contest will be judged anonymously, on merit alone. The judges' decisions are final. Judges reserve the right not to award a prize in a given category if no entry is of sufficient quality to warrant publication.

6. Entries must be accompanied by a maximum of one cover page, regardless of the number of entries submitted, and must provide the following information:

     a) Your name, complete mailing address, telephone number, and email address.
     b) Title of your entry (ies).
     c) Category or categories you are entering: Poetry; Fiction.
     d) Word Count (Fiction) / Line Count (Poetry). An absolutely accurate word or line count is required.

Judging is blind. Do not print, type, or write your name on the text pages of your entry.

7. Your entry must be typed (double-spaced for fiction) on 8 1/2 x 11 inch paper. It must be legible. Faxed and/or electronic entries not accepted.

8. Entries will not be returned. Keep a copy of your entry.

9. Names of the winners and titles of the winning entries of the 23rd Annual Short Grain (with Variations) Contest will be posted on the Grain Magazine website in August, 2011. Contest winners will be notified directly either by telephone or by email prior to the website posting.

Make your cheque or money order payable to Short Grain Contest. Send your entry or entries to:
Short Grain Contest
P.O. Box 67
Saskatoon, SK
Canada, S7K 3K1

NOTE: Entries by email or fax will not be accepted.

Deadline: April 1, 2011

Prize Money Generously Donated in Part by:
Cheryl and Henry Kloppenburg, Barristers and Solicitors, Saskatoon.

**

Frequently Asked Questions

1. When you say, "...a maximum of two entries in one category..." does that mean I can enter one piece of Fiction and one piece of Poetry with one $35 entry fee?

No. For each $35 entry fee, you may enter one or two pieces of Fiction OR one or two pieces of Poetry. If you do send one piece of Fiction and one piece of Poetry, we will choose one of them at random to be considered. The other piece will be recycled.

2. Can I enter more than once?

You may enter as many times as you like, provided you include another entry fee for each entry beyond the first. Therefore two Canadian entries would cost $70.

3. If I enter twice (for $70), can I enter two pieces of Fiction AND two pieces of Poetry?

Absolutely! Or you could enter four pieces of Poetry. Or two pieces of Poetry and one piece of Fiction. But not three pieces of Poetry and one piece of Fiction. See how this works...

4. Do I need to send a separate cover page for each piece of writing I enter?

No. Send only one cover page that includes all the information for every piece of writing you are entering. Don't forget to include your complete contact information!

5. And what happens to my free subscription if I enter more than once?

Your Grain subscription will be increased by four issues for each entry fee received beyond the first. So, if you enter twice, you will receive a two-year (eight-issue) subscription to Grain Magazine. If you already have a subscription to Grain, we'll simply add another four issues to your current subscription for each entry fee received.

6. What if I enter something that's over the word count? Will that piece be disqualified?

The contest judge will only consider the first 2,500 words of each piece of Fiction. If you enter a piece of Fiction that is 3,000, for example, only the first 2,500 will be considered. The last 500 words will be discarded. The same rules apply for Poetry entries over 100 lines.

7. Will entrants be notified of the winners?

No. Winners and the names of the winning pieces will be posted on this website in August 2011.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The American Poetry Journal Book Prize
Guidelines & Information for 2011

The postmark deadline for entries to the 2011 The American Poetry Journal Book Prize is February 28, 2011. To enter, submit 50-65 paginated pages of poetry, table of contents, acknowledgments, bio, email address for results (No SASEs; manuscripts will be recycled), and a $25.00 non-refundable fee for each manuscript entered. The winner will receive $1000, publication, and 20 copies. All entries will be considered for publication. All styles are welcome. Multiple submissions are acceptable. Simultaneous submissions are acceptable, but if your manuscript is accepted for publication elsewhere you must notify The American Poetry Journal and/or Dream Horse Press immediately. Fees are non-refundable. Judging will be anonymous; writers' names should not appear anywhere on the manuscript. Please include your name and biographical information in a separate cover letter. Please be sure to include your email address.  The winner is chosen by the editor of The American Poetry Journal, J.P. Dancing Bear.  Close friends, students (former or present), and relatives of the the editor are NOT eligible for the contest; their entry fees will be refunded.

The American Poetry Journal Book Prize entries may be sent, following the guidelines above, to:

The American Poetry Journal book prize
P. O. Box 2080
Aptos, California 95001-2080

Please make checks payable to: Dream Horse Press.

Or, you can now submit your manuscript in email, save on postage, paper, and envelopes by paying online: email

The American Poetry Journal Book Prize
Guidelines & Information for 2011

The postmark deadline for entries to the 2011 The American Poetry Journal Book Prize is February 28, 2011. To enter, submit 50-65 paginated pages of poetry, table of contents, acknowledgments, bio, email address for results (No SASEs; manuscripts will be recycled), and a $25.00 non-refundable fee for each manuscript entered. The winner will receive $1000, publication, and 20 copies. All entries will be considered for publication. All styles are welcome. Multiple submissions are acceptable. Simultaneous submissions are acceptable, but if your manuscript is accepted for publication elsewhere you must notify The American Poetry Journal and/or Dream Horse Press immediately. Fees are non-refundable. Judging will be anonymous; writers' names should not appear anywhere on the manuscript. Please include your name and biographical information in a separate cover letter. Please be sure to include your email address.  The winner is chosen by the editor of The American Poetry Journal, J.P. Dancing Bear.  Close friends, students (former or present), and relatives of the the editor are NOT eligible for the contest; their entry fees will be refunded.

The American Poetry Journal Book Prize entries may be sent, following the guidelines above, to:

The American Poetry Journal book prize
P. O. Box 2080
Aptos, California 95001-2080

Please make checks payable to: Dream Horse Press.

Or, you can now submit your manuscript in email, save on postage, paper, and envelopes by paying online: email

jessica Care moore presents:

January 7th-15th

Opening Reception:
Friday, January 7th, 6-9pm
@ Dell Pryor Gallery (Located inside the Spiral Collective)
4201 Cass Ave
Detroit, Mi 48201 

 

Celebrated poet and renaissance woman, Jessica Care Moore pushes the boundaries of craft with the premiere of her Conceptual Art Installation, NANOC: I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC: Deconstructing the Literary Canon at The Dell Pryor Gallery on January 7th.

Moore will present a nine-day series of conversation, conceptual art, and performance at Dell Pryor Gallery in Detroit. The Free Opening Reception is Friday, January 7th, 6-9pm. The Exhibition runs from January 7-15th.

Moore, an author, poet and performance artist, was inspired by an artist residency last summer working with Master Painter Radcliffe Bailey, at the Atlantic Center for The Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida” It was the first time in the 30 years of that residency that a Master Painter brought a poet and writer to collaborate with the other visual artists. “Those three weeks inspired me beyond words, and Radcliffe has been pushing me to continue to translate my text into a visual medium ever since.”

 

NANOC: I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC, will challenge the definition of Literary Canon from a 21st Century brown woman poet’s perspective.  Moore, who was formally educated in Detroit Public Schools and in Michigan Universities, says she hopes this work will challenge the idea of what is defined as a “classic.”

The installation will include found objects, collage, text, political broadsides, and photography. The photography is a collaborative work with fashion photographer Piper Carter. “I wanted to deal with the text of the poets I was forced to deconstruct, in a physical way. There are physical spiritual and mental reactions when men or certain historical ideas are forced on people, and specifically young girls,” says Moore.

The installation will explore the Canon writers on the body of a contemporary woman poet’s body, in addition to inserting her own perspective into their body of work.  Moore hopes the work will encourage dialog, and offer a provocative perspective on Classic American Literature.

“The Canon desperately needs to evolve. We need more women writers being taught to our kids. Many more writers and poets of color. That’s what I hope some of this work will speak to.”

 

HIGHLIGHTS

Friday January 7th:

Opening Reception will include an opportunity to receive limited edition signed photos with the author on top of a book sculpture inside the space, that will be used for a future exhibition.  Pre-order payments for the limited edition photos must be made that day.

Tuesday January 11th:  Moore will be joined by noted visual artists, Sabrina Nelson, Jocelyn Rainey, Kristine Diven and photographer Piper Carter to discuss Sexism, Canon and The Female Body in art.

Saturday, January 15th:  Closing Reception 7-9pm A closing performance and talk with artist, Jessica Care Moore, including an excerpt of her Off-Broadway solo show dedicated to Vivienne Eliot, T.S. Eliot’s first wife and muse. $5 Donation.

 

Dell Pryor Gallery (Located inside the Spiral Collective)
4201 Cass Ave
Detroit, Mi 48226
(313) 833-6990

 

Book Reviews: Recent Historical Scholarship

Posted on December 17, 2010 by blackatlanticresource| Leave a comment

The Black Atlantic Resource presents reviews of two of the most recent publications which expand understandings of U.S. African-American relationships with Haitians and their revolutionary history:

Millery Polyné, From Douglass to Duvalier: U.S. African Americans, Haiti, and Pan Americanism, 1870–1964, 2010 (University Press of Florida: Gainesville)

 

Millery Polyné, From Douglass to Duvalier: U.S. African Americans, Haiti, and Pan Americanism, 1870–1964, 2010 (University Press of Florida: Gainesville) 

Review By: Wendy Asquith (University of Liverpool) 

Published: December 2010 

 

 

From Douglass to Duvalier is an important new work, situated in the ‘emerging field of Hemispheric American Studies’, which presents new approaches to the role of Haiti in African-American consciousness.1 This work moves through a number of chronologically ordered case studies which demonstrate U.S. – Haitian African American relations, between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth century. Polyné considers intra-racial interactions between these two groups to ‘have been central to the spirit of the pan-American movement because of their long history of transnational engagements.’2 

Overarching the entire volume is a distinct reformulation of the hegemonic U.S. model of pan-Americanism. This concept is considered as African-Americans (a term used here in its broadest sense, denoting those of African descent throughout the Americas) actually attempted to work through pan-Americanism’s ideals, rather than using them as a smoke-screen for an imperialist agenda. Though the focus remains on U.S. - Haitian interactions, broader examples of this are mentioned. So, Haitian attempts to engender a mutually co-operative, non-interventionist movement are briefly demonstrated through their government’s support of Latin American independence movements. 

The volume begins, as others before it, in the late nineteenth century with Frederick Douglass. The personification and forerunner of black pan-Americanism (“an organizing concept encompassing movements and expressions for development and racial solidarity in intra-racial communities”3) and takes us up to the dictatorship of François ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier and the role of Haitian exiles in the 1960s. 

In between are a number of case studies which explore both inter-racial and intra-racial schemes of development and uplift, originating in the United States. Implemented on behalf of Haiti these schemes spanned cultural, economic and political spheres. They include: Claude Barnett’s Associated Negro Press information network, which sought to aid business investment in Haiti through positive reporting and; the Moton Commission which explored potential trajectories of educational uplift in Haiti. 

Polyné in a number of ways approaches topics popular in current historiography from a subverted angle. Briefly he uses the Haitian Revolution as an ‘overture’ to his study, mirroring the rituals of U.S. black and Haitian ‘transnational exchanges of ideas’, however he does not retread that oft-treaded ground for long. 4 Neither does he reconsider African-Americans’ abstract musings on Africa as a diasporic homeland. Rather, refreshingly he explores a set of case-studies which demonstrate the physical and psychological investments of African-Americans in the second half of their hyphenated identity. 

However, he then goes onto pessimistically argue that it was this investment in national (racist U.S.) systems and identity that overrode intra-racial alliances between U.S. and Haitian blacks stifling if not dooming black pan-Americanism to failure.5 In support of this he demonstrates U.S. African-Americans’ psychological investment (like the wider U.S. population) in U.S. paternalism. This aided, what Polyné highlights as, the problematic conflation in U.S. black consciousness of the history and objectives of the Haitian Revolution, with an ideal imagined Haiti as a ‘city upon a hill’, which requires their assistance to be uplifted to ‘finish the unfinished’ revolution which would could Haiti perfectly representative of black achievement.6 

This text also approaches the subject of ‘silences’ so memorably asserted by Laurent Dubois, with regard to Haiti’s place in historical memory, from a novel angle. Rather than re-layering the idea of U.S. African Americans struggling to assert the importance of Haiti’s revolution in the wake of Western discourses silencing of it as an unthinkable history. (As Kachun notes, so popular in current historiography that historians themselves are creating a ‘historical mythology’ of African American celebrations that there is not definitive evidence for.7) Polyné highlights U.S. African-American hesitations to recount this history, and silences about it when contemporary Haiti presented a less attractive option than other intra-racial symbols or national inter-racial opportunities. 

Most notably the hesitation of the vast majority of U.S. African-Americans to criticise the marine invasion of Haiti in 1915, until they had a need to speak through the injustices of that regime to highlight their own unjust experiences in the ‘Red Summer’ and the need to fight to establish an anti-lynching bill.8 Similarly after the years of cultural, economic and personal intra-racial relationships between these two groups Polyné notes the somewhat disappointing ‘deemphasising [of] the importance of Haiti’ among U.S. African Americans.9 Polyné locates the origins of this deterioration, and the slow silencing of Haiti as a symbol of race pride, in the 1960s, as a result of the actions, and mainstream press accounts, of the Duvalier dictatorship. 

Each case adds a layer which supports this fresh perspective and cements the foundational argument of the need for a broader understanding of the role of pan-Americanism in the consciousness of African-Americans.

 

1 Millery Polyné, From Douglass to Duvalier, p.15 

 

2 Ibid, p.11: including emigration, diplomacy, mission, economic co-operatives and, anti-imperialist campaigns. 

 

3 Ibid. 

 

4 Ibid, p.7 

 

5 Ibid, p,24 

 

6  Ibid, p.4: Quoting Ron Daniels scheme ‘Cruising into History’. A weeklong salute to 1791 planned for August 2004 in the United States, aimed at promoting future economic and cultural development in Haiti which was ‘shipwrecked’ by the political unrest of Artistide’s kidnap in February. 

 

7  

Mitch Kachun, ‘Antebellum African Americans, Public Commemoration, and the Haitian Revolution: A Problem of Historical Mythmaking’ in Jackson and Bacon (eds), African Americans and the Haitian Revolution, p.93-106 

 

 

8 Millery Polyné, From Douglass to Duvalier, p.62 

 

 

9 Ibid, p.186 

 

 

__________________________ 

 

 

 

 

 

Maurice Jackson and Jacqueline Bacon (eds), African Americans and the Haitian Revolution: Selected Essays and Historical Documents, 2010 (Routledge: London and New York) 

Review By: Wendy Asquith (University of Liverpool) 

Published: December 2010 

 

Jackson and Bacon’s edited volume is a collection of recent work which provides key contextualisation of African Americans interaction with the Haitian Revolution from the late eighteenth to the twentieth century. These essays and case-studies presented as a collection are so compelling because stylistically mirroring the historical ebb and flow of ideas across ‘porous borders’, the works in this volume converse with each other. They present a variety of evidence which unarguably attests to the enduring influence which Haiti has and continues to have on the actions and consciousness of African-Americans. From Toussaint inspired soldiers fighting the American Civil War while singing ‘La Marseillaise’ to the projects and words of Danny Glover contemporary activist and co-founder of louverture films.1 

These chapters span a number of disciplines: From the outset, the editors present, the roots of the ‘transtemporal’ and transnational nature of the work to follow.2 These can be found in the expanding scope of African-American studies, and Atlantic approaches. Byman places this in a wider scholarly trend of “considering “bodies of water” as well as “land masses ... as sites of connectivity and mutual influence,” through which we can explore “diasporas, mobility, diversity, cultural borrowing, and the porousness of borders.”3 

Fanning and Alexander both consider movement across material borders in the African-American emigration movements to post-revolutionary Haiti. However they present differences of accentuation in looking at the significance of these movements. Alexander explores this phenomenon from the 1820s to its ultimate end in the 1860s as ‘phantasms’ and escapist fantasies which many who physically partook of returned dissatisfied with the realities of the ‘black republic’.4 Fanning however delves deeper into the 1820s movement but seems unable to reconcile herself with the idea that African-Americans were dissatisfied with physically living in Haiti, she substitutes a less than convincing supposition and misses what I believe is the real power of Haiti in the black Atlantic: Its symbolic significance of black pride, potential and achievement. This provided so strong a pull on the minds of free blacks in America that, at a time when they were despised and frustrated at home, despite the post-revolutionary turmoil in Haiti like a siren it called across the waters: a mirage of a diasporic homeland, successfully drawing in 6000 to 13000 African-American migrants, temporarily.5 

At times these essays unabashedly and directly present conflicting views, notably over the controversial issue of public commemoration of the Haitian Revolution. A number of chapters casually make reference to the assumed occurrence of such events among African-Americans.6 Kachun, however, notes that little if any primary evidence has been presented by the scholarship as a whole for these assertions, and he goes on to meticulously observe the accumulation of a “historical mythology” through a “well-intentioned” “scholarly collusion”. Kachun’s essay is important as it warns against an assumption of repeated though unsubstantiated information in a field of study which has gained notable popularity in recent years. However, in conflict with Kachun labelling this scholarly trajectory as ‘counterproductive and downright dangerous’, I find this occurrence infinitely interesting and demonstrative of the enduring potency of Haiti’s history as a mythology or folktale.7 

Though this volume is mainly a compilation of works that focus on textual sources, the themes and arguments constructed are nonetheless instrumental to a good understanding of the critical and enduring impact of the Haitian Revolution, and its heroes (interestingly female archetypes are introduced here through Bacon’s chapter8) on African-Americans. However Jackson’s ‘No Man Could Hinder Him: Remembering Toussaint…’ which takes a wide-ranging and at times unwieldy approach to twentieth century cultural remembrances of Toussaint and the Revolution considers a broader set of sources beyond the textual.9 

Particularly Jackson presents a short in-depth consideration of a key visual source: Jacob Lawrence’s Toussaint L’Ouverture series.10 In discussing this work which memorialises the Revolution Jackson reveals some surprising influences on Lawrence, including his attendance at a play on the life of Toussaint by a W. Dubois, which he mistook for the famous African-American political leader and founding member of the NAACP, but was in fact a white southerner: William Du Bois. Jackson also discusses some motivations behind Lawrence’s Toussaint series and raises some interesting questions, including to what extent Lawrence as a 21 year old, painting this piece, understood the deeper implications of this dramatic story, though Jackson suggests no clear answer to this. 

What is abundantly clear though, through the chronologically wide-ranging array of evidence presented in this volume, is that Haiti’s revolution and its aftermath have been undeniably key in African-American’s: recognition of their own potential and; galvanising themselves and their community to act in creating both material freedoms and continuing to inspire freedoms of mind. This event continually resonated with African Americans, ‘even as changing times gave is new meanings.’ 11 African Americans have not only encountered the Haitian Revolution as a historical reality, but socially and culturally have redefined, reshaped and retold it as a defining collective memory, key to the cosmology of African American and indeed black Atlantic consciousness: ‘the touchstone of a transatlantic identity’. 12 

1 Matthew J. Clavin, American Toussaints: Symbol, Subversion, and the Black Atlantic Tradition in the American Civil War, p.110; Maurice Jackson and Jacqueline Bacon, Introduction, p.1 

2 Maurice Jackson and Jacqueline Bacon, Introduction, p.2 

3 Ibid. 

4 Leslie M. Alexander, “The Black Republic”: The Influence of the Haitian Revolution on Northern Black Political Consciousness, 1816-1862, pp.57-80 

5 Sara C. Fanning, The Roots of Early Black Nationalism: Northern African Americans’ Invocation of Haiti in the Early Nineteenth Century, pp.39-58 

6 Ibid., p.39 

7 Mitch Kachun , Antebellum African Americans, Public Commemoration, and the Haitian Revolution: A Problem of Historical Mythmaking, p.105 

8 Although the disappointing lack of further evidence beyond two female figures: one of which, Madame Christophe, is made famous primarily as the wife of Henri Christophe, and the other; Theresa, is a fictional character, makes this argument feel somewhat forced, this gender angle is interesting and one which has lacked in the historiography up to this point; Jacqueline Bacon: “A Revolution Unexampled in the History of Man”: The Haitian Revolution in Freedom’s Jounral, 1827-1829, pp.86-90 

9 This chapter covers the vast ground of: black 20th century political leaders, including some West Indians such as C.L.R. James; African-American engagement with US invasion; a variety of literary responses including McKay; theatrical pieces; dance; anthropology and; jazz music. 

10 Maurice Jackson, No Man Could Hinder Him: Remembering Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution in the History and Culture of the African American People, p. 150-152 

11 Maurice Jackson and Jacqueline Bacon, Introduction, p.4 

12 Ibid. 

 

 

 

 

 

The history of African Performance

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BBC Drama producers Fiona Ledger and Jenny Horrocks look back at the last five decades of BBC radio drama across Africa.

This year - 2010 - marks 50 years of African drama on the BBC African Service. The output is sounding rather different now from the early days, and it has grown into a competition designed to encourage new African writing from BBC listeners.

It was back in 1960 that the late BBC producer John Stockbridge was asked by the Head of the African Service to devise some kind of drama for African listeners. He came up with a series, a soap opera set in London.

No copy survives, but the star does. Yemi Ajibade, then a young actor new to the UK, took the role of a social worker, moving around England and settling quarrels.

The season evolves

"This is definitely a crushing of boundaries"

BBC African Performance is a unique annual season of radio drama now entering its fifth decade. The Nobel Laureate Professor Wole Soyinka believes the season penetrates Africa's borders in one fell swoop.

"They are listening in Zimbabwe at the same time as in Sudan, in South Africa, in Nigeria, in Sierra Leone. And this is definitely a crushing of boundaries in a way that even the written word on its own may not have."

Since then, drama on the BBC African Service has been transformed into a competition aimed at developing new African writing and indeed acting.

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One of the early plays aired on the BBC African Service was Ama Ata Aidoo's Anowa, broadcast in 1968.

Now a grandmother of African literature, Ama Ata Aidoo was then 26 years old. Her play was about a woman who turns down a young man, considered a good catch by her parents, only to elope with an undesirable.

The power of attraction and its disastrous consequences was a common theme in African Performance (or "African Theatre" as it used to be called). Equally strong was the battle of the sexes.

The late Jeillo Edwards was always adept at playing big strong women

The late Jeillo Edwards was always adept at playing big strong women, though she did confess to being keen on taking the romantic lead. Invariably she played across from the late Alex Tettey-Lartey in the gender war.

Another lead actor who became one of the UK's most successful performers, is Saeed Jaffrey. He played alongside Alex Tettey-Lartey in A Mile to Go, by Kuldip Sondhi, the story of an Indian businessman attempting to leave a hostile African state, only to be thwarted at the last minute.
Kuldip Sondhi combines writing for a living with the hard commercial world of being a hotelier. Few playwrights can rely on their work for a sole source of income.

Nigeria's contribution to radio drama has been enormous and it continues to yield the most drama scripts on an annual basis in the whole continent.

Nigerian novelist and playwright Biyi Bandele's first play Forbidden Fruit was broadcast in 1991 on the BBC African Service.

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Many plays in BBC African Theatre were strongly political, as well as full of personal anguish. In South Africa politics and human suffering fused to produce drama which was traumatic, funny and driven.

While apartheid ruled, London was full of South African writers, actors and directors: Lionel Ngakane, Alton Khumalo, John Matshikiza, Jabu Mbalo. Many returned with majority rule.

Ugandan Vincent Magombe had been cut off from Africa and the West by nine years of study in the Soviet Union. He submitted his first script to the BBC within a week of arriving in London, a complete unknown from Moscow.
"The experiences in Russia were extraordinary and I kept seeing things that really gripped me as an artist, as a writer", he said.

Actor Joe Marcel, a regular performer on BBC African Theatre, ended up in Hollywood. He shot to stardom playing black English butler to Will Smith's boy from the hood in the TV hit, Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

The 1960s and 70s were lean times for black actors. Jeillo Edwards, the first black actress on British television, says she lived on money she was paid from BBC African Theatre, then a monthly production. "But I decided to get married. I thought at least I'll have something to eat and a roof over my head!"

The meeting of two worlds

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The secret of the success of some writers and actors was versatility - moving from radio to television to stage.

No one demonstrated that more clearly than Nigerian Ken Saro-Wiwa. In 1972 his play Transistor Radio was chosen for production by BBC African Theatre. It was the pilot for what became a hugely successful comedy on radio and then television, featuring the feckless but ever hopeful Basi.

But Saro-Wiwa moved away from the world of writing and commerce to the world of politics in the 1980s. He paid the price in 1994 when he was executed, accused by the Nigerian government of murdering political opponents in Ogoniland.

In the mid 1970s BBC African Theatre was reduced from a monthly affair with a dedicated group of actors, to six plays a year broadcast weekly over a six week period. In 1994 the name African Theatre was changed to African Performance to allow for music, poetry readings and drama-documentaries and even stand-up comedy to have their place in the season.

In 1994 the decision was also taken to record two plays a year on location, working with local actors and writers across the continent.

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The last ten years of African Performance have continued to throw up themes that reflect the concerns of the continent.

The plight of child soldiers, mob justice, people trafficking and prostitution, football fanaticism, internet dating and science fiction; These are just a few of the themes that have emerged from our competition in recent years.

There are several winners of the competition who having tasted success have been encouraged to go on and achieve success elsewhere. Nigerian writer Sefi Atta twice won second prize on Afrcan Performance.

First, in 2002 with An Engagement and again in 2004 with Makinwa's Miracle, a hilarious comedy about a fanatically religious woman who believes the face of Jesus Christ has miraculously appeared on her toilet window.

In 2006, Atta's debut novel Everything Good Will Come was awarded the inaugural Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa. Her collection of short stories, Lawless and Other Stories has also won the 2009 Noma Award for Publishing in Africa.

Becoming an institution

The African Performance season is something African actors also look forward to taking part in.

"One of the main things about being involved in African Performance is the energy of imagination, the energy of story-telling," says Leo Wringer, another actor to have made it in Hollywood.

For Ben Onwukwe, a veteran African Performance actor, it's a pleasure to be involved. "Suddenly I come in this building and there's actors' power! There's the power of the performer who is listened to, and whose contribution is discussed," he says.

For writer, Biyi Bandele, BBC African Performance does something unique. "I think the fact that African Performance reaches every corner of the continent is wonderful. The cross-cultural dialogue it provides makes me think it is very very crucial that it should go on".

Michael Kamber on photojournalism today

Phil Coomes | 09:18 UK time, Monday, 13 December 2010

 

Michael Kamber is an award winning photographer who currently works for the New York Times, here he outlines his view of the state of photojournalism today.

This is the first in a series of articles to be published this week, each one by a different author looking at the world of photojournalism from a number of angles.

"I remember arriving in New York in 1985 only to find that I'd arrived too late: photojournalism was dead. This was common knowledge - everybody said so. Life, Look, and The Saturday Evening Post were gone and photojournalists were struggling to find new markets and new ways to finance their work and reach the public. The murderer was television. The evil box had reduced attention spans and created a hunger for constant movement - something we photographers could never match.

 "I scratched my way into the profession with a generation of men and women now approaching the age of 50. We shot demonstrations on spec, souped our film in the bathroom, sold photos to AP or Reuters for $25, slept in groups on hotel room floors in Port-au-Prince and Mexico City.

 "And lo and behold, we scratched out a living as photojournalists. Some of us did quite well. True, the grand picture magazines were gone, but Time, Newsweek, US News and most of the big papers in the US had photographers on assignment all over the world. Gamma, Sipa, Sygma and other photo agencies thrived.”

"Now, 25-years later, I'm the one saying that photojournalism is dead. And it is dead, as Neil Burgess has famously pointed out; at least as we have know it.

 "I was in Baghdad covering the election this past winter - a historic election marking a supposed turning point in conflict of the decade. Ten years ago there would have been 20 photojournalists there. I was there with one other Western photographer that I'm aware of - Andrea Bruce, who had come largely on her own.

 "I have the luxury to work on contract for The New York Times, probably the only remaining paper in the world with the budget and commitment to finance photojournalism on a large scale. And I'm proud of my paper - we've covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from top to bottom, start to finish. Three hundred people were recently laid off, but the NYT's foreign bureaux remain open.

 "Yet we are the last stalwarts; my photojournalist friends at other mainstream newspapers say their travel budgets are gone. The LA Times, US News and Newsweek appear to be sliding towards bankruptcy; The Washington Post closed nearly all its foreign bureaux; Time is a shadow of its former self.

 "But is photojournalism really dead? When my mentors in 1985 lamented the passing of photojournalism, what they were really marking was the passing of their system, their model. And it was a great model. And the model that we reinvented in the 1980s and 1990s was pretty damn good too. Now it's my generation's turn to lament the passing. But once again, what is dead is not photojournalism - what is dead is the particular culture of photojournalism that supported us for the past 30 years.

 "Today there is a new way, a new system. I meet young photographers constantly: idealistic, excited, naïve, creative. They may have missed out on the magic of baryta paper in a tray of Dektol, but they love image-making nonetheless. And as has been said ad-nauseum, they are focusing on new models for raising cash to do projects - the grants, agency workshops, Emphasis, the partnerships with NGOs (which I find troubling for reasons I won't detail here), and others. I myself am using Emphasis to raise money for a book project.

 "And of course, a photojournalist today has to be much more of an overall journalist - video, written pieces, and multi-media are crucial to stitching together a living.

  "Do I like this new developing model? Not much. Does it allow for a photographer to have job security, raise a family with health insurance, know that someone will evacuate him or her if injured in a warzone? Absolutely not.

 "But this developing model is what we've got and we have to work with it, there is no other option. What troubles me is that we are becoming ghettoised. As the mainstream press dies a slow and ugly death, we increasingly work for each other - for the cultish community of photo festivals and workshops, awards and grants, boutique print collectors. And this new model will surely exacerbate something I deplore about photojournalism: it is increasingly a community of privileged white people. I was astonished a few years ago to sit at an awards ceremony in Amsterdam with about 300 other photographers and editors. There was exactly one African and possibly one or two Latinos in the room, though probably 75% of the ‘subjects’ were people of colour.

 "It is up to the photo community to break out of this new model, democratise it and reach new audiences. I can see it happening already. And though I may not like the business model, the bottom line is this: there is a new generation out there shooting pictures in the corners of the world every day.

  "No doubt, 35 years from now, there will be yet another new model. This will allow the youth of today their deserved turn to lament the death of photojournalism."

You can see more of Michael's work on his website. [Warning: The site contains photographs of warfare and graphic violence.]

Tomorrow, David Campbell, photographic consultant, writer and producer, talks about photography in the age of mass media and image abundance.

Related posts:
David Campbell on photojournalism in the age of image abundance
Adrian Evans on future funding of photojournalism
Coming at photojournalism from a different angle

An Unguarded Portrait of Haitian Spirit

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

 

Damon Winter had finished his photo session with Fabienne Jean, a young dancer in Haiti whose lower right leg was amputated in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake. Overcoming her understandable reluctance, Ms. Jean removed her prosthetic limb in the middle of the shoot and set it to the side so that Mr. Winter could photograph her legs as they are. He shot two rolls of film with his Hasselblad and wound up with a fine, eminently publishable portrait.

That isn’t the picture that appeared on Page 1 of The Times, however.

Instead, while he was rewinding the second roll of film, Ms. Jean picked up the prosthesis and swung it jauntily over her shoulder. “Except for the fact that I lost a part of myself of Jan. 12, I’m still Fabienne,” she said, as reported by Deborah Sontag in “A Year Later, Haiti Struggles Back.”

Photographers like Mr. Winter and Fred R. Conrad (“Wrong Station, Right Image“) make their own luck by having another camera on standby and, far more important, by recognizing instinctively when a defining moment presents itself.

In less time than it takes to tell, Mr. Winter pulled out a digital camera and captured Ms. Jean with the prosthesis in hand, utterly unselfconscious. He also shot wider than the frame of the formal portrait, showing the makeshift studio he’d concocted in Port-au-Prince.

“She is elegant and personable, a beautiful person,” Mr. Winter said of Ms. Jean, whom he photographed a month ago. “The picture we used on the front page so much more accurately captures her character that the more subdued pose.”

(And for those sharp-eyed viewers who’d wondered: now you know why Mr. Winter’s other Haitian portraits have the distinctive black borders of film, while the Page 1 portrait does not.)

Damon Winter/The New York TimesFabienne Jean.

========================

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

A reflection in a puddle on an airport tarmac or in a mirrorlike teleprompter. Silhouetted shadows on a chain-link fence. A cascade of empty metal bleachers. Not the stuff of ordinary political coverage. But Damon Winter, 34, had never before covered a presidential campaign. So maybe he didn't know how many rules he was breaking as he followed Senator Barack Obama. But that approach worked, and he received the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography.

"My editors encouraged me to go beyond the straightforward photo," Mr. Winter said. "I had the luxury of not just getting the photographic equivalent of the 30-second sound bite, but to look beyond the obvious, in a more subtle way."

"With Obama," he said, "much of the story was about the excitement around him wherever he went. Over the course of the campaign, I wanted to create a complete photo story, so that the reader could see what I saw."

Mr. Winter joined The New York Times in 2007 after three years as a staff photographer at The Los Angeles Times. In New York, he has captured the reconstruction of an old railroad viaduct in "Working on the High Line" and found a way, with "Double Exposures," to get to a truth about urban juxtaposition that is more evocative than any single image could be. "A Dilemma in the Arctic" took him far from frenetic cities and campaigns, allowing his imaginative eye to record the rich human tapestry in what seems at first to be a barren wasteland.

Born in New York, Mr. Winter grew up in St. Thomas in the United States Virgin Islands. He earned a bachelor's degree in environmental science from Columbia University and worked for The Dallas Morning News, Newsweek, Magnum Photos, The Ventura County Star and The Indianapolis Star. His photo essay on sexual abuse victims in western Alaska was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. Mr. Winter lives in Brooklyn.

>via: http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/an-unguarded-portrait-of-haitian-spi...