Categories: Art, Photography
Posts from the “Art” Category
Ominta / Barn / Tara 2009 © Nicola Lo Calzo
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The Republic of Niger, the largest nation in West Africa, ranked 186 of 187 on the United Nations’ Human Development Index for 2011. With over 80 percent of its land covered by the Sahara desert, the country’s predominantly Islamic population of 15 million is mostly clustered in the far south and west of the nation. The capital city of Niamey is located here, situated on the Niger River, the third longest river in all of Africa.
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As photographer Nicola Lo Calzo writes in the afterword of his book Inside Niger (Kehrer Verlag), “The origin of the name Niger has proved enigmatic among modern researchers, and thus cannot be traced with certainty. The most accepted hypothesis is that the name derives from the Tuareg word: ‘gber-n-igheren’ or ‘river of all rivers’…. Since time immemorial, the Niger River has been a meeting point and a place of exchange among various ethnic groups. A genius loci, the river has served as a depository of myths and legends, as well as being the abode of great deities like Ba Faro (mother of humanity) and the all-important Noun. The Niger River is a fountain of living waters and a breath of life.” And so it was that Lo Calzo began to photograph the people of Niger as he followed the river some five hundred kilometers through the land.
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Lo Calzo photographed people that work and live on the river, where most of the commercial activities take place, such as universities, public works, markets, fishing, slaughterhouses, vegetable gardens, and tanneries. The portraits show us people who are employed in a nation known by its high rates of unemployment, thus giving us a glimpse at the haves in a world of have nots, ensuring we understand how vital work itself is to the pride and identity of (wo)man.
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The result is at once powerful and provocative, challenging any and all assumptions about Africa as anything other than a majestic world. As Laura Serani notes in her introduction to the book, “Lo Calzo’s empathy and respect towards his portrait models transforms them into heroes; a transformation that echoes the words of the Italian journalist Pietro Veronese: ‘No, all men are not equal; yes, races do exist and are divided between inferior and superior. Superior to all is the African.’”
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Lo Calzo’s photographs reveal the heroism of a people living on the brink, caught in a web of poverty and environmental degradation that keeps them in harms way. Yet despite a quality of life that is virtually unfathomable to all in the first world, the people photographed by Lo Calzo maintain a dignity that belies their circumstances. Each portrait reveals only the subject’s first name and their location, bringing us face to face with the people who defy all odds by simply surviving in a nation facing constant hardship.
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Most of Lo Calzo’s subjects are men of various age, and as they stand before his camera we witness a pride of being that challenges commonly-held Western perceptions of gender, class, and race as it pertains to the African man. Whether a ractor of the Catholic Church, clothed in the finery begetting his position, or workers in a slaughterhouse, covered in layers of blood, the men stand before Lo Calzo as they are, with a strong, silent, and somber masculinity that demands our attention.
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Respect comes when respect is earned, and when it is given it is returned ten thousand fold. The men who stand before Lo Calzo like a mirror facing itself, and the honor and prestige bestowed upon the most common of men resonates like nothing else. His portraits recall nothing so much as the Biblical passage Matthew 20:16, “So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many are called, but few are chosen.”
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Lo Calzo portraits show us that though we can never fully know what fortune has bestowed upon us, when we look into the eyes of his subjects we can see all that we have been given—and all that has been lost.
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First published 25 January 2013 in
Le Journal de la Photographie
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Assada / Tannery / Niamey 2009 © Nicola Lo Calzo
Azize / Vegetable garden / Niamey 2009 © Nicola Lo Calzo
Michael Jackson by Jim Jocoy
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When the San Francisco punk scene took off in 1976, Jim Jocoy dropped out of UC Santa Cruz, got a job at a copy store, and went to punk clubs at night where he photographed his friends. Together the members of this small independent scene made art, music, videos, and other DIY productions. Jocoy had a few of his photographs published in local fanzines including Widows and Orphans, Search and Destroy, Research, and Punk Globe, and though he photographs were only exhibited twice, one of those included a slide show at the 70th birthday party for the great William S. Burroughs.
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But all of that came to an end in 1980, when Jocoy stopped taking photographs. He recalls, “For me, when Darby Crash of the Germs committed suicide, it was the end of punk as I knew it.” Jocoy bowed out of the burgeoning scene, and of it, all that remained was a shoebox of 35mm portraits and Polaroids shot from 1978–1980.
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Two decades later, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth unearthed Jocoy’s collection and from that came the book, We’re Desperate (powerHouse Books, 2002). This dense collection of uncaptioned portraits became an instant hit, having been shown at the Bay Area Triennial in 2006, as well as inspiring Marc Jacobs to have Juergen Teller shoot an ad campaign in the style of Jocoy for the Spring 2003 collection.
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But greater than any accolades was the book’s greatest gift, for once it was in production Jocoy did something he had not done in two decades: he picked up his camera and began photographing again. Jocoy recalls, “When I had We’re Desperate published, I knew I would be contacting many people in the book. I wanted to take a follow-up photo of them 20 years later. I also knew I would be doing a little more traveling and meeting new people. It felt like it was going to be fun. It was. I decided to make it more fun by using my Polaroid.”
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He continues, “It’s so easy to use. They take good photos. At least the kind I’m looking for. Nothing fancy. Lots of close ups. I like that a Polaroid photograph is an artifact of a close encounter with your subject. The idea of getting physically close to someone is important when you want to get a good Polaroid photograph.”
Indeed, it is. When Jocoy sets his eye on a subject to shoot, he graciously approaches them and asks for permission to photograph. More often than not, permission is granted and the results are phenomenal. In Jocoy’s world, everyone is a star. Celebrities are as casual as everyday people, while everyday people look like stars. Whether photographing the likes of Michael Jackson or Joe Strummer, Robert Evans or Shepard Fairey, Amanda Lepore or Charo, Bruce LaBruce or John Waters, Jocoy’s portraits are always up close and personal.
Complementing his images of famous faces are those who are less known, stars in their own constellation as they orbit the earth. Many of these photographs were taken on location at events like the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade, at exhibition openings and nightclub parties, backstage at concerts or on the city streets. Combined with a selection of cityscapes, the result is a raucous collection of the poetry of daily life.
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Jocoy explains, “I like to photograph people who do things. Creative people are the best. They are special people. They have special gifts and I find them the most interesting. That is the common denominator of most of the people I’ve photographed. They have good energy and usually look great. I like to capture some of it on film. I approach people with respect and try to make them look as best as I can. My favorite group of people I enjoy photographing is any taboo community. Many have extreme looks and I enjoy that a lot. I find much beauty and inspiration with people who are outcasts.”
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As time has shown, Jocoy’s taste for the edge leads him into scenes that have the power to change the world through art, music, style, and culture. His ability to create images of the world in which he lives, to show the common man inside the celebrity and the celebrity inside the common man, leads us full circle, back to where it all began, to a man and his camera, capturing the world one frame at a time.
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First Published in Le Journal de la Photographie
January 18, 2013
John Waters by Jim Jocoy
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I believe that death is not the end, but a new beginning. It is an opportunity for us to reflect on life and discover its deeper meaning. Death appears to sever the spirit from the flesh but perhaps this is not true. Perhaps death transcends our understanding of absolutes. Death allows us to consider what matters in our lives: the people in our world and our purpose here, while on earth. Death, then, is the start of a new revolution, as we come around the circle once again. I believe for every loss there is an equal and opposite gain and I do my best to remember that the dead are not gone. So long as they live within us, their spirit lives on.
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Gigi Giannuzzi died on Christmas Eve 2012 at the age of 49. Giannuzzi founded Trolley Books in 2001 and leaves behind more than a decade of art and photography books dedicated to truth, justice, and the beauty that lies in the darkest corners of the soul. A David among Goliaths and a hero among men, Giannuzzi created Trolley as a platform to stand against the exploitation and deception of our fellow man. Possessed with the heart of an activist and the spirit of a maverick, Giannuzzi’s passion for publishing brought into existence books that speak truth to power at any cost.
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The nature of the book is one of permanence; we consider the book as part of the historical record. Once put into print, the book is a testament to the greatness and horrors of humankind, and Trolley Books bore witness to this in every volume. Under Giannuzzi’s direction, Trolley has released some of the most difficult stories to tell, stories that have been buried under a mountain of misinformation or ignored all together. Giannuzzi’s genius was to partner with likeminded souls, the artists, journalists, and truthtellers who give of their lives to change the world.
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Read the Full Story at
LE JOURNAL DE LA PHOTOGRAPHIE
The Danvers State Hospital – Danvers, Massachusetts from Ghostly Ruins by Harry Skrdla
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Ruins. Empty hollow shells of what once was. Disarray, deshabille, the beautiful poetry of decay. Buildings that once stood, fully functional, making themselves useful to the people that created them to serve a greater purpose. But time passes and use falls away, and buildings that once were designed to serve us are no longer necessary. And, if the land is not wanted, there is no need to tear them down. Instead they are abandoned, left behind, reclaimed by nature ever so slowly.
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As Harry Skrdla writes in the introduction to his book, Ghostly Ruins: America’s Forgotten Architecture (Princeton Architectural Press), “We construct buildings not just as shelter, but as frameworks of life—templates within which to conduct the business of living. Each one is designed for a purpose: a place to reside, a place to bank, a place to make things. They are occupied by, and surrounded with, living breathing human beings…as long as they serve a purpose. But when their reason for existence is gone and the people drift away, only memories remain.”
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Skrdla traveled around the country in search of buildings that are but remnants of their former splendor. Collected here are thirty such locations including homes and hotels, power plants and prisons, whole neighborhoods and even entire towns—what once was now becomes an eerie reminder of lives lived and long gone, haunting and poignant reminders of an earlier world. Skrdla explains, “An abandoned building is dead—as dead as any corpse left decaying in a field. But it too once lived, was animate, and in a sense, had a soul. Except that soul was us. We gave it life and meaning, motion and warmth. We put the spark of light behind the shade-lidded windows and the circulation in its corridors. It consumed supplies and excreted waste. The thing was alive and the life force was us.” The building, as we know it, is an extension of our lives themselves.
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Ghostly Ruins is a cozy tome that takes us back to an earlier time in our country’s history. Organized by function, the book is divided into chapters that offer beautifully subjects for quiet contemplation in categories including Transportation, Industry, Commerce, Public Works, Home, and Amusement. It also includes two additional chapters on Reincarnation (restored buildings) and Epitaphs (buildings now permanently gone). In organizing the book by function, we begin to consider the larger way in which we, as public and private citizens of the world, conduct our affairs. We can consider all that we take for granted, all that seems permanent so easily can be stripped away, that buildings, most of all, offer us a sense of continuity within the ever shifting dynamics of so many lives that make the community strong.
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Consider the Book-Cadillac Hotel in Detroit, Michigan, which was a first-class luxury hotel that, at 1,200 rooms, made it the second largest hotel in America when it opened in 1924. No expense was spared; the lobby had been furnished in breche violette marble, ornate iron railings, and gold leafed ornamentation. The ballrooms had crystal chandeliers. The restaurants were wood paneled. Every room had a a spectacular view and a private bath—a luxury of the time unknown to most people in the world. The hotel prospered until the city began to fall into disrepair, and by 1984 it shuttered its doors, never to re-open in the city’s whose decline stands for all that failed in twentieth century America. The hotel still stands, thirty-three stories tall. It has been stripped of its treasures, just like all the great ruins of civilizations that came before.
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Contrast this with the City Hall IRT subway station in New York City, which had been built in 1904, and was more highly decorated than any other station in the entire city. Designed by the noted architectural firm of Heins and la Farge, and overseen by Spanish-born architect Rafael Gustavino, the City Gall Station—which stands abandoned and perfectly intact—with terra cotta tiles of buff, cream, and chocolate brown on the curving vaults of the ceiling over the tracks and platform. Three ornate leaded-glass panels admit light from overhead while chandeliers featuring the then-brand-new Edison electric light illuminated the rest. The station was the pride of the entire subway system, until it was abandoned when the sinuous curve that defined the station could no longer accommodate the train cars introduced in later years. Today the City Hall Station stands, entrances sealed and skylights covered, though urban adventurers know how to access it for their private photo shoots.
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The abandoned buildings of Ghostly Ruins stand as a monument to the ingenuity and vision of the American mind, to its wealth and its greatness that is as easily lost as it is found. The photographs provide us with a dynamic history of these spaces, illustrating the inevitability of change in all facets of waking life.
The Danvers State Hospital – Danvers, Massachusetts from Ghostly Ruins by Harry Skrdla
Women of God, NYC © Jamel Shabazz
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The Brooklyn Central Library stands proudly at Grand Army Plaza, firmly set in the Northwest corner of Prospect Park, shining bright with gold inlays upon its façade, recalling nothing so much as Egyptian hieroglyphics. Inside the library, the ceiling soars high above, opening its many collections to a public that loves books for pleasure, for knowledge, for enlightenment—much like Jamel Shabazz himself.
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Shabazz, a native of Brooklyn, currently has a four-part exhibition on display at the Central Library now through February 28, 2013, which has been produced in conjunction with a self-published thirty-year retrospective of his photographs titled Represent: Photographs from 1980–2012. The exhibition is organized in four parts, each display in a different location on the first two floors. In the atrium of the ground floor stands an edit from Represent, a broad swath of color, spirit, and style as Shabazz see the people of the world.
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He explains, “ Since picking up my first camera nearly thirty-five years ago, I was intrigued with how people within my community represented themselves. As time passed, I embarked on a self-imposed assignment to document the people of the world around me. I have been very fortunate to meet many wonderful and diverse people from around the globe, and each experience has enriched me in ways that far surpassed what I learned in history books.” His photographs bring that home, as we see people from all walks of life in their native dress, be it Dominican adolescents in their pageant best or two little Jamaican girls, with their afro puffs glorious in yellow, black, and green, or the Italian men, lined up in the window of a café in Little Italy, staring down the camera like they’re on the set of a Scorcese film. And we’re just getting started.
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One of Shabazz’s many gifts is taste, his honing in on people killing it with their pride of purpose and the dignity that belies human greatness. It is seen in the dress, the posture, and the determination of spirit that he captures that make each person he pictures a king and queen. This is most evident in the installation along the balcony of the second floor, grandly overlooking the atrium and out the front doors. Here Shabazz gives us “Men of Honor and Women of Distinction,” a sweeping tribute to the heroes of modern life. In perhaps the most lovely social networking moment I’ve had in some time, Shabazz posted a brilliant portrait of eleven black women perfectly dressed in a bouquet of pastel suits and slinky heels, perfect coiffures and more than a couple of hats. To which, Spike Lee asked, “Who are they?” and Shabazz answered “Women of God.”
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This is but one in a series that pays tribute to the traditions of family, community, nation, and global village, the very now that allows the earth to carry six billion people. Shabazz gives us a glimpse into but a few lives he has connected with over the years, as they organize themselves in groups or around distinguished individuals. He speaks of being influenced by dapper men of Caribbean descent, standing erect and proud. It is this bearing and carriage that Shabazz sees when he looks at law enforcement, military personnel, elders, social and political activists, and every day people organized for the greater good of our world. Whether wearing a uniform of Sunday best, in these photographs Shabazz bears witness to the men and women who uphold the principles of family, community, and civil service.
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Nestled into the entrance of the Brooklyn Collection, just off the balcony, is “Reflections,” a series of over eighty photographs depicting the people of Brooklyn. There’s a lot of talk about Brooklyn, there always was. Maybe it’s something in the water, or it’s in the air. Shabazz’s photographs remind us of this, like nothing else; that despite all of the diversity of ethnicity, culture, and custom, there is something that unites these beautiful people together and that is the ground upon which they walk. I’m saying, it comes up through the ground. And in these photographs we feel it, Shabazz being a native and understanding that here we walk upon sacred ground.
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Lastly, and perhaps most touchingly, is the installation up front, “Pieces of a Man” in the Foyer Cases, which you can catch when you are coming or going—both are good. Here Shabazz shows us an intimate glimpse into the art that inspires him, as a man and an artist and a native of this here Brooklyn. It begins with Leonard Freed, Black in White America, and it forces us to ask the question, what’s really changed, and what’s really good. Tough questions. We usually talk around them. But not Shabazz. He presses forth, he brings in the music of an era. 45s, 8 Tracks, we’re talking Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Rufus Featuring Chaka Khan. The list goes on. There are magazines, books, images, texts, stories, each one adding to the next, until the experience of these cases becomes a diary written by the voices of the world we know, but never fully see, until into it Shabazz brings his voice, like a bell tolling with perfect clarity.
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Old School, ND, Harlem NY © Jamel Shabazz
Cindy Sherman: The Early Works 1975-1977
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Chaka Khan most famously sang, “I’m every woman” and no artist embodies this quite as brilliantly as Cindy Sherman. She has been remaking herself in the image of others throughout her career, giving a spellbinding performance of gender roles assigned to (mostly) Caucasian women as they are created and lived by countless females. Her ability to transform reveal the plasticity of identity as it is defined by appearance and affect, by the way in which we unconsciously communicate our fears and dreams through non-verbal cues.
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The photograph is the ideal medium for Sherman’s experiments and discoveries, the still image being a soundless, wordless, motionless space for eternal contemplation. Sherman’s uncanny ability to play a role, to construct an entire narrative into a single frame is nothing short of remarkable. What is perhaps shocking is that she has been doing this for close to forty years, and her earliest work is just as profound and compelling as that of her later years.
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These works are collected together for the first time in Cindy Sherman: The Early Works 1975–1977 Catalogue Raisonné(Hatje Cantz). This volume is simply magnificent, a breathtaking tour-de-force that unfolds with image after image of the artist who would come to embody an iconography all her own, a kind of storytelling that has no precedent on this scale in the medium.
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What makes The Early Works compelling is the simplicity of the work and the way in which this is mirrored in the production of the book. It is understood this book will be grand from the very opening of the front cover, as a bright orange matte jacket flap rest against silver endpapers. That and the book is 376 pages. It is substantial, and statuesque as gatefold after gatefold reveal themselves. The works inside are pure pleasure, presented against a vast expanse of white space. They sit there, one after another, variations on a theme, repetitions to derive an effect, a kind of very clever inside joke with yourself. Sherman’s ease into the odd characters she creates are clearly a kind of genius that is perfectly suited to the medium of photography. The pleasure of this book is seeing her brilliance in its earliest stage, and the way in which she was always born to stand before a camera in order to create the image in her mind.
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As Sherman notes in the beginning of Gabriele Schor’s essay, “Even though I’ve never actively thought of my work as feminist or as a political statement, certainly everything was drawn from my observations as a woman in this culture. And a part of that is a love/hate thing—being infatuated with makeup and glamour and detesting it at the same time. It comes from trying to look like a proper young lady or look as sexy or as beautiful as you can make yourself, and also feeling like a prisoner of that structure.”
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Indeed, that structure forms the basis of her iconography, and the sense of imprisonment is palpable in some of her more emotionally tense scenes, Her explorations extend far beyond the frame of femininity, giving us a sense of a certain femaleness that every woman is confronted with as she reaches maturity. The Early Works offers a larger context in which to place this new frame, particularly with the facsimile of Script Notes for “A Play of Selves” written in 1976.
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Here Sherman puts into words what she has been saying with imagery, a cast of characters that include A Broken Woman, The Vanity, The Madness, The Agony, The Desire, The Actual Main Character, and The Character As Others See Her, among others. We are then given four acts and a finale, each outlined with scenes, and with these pages we are given a concrete look at the structure of Sherman’s mind during the process of creation as she maps idea into actuality. Following the acts, we are given two pages that tell us about the order of characters photographed, which are then illustrated in the actual works themselves.
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For this project, Sherman cut out full-body portraits so that they appear as paper dolls, each posed in specific stances to communicate meaning through gesture, emotion, and juxtaposition with one another. The facsimile pages let us know exactly what we are looking at, creating a sense of silent film as the pages unfold. And it is just this silence that makes the photograph so profound, the way in which we are invited to fill in the blanks by creating meaning through the implications of Sherman’s work.
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The Early Works is a deeply fulfilling experience, not only because of its dedication to detailing this period of the artist’s work, but also because of Sherman herself. Her clarity of vision and the proliferation of her ideas present Sherman as something of an Athena, springing fully armed from the mind of Zeus himself. There is something of the warrior in Sherman’s work throughout her career, a tireless champion whose commitment to the medium has forever transformed our ideas about photography, the female gaze, and the construction of identity itself.
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Cindy Sherman: The Early Works 1975-1977
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Since its inception in the late 60s, graffiti has been the most public of public arts, the ultimate statement of self, a mark of existence that enlivens the streets. Since it began with tags, it has since expanded in all manners including beyond its original letterform. As it shifted into an image-based lexicon, it took on new forms, and was dubbed Street Art as a way to differentiate itself. And while many have succeeded in any number of mediums, there is only one photograffeur: JR.
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JR has taken photography to new heights. By employing the ideals of graffiti—scale, placement, and proliferation—JR’s work creates its own expectations. The 2011 winner of the TED Prize, he works on a global scale using art to effect a change in the world. Women Are Heroes: A Global Project by JR (Abrams) showcases one his most noble efforts, a tribute to women on a massive scale, with public art works produced in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan, Kenya, Brazil, India, and Cambodia. Mural size photographs of everyday women were created on monumental scale from simple black and white portraits that are at once intimate and outlandish, evocative and emotional, provocative and profound. The cumulative effect of JR’s work allows for a new understanding in the representation of women, as well as in the discourse of public art.
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Public art, such as it exists, has been a tool for the establishment to reinforce itself. Whether it is the monumental sponsored work of the church and state, or more recently, the art world’s ever-present self-veneration masquerading as a “profitable investment” most public works have been imposed by external forces upon the community it claims to serve. Graffiti and street art also impose, but they do so by way of the anonymous insider making his or her presence known. Here, JR takes the insider to the furthest possible reach, making heroes out of the people themselves, effectively saying, “In you, beauty exists.”
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JR’s installations serve the people by becoming part of the whole, by transforming the landscape by fusing the internal and external at the same time. The placement of the works are as telling as the choice of subjects themselves, for the art of Women Are Heroes exists only in lands of extreme poverty throughout the world, in lands where people are marginalized in ways we of the first world all too often forget.
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But JR won’t let us forget, and he takes us deeper into the abyss by granting access to the personal side of his subjects in “As Told To” narratives throughout the book. As Chantha Dol of Cambodia reveals, “I agreed to have my photograph put up so that the men in power in Cambodia would open their eyes and take a look at our condition. The reason my eyes are so wide open is to show my anger. Words are no longer enough. I want people to ask themselves why these photograph of women were put on the walls of their houses.”
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But Ms. Dol might not know that when she agreed to be photographed, the question she wanted people to ask themselves would be a question to travel around the world. JR’s continued success allows the work he is doing to reach new audiences that go far beyond the traditional realms of photography and street art. As his audiences expand in both size and prominence, the questions his work raises gain power and strength, inspiring us as individuals and as societies to look at ourselves with fresh eyes.
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Women Are Heroes is a sumptuously produced tome that pleasingly combines the grand scale of the public works with the directness of the photographs and stories being told. It provides context at every turn, allowing for a more complete experience of the installations themselves. This book is equally provocative and pleasurable, as each turn of the page reveals an unexpected angle on the power of photography to tell stories and touch hearts. Imagine eyes softly shut, black eyelashes lain thick, now imagine this image pasted to the side of a garbage truck at a dump in Cambodia. JR reminds us women are worthy of a veneration that goes deeper than the flesh, that celebrates an inner beauty in every being that only art can truly make manifest.
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Everyone has a level by which they’re going to deal for self. But in dealing for self you can or cannot be considerate of your fellow human being next to you or near you or around you or in your neighborhood. It was the 60s protest movement that captured the imagination of a lot of young people, including myself. For me to go and hear Martin Luther King speak in 1962 when I was first introduced to, beginning to understand, what that 60s protest movement was about, I was a young college man, I was an engineering/design major, and at night I worked a full time job in an engineering department. I was working on the Gemini Missile project, a government-financed framework putting the satellites up around the earth. I placed myself in the high tech world I loved. So that’s where I was; but I became sensitive, was made sensitive by people like Martin Luther King, by the plight of Nelson Mandela in South Africa. They made me understand, made me take the time to research and know the history—not only the colonization of Africa but the history of African Americans in this country. And I had already identified with the history of peoples—when I was 16, before I knew any African American history, I knew Native American history and their plight. It was easy, I guess, that the civil rights protest movement should get to me and cause me to be concerned a young man—not married, to get involved in the protest movement, to the point of literally quitting my engineering job to go to work in the grassroots community and not even make the kind of money I was making.
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Now the Constitution of the United States of America and the First Amendment that Huey Newton had pointed out before we started the Black Panther Party gave the people the right to peacefully assemble and peacefully address their grievances. That’s important to understand—morally, correctly so—but more importantly from a legal standpoint. The people had a right to peacefully redress their grievances and peacefully protest. Before the Black Panther Party came along, peaceful protesters were getting murdered shot, killed, brutalized. Peaceful protesters who declared that they were holding peaceful protests. It happened to a lot of protest efforts around the country because they gained momentum, because they were saying, “Let’s make a change.” Violence was getting heaped upon peaceful protesters.
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It’s important to understand what we said in our Ten Point Program, when we called for full employment, decent housing, an end to exploitation and robbery of our communities, free preventative medial care for our communities—these were basic civil rights issues that peaceful protesters were about across the board. But politicians would order their police, order their National Guard, order their state police to literally beat the heads of and brutalize the peaceful protesters. So by the time we came along, Huey and I, creating the Black Panther Party, we took the position that if anyone attacks the people of the United States, if any racist or others attack the people of the United States, it’s wrong. Because we would take arrest, that was always our policy: if the police say we’re under arrest, we take the arrest. We were never afraid of the courtroom, but if they come in shooting and not recognizing our human right to live, as a means to try to terrorize us, we will defend ourselves—and that’s what we did. By 1969 every Black Panther Party office across the United States of America was attacked and half of those attacks resulted in shootouts—because the police came in shooting. They didn’t come in saying you were under arrest, they just came in shooting and we defended ourselves. And in that heavy period of 1969, twenty-eight of my Black Panther Party members ended up dead, a couple of them killed by provocateur agents working for the FBI inside our organization. And then they attempted to blame party members for doing it. Now this is why I was heating up, but we defended ourselves. And we had many a rally that was basically peaceful; we had many a gathering that was basically peaceful; we had many a free breakfast for children in churches or in other halls that were basically peaceful efforts. The point is they heaped the violence upon the United States and we defended ourselves from it.
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Now people forget how and why all those attacks and all those shootouts—shootouts with the police were largely the police attacking the United States—now why did those police and those attacks stop? People have to remember that by 1970, going into 1971, the United States Senate, Senator Ted Kennedy and Senator Church headed up an investigation hearing on the FBI because they found out the FBI was going to police departments and setting up and laying plans months in advance to attack the Black Panther Party offices. Now with this hearing the FBI was in the hot seat and the United States Senate asked—it was right on live television—“Why are you running around here attacking these Black Panther Party members?” Now if you take note of history, those investigations were caused by the last two attacks in December 1969. December 4 in Chicago, a predawn raid where the police busted into a house and came in shooting, shot up everybody, and killed and murdered Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. We later proved and showed, and as the Freedom of Information Act documents, that in fact the FBI had an infiltrator who got the plans for the layout of the house. Those plans were given to the State Attorney’s Special Police Force. Six to eight years later, a suit was filed and the families of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark eventually won millions from the FBI and the State Attorney.
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Two days after that shootout they attacked the Los Angeles office, and a month or two after that they laid out plans to attack the national headquarters, the central headquarters of the Black Panther Party here in Berkeley California. I was in jail at the time, but a young white policeman in the Berkeley Police Department had overheard the plans. This young white police officer, hearing them laugh and carry on about how “We’ll kill 10 or 20 of these Black Panther Party when we come in shooting from the downstairs up to the second story through the ceilings,” all this kind of crap—this young white policeman stole the plans and gave them to our lawyer and we called a press conference and put them in the press.
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I am trying to show you that there’s smoking gun evidence of how the politicians and others had agreed that they needed to wipe out and terrorize the Black Panther Party. Further, the mayor of Seattle, Washington, a young white liberal mayor, got on television after he discovered the FBI had planned attacks on the Seattle chapters. He said, “We want the FBI out of our department. We will not have the FBI try to spearhead and cause an attack on the Black Panther Party here in Seattle.” Now notice something: after the investigations there were never any more shootouts between the Black Panther Party members and the police in the United States again—ever. That’s the evidence.
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This is what people forget or don’t know or don’t understand about our position. The difference is between taking the right of self-defense and at the same time having all kinds of programs around the country. Party members went to do breakfast programs without guns. It’s what we did when we started that Free Breakfast for Children program—it’s one thing to say the racist pig power structure is brutal, it’s murderous; it’s another thing to articulate and specify all the hysterical particulars of how racist discrimination has affected the United States; but it’s another thing to say we’re not only observing the police, we’re going to organize political, electoral campaigns and we’re going to run for political office and we’re going to try to win some of these localized seats where we have these large African American groups.
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We were ready to write legislation that deleted the racist discrimination, policies, and institutionalized racism. Because the city council is nothing but a local legislative body—just as a county seat is a local legislative body, as states are local legislative bodies, as the federal government is a local legislative body—it can make laws and policies that make human sense. This is what our revolution was about. Not only had the Black Panther Party spread out in 49 chapters with branches in cities across the United States of America but we had working coalitions with all ethnic groups, including our white, left radical friends, so we had another ten thousand working in our framework called the United Front Against Fascism: The National Committee to Combat Fascism. So to the power structure we were on the proper move to make a change.
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What people have to take time to understand was that we, as young college students, injected something into the movement that was relevant, and that legacy is about uniting people and creating greater political electoral empowerment. You have to remember we ran for political office with our names on the ballot: a critique of and opposition to institutionalized racism in the United States. Trying to unite people with electoral and community empowerment and to change legislative bodies as a means to fight against institutionalized racism here in the United States of America: that is what we were about, that is what I stood for, that is what I organized.
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—Bobby Seale
As told to Miss Rosen
Oakland 2006
1st Sgt. Octavious McFarland, Company D, Sixty-second U.S. Colored Infantry. Carte de visite by unidentified photographer, about 1864-1866. © Collection of the Gettysburg National Military Park Museum.
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In February 1865, Martin Delany was received by Abraham Lincoln at the White House. There, Delany told the President, “I propose, sir, an army of blacks, commanded entirely of black officers.” Shortly thereafter, Delany received a commission as major of infantry—the first African American appointed an army officer. As Frederick Douglass reportedly stated, “I thank God for making me a man simply, but Delany always thanks Him for making him a black man.”
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The story of Major Martin Robison Delany, Fifty-second U.S. Colored Infantry, is titled “Most Defiant Blackness” and leads with his portrait, dressed in Union blues. This photograph is a cartes de visite, taken with a specially designed camera that produced eight images on a single glass plate, from which the resulting paper print. It was then glued to card stock and measured 2.5 x 4 inches in size, the perfect keepsake that was economically possible at this time. From 1851–67, “cartonamia” was unleashed, with some three million cartes de visite sold. This was the first time almost anyone could record his or her own image for posterity, and they immediately became decorative objects that made picture giving a cultural phenomenon. Not to mention a resource for an author as industrious as Ronald S. Coddington.
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Coddington has just released his third book, African American Faces of the Civil War: An Album (Johns Hopkins University Press), a beautiful and meticulous presentation of the likenesses and lives of seventy-seven men whose stories are part of the complex and compelling tapestry that is America. These stories offer but a glimpse into the vast ocean of men, some 200,000 African Americans, who served the Union Army and Navy during the Civil War. Some of them were born free, others escaped from slavery or set free by owners sympathetic to the war effort. And, if only for a moment, imagine what it must have been like, two hundred thousand African American men armed and dressed for combat on American soil, ready to fight the white man for freedom, the right to self sovereign.
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And, if only for a moment, imagine what it must have been like, two hundred thousand African American men army and dressed for combat on American soil, ready to fight the white man for freedom, the right to self sovereign. “I am for war—war upon the whites,” Delany wrote during the 1950s in a novel that stood in marked contrast to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Delany’s words are seen in the stories of men who served not only their country but something greater than this. As soldiers in the Civil War, they stood for what the United States was founded upon: Independence.
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The stories provide a reverent context for the images we witness here. They lend a gravitas to the images, which charming in their dated stylistic iconography, the way in which the photograph easily replaces the painted portrait while assuming all of its conventions. Consider the portrait of Corp. Jeremiah Saunders, Company K, 124U.S. Colored Infantry, and his wife Emily. His master died in Kentucky in February 1965, he was not free for the Emancipation Proclamation only liberated those in the seceded states. Nevertheless, Saunders left the tobacco fields and headed straight to Camp Nelson, a Union establishment. There he signed his enlistment papers with an “X” and joined the 124 U.S. Colored Infantry, a regiment composed of men between 3545, considered too old for active duty. And though he was not on the front lines, still he served. For this book proves that for all the darkness of humanity that does occur, the wheel of fortune will always turn. And though one might be born a slave, degraded in countless ways, there might just be another destiny that is meant to be. African American Faces of the Civil War: An Album serves us well to remind us of those who came before and honor them for these are the heroes we need today, the lives and lessons of humble greatness.
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First published in Le Journal de la Photographie
21 November 2012
Q.M. Sgt. Alexander Herritage Newton (left) and Q.M. Sgt. Daniel S. Lathrop, both Twenty-ninth Connecticut Infantry. Carte de visite by James Horace Wells (b. ca. 1828) & David C. Collins (b. ca. 1805) of New Haven, Connecticut, about 1865. © Collection of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
Seaman George William Commodore, U.S. Navy. Tintype by unidentified photographer, about 1865-1867. © Collection of National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.
Photo: Volker Hinz, William S. Burroughs, Lawrence, Kansas, 1987
This is a story about the machine.
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When you ain’t got nothinn, you got somethinn. You got you exactly as you are. You got love and fire, passion and desire, untainted, untouched, virgin, unspoiled by what comes after.
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When you a virgin you got that. You got that thanng no one else has had. You got that thanng you can give once. And you know this. So it builds. It becomes everything. It becomes all you have in this world because you are all there is.
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And you give it, you give it with everything you got because all you have is you, and your dreams. You got dreams, right. Dreams of what is and what could be, born of pure and innocent heart, of never knowing anything other than the depths of your soul plumbed for this moment riighh here. This moment to give, to share, to become, to be in this world, on this earth, in this life, this time around.
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And you give it. You give it with everything you got. Cause you know, you know you got this, this is your shot. So you give it, and then you give it some more, and you keep on givinn until you can give no more.
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Who is to say who gets lucky? Cause luck isn’t what happens, it is how you maintain.
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But let’s just say you get IT. That dream you dreamed has finally come true. And it surprises you in that way you always knew you were somebody—you just didn’t know other people knew too. So you’re kinda humbled and shocked but also kinda happy and rocked cause you know You, you know what you put in to get to the here and now of it all.
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Thas what no one knows, thas what no one could ever know. Not the blood tears and sweat, not the sleepless nights, fears and regrets. Not what it cost and what you lost and the sacrifices it took. Not the passion and the pride and the power manifest when you claim whas yours.
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But.
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Ahh. See now. It ain’t eva yours so long as there is anyone else involved. If you lucky, it will be ours, but it might become theirs sho nuff. Cause virgins are, well, naïve. There’s a lot of trust in your heart cause trust is believing other people feel the same.
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But.
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You don’t know. You have no idea. No one eva does. No one eva knows what kindsa people run the machine, why they run the machine rather than live out their dreams like you and me. You know no child has ever answered the question, What do you want to be when you grow up? with the words, I wanna be a cog.
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But they do. Become cogs, jockeying for position while causing, well, clogs. Clogs, drains, alla that. The machine is a machine which means, it is gonna break. Break down, break you, break me, break apart, break your dreams, break your sweet succulent innocent heart. The smart ones are dancinn on the break, you know, them b-boys and b-girls with the headspins and backspins to keep themselves in check.
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But maybe if you lucky, you will learn to maintain. You will learn it is a machine and you’ll look to preserve your (integrity) (sanity) (innocence) (name). Maybe you got that, maybe you are that one, the golden virgin with brains and restraint. Or maybe you like me, thinkinn, now you experienced. You somebody. You got that. What? What! WHUT!
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It goes on like this. It goes on and on until you’ve had enough. But when does it get to be enough is enough? Do you gotta get on your Donna Summer and be reborn?
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Sho nuff. Everyone got they thang. And it makes you wonder, yea, it makes me wonder. We know this is a machine. A machine designed to turn us into a dairy cow (heated vegan alert). Take us out of our natural rhythm, in a constant state of mass productivity, draining our life’s essence to make dollars for just who now?
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But even if you get it. Even if you get tha cash. Is that what this is about. Is that why we are here. To be whored out.
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I’m sayinn. What kinda writer hires a writer to write for them? Dig, we know Warhol wasn’t paintinn nothinn for most of his career, which is why no one ever calls him a, umm, painter. He was a conceptual artist. What he produced was ideas, not artifacts, though undoubtedly, he had that OCD need to hoard crap.
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But most of us ain’t gonn reach the stage of conceptual artist, meaning we aren’t gonna be able to have other people produce our work for us. Or. Perhaps we are, we just won’t tell you. We’ll take the praise and the hate and run smoke and mirrors thinking we beat the machine because we lost our soul.
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But wait. Wait! Can you beat the machine? To beat it, wouldn’t you have you blow it up. Why does that sentence set my heart aflame. Bougie fuckinn revolutionary, c’est moi.