Milk

I celebrated inauguration day by paying tribute to another great leader who stood for hope and change - Harvey Milk. After Rick Warren's creepy Christian prayer session, and Obama's eloquent speech, I watched the documentary, The Times of Harvey Milk, at home and made it to the theatre tonight to finally see Gus Van Sant's interpretation of his life, Milk.

I was struck by the parallels between Barack Obama and Harvey Milk, who as supervisor in San Francisco's 5th District in 1977, was the third openly gay elected official in the United States. Both persevered enormous odds and rallied community support through their charisma and idealism and their ability to embrace and to inspire people in the margins. Both describe their own experiences with discrimination and talk about a message that is bigger than them - and not about them - but about us.

Watching the gay community and it's supporters celebrate Milk's victories and mourn his death brought to mind those same raw emotions that surround Obama, and I hope we are not robbed of his leadership under similar tragic circumstances. And I hope as President, Obama reconsiders his position on gay marriage, and truly realizes his promise of equality.

Election Day

Kyle and Brad
Main Street
Binghamton, NY
Election Day
November 2008


Matthew
Main Street
Binghamton, NY
Election Day
November 2008

Many Americans will probably remember for the rest of their lives exactly where they were and what they were doing when the election results arrived on Tuesday November 4th confirming Barack Obama as our next president. One of my friends was celebrating the victory with her neighbors on the streets of Harlem and another friend, photographer Jason Lazarus, got to be in the heart of the action in Byrant Park documenting the beauty of that historical moment. I was sitting on my girlfriend's couch in her living room in Endwell, near Binghamton, sending and receiving text messages to and from friends around the country and wiping away some tears of happiness and relief.

I spent the afternoon of election day in Binghamton driving up and down Main Street, watching people too young to vote attempt to rally support for Obama. Teenagers were shouting at cars to VOTE OBAMA and even shouting the same message at me walking around with my camera. Kyle and Brad stood stoically with their Obama sign outside a gas station on their way home from school while I took pictures of them.

At the end of the afternoon, before dusk settled over Binghamton and I picked up my girlfriend from work so she and her mom could make it to the election site to cast their votes, I found Matthew bagging dried leaves on the sidewalk outside his father's auto body shop. I noticed him watching me in the car watching him, and when I stopped to ask if I could take a picture, I approached him gently since he struck me as so delicate. He didn't say much and was perhaps less preoccupied with the significance of the day, but he seemed to appreciate the unexpected experience of being photographed.

By now, we have seen all kinds of photographs taken on this incredible day, but I recently discovered some good documentary photography on a blog, We Can Shoot You, consisting of work by ICP photojournalists capturing these latest events. The blog also includes images of supporters of gay marriage outside The Church of the Latter Day Saints near the Lincoln Center protesting the passage of Proposition 8. For as much progress as was made on election night, Proposition 8, which reversed marriage equality for gay couples in California and wrote discrimination into the California Constitution, is a huge set back for the gay community, and fortunately, is inciting protests around the country.

While personally, I would drink battery acid before I'd dress up like a bride or a groom, and hope that gays couples ultimately continue to redefine their relationship to gender roles and the institution of marriage, I'd naturally like to see gays, including myself, achieve the same rights as everyone else, and find it incredibly sad and pathetic that it is still socially and politically acceptable and even advantageous to legally discriminate against gays in this country. We may be the next minority group most in need of a civil rights movement, and those wheels are already turning.

Democratic Camera

from Los Alamos
copyright William Eggleston

Next to Barack Obama getting elected to be our next president, the second most exciting and historical event this week, as far as I'm concerned, was the opening of William Eggleston's first retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art. I took my ICP class on a field trip to the museum, and we dissected some of the seminal works that shaped the evolution of color art photography and the attention to the everyday as subject matter. At an extraordinary moment in time where there is a sense of new hope for America, it was moving to see images shot during the last five decades by an artist who is deeply attune to the characters and places that make this country strange, complex and fascinating.

William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1961 - 2008
Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison at 75th Street
November 7, 2008 - January 25, 2009

Jacob

Jacob
Main Street
Binghamton, NY
October 2008

I spotted Jacob on the section of Main Street that passes through the middle of downtown Binghamton. I thought he might be waiting for a bus, but when I asked him if I could take his picture, he said he had time. He said he wasn't doing anything - just looking for a job.

We started walking down Main Street together, across the river and past the high school, into a seedier part of town where drunk war veterans sit on stoops outside homes and teenagers in bulky jackets meet on corners. Jacob told me they call this "The Strip" and at night, you can see prostitutes and drug dealers.

When I told Jacob that I live in Brooklyn, he told me he planned to move there someday. He said he had friends in the Heights and he had some idea of what neighborhoods you could actually live in. He thought he might have better luck getting a job in a bar or a restaurant and he might feel less alone in the city. Binghamton felt small to him, and sometimes there was no one around and nothing to do. He said you could fit everyone out on the street in Binghamton onto one block in Manhattan.

I asked him if he tried to get a job in a bar or a restaurant in Binghamton, and he said he'd have to work in the back - washing dishes or something - on account of his tattoos. Then I asked if he could do anything, what would he do.

"What's your dream job?"

Jacob told me his dream job was to be a construction worker. I wondered how hard it could be for a strong and strapping twenty-year-old guy like Jacob to find a construction job, and he said, "It's harder than you'd think."

I asked about his family, and he said they had their own problems and he didn't lean on them for help too much. His parents lived in Florida and he had a brother in Binghamton. When I wondered aloud if he was ever tempted to use drugs, he said, "No, that stuff will mess you up real bad."

When we passed a launderette, Jacob said he'd like to buy one of those. He thought you could make a lot of money off those coin machines.

We talked about the election and if the economy might change for the better. He wanted to know who I planned to vote for and when I told him Obama, I held my breathe to see how he would respond. He said, "Yeah, I'd vote for him too."

Before we said goodbye, Jacob looked me over and asked, "Is that the hippie look or just the laid back look?"

I said I definitely didn't consider myself a hippie, so I guess it was the laid back look.

He also wanted to know what I was taking these pictures for, what I was trying to do. I told him I was interested in the struggle of being his age in a place like Binghamton.

I gave him my card and asked if he had an email address so I could send him a photo. He said he was planning to set up a yahoo address at the library, and this week, I got a message from "Joker B".

When I mentioned Jacob to my girlfriend, I said," He wants to live in New York City."

"Don't they all," she replied.

I am leaving for Binghamton again tomorrow. I voted yesterday at the Board of Elections and I plan to celebrate Obama's victory on a late night bus back to New York City on Tuesday that makes a stop in the Greyhound Station in Scranton, Pennsylvania - Joe Biden's hometown.

I hope I see Jacob again - to take more pictures, perhaps, or simply to see how he is doing.

The Ballad of Sad Young Men

Justin
Greyhound Station
Binghamton, NY
September 2008

Besides the many real things to be afraid of and appalled by about Sarah Palin, did she really have to liken herself to a pit bull? As a pit bull lover and former owner who made everyone who happened to land on my blog this summer confront the loss of my dog, I was not the least bit excited and turned on by picturing Sarah as pit-in-lipstick, or convinced that it was an apt portrait. As if pit bulls don't get maligned enough, and frankly, I'd venture to say that Barack possesses more of the strength, intelligence and compassion that I associate with the pit bulls I have known and loved. Not that I necessarily see Sarah as pig-in-lipstick either (that's John McCain in drag), but perhaps more like one of those little, loud, yappy, vicious, sneaky, ankle-biting dogs.

Mostly these past couple of weeks, I have been spending my time worrying. Reading ... worrying ... turning the radio on and off ... worrying ... tuning into some blogs for some shared fears as well as some positive, hopeful thinking which is hard to come by alone ... swimming even more than usual to diffuse the anxiety and to locate some faith and optimism.

One one hand, living in New York City, I can assume that I exist amongst a significant population of peers with similar politics, but it is the America between the east and west coasts that I wonder and worry about come election day, and it is also that part of the country which, as a photographer, I care about the most. I am the kind of photographer who lights up like a kid in a candy shop when I step off the Greyhound bus in anyplace that resembles small town America.

I spent Labor Day weekend in Binghamton, which is currently where my heart is, and not just because my girlfriend lives there. I love the old houses and storefronts frozen in time and a downtown where the bricks haven't entirely succumbed to big box stores. I love the sprawling green trees and the big cloudy sky of a valley in the hills of central New York. I love sitting on a back porch and hearing next to nothing and seeing stars in deep darkness.

On Tuesday after Labor Day, while my girlfriend was at work at the Tri-Cities Opera, I spent the afternoon driving around in her little blue Volkswagon trying to put some of my affinity for Binghamton into images and feeling almost desperate since who knows when I will ever escape New York City again. Actually, if truth be told, I was prowling the streets for sad young men.

At the end of the summer, one of my closest friends in Minnesota, Anthony Stanton, sent me a description for a workshop he is teaching this fall in the theatre department at The St. Paul Conservatory of Music. His class, Heartsong, encourages students to create musical performances based on songs that resonate with our stories, our past, our hopes, our fears, our dreams and our losses. The song that he referenced as his own source of inspiration, The Ballad of Sad Young Men, has been sung by both Shirley Bassey and Roberta Flack and has some resonance in the gay community.

I was sorry I couldn't take his class, though I am barely musical, except when I try to play the violin with my girlfriend. But I, too, found his song inspiring and decided to approach it instead as an exercise in photography to give me some direction as I roamed Binghamton. And I discovered there is no shortage of sad young men in Binghamton and probably in every other town between the coasts. For that matter, who isn't a little sad right now?

Phoenix

Agnes and Phoenix
New York, NY
August 2008

Phoenix was born to my dear friend, Agnes Dahan, at Beth Israel Hospital at 9:38pm on August 8th after twenty two hours of labor. Phoenix was to be Phoenix were she a boy or a girl, and she came into the world with a lovely face and a head of dark, curly hair.

Just a few hours earlier in Michigan, my dog, Paris, passed away in a vet's office. His condition was even more dire than I had comprehended when I brought him home in July. My parents were present, and I talked to them shortly thereafter. I have spent the end of my summer grieving this loss, but I am truly relieved that his suffering has come to an end. And thanks again to everyone who reached out.

A friend asked where I think his spirit is now, and over the past three weeks, I have sought to answer that question for myself. So far, I have come up with five simple answers. His spirit is in dreams and memories. His spirit is in my heart, of course, and the hearts of many who knew him. His spirit is in dogs who I see on the streets of New York and who bring intense pangs of love and affection. And his spirit is in photographs that I cherish now more than ever - his soulful expressions, his seriousness, his silliness.

Sometimes, as a photographer, I almost lose sight of the fact that most people take photographs precisely for this reason - to preserve an impression of someone or something they love. That power and beauty of photography resonated with me in a profound way when I first opened my box of snapshots from our ten and a half years together.

As summer in New York winds down, I spent the afternoon accomplishing the last few essential things on my list of what to do in August. I watched Frozen River at the Angelika Theatre, an astonishing film about a pair of women struggling for survival on the snowy border of upstate New York and Canada. I saw black and white photographs by Scott B. Davis shot at night in the Land of Sunshine at Hous Projects. And I made it to Julie Saul in the knick of time for When color was new (vintage photographs from around the seventies), including work by early color photographers who never fail to remind me why I love this medium, like William Christenberry and William Eggleston.

Tomorrow, I leave on the Greyhound for Binghamton, NY to spend Labor Day weekend with my new girlfriend and her darling mother. I was excited to learn that not only is Binghamton the Carousel Capital of the World, it's also the hometown of Rod Serling ... creator of ... The Twilight Zone. How cool is that?

For now, my full attention goes to the radio, and to Barack Obama, and to one of those most inspiring moments in political history of my lifetime.


Cannon's Grocery
near Greensboro, AL
1972
copyright William Christenberry


Untitled (Vizcaya, Miami)
1985
copyright William Eggleston