Dinner of the decade

Invitation reads: Supermodels, Freedom Fighters, Warlords and Washed up Actresses only!

Seriously, sorry for the inconvenience Naomi, I know you’d never even heard of Liberia and all, but when you dine with the stars, sometimes you gotta testify.

In other news, I have received an invitation. To screen a little film I made last year at Planet in Focus. More on that later.

HT Sana

Truck Stop

Crazy weekend, crazy parties. Caribana, it turns out, is more of an afternoon dance party with moving trucks than a ‘parade.’

I need to party less. Or more. Maybe more.

Storm front over Churchill, Manitoba

I watched this terrific storm roll in over what remains of NASA’s rocket centre. I thought to myself, this is like an aurora. If they were still here, maybe they would launch a rocket into it. Maybe.

It’s been a long week, and a tough shoot. We are without a bear guide. I have a gun license. This means in addition to two camera, a tripod, lights and mics, I am now carrying a winchester 12 gauge shot gun. I am the last line of defence against 1,200 pounds of giant white predator. It’s more than I bargained for.

Sometimes, while I am walking along this great moon landscape, gun in one hand, mk11 in the other, I think to myself, this is my life.

How did I get here?

Communities of migrant workers, known as bateyes, spring up within the cane fields. They are far from the rest of civilization, and become home for those who venture across the border. Most will never return to Haiti.

stacked cane

cane cutter

long days in the field

25 years in the bateyes.

shoes

]]> http://www.earthfeed.com/vote-for-my-photo/ /feed 0 http://www.earthfeed.com/thoughts-on-small-place/ http://www.earthfeed.com/thoughts-on-small-place/ #comments Tue, 16 Feb 2010 16:08:21 +0000 Earth Feed http://www.earthfeed.com/?p=452
I’ve finished editing some of the photos from my trip to Jamaica. I wish they were better, but they are what they are. They’re up on my website.

I’ve just finished reading Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place. It’s got me thinking about the nature of travel and tourism. I travel a lot (too much for someone who claims to have a green thumb.) These days it’s less as a tourist, and more for work. Still, I’m forced to admit a certain degree of voyeurism in the work that I do. There are tough ethical questions that need to be asked, and after Zambia, I can’t help but ask them every day. A Small Place is a good read, and made me reexamine some of my own assumptions on post-colonial landscapes.

From the book:

Antigua is a small place, a small island. It is nine miles wide by twelve miles long. It was discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1493. Not too long after, it was settled by human rubbish from Europe, who used enslaved but noble and exalted human beings from Africa (all masters of every stripe are rubbish, and all slaves of every stripe are noble and exalted; there can be no question about this) to satisfy their desire for wealth and power, to feel better about their own miserable existence, so that they would be less lonely and empty — a European disease. Eventually, the masters left, in a kind of way; eventually, the slaves were freed, in a kind of way. The people in Antigua now, the people who really think of themselves as Antiguans (and the people who would immediately come to your mind when you think about what Antiguans might be like; I mean, supposing you were to think about it), are the descendants of these noble and exalted people, the slaves. Of course, the whole thing is, once you cease to be a master, once you throw off your masters yoke, you are no longer human rubbish, you are just a human being and all the things that adds up to. So, too, with the slaves. Once they are no longer slaves, once they are free, they are no longer noble and exalted; they are just human beings.

I’ve spent the last few days frantically working to finish up projects from 2009 before the new year rolls in.   I’m putting the finishing touches on a new portfolio site, which will launch withen the week.  I’ve finished up the Red Knot film, documenting the migration of an endagered shore bird – it will be available online too.

Cleaning shop forced me to look through photos previously left untouched.   Mingan, Quebec, a small native village on the North Shore of the St. Lawrence.  A sleepy town with empty streets and faces of children pressed hard againt fogged windows.  During my entire week in Mingan I met one, maybe two locals.  It was the dead of summer, but everyone was hiding.  Who knows where.

The first storm of the season has descended upon my sleepy city.  I can hear what should be snow, but is instead a sleet cold rain, falling outside my apartment window.   There is white dust on roof tops and slush on asphalt.  I am hiding inside my castle in the sky.  The CN tower is hiding too, behind the blanket of white.

Toronto has had the mildest fall on record.  For the first time in over 80 years there was no snow in November.  Earlier this week I left my basement bunker at the ROM and lost my breath for a moment, when tiny white flakes fell upon my face.  I hate winter, but there is something sacred about the first snowfall.