Rangefinders for a cause

[PJRiley]

You are offered the chance to pack up your RF camera and lenses of choice to document a subject/cause to show the world. What would it be? I will start this off by saying I'd love to spend a year documenting life on First Nations reservations here in Canada.
Mary

 

[charjohncarter]

Nude beaches!

 

[dazedgonebye]

Did someone already take Nude Beaches?

 

[thomasw_]

No question, document orthodox christian liturgical rites and the practice of spiritual disciplines.

 

[RML]

I have a few projects running or in mind in Mongolia already. Mostly rf even but dSLR when necessary.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Tibetan independence.

I started this some time ago: my book 'Hidden Tibet', a propaganda book for the Government in Exile, was published by Element Books in 1988. There's a 'Postscript-Photography' on page 147, where I describe using Leicas and Linhofs.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Trius]

Mary: I think I would be doing the same, though I might be persuaded to go with Roger, though for a bit selfish reasons. So, since this is "for a cause", I would be going to First Nations reserves, in particular Pikangikum and other Northern Ontario locations. I would also be going to reserves where more progress in improving conditions has been made; it's important to provide some sunshine, too.

 

[kshapero]

I am working on a photo book to document a group of seniors I visit with every Tuesday. About 25 of them are an average age 86! I am doing b&w portraits of them . It is at a Jewish Senior Center and almost all are ironically either Holocast survivors or veterans of WWII.

 

[colyn]

Since nude beaches have been spoken for I'll go with the conflict in the Middle East..

 

[Nando]

Mary, I'm very interested in the First Nations people in Canada too. It is such a shame how poverty among First Nation communities is so prevalent in such an advanced country. I'd probably go with documenting the effects of the Canadian residential schools on First Nations people. Not only the effects of the widespread physical and sexual abuse that occurred but also the attempt of assimilating First Nation people into white-Canadian culture. The last residential schools were shut down in the 1990's - so this isn't something that happened long ago in the past. We'll be seeing major effects of these schools linger for several more generations I think.

When it comes to Portugal, I have lately thought about documenting domestic violence. Not so much the violence itself but the wide-spread acceptance of it among many people and also how it is swept under the rug. Although Salazar and is cronies are long gone, there is still a sort of domestic fascism in Portuguese homes and accepted violence against women (and sometimes against children and the elderly) is often the result of this. I recently read that over 50% of women in Portugal are believed to have been treated violently by their male partners. Judging from what I have seen, I wouldn't be surprised. Although it is not well documented, many believe that domestic violence is the leading cause of death and injury to women under 50 in Portugal - more lethal than cancer, automobile accidents, heart disease, etc.

I love both Canada and Portugal dearly and I'm very proud of being a citizen of both countries, however the two issues mentioned above make me truly ashamed. If I were a serious documentary photographer, I think that those two issues would be on my mind when it comes to possible projects.

On a lighter and more practical side, I would also very much like to document automobile enthusiasts. I find automobile enthusiasts and their relationship with their automobiles to be very interesting. I'm a very serious automobile enthusiast myself and it would be nice to combine my two past-times into a project of some sort. Lately, I've felt that when I dedicate myself to photography, its almost as if I'm turning my back on my car-buddies and also on my car - please keep in I actually see my car more like I would a living, breathing pet than a lifeless machine. On the other hand, when I spend time in the car-hobby, I feel that I'm not shooting enough. I tried shooting cars but I found it to be very difficult from a technical standpoint and I was usually disappointed with the results. I decided to take a different approach and try to document the people involved in this hobby instead. However, here in Canada, I will have to wait until the spring. All the cars (and sometimes the car enthusiasts) are currently hibernating.

 

[PJRiley]

I used to work in the Algonquin Park area of Ontario, which has a First Nations reserve nearby. The issues were difficult; the mistrust of 'whitey' off the scale; and understandably so. I'd give a lot to gain the kind of trust that would allow me the access to truly show the rest of Canada how appalling it really is.
Most of the prisons in the prairies and western Canada are 'home' to aboriginal peoples. In my mind, there is no excuse, and I'd like nothing better than to spend a year documenting their reality. The sad thing is, things have not really improved for them at all over the years.
Perhaps we need to band Canadian photographers together to work on it!

 

[ruben]

War.

Cheers,
Ruben

 

[Nando]

PJRiley,

I think that is a great idea. I don't think native issues are very well covered by photographers in Canada.

 

[PJRiley]

I have a few contacts through the Ontario Provincial Police; friends of mine who are working to improve the relationships. I rec'd 2 pms from RFFers; thank you. Other Canadian photographers who are interested, especially in Ontario, please send me a message and we'll see what develops.
It's that old saying: 'Evil abounds when good men do nothing.'
Mary

 

[raid]

I would be interested in documenting life in Iraq as lived by the simple people.

 

[amateriat]

I have a pet project that's been on the back burner for a few years, but it might get shoved forward once my exhibit plans for this Autumn are more firmly in place.

I've been thinking a lot about development in my fair city (NYC), or what I tend to think of as overdevelopment. I've been a Brooklynite for the better part of fifteen years, even though I was born and raised in Manhattan. That island feels more like Tokyo to me now, more speeded-up and crowded than I remember. More ugly, hastily-constructed "luxury" high-rises cluttering the skyline, more competition for street and sidewalk space. It has me thinking about population growth, which, IMO, is the elephant in the room most choose to ignore, yet it impacts everything we fight with each other about, from suburban sprawl to reporoductive rights to global warming and beyond. I've been documenting this stuff casually for the last two decades, and I have more than enough material to put together something of substance (more or less), but I have even stronger image-related ideas in mind, simply because what I see before me now, on a daily basis, is ever-more extreme in nature. The project will happen, perhaps with others besides just me. Since the vast majority of human conflict has underpinnings of territorial imperative, I can't quite wipe this away from my mind.

This doesn't necessarily mean that the photography this results in is all a serious downer. Some of the stuff in my archives actually has an odd humor about it. (If it didn't, I'd imagine I would be on some mighty powerful meds by now.)


- Barrett

 

[Film dino]

health inequalities in Malaysia

 

[Bryce]

Barrett-
How do you go about documenting that issue?
That I can think of, before and after pictures of neigborhoods becoming more crowded, traffic jams, lines waiting to get into hospitals...
Trouble is, the symptoms get the attention rather than the cause. Some see property value going up as a neighborhood becomes more crowded.
I've thought about it before and haven't come up with an effective vehicle if you will.
Just curious what your thougts are on the subject.

 

[amateriat]

Barrett-
How do you go about documenting that issue?
That I can think of, before and after pictures of neigborhoods becoming more crowded, traffic jams, lines waiting to get into hospitals...
Trouble is, the symptoms get the attention rather than the cause. Some see property value going up as a neighborhood becomes more crowded.
I've thought about it before and haven't come up with an effective vehicle if you will.
Just curious what your thougts are on the subject.

It's a toughie...it's one of those "you know it when you see it" things, but harder to put in a visually cohesive form where someone says "yeah, I kind of get it" (whether one agrees or not). I do think it's worth trying, whether I'm judged as making or missing the mark. That's the tightrope one walks with stuff like this.


- Barrett

 

[Bryce]

Quote-"That's the tightrope one walks with stuff like this."

True of anything that hasn't been done to exhaustion. Go forth and, um edify!