(And this time it did come from my lips.)

Trying to learn the meaning and usage of the new (to old-fogey me) slang term, emo: “Is it a reference to Brian Emo’s music?”

Laugh if you must. But last night I went to the So You Think You Can Dance Canada show in Hamilton (or, as Nico, Danny and Vincent called it: ahMILton) and I loved it.

Just in case you didn’t know, last spring Canada held auditions for its own version of So You Think You Can Dance. It aired in the fall, and I have to say that the top 20, IMHO, was stronger than any top 20 the American version featured. We also got to sample Canada’s fantastic choreographers, who were at least as good as the Americans, and we got a few visits from US favourites like Mia Michaels and Dan Karaty, the screamer judge, Mary Murphy (note: when she’s screaming that some of the best dancers on the planet are in your country, her screams aren’t nearly so earsplitting).

Anyways, so last night I took my friend, just returned from Malawi, to the live show. Our seats rocked, and immediately I regretted not having my camera. Seriously, we were 12 rows back from the stage. We were so close, I could see that Nico was flying low during the creepy cane piece that he, Allie, Natalie and Miles did.

I didn’t have particularly high expectations, since I’d watched the whole show on tv. I didn’t really think the live version would offer much that the tv version didn’t. But it did. The live dances had so much more subtlety than on tv. Partly I hold the camera operators and editors responsible because the tv view moves so erratically around the stage that you often can’t pay attention to what you want to. But also, there’s something about living, breathing people that just give so much more nuance.

The bottom line? I love Lisa and Vincent more than ever. I still think Arassay got short shrift, I can’t help but suspect that Nico’s getting a big head (the screams for him seriously impaired my hearing), Miles is as adorable as ever, Isaak (or Izak or however he spells it) still annoys me, and the producers should really hire an MC for the live show instead of making the dancers spit out overly rehearsed and silly intros.

From time to time a recorded announcer’s voice would speak out about some thing or another, and some clips would show on the big screens. Just before Isaak’s solo, the anonymous voice said “Isaak says he wants to be a dancer because it’s what he loves to do.”

I find it really interesting the emphasis our culture puts on being nouns. Isn’t it interesting that BEING a dancer is not the same as being someone who dances? That the noun adds some kind of credibility or importance that the simple verb doesn’t? I mean, anyone can dance, anyone can love dance, but not just anyone can BE a dancer. It’s the same with writing. Anyone can write, but not anyone can BE a writer. It doesn’t make grammatical sense, but it says a lot about our culture, don’t you think?

A few photography blogs have been linking to an article that I haven’t actually clicked through and read (and now I can’t find the references to link to it myself), but the gist was that with the economy tanking and the publishing industry changing so dramatically (some might say failing?), eventually all photographers will only be amateurs. They’ll all have separate day jobs to support their true passion, and they need to get over their snobbery about that. Of course this is music to my amateur ears.

A number of people have asked me if I want to be a professional photographer, or they’ve commented that I could be a professional photographer. But the truth is I don’t have much interest in that. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love a patron, someone who would just pay for me to live and make whatever pictures I want to make. But I really have no interest in making pictures for paying clients with demands and expectations. Even if that means my work is taken less seriously, for now, I’m ok with that. But still, I’m awfully glad to hear about people questioning the notions that only professionals can make great photographs.

Yesterday was Valentine’s Day, in case you didn’t already know. While I was at the Drop In Centre, two people came in with big signs offering free hugs. I thought this was pretty cool, so I pulled out my camera and started shooting. I’ve never just pulled out my camera there before, not like that, but I couldn’t miss the opportunity.

As it turns out, the huggers also volunteer at the centre, during the week. The woman who led the free hugs (sadly I didn’t get any good shots of her) ended up helping us serve the meal, because somehow we seemed short-handed. Anyways, she told me that she first saw the free hugs idea on youtube, and she was just really touched by it, so she wanted to do it herself, and on V-day. She said a few people said it was exactly what they needed.

(And for once it didn’t come from my lips.)

“We have to realliterate that.”

It started as a call inward, a tightening, pulling my attention away from the restaurant and the conversation and my quesadilla. Eventually I discerned a rhythm to the calls, and they began to apprach pain. At home, I remember gripping the leather back of our rust-coloured chairs and shimmying away the pain. When the midwives came, I remember looking at the crack that ran across the plaster ceiling of our old spare room, and thinking we might not get a baby at the end of this. In the hospital, I had to labour on my left side, because the monitor on my belly said your heartrate plummeted every time I sat or stood upright. I remember holding the bars of the bed, and feeling I might lose my mind with the pain, that surely that meant I was in transition. But I wasn’t; nowhere near it.

It was a relief when the doctor said it was time for a section (although I bristled at his short-form, which sounded more like vivisection than was really appropriate, in my opinion). On the table, I felt like Jesus with my arms strapped down, perpendicular to my body, and I was grateful for the anaestesiologist whispering in my ear, sweet nothings like “don’t worry, that feeling is normal, you won’t actually stop breathing,” and “you’ll feel some pressure now” and finally, “It’s a boy!” A whisper of an exclamation mark then silence. Long silence.

The midwife told me you had red hair, as excited as if she’d just given birth herself. Finally you squawked, from the other side of the room, and someone brought you, swaddled, to my side so I could look for a moment. “Hi baby,” I said, your pointy, old-man’s face getting smeared by my tears.

“Why don’t you kiss him?” the midwife suggested.

So I did, awkwardly.

* plus five days.

Once again, I’ve fallen behind in blogging so my mind is a jumble. So today you will get a recipe for pumpkin soup. I improvised it last night, and it is SO good. My problem with improvising stuff like this is that I never write down what I did, so I can’t ever truly repeat the same results. This time will be different though. This time I will document what I did. And because it was so good, I’m sharing it here:

My Pumpkin Soup

1 onion chopped
1 carrot, peeled and choppped
1 stalk celery, chopped
Bay leaf
Fresh garlic, chopped (lots)
Fresh ginger, peeled and grated (a knob?)
1 can of pumpkin puree (nothing else in it – check ingredients)
Vegetable stock – 4-6 cups plus water (it needed a lot of liquid to cook the lentils and made quite a big pot)
1-2 tsp sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
3-4 handfuls of red lentils
a bit of brown sugar
a splash or two of white wine vinegar

Sauté onion, carrot, celery, ginger, bay leaf in butter and oil. Add some salt and pepper. Add garlic. Add pumpkin and stock. Add lentils. Simmer for between 40 minutes and an hour. Check seasoning. I added white wine vinegar and brown sugar, and more salt and pepper, because there was quite a bitter undertone. Remove the bay leaf. Blend in the blender. (This last step is essential – I couldn’t believe how much better it tasted all blended and smooth.)

So that’s it. More photo posts soon, I hope.

I got a nice package in the mail tonight: my new business cards, which I ordered from Moo. They look great. Some of the pictures lost their blacks, probably because of the very matte paper. But most of the images look really good, and the backsides are fantastic. What I like about these cards is that you can import many pictures from flickr, so you have a big selection of images on the front. Designing the layout of text and logos on the back of the card is intuitive and pretty easy, although I was really glad I had my husband on hand to tweak my logo to suit the card. And the price is way more cost-effective for my quantity needs than having cards (with only one image) printed at a local print shop. So if you have any need for business cards, check out Moo.
* * *

Imagekind is about to start a Valentine’s Day promotion. From February 10 to 16 you can get 25 percent off their custom framing.

I have a new song on repeat these days: “Paper Planes” by MIA (which is apparently on the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack – a movie I really want to see). Go listen to it here. The other day, I tried to convince Ishra to create a tribal fusion choreography to it, but she wasn’t keen on all the gunshots. “What is it saying? ‘All I wanna do is [boom boom boom]…’ What kind of a message is that?” she asked.

Those questions hadn’t really occurred to me. I liked the beat, and thought the gun shots and cash register sounds could make for some great isolations and accents. That said, from the very first listening, it made me think of Jodi Bieber‘s work, “Between Dogs and Wolves,” especially images #9 and 10 if you follow that link and scroll through. And those are pretty disturbing, so Ishra probably has a point. Before I saw Bieber’s work, probably a year ago now, I had a pretty naive view of impoverished children in Africa; I thought material wealth isn’t all it’s cracked up to be anyways, so maybe it wasn’t that bad. When I was in South Africa, I saw poverty for sure, lots of it, but I also saw so much song and laughter that I thought maybe it wasn’t so bad. Bieber’s work forced me to rethink that.

* * *

A tv crew was at the market yesterday. Which has nothing to do with anything, except that I’ve been trying to find a way to work in a quote from ER that’s been haunting me. On Thursday night, I watched a rerun of ER. I gave up on that show a year or two or three ago, not sure why now. But I was restless after my photo class and needed something to watch while I wound down for bed. Anyways, this is the quote:

“When you lose your parents, you’re an orphan. You lose your spouse and you’re a widow. But if when you lose your baby, there is no word.”

And that’s really all I have to say for myself this weekend. Oh – and thanks for voting in my last post! It really helped.

Ishra, Artistic Director of Invoketress Dance and all-round great woman, has invited me to hang one or two prints at a Valentine’s Show she is doing. One image is for sure:

I’m thinking I might also want to show an image from the glow piece at the Mish Mash. But I’m having trouble choosing just one. So can you help? Which one of the following images do you like the best?

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

(If anyone wants to buy one, they are for sale, but I’ve been busy re-processing them, so these ones are different from what’s available through Imagekind. If you email me, I’ll make it happen.)

Thanks!

If I fall behind in blogging, then everything gets so jumbled up in my head that I can’t seem to compose a coherent post. So you’re going to get an extremely long, rambling, incoherent post.

On Saturday, I went the local youth drop-in centre, which has a gallery afternoon on weekends, before I started my volunteer shift at the (adult?) drop-in centre. The youth centre is run by Edward Pickersgill, whose name keeps popping up everywhere. He was the NDP candidate in (I think) the last provincial election (or maybe the one before that – at any rate I voted for him). He runs a housing resource centre as well as the youth centre, and he’s been advocating strongly for a youth shelter ever since June 2007 when the youth shelter closed suddenly and under strange circumstances. I’ve known his name for a long time, but I’ve never taken the time to match his name with his face – until a few months ago.

Rewind to October 2007: Outside the housing resource centre, which also had a drop-in program for youths, I saw some kids sitting on the sidewalk. I talked with them for a bit about the need for a youth shelter, and asked if I could take their picture.

I turned around and saw this:

Sometimes when I get excited by what I’m seeing, I yell inside my head, “Seriously?!?” like an intern in Grey’s Anatomy. Sometimes I just can’t believe I get to come upon scenes like this.

As I shot, I heard one of the kids call him Ed, but I didn’t think too much of it. After a couple frames, the man saw me and one of my shots shows this, me watching him watch me. I probably lowered my camera, and smiled and shrugged sheepishly, then turned and walked away, which is what I usually do when people bust me taking their picture.

Anyways, since then details have started to niggle on my mind to make me wonder if perhaps this was Ed Pickersgill. A few months ago, I googled him and found some photos that confirmed it was. I shot Ed Pickersgill without knowing it. I started to feel guilty, that I had this picture of a recognizable local figure, and he didn’t know I had it.

In December, I wanted to submit some photos to a newish gallery in town, along the theme of Guelph architecture. That picture of Ed immediately spang to mind, as he’s sitting in front of the grand old post office building, which is now used by the county I think. But what if it got accepted, and he saw it?

So I tracked him down on facebook and sent him a message, confessing that I’d taken his picture and did he want to see it? He did, and I think he loved it. He called it iconic and took me up on my offer of a print, which is why I went to the gallery afternoon last Saturday – to give him a print.

Which is a very long preamble to get to the point, a point that’s suddenly much more difficult to articulate than I expected. I’ve struggled with the ethics of photographing people on the street and publishing them online, mostly because I imagine people who aren’t involved in online communities being horrified at the thought of having their picture On The Internet. But I keep doing it, because I can’t not. It’s like a compulsion.

So hearing such praise from someone who didn’t choose in advance to collaborate with me in making a photograph… well, it just felt REALLY good.

Of course, since I shot that picture, my photography and my approach have evolved. I’m less interested in just shooting people, and more interested in interacting with them. In the beginning, I knew that I didn’t have the skills yet to make the photography a part of an interaction. Any attempt would have destroyed the image before it was even made. My self-consciousness would have translated to the person, and added to whatever self-consciousness the person brought all on their own. I had no idea how to make them comfortable.

* * *

Last weekend, Tony Fouhse touched on the subject of exploitation, and give a few nuggets of his process, how he works with the people he shoots: “I believe the art of what I do is in my encounter with the subject. The photograph is merely a document of that encounter.”

* * *

I remember at the portrait workshop I went to in July, standing with the camera up to my face, and being able to see the discomfort of my subject, but I was absolutely powerless to do anything about it. I froze up. I flailed about fruitlessly, saying stupid things like, “Pretend I’m not here.” or “Relax.” (Is there anything more stress-inducing than someone commanding you to relax?!?)

* * *

Going into the lemon pie shoot a couple weeks ago, I was nervous. How would I make my friend and her mother feel comfortable in front of the camera? What if I froze up again? I decided I just had to fake it. I had to pretend that I knew exactly what I was doing, and then just wing it and hope for the best. In the end, it wasn’t an issue anyways. There was only a moment of discomfort, and we all got past it.

* * *

I’m reading Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn. I noticed it for its fantastic title, but it was the description that made me buy it. Nick Flynn was working in a homeless shelter when his father, who he’d never really known in person, showed up there, homeless. And I’m loving it. The writing is brilliant, and the themes of family, home and homelessness are right up my alley these days.

He keeps bringing up the notions of inside and outside. If you have no inside, no home, then outside IS your inside. It reminds me something Ruth Kaplan brought up in that July portrait workshop, when she said photographing people on the street, in public spaces, is fine. But it gets problematic when the person is homeless, because the street is their home, the public space is their private space.

A few quotes from the book:

“Sometimes I’d see my father, walking past my building on his way to another nowhere. I could have given him a key, offered a piece of my floor. A futon. A bed. But I never did. If I let him inside I would become him, the line between us would blur, my own slow-motion car wreck would speed up.”

“Last night Mackie had a la-z-boy set up in Rat Alley, watching a television hotwired into a light pole. My father stepped into Mackie’s living room, checked out a couple minutes of play – can these still be called the glory days of the Bird? Step out of your room, settle into a discarded recliner – are you inside now or out? Position your chair before your television, take your walk, find your coffee, by morning it all will be gone – no inside no outside, no cardboard box no mansion, no birth no death, no container no contained, a Zen koan, a frikkin riddle. A garbage truck hauled the tv away, another will be put out on the sidewalk tonight. But a la-z-boy, my lord, maybe not again in this lifetime.”

“I drive slowly past a blanket shaped like a man – here is a man, shaped like a blanket, shaped like a box, shaped like a bench. Easy to mis. If this is my father, if I leave a sandwich beside his sleeping body, does this become a family meal. Is this bench now our dinner table? Are we inside again?”

“I see that I really don’t know what I’m doing, that I’m adrift, as the Buddhists say, on a river of forgetfulness. A hungry ghost.”

(Which brings me to another book, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts by Gabor Maté, which is accruing library fines big enough to buy it three times over while I try to write some kind of review about it. But I just don’t think it’s going to happen. So can I just tell you to read it? It’s that good and that important. A review quoted on the cover said that it should be required reading for anyone struggling with addiction or who loves someone struggling with addiction, but I think it should be required reading for anyone who can read.)

* * *

On Sunday night, I watched a documentary called Pardon my Postpartum.

Someone talked about how inappropriate psych wards are for treating mothers with severe postpartum depression, because they have to be separated from their babies. In the UK, apparently they’ve had maternal wards in hospitals for 40 years, where women and their babies are checked in as a pair, regardless of which one is actually receiving medical treatment.

One woman lost custody of her children when she checked into a hospital for treatment of her postpartum depression. I think her going to hospital coincided with the end of her marriage. When she came out of hospital, all her visits to her children had to be supervised. She said that felt way worse than the postpartum depression had ever felt.

Another woman prepared for the birth of her second or third child, after severe postpartum depression with her last baby, by developing a postpartum plan rather than the birth plan every other pregnant woman develops. In the plan, she identified friends she would feel comfortable calling on at the last minute for a meal, or a break. She decided in advance not to breastfeed so she could take whatever medication she needed to without worrying, and also so that anybody else could feed her baby.

Sometimes I wonder if I had mild postpartum depression, breastfeeding every two hours around the clock for months and months and months.

* * *

That night I dreamed I went to Malawi for five days (how crazy is a five-day trip to a place that takes 35 hours each way just to get there?!?) with my entire family: my son, my husband, my mother, my father, my sister and her husband and their daughter, even. The flight was fine, and we arrived in a very busy international airport. We had to be driven in a big bus to a resort, which the travel agency hadn’t told us about. I carried my son, while someone else had my passport, my wallet, phone numbers, everything. We got separated in the busyness, so that I was all alone with my son in a totally foreign place.

My best friend appeared out of nowhere (she’s currently IN Malawi, coincidentally), and told me she’d take me where I needed to go. My son was amazingly still in my arms, almost like a big baby. We rode escalators and got on subways and buses and all kinds of transportation, all amidst a crazy crowd. A man suddenly took a knife to my throat, and I prayed he wouldn’t notice my son, that my son would stay still and quiet. I didn’t care so much about my throat, only my son. The man left, and we carried on in our journey back to my family. Then another man held a gun to my head, and again, I prayed for my son to remain still and unnoticed. The man left because I had no money. And I just felt terrified by all the hazards I had to protect my son from with no resources and no community.

Later the next day, I realized with a jolt that my dream was quite the metaphor for postpartum depression and my fear of having another child.

Last night I mentioned to my husband that we only have a few weeks to go until our friends come home. “Our only friends,” he said.