Leon, Nicaragua, 2009. A young woman working in the central market cleaning dishes.

Looking through my archives to find an image to include here I’d say that 90% of the photographs I’ve taken over the last couple years have featured women, usually working, typically working extremely hard. Doesn’t really matter if I’ve been working in markets, streets, farms, or homes – the weight of my work is about women. Despite this it’s pretty darn safe to say that the perceived value of these women to their communities was under-appreciated. I wouldn’t say that they were invisible (though often times, yes) but that they definitely struggled with some very serious issues in the way that the men around them wouldn’t. The fact that words like Femicide, and Honour Killing are in active circulation speak much to this. In Guatemala, for example, there have been more than 3000 murders of women and girls over the last 10 years, and very few of those killers have ever been brought to justice. The culture of machismo and impunity is such that these women will likely never get the justice they deserve. Beyond simply being murdered because of your gender there’s pay equity, health equity, political equity, food security, sexual equity, reproductive rights… what am I forgetting? Hundreds and hundreds of other very serious affronts to the quality of women’s lives the world over.

So, Happy International Women’s Day? No, not really for a great many women, but still a time to take these things into consideration, and spend a moment being conscious of the inequalities around us.

Now, go hug your mom.

A little video of some of the flooding in the south, though it’s just as bad up here in north. Just about every river is twice as wide as it should be, and the rain keeps coming. Municipalities are scrambling to try and get some kind of reparation from the state for damages, get areas declared disaster zones with most of the crops destroyed, as well as roads, homes, bridges, etc. starting to crumble.

It’s a wet mess.

Umm, where the fuck have I been? Long story, too much to catch-up with really, Boston, New York, London, middle of nowhere Wales, and finally Spain. Best to pretend I talked about all that in great depth, and instead announce the launch of a project I’ve been working on for the last while with NYC photo rep Julian Richards, and photographer Henrik Knudsen. Every year Julian holds a music festival at his farm in upstate New York, and last year Henrik photographed it, shot some video, and recorded some audio. Over the last couple months we’ve been putting it all together into a nice little mini site and it’s come together pretty nicely. Great collaborative design process between the three of us, and then me trying to make it all work.

We just launched it with an ad on What’s the Jackanory? Check it.

Welcome back Friday. Here’s a little tune I’ve been meaning to post for a while now. I came across mention of Karen Dalton a while back in connection with Bob Dylan, in some writing about his early days in Greenwich Village: “My favorite singer in the place was Karen Dalton. She was a tall white blues singer and guitar player, funky, lanky, and sultry. I’d actually met her before, run across her the previous summer outside Denver in a mountain pass town in a folk club. Karen had a voice like Billie Holiday’s and played the guitar like Jimmy Reed and went all the way with it. I sang with her a couple of times.” After reading that I managed to track down a few of her albums, though she didn’t record much, and never got very far with critics. A Guardian UK article sums her up as ‘a cult favourite whose name is muttered like a secret handshake.’ She typically gets labelled as a folk musician, but there wasn’t much about her that wasn’t blues, seems she just got grouped in with the folks she was hanging-out with. Sadly, she died in the early 90s of AIDS, living pretty rough.

The above is from the 70s when she was living in Colorado, and a French documentary crew was following her around. It’s hard to explain, but the way she sings and plays is exactly how I want to take photos.

It’s also clear that the blues don’t translate all that well into French.

Back in November I spent a week photographing at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto. The Royal is one of the world’s largest indoor agricultural fair, and is now a cross between a trade show (where you can buy everything from custom saddles to horse spas) and an animal show, with contestants coming from all over to compete. There are also equestrian events and a rodeo which are also pretty popular. I spent most of my time working my way between the cattle barns where folks primped and primed their cows and the show ring.

The above image is from a series of portraits I took during one of the 4-H competitions. While I was never a 4-H member, it was big in the area where I grew up. For those that don’t know the 4-H is an organization that teaches leadership skills to youth through agriculture (the four Hs are: Heart, Head, Hands and Health.) Throughout the week I was really impressed watching these kids work with their animals, it was really moving seeing the connection they had to farm life. Regardless of whether they actually grow-up to be farmers that respect for farming and food can only do them good.

This year’s fair also happened during the height of the swine flu outbreak in Toronto, and on the first day all the pigs were out and about, but by the second morning they’d all been placed behind glass. Seemed a bit absurd, really. I was more worried about the guy hacking away behind me while I was watching the sheep show than I was about the pigs.

Anyway, lots of new galleries: the 4-H portraits, other youth at the fair, the rodeo, and a general gallery (there is also the whole wack of everything shot.)

From the death of a rock and roll to the death of the planet, here’s a little clip of Thomas (the friendly ball there in the background) making the rounds in Copenhagen safe from catastrophic climate change.

Maybe he can also apologize to everyone there for Canada’s penchant for global destruction, doubtful our government will do so.

Today is the anniversary of the death of John Lennon, and I have asked Lester Bangs to ruminate here as he did in December 1980….

Thinking the Unthinkable about John Lennon

You always wonder how you will react to these things, but I can’t say I was all that surprised when NBC broke into the tonight show to say that John Lennon was dead. I always though that he would be the first of the Beatles to die, because he was always the one who lived the most on the existential edge, whether by diving knees-first into left-wing adventurism or by just shutting up for five years when he decided he really didn’t have anything much to say, but I had always figured it would be by his own hand. That he was merely gunned down by a probable psychotic only underscores the banality surrounding his death.

Look: I don’t think I’m insensitive or a curmudgeon. In 1965 John Lennon was one of the most important people in the world. It’s just that today I feel deeply alienated from rock-n-roll and what it has meant or could mean, alienated from my fellow men and women and their dreams or aspirations.

I don’t know which is more pathetic, the people of my generation who refuse to let their 1960s adolescence die a natural death, or the younger ones who will snatch and gobble and shred, any scrap of a dream that someone declared over 10 years ago. Perhaps the younger ones are sadder, because at least my peers may have some nostalgic memory of the long-cold embers they’re kneeling to blow upon, whereas the kids who have to make do with things like Beatlemania are being sold a bill of goods.

I can’t mourn John Lennon. I didn’t know the guy. But I do know that when all is said and done, that’s all he was — a guy. The refusal of his fans to ever let him just be that was finally almost as lethal as his “assassin” (and please, let’s have no more talk of this being a “political” killing, and don’t call him a “rock-n-roll martyr”). Did you watch the TV specials on Tuesday night? Did you see all those people standing in the street in front of the Dakota apartment where Lennon lived singing “Hey Jude”? What do you think the real — cynical, sneeringly sarcastic, witheringly witty and iconoclastic — John Lennon would have said about that?

John Lennon at his best despised cheap sentiment and had to learn the hard way that once you’ve made your mark on history those who can’t will be so grateful they’ll turn it into a cage for you. Those who choose to falsify their memories — to pine for a neverland 1960s that never really happened that way in the first place — insult the retroactive Eden they enshrine.

So in this time of gut-curdling sanctimonies about ultimate icons, I hope you will bear with my own pontifications long enough to let me say that the Beatles were certainly far more than a group of four talented musicians who might even have been the best of their generation. The Beatles were most of all a moment. But their generation was not the only generation in history, and to keep turning the gutted lantern of those dreams this way and that in hopes the flame will somehow flicker up again in the ’80s is as futile a pursuit as trying to turn Lennon’s lyrics into poetry. It is for that moment — not for John Lennon the man — that you are mourning, if you are mourning. Ultimately you are mourning for yourself.

Remember that other guy, the old friend of theirs, who once said, “Don’t follow leaders?” Well, he was right. But the very people who took those words and made them into banners were violating the slogan they carried. And they’re still doing it today. The Beatles did lead but they led with a wink. They may have been more popular than Jesus, but I don’t think they wanted to be the world’s religion. That would have cheapened and rendered tawdry what was special and wonderful about them. John Lennon didn’t want that, or he wouldn’t have retired for the last half of the ’70s. What happened Monday night was only the most extreme extension of all the forces that led him to do so in the first place.

In some of his last interviews before he died, he said, “What I realized during the five years away was that when I said the dream is over, I had made the physical break from the Beatles but, mentally there is still this big thing on my back about what people expected of me.” And: “We were the hip ones of the ’60s. But the world is not like the ’60s. The whole world has changed.” And: “Produce your own dream. It’s quite possible to do anything… the unknown is what it is. And to be frightened of it is what sends everybody scurrying around chasing dreams, illusions.”

Goodbye, baby and amen.

– Lester Bangs

Um Hannee on the day her daughter left to be married in Jordan.

For the last while I’ve been working on pulling together a small book of photographs from my time in Yanun. Despite my belief that the web is the best method to distribute photography I still feel equally as strong that photographs need a physical presence in the world beyond bits n’ bytes. One of the initiatives for Ballad in the new year will be looking for funding to start printing regular editions of work, both individual projects, and hopefully group efforts.

I’ve been working on another maquette for a book on the markets in Guatemala, Cuba and Nicaragua, but I decided to push ahead with this one first to get some of the logistics worked out. Yanun was also an important time and place for me, and I felt I needed to start there. Yanun is a tiny farming village in the West Bank near Nablus, and perched on the cusp of the Jordan Valley. 10 or so years ago a group of Israeli Settlers took over the hilltops around the village and have been since slowly choking the village, stealing farmland and water, blocking access to roads, attacking Palestinians, etc. I first learned about Yanun after the Settlers had forced the people of Yanun out of their homes, and a call went out for folks willing to come live in the village as part of an accompaniment program, to get the Palestinian back in their homes. I spent six months, on and off, living in the village – most of it spent in the mountains with the village shepherds. There was always an impending sense that we would be attacked by Settlers, and while attacks were routine, with villagers being injured, and even killed, it was fear that was doing the most damage to life in the village. Children were afraid (rightfully so) to walk alone to school, Mothers afraid to let them go, Farmers afraid that their crops would be ruined, olive trees burned, livestock stolen, or killed.

As I started to select images for the book it was this fear that I found informed the photos, even in lighter moments. I know from sad experience how quickly the mood can change with when heavily armed lunatics decide to make their presence felt. For the most part the book is a series about life in the village, and will be small, so it sits nicely in your hands. I made a conscious decision not to show any of the actual Settlers, though I think they can be felt nonetheless.

Things are at the point now where I can start sending the PDF file off to printers to get quotes. Most seem to have a pretty quick turn-around, so hopefully things will move fast. More here when it does.