photoED Magazine - FALL 2022 - Activism

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FALL 2022

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CAROLE CONDÉ + KARL BEVERIDGE

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IN THIS ISSUE...

10 RESOURCES WE LOVE By Alan Bulley 13 THE BIPOC PHOTO MENTORSHIP PROGRAM

By Heather Morton 17

KC ADAMS PERCEPTION

20 ALEX JACOBS-BLUM HOME IS CALLING

By Laurence Butet-Roch 26 BLURRED LINES: A conversation between photographers JACKIE DIVES & KATE SCHNEIDER By Rita Godlevskis 34 A MBER BRACKEN A WITNESS WITH A CAMERA

By Laurence Butet-Roch 38 A N ETHICAL PHOTOGRAPHY PRACTICE

By Danielle Khan Da Silva 41 IMAGINING AN ARCHIVE OF CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVISM By Gabrielle Moser 44 CAROLE CONDÉ + KARL BEVERIDGE An interview by Ingrid Forster 51 THE GALLERY Submissions by our community

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CURATOR’S NOTE

PHOTOGRAPHY + ACTIVISM AS I WRITE, the U.S. Supreme Court severely

Photo by Cole Breiland

restricted the reproductive rights of Americans.

The reversal of Roe v. Wade likely foreshadows a reappraisal of a number of other rulings that affect such issues as same-sex relationships or access to contraceptives. This event is one of many in a long list that has galvanized the public internationally and is mediated through the lenses of photographers.

“We must be more assertive, tricky, and thoughtful with our visual atmosphere.”

— Alexis Boylan

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I often consider the call by art historian Alexis Boylan to become “visual activists.”

She tells us that “we must reject passivity and mere consumption” of images to “be more assertive, tricky, and thoughtful with our visual atmosphere.”

This issue of photoED explores how we, as Canadian photographers, might get there, acknowledging the tenuous relationship between photography and activism.

Documentary photography, while passionate about redressing the injustices captured, remains wary of adopting a radical position, lest it be seen as partisan. Amber Bracken, Jackie Dives, and Kate Schneider share their thoughts on navigating their role as witnesses and their desire for social change, while Danielle Da Silva, founder of Photographers Without Borders, looks at ethics.

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Artistic practices have also played a key role in changing our social landscape. Consider the eloquent work of Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge, who were awarded the 2022 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts for their “socially engaged and politically grounded” approach; Alex JacobsBlum’s evolving practice through which she answers her ancestors’ call to advocate for her homelands; as well as KC Adams’s billboard provocations.

There are also photographic approaches that seldom register as “activism” but quietly participate in reshaping our visual atmosphere. Here, we turned to Gabrielle Moser’s reading of the contributions of The Clarion, a Black-owned newspaper published in Nova Scotia at a time marked by the civil rights activism of Viola Desmond, whose portrait now appears on our 10-dollar bills.

Let that bright purple banknote be a constant reminder that we need to defend our rights.

Your issue curator, Laurence Butet-Roch lbrphoto.ca IG: @lbutetroch

MAGAZINE FALL 2022 ISSUE #65 ISSN 1708-282X EDITOR/PUBLISHER ART DIRECTOR CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

COPY EDITOR

Rita Godlevskis /rita@photoed.ca Ruth Alves Alan Bulley Laurence Butet-Roch Ingrid Forster Rita Godlevskis Danielle Khan Da Silva Heather Morton Gabrielle Moser Deborah Cooper

COVER IMAGE BY Kate Schneider

This issue was made possible with the assistance of the Ontario Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, and the Government of Canada.

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GET INSPIRED

ACTIVISM EDUCATION A few resources we recommend to get you inspired and considering photography + activism from different angles

BY ALAN BULLEY

THE CRUEL RADIANCE: PHOTOGRAPHY AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE

IMAGINING RESISTANCE: VISUAL CULTURE AND ACTIVISM IN CANADA

By Susie Linfield

Edited by J. Keri Cronin and Kirsty Robertson

Documenting suffering raises hard ethical and political questions for photographers and viewers. Journalism professor Susie Linfield works through some of these questions in three steps: by responding to critics of photography as a documentary medium; by examining ideas of human rights in the context of photographing violence, from the Holocaust to Abu Ghraib; and finally, by anchoring her discussion in the practices of three noted war photographers. We must ask ourselves: Are there photographs that should never be made? And if they are made, how should we respond?

2012, 344 pages $25.00 Paperback / $20.00 Kobo e-book www.chapters.indigo.ca

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This collection of essays contains a wealth of careful reflection on the use of visual art in the service of activism in Canada. From John and Yoko’s “bed-ins” for peace in Montreal and Toronto in the late 1960s, up to social, racial, and economic issues of the 2000s, the volume covers our evolving context well. And, although intended for an academic audience, the presentations are always accessible and the Canadian case studies are both fascinating and helpful. Readers will learn a lot about when art was an effective means of protest and when it was not … and why.

2011, 294 pages $31.99 Paperback Wilfrid Laurier University Press

ONLINE RESOURCES There is no shortage of online resources when it comes to activism!

The Photo Bill of Rights aims to change the industry by encouraging photographers to reflect on their practice and commit themselves to an ethical code. To challenge and help you sharpen your thinking, the Photo Ethics Podcast presents interviews and discussions on topics from environment to empathy, and everything in between.

Photo Bill of Rights: www.photobillofrights.com The Photo Ethics Podcast: www.photoethics.org/podcast

GORDON PARKS The Flávio Story + A Choice of Weapons A pioneer in many respects, Gordon Parks was the first African American to photograph for Life and Vogue magazines and to direct a major Hollywood movie, The Learning Tree. The publication of Gordon Parks: The Flávio Story gives an in-depth account of a 1961 Life photoessay documenting poverty in Brazil and Parks’s years-long work on behalf of a Brazilian boy, his family, and their community. Gordon Parks died in 2006, but his reputation both for involved photojournalism and social action is legendary. The 2021 movie biography A Choice of Weapons is an excellent introduction to the man’s life and work.

Gordon Parks: The Flávio Story 2018, 304 pages €58 Hardback, with free shipping Steidl A Choice of Weapons: Inspired by Gordon Parks Directed by John Maggio, 2021, HBO Documentary Films Available in Canada on Crave

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Plenty has been written about the toll the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and anti-Black racism have taken on Toronto’s Black residents this year.

But a close look shows communities that are creating, resisting and thriving despite it all.

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Fresh, organic photography talent

Mentor SURENDRA LAWOTI + mentee JOEL RODRIGUEZ navigate documentary photography storytelling

BY HEATHER MORTON

From the Certified Organic project. Pears are one of the only fruits that must be picked unripe and are allowed to ripen off the tree.

Left, Joel Rodriguez and, right Surendra Lawoti.

THE BIPOC PHOTO MENTORSHIP PROGRAM is just over two years old and, in that time, we have facilitated over 200 mentorship opportunities with almost 100 mentors from various areas of the photo industry and from all over the world. One of our most exciting initiatives was a collaboration with Toronto-based organization Gallery 44.

During this program, mentee Joel Rodriguez was matched with mentor Surendra Lawoti and they spent three months working together on the production of Joel’s documentary project Certified Organic, an exploration of food production and regenerative agriculture in Canada. Both Joel and Surendra are working from an activist perspective and, though they both use a documentary approach, their practices are unique.

Joel relates that the mentorship opportunity came at the perfect time in his process. “My mentor Surendra Lawoti and I spoke at great length about various approaches I could take. His experience with large format photography really opened my eyes to new directions in the genre. Surendra helped me deconstruct my compositional choices and really pushed me to embrace the nuances that can be accentuated within a frame. I quickly learned that good critique most commonly poses more questions rather than direct assumptions.” photo ED 13

Indeed, Surendra and Joel were a great match, as they share a common interest in documenting people in a way that Surendra describes as “incorporating aspects of fragility, strength, and poise that elevates the people in photographic representation.” Surendra describes his approach to mentorship; “One of the things I did as part of the mentorship was show Joel my series This Country Is Yours, explaining the context of the work and the process.”

Questions of ethics and responsibilities are complicated and nuanced in documentary work, especially when the photographer is working from an activism angle. Intention and outcome were top of mind during this mentorship. Joel frames his practice: “Our way of seeing the world is ultimately based on our knowledge of it, and I believe social and political change can stem from challenging our perception of the world around us.” In Surendra’s case, he uses portraiture to focus on civil rights activists and movements in Nepal. The concepts of dignity and relationship to place is important in his work: “Through portraits of activists, I wanted to encapsulate the idea of negotiating historic injustices and internalizing a place of rightful dignity in one’s country,” he says.

Through his mentorship with Surendra, Joel realized that his aim was also to highlight the personal and the subjective experiences of migrant workers. He says, “Documentary photography is a practice that requires a lot from you. You are constantly grappling with the responsibility of taking someone’s photograph, a task which should never be taken lightly. Our conversations pushed me to further explore the pursuit behind the images I make.” Surendra adds, “During the interaction, I [talked] about how I am transparent with my subjects about the context of the work, the scope of the work, and ways the work could be disseminated. My photographic interaction was an act of solidarity for our common aspirations.”

Without question, mentorships can be personally transformative; Joel says, “As I continue to embark on my visual storytelling journey, I feel a sense of relief knowing that there exists a pool of resources to help further develop one’s artistic practice.”

For more information, and to join the program, please visit www.bipocphotomentorship.com and follow us on Instagram: @bipocphotomentorship 14 photo ED

Certified Organic is a multimedia documentary project that explores the organic food production sector in Canada.

According to Employment and Social Development Canada, “Approximately 50,000 to 60,000 foreign agricultural workers come to work in Canada each year.”

Joel Rodriguez worked alongside, Casimiro, Luis, Jahir, Paulinho, and Emiliano, Mexican migrant workers on a farm in Owen Sound, Ontario in 2021.

ABOVE: Casimiro, Emiliano, Luis and Jahir process squash in a greenhouse.

LEFT: Cows are transferred to a new pasture during a pasture rotation. In a rotational grazing system, cows enter a pasture, graze it down 2-3 inches, and are then moved to another pasture.

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KC ADAMS

PERCEPTION photo ED 17

W

When KC Adams started the project Perception, which actively combats anti-Indigenous racism, she expected some backlash. Instead, she notes, she “got nothing but support.”

Her series features pairs of photographs that confront common stereotypes about First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples. Harrison Samphir’s article in Canadian Dimension describes the work as giving “its subjects a chance to define and represent themselves. Each photograph is captured with a short focal length, directing the viewer’s gaze straight into the eyes of the other. To a passerby, it creates a momentary union in public space where the walls of prejudice become invisible. Though it may only produce an ephemeral, transitory experience, it is still an effective one — a moment of clarity where one can reevaluate their preconceived notions based solely on physical appearance.”

The images first appeared on social media in 2014, and then in public urban spaces. Selected photos have now been gathered together in the book Perception: A Photo Series. Reflecting on this journey, KC says, “Once I sent out those first five images on social media, I was flooded with requests from people who wanted to participate in the project. National and local media outlets approached me for interviews. In one of the interviews, I explained how I would like to have the work seen on billboards, bus shelters, and posters. A few months later, Urban Shaman Gallery in Winnipeg, Manitoba, reached out to me to make my dream a reality. They had contacted numerous businesses and organizations and raised the monies to launch an ambitious campaign. My art was seen on posters, bus shelters, and billboards all around Winnipeg in 2015. The campaign was so successful I was invited to Lethbridge, Alberta, in 2016 to create a Perception campaign through IINNII, an artist-run centre there.

They were impressed by the project’s ability to address serious issues without alienating viewers. Strangers, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, were telling me about their positive experiences after seeing the work. My intent for this work is to give hope to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples for a better future and to remind people that discrimination must never be tolerated.”

KC Adams is a Cree, Ojibway, British, and Winnipeg-based artist. Her work can be found in many permanent national and international collections. www.kcadams.net

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Perception: A Photo Series

By KC Adams Foreword by Katherena Vermette 120 pages. Available in hard cover and e-book.

A teacher’s guide is also available through Portage & Main Press that can be used in conjunction with the book. Lessons in this guide by educator Reuben Boulette explore racist realities with students.

Photo by Dave Hoffos Lethridge, Alberta, 2016. photo ED 19

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HOME IS CALLING

LEFT: “Od.roh.yo:t” From the series, The land we are and have always been // tsih.sa:né:yohs (when you are healing), 2020.

RIGHT: “Gyoh.wé.ja:de’ “ From the series, Onákdo:t, 2019.

For ALEX JACOBS-BLUM, resistance begins with cultivating a deep, personal relationship with the Land.

BY LAURENCE BUTET-ROCH

Alex Jacobs-Blum’s practice demonstrates that despite photography’s reputation as a lone wolf endeavour, it is a profoundly relational one, with ties that extend beyond the human realm. She frequently expresses gratitude for how the medium allows her to heal and grow, and for those who have been guiding her along the way. The first mentor was her father, who had a 35mm camera and taught her how to use it when she was nine, igniting an intuitive understanding of its storytelling capacity. The second is the Land, with a capital L, since, as Alex clarifies, “it encompasses not only the ground beneath our feet but also the skies above, the air, the moon, the sun, the stars, the waters, the trees, the rocks, the animals, the plants, all of which are interconnected and intertwined with us.” Along the way, other guides such as Anishinabekwe artist and researcher Celeste Pedri-Spade, who honoured her ancestors by integrating their portraits into regalia and other cultural pieces, moved Alex and served as her entry point into Indigenous arts.

The young artist also credits, importantly, her grandmother, Ethel Davis.

A member of the Lower Cayuga of Six Nations, Ethel attended the infamous Mohawk Institute Residential School, which operated in Ontario for nearly 150 years, from 1831 to 1970. Yet Alex knew little about it. Growing up in Hamilton and studying within the province’s public school system meant that she had next to no access to Indigenous knowledges and was fed a patriotic progress-driven photo ED 21

narrative. “I was very confused because when there was mention of Indigenous people, they were always positioned as being in the past,” she remembers. “And yet, here I was sitting in the classroom.” As a result, she initially shied away from sharing that aspect of her identity with others. “I didn’t know how to acknowledge it,” she recalls. Years later, figuring out how to do so has become a central part of her artistic journey. Her Honours Bachelor of Photography thesis, titled “Otgw j’ia:’,” a Cayuga word meaning red, reflects her early explorations into what it means to navigate living in between two worlds, to be of mixed descent. Her father is German. On the one hand, she felt a need to address the layers of colonialism and intergenerational trauma that distanced her from her community and ancestors. On the other, she wondered whether she, someone who grew off-reserve and is white presenting, was “Indigenous enough” to talk about it. Making images became her way in and through these complex emotions. “I’ve been navigating all of it through photography. My practice has been about sharing this learning process with honesty and reclaiming myself because I want the future generations to feel empowered Indigeneity,” she explains.

In a recent conversation with grandmother Renée Thomas-Hill, an Elder based on Six Nations, Alex came to understand that this was her calling, that the Star People, guiding spirits within Hodinöhsö:ni’ cosmology, were calling her home. “I felt inauthentic as an Indigenous person for so long. To be acknowledged not only by this individual that I really admire, but also by creation, feels so validating. This was what I was searching for: that belonging.”

Her experience provides a response to, paraphrasing Audre Lorde, the question of whether the master’s tools can be used to dismantle the master’s house. Visual culture scholars from Ariella Azoulay to Teju Cole remind us that photography assisted the colonial enterprise. It served to catalogue phenotypes, study them for classification and ultimately devise means to control

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“Oy’ajihó:no” from the series Otgw j’ia:’ 2016.

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“I NEEDED TO TRAVEL TO MY HOMELANDS TO UNDERSTAND MY CONNECTION TO LAND AND MY RESPONSIBILITY TO IT.”

them. While such an indictment can lead us to renounce the medium altogether, it can also be regarded as a provocation to imagine new approaches. Subverting photography to reclaim a contemporary Indigenous identity that imperialism so earnestly endeavoured to relegate to the austere halls of museums and archives falls within that. “When I started this project, I was learning about Indigenous and colonial history and the effect it had on me and my family. I wasn’t supposed to be doing all that questioning, to unearth all this information. I was supposed to stay comfortably assimilated. Until then, colonialism had successfully taken my identity, language, and land without my knowledge, making me believe in the grand Canadian narrative. Yet here I am pushing actively against it, learning what they didn’t want me to know,” she says. The images that make-up Otgw j’ia:’ conjure the snaps usually analogous with homecoming: the road home, sporting events, fireworks. Yet, their framing translates a certain ambivalence. Some are taken at a distance, through a car window or a fence, signalling apprehension, while others are in the thick of the action, taken inside relatives’ homes or in the midst of the pow wow dancers. One, titled “Oy’ajihó:no’,” which shows a living room corner filled with family photographs, hangs behind Alex as she speaks about her work, sitting among the graduates and the athletes, the fathers and mothers, the aunties and uncles, and the elders and babies that are her community.

In 2018, and again in 2019, Alex pursued her journey home even further, reversing that of her ancestors. “The Hodinöhsö:ni’ didn’t come to the Grand River until 1792,” she narrates. “They originated from Cayuga Lake in Upstate New York. Allied with the British during the American Revolution, they lost their land when the Americans won the war. The Crown negotiated with the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation and granted the Hodinöhsö:ni’ 6 miles on each side of the Grand River.”

The four-and-a-half-hour drive proved, as expected, emotional. “I didn’t do much preparation,” she admits. “In the car, there was just me, my camera and a pizza. I was so nervous, I was shaking. Around St. Catharines, I wanted to turn around, when a hawk flew right over me. My grandma Ethel, who had an incredible sense of humour, always said, ‘if you see a hawk, go to the casino.’ I took the bird as a sign and continued to drive. In fact, I saw 26 hawks on my ride. Not far in the distance, but right by my side. It felt like they were bringing me to my homelands; like my grandmother was guiding me.” Once there, in a region that is now mainly cottage country, Alex turned off her GPS and began steering intuitively. “Though I was confronted with signs that referred to the existence of an ‘Indian’ burial ground or celebrated the defeat of

24 photo ED

‘savages,’ I felt comfortable on the land, I felt connected to the water,” she adds. Correspondingly, there’s an intriguing straightforwardness to her travelogue. The car window returns as a motif. Historical markers that dot the side of the roads are exposed for their ubiquity, terseness, and deceit. The land and the waters, frozen or rushing, are shown without artifice. The more you look at the series, what initially reads like desolation becomes a yearning for what you imagine those lands and waters were and can be. Alex says, “I didn’t realize how deeply rooted our connection to the Land is until I visited Cayuga Lake. I immediately felt this overwhelming sense of love, safety, and land when I arrived; and the reason why is because I’m connected to my ancestors who lived there and live within me. It felt so validating to be seen by the Land,” she recalls. “I needed to travel to my homelands to understand my connection to Land and my responsibility to it.”

In this time of climate crisis, Alex is profoundly concerned with the health of the Land, which is intrinsically tied to all of ours. “Indigenous knowledges and ways of being are rooted in the Land. Our teachings come from it and can be found in it,” she affirms. “The Land is part of us.

We are born out of the waters of the womb and we return to nourish the soil when we pass on. The Land brings us belonging and provides sustenance.” Her latest projects, which expand beyond photography to include video works, installations, and curatorial endeavours, hope to focus our attention on the urgency of the current moment and encourages us to look at our world with a critical eye.

In the short As Above, From Below, produced in 2021 with Kiera Boult, she satirizes the positioning of Hamilton, her hometown, as a “city of beauty and industry,” as the one clip claims. The pair similarly parodied class-action lawsuit ads and alien TV shows in Close Encounters, a video made in 2022, to bring into sharp focus the treatment of Indigenous and Black cultures. When they are not outright stolen, the two are framed as the result of extraterrestrial activities, as if that were more believable than being the expression of ancestral knowledges. This summer Alex curated Born Celestial at Hamilton Artists Inc. Her selection of works that prefigure Indigenous futures urges us to act towards the environment that surrounds us with gratefulness, love, mindfulness, and imagination.

“We have a collective responsibility to ensure the safety of future generations. We should use only what we need and leave the rest,” she specifies. In this respect, she sees Land advocacy and Indigenous sovereignty as “one and the same.” Both are commitments to sustainable futures, with each offering ways to enact our obligations. While the latter is tied to direct action such as the frontline activism of the Land Back movement, the former can be accomplished through the arts, since as Alex points out they “are a gateway for difficult, pressing discussions; a means to call in everyone to act, to care for our Home.”

TOP: “Ha.di.g h.jih.so’ gé.h :’” from the series The land we are and have always been // tsih. sa:né:yohs (when you are healing), 2020.

CENTRE: “Oh.né.ga.nohs” from the series The land we are and have always been // tsih. sa:né:yohs (when you are healing), 2020.

BOTTOM: “Oh.ne.g’a.gah” from the series Onákdo:t, 2018.

NOTE Sections of this article were originally published in the March 2021 issue of PhotoLife under the title “Finding Home.” photo ED 25

BLURRED BLURRED LINES LINES Art, journalism, documentation, and undeniable subjectivity A conversation between photographers

JACKIE DIVES & KATE SCHNEIDER hosted by Rita Godlevskis 26 photo ED

Kate Schneider, Landscapes of Resistance A look at the individuals and landscapes in water protector communities in the U.S. From the Keystone XL and DAPL pipelines in the Great Plains to the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, these communities are on the frontlines of North American land and water issues.

Mesa. Two Rivers camp, Presidio County, Texas. February 2017. photo ED 27

KATE SCHNEIDER is an artist of settler ancestry living in Tkaronto (Toronto). Her artistic practice is engaged with activism, political culture, and environmental social justice. www.kateschneider.net

RG: Briefly, how would you describe your recent works?

JD: I do a lot of work around the overdose crisis and my choice to be a childfree person in this world. Undoubtedly these things are related for me, although that bridge hasn’t really been crossed yet in the actual work.

My personal experience of the overdose crisis is linked to the way that my dad died. He died from an overdose in 2017. Even though I had been working in that realm already in my photojournalism practice — simply because it’s a major issue in my city — this topic became deeply personal. At that point, the work itself also shifted into more of an art realm, more so than photojournalism.

JACKIE DIVES is a Vancouver-based (the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam Indian Band, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations) editorial photographer who divides her time between her personal photography projects and commissions for media clients such as The Globe and Mail and The New York Times. www.jackiedives.com

The work related to being childfree is also deeply personal. So, I guess you could say that I make work around things that are happening to me.

KS: Landscapes of Resistance was a body of work that began with the Keystone XL Pipeline that led me to Standing Rock. I later started looking at activist camps across Turtle Island. I didn’t photograph them like you would expect to see

Kate Schneider, Trumpgrabs An archive of news alerts Kate screen grabbed on her phone between 2017and 2021.The alerts are juxtaposed with a wallpaper image 28 photo ED

an environmental protest camp looking like.

They are very quiet images, very much focused on the architecture of these spaces and people’s engagement with the land itself.

RG: What principles and ethics guide your practice?

JD: Increasingly, I find I don’t want to tell other people’s stories, and I’m choosing stories that make sense for me to tell. This is a constantly evolving part of my practice. A lot of consideration needs to go into why a particular person tells a particular story. It’s very important for the journalist to have a nuanced understanding of the topic and those who are being affected. You don’t have to have that through personal experience necessarily, but possibly through a lot of education. I am very opposed to people parachuting in and telling a story they know nothing about. I still witness that daily happening.

My particular formula for telling stories around the overdose crisis is partly an education component and also an understanding that I’m not the expert. I am paying attention to, and being thoughtful about, what the subjects want to say, talk about, and highlight. My kind of

of a tranquil sunset. This stereotypically sublime image takes on an ominous quality when paired with news about bombings, FBI investigations, and the

dismantling of the Obama Administration’s climate legacy. As a guerrilla art series, presentations of the work include postering in urban environments.

Kate Schneider, Landscapes of Resistance.

Action led by the International Indigenous Youth Council & Spectral Q. Turtle Island between the Oceti Sakowin and Sacred Stone camps, North Dakota. November 2016.

Kate Schneider, Landscapes of Resistance.

Defend Big Bend.Two Rivers camp, Presidio County, Texas. February 2017.

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portraiture for this is one of extreme consent. I don’t ask people if they would like to participate. I put it out into the world that I’m doing this project, and I wait for people to come to me. I think that that is the most explicit form of consent that I can engage in. When you ask someone for their portrait, you’re automatically changing the power dynamic. My portrait series of people who have lost a loved one to an overdose has proven to be really valuable for the person, because many people end up finding great healing in that process.

JD: My fear is that I’m seen as too close to the issue and unable to make the right judgment calls, also known as not making “poverty porn” photographs. That makes me furious because I’m not too close to the issue, I understand the issue.

My commissioned work can be more tricky. There can be a lot of pressure for me to make images that I consider to be “poverty porn” and I have to say no over and over again to these directions, at the risk of losing my job. I draw the line at photographs of people using drugs. I do not think that is necessary. We all know what drug use looks like. It’s an intimate, personal experience for the person using drugs. Overall, it’s incredibly re-stigmatizing and absolutely useless for the story. But that’s what companies want to see because of the old notion that if “it bleeds, it leads.” I don’t believe in that.

The thing that I hated the most is when a fellow activist would talk to me about my photography and say, “Thank you for the service you’ve done.” But I don’t feel like the photographs did much. I felt that washing dishes and calling people to come out to the event was more valuable.

KS: It’s interesting listening to Jackie because you sound like me around five years ago. While working on the Keystone XL project, I was in a close-knit community helping people make signs in addition to photographing. This made me feel like I was part of the activity and part of the work being done to protect the land. For me activism is about community. I sometimes call myself a recovering photojournalist. I wasn’t taken seriously by editors. The moment I started blurring the line between journalist and activist, I was not getting work.

KS: I feel more valuable doing something different. I mean, this kind of work is mentally taxing. I miss doing documentary work, but I just needed a break. There’s a particular burden in wanting to do it right.

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KS: I have similar experiences. With Landscapes of Resistance, editors and publishers come in with a preconceived idea of what the story is and are trying to find information and photographs that match. They’re not necessarily trying to tell the actual story.

JD: They’re both valuable, necessary, and important. I remind myself not to feel bad for not doing more, because my role is to make the pictures. And I am really good at it: creating incredible documentation that is true to the people within the cause.

RG: Speaking of value, what do you hope to accomplish by creating these images?

JD: As a photojournalist, one of my objectives is to simply document history and bring attention to people’s stories. For my

Jackie Dives, from the Grief Point series. An ongoing project featuring people who have lost a family member to a drug overdose.

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personal work, I want people to feel seen, which comes from me not feeling seen. I want to create that space for me and others.

KS: I’m mainly interested in how people engage with their environment. While that may sound very basic, we live in a society where people are increasingly completely abstracted from the land that feeds them, waters them, and houses them.

I’ve always had a very deep relationship with land. When I meet people who also have a deep kinship and relationship to place, I feel that they get me.

We’re living in such an interesting political moment when there’s a large swath of us who are screaming at the clouds about what’s happening to our environment and the others are happily filling up our cars for $2 a litre.

In this context, I was interested in finding out what makes a person want to go to a protest camp. And how do they create that space? Most of the images that I took were of people building their camp community through structures on the land. I wasn’t interested in the protests.

KS: I agree, to a point. I think it’s part of a colonialist system to accept that a person can be objective or just get rid of their subjectivity. When I was in journalism school, the Iraq War was happening, and I went to a protest. I was included in a photo on the front page of the newspaper. My journalism professor got so mad at me. She said, “You’re a journalist,” but I thought, “I’m a human being first.” That was the moment of break for me.

That said, when we look at the World Press winners every year, none of that work is objective. Awards are given for subjectivity.

So why do we put ourselves in these structures when really at the end of the day we don’t actually believe in them?

At the same time, I do think the line exists for a reason, although I don’t agree with it. If we don’t have that line, we have Tucker Carlson. Be objective or be Tucker Carlson.

In a way, my Trumpgrabs project is a critique of journalism and documentary photography, even though the project is a collection of screenshots from my phone displaying the clickbait titles we receive as news.

RG: What do you consider the boundaries between journalism, advocacy, and activism?

RG: How do you sustain your energy for the work that you do, engaging these thorny questions?

JD: That question implies that there are boundaries. We come from a school of journalism where you need to be objective, a concept upheld by the white, patriarchal status quo. When, in fact, objectivity is impossible. For example, who gets literally cropped out of an image and who gets included is inherently subjective. I’m not interested in being objective. I’m interested in being truthful.

Kate: I’m a failed editorial photographer. I couldn’t do it. For my mental health, my physical health, for my financial health.

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KS: It’s really difficult. Journalism doesn’t pay enough. The amount of work you have to do in order to stay afloat is physically impossible, and I don’t want to live below the poverty line. I had

“ AS A PHOTOJOURNALIST, ONE OF MY OBJECTIVES IS TO SIMPLY DOCUMENT HISTORY AND BRING ATTENTION TO PEOPLE’S STORIES.”

Jackie Dives From the Grief Point series. An ongoing project featuring people who have lost a family member to a drug overdose.

this idea that if you worked hard enough you would eventually get there. But there’s no “there” that’s sustainable in the current journalism landscape in Canada.

KS: And you shouldn’t [live below the poverty line]. I too love journalism, but it doesn’t love me back. When I realized I needed a break from documentary-based work, I took that break. I got a job with a pension. Sometimes I feel like I gave up or I quit too

soon, but I struggled between doing editorial photography work and teaching. I need my mental health and my physical health to be a priority. I’m going to do this in a way that makes sense to me, which means that I make photo-related work furiously on the weekends. I figured out a way to practice and also realized that you can be an activist in many different ways.

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A WITNESS WITH A CAMERA AMBER BRACKEN is an

award-winning photographer, known for her unflinching coverage of Indigenous resistance, from Standing Rock to Wet’suwet’en.

Laurence Butet-Roch spoke to her about the responsibilities that come with being a witness to some of today’s defining movements.

LBR. What led you to photograph stories related to

Indigenous rights, environmental defence, and land reclamation, including the opposition to the Coastal GasLink Pipeline (CGL) in Wet’suwet’en territory?

AB. I’d say it began by looking around my neighbourhood

in Edmonton. When I started freelancing in 2014, I was also volunteering at iHuman Youth Society, which provides vulnerable youth, like those experiencing housing insecurity, with creative outlets. A vast majority were Indigenous. As I worked with them, I learned more about their experiences. It was like unravelling a strand on a wool sweater; paying attention to the young people in my community cued me to the persistence of intergenerational trauma, its roots in the residential school system, specifically, and, more generally, colonization.

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“ I’m there as an observer. My pictures show what is and has been the experience of so many Indigenous people for the last 150 years.”

Sabina Dennis stands her ground as police dismantle the barricade to enforce the injunction filed by Coastal GasLink Pipeline at the Gidimt’en checkpoint near Houston, British Columbia on January 7, 2019. The pipeline company were

given a permit but the Office of the Wet’suwet’en, who have jurisdiction over the territory in question, have never given consent. photo ED 35

Some of the youths were involved in the Tar Sands healing marches and I remember an instance, in 2015, when one was carrying a sign that read “Take me to Unist’ot’en,” I’d never heard of Unist’ot’en and I was intrigued. For well over a decade, natural resources companies have had their eyes on the mostly untouched land between Smithers in British Columbia and the Pacific Coast, and Wet’suwet’en have occupied their territory to defend it. Repeatedly, the nation said no to resource projects, mainly to protect the local salmon population and preserve their way of life on what has become a rare intact ecosystem in their territory. Then along came the Coastal GasLink Pipeline (CGL). The hereditary chiefs continued to say no; but under current Canadian law, there is a duty to consult impacted Indigenous nations, not a duty to gain consent, and the government granted the CGL permits anyway.

LBR. How has documenting confrontations between Indigenous

land defenders, corporations, and authorities informed how you think about the role of photojournalists overall?

AB. My job, fundamentally, is to photograph stories that matter to

public discourse. In Wet’suwet’en territory, the story is obviously important to the discourse, but it seems like it’s inconvenient for powerholders. The RCMP have been quite effective at keeping this critical contemporary issue out of the public eye. The area is remote with difficult terrain and has roads branching from a single main logging road. RCMP can easily restrict access by blocking points on that main road. So, overall, it’s made me more stubborn: more committed to showing whatever it is they don’t want me to see.

LBR. You’re strongly committed to documenting the contemporary

iterations and impacts of colonization. What distinguishes you from being an activist?

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AB. I don’t believe that it’s activism to want to see our country

clearly. I’m not creating or taking part in the situations I report on.

I’m there as an observer. My pictures show what is and has been the experience of so many Indigenous people for the last 150 years, which is so-called “progress” at gunpoint. All I did was stay long enough for evidence of that to happen in front of my camera.

I often get that question, and I think part of the reason is that the issues I’m covering cut to the core of the Canadian identity. By being present, by witnessing what is happening in places such as Wet’suwet’en territory, photographers and writers are validating experiences that challenge what Canada thinks it is. And that hits a nerve. For some, it can be tempting to cast me as just another activist or radical, rather than a reporter, because it’s easier to try to dismiss my credibility than acknowledge that it is normal, in 2022, for Indigenous people to be met with a gun or criminalization when they say no to the exploitation of their land.

LBR. Practically, what are some of the guidelines you follow to

avoid crossing the line and being perceived as an activist?

AB. I never forget that my role is that of a journalist, and I’m strict about

how I conduct myself. No matter the story, I uphold the same principles: transparency, accountability, fairness, and editorial independence.

I always pay my own way. In Wet’suwet’en, I track how many days I spend at the camp and calculate how many resources I’ve used and make sure to pay my share. If I’m tagging along with someone who’s driving to check out the farther reaches of the territory, I’ll pay for gas. And, I do my part. In places like bush camps, you rely on cooperativeness to survive, especially in the winter. I’m not going to sit around and have people serve me; so I will do what’s needed to contribute to my or other people’s survival, such as cooking

“ My job, fundamentally, is to photograph stories that matter to public discourse.”

LEFT: The Lightning family rests together after a feast in memory of their sister, who died from suicide. 2018.

Centre: Swallows at the Muskowekwan Indian Residential School, a part of a system of schools that were designed to sever Indigenous children from their culture, near Lestock, Saskatchewan on June 22, 2021. The community has just begun to search

and has already found 35 graves in an area behind the institution.

Right: Aimee signs her mother’s memorial, in the place where her body was found, after visiting it for the first time since it had been discovered there in 2012. An aunt who Aimee isn’t on good terms with has her mom’s ashes. Without a grave to visit, Aimee feels disconnected from her mom.

and cleaning. But, I won’t do anything that contributes to their actions, such as keeping watch. I won’t carry a radio because I will never be the intermediary between the police and the camp. I won’t participate in any building, reinforcement, or anything related to protest activity. Sometimes people forget because we were doing the dishes together the night before, so I’m explicit about reminding them. I make sure that everyone is clear on why I’m there, who I work for, and what my role is.

but consistently. We need to establish and enforce clear rules that uphold our right to access the spaces where important stories are happening. We can’t let the authorities think it’s normal to dictate who, how, and where journalists can cover a story, to see events unfold only from their managed vantage points. As public servants police need to be accountable to the public and in the public eye when they are doing their jobs. We can’t allow them to target and arrest us either because it creates a precedent that makes it hard for us to work, to bear witness.

LBR. Last December, you were arrested along with land defenders

and another journalist when the RCMP raided the Coyote Camp in Wet’suwet’en. This turn of events suggests that despite your clear stance as media, the authorities may still see you differently.

LBR. Is that why it’s important for you to make the distinction

between activism and journalism?

AB. It would be rather self-serving to make that distinction solely

AB. Regardless of how the RCMP may see me, Canadian courts

I wrestle with the way my arrest became such a big headline. It took a lot of attention away from what was happening on the land. I didn’t want to be part of the story. But when the police arrested me, I became an active player, despite my intentions.

because I want to avoid being arrested. Both activism and journalism have an important and different role to play in this world: respectively to act and to witness. But when you’re a journalist, you’ve made a commitment to follow a structure that confers credibility to your accounts, you’ve invested your entire career in that credibility. It’s not just about the act of taking a photograph, it’s the guidelines and rules that you follow that make you a credible witness. And we need credible witnesses, especially in this post-truth, disinformation era.

What became clear to me, as a result, is that we need to fight for media rights in this country, not just when journalists are arrested,

www.amberbracken.com

have upheld the rights of journalists like me to report in injunction zones and specifically on Indigenous issues.

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Danielle (Dani) Khan Da Silva is the founder and executive director of Photographers Without Borders (PWB). She is an internationally acclaimed and award-winning South Asian/ Portuguese photographer/filmmaker, as well as a land protector, scholar, and activist.

AN ETHICAL PHOTOGRAPHY PRACTICE WORDS AND IMAGES BY DANIELLE KHAN DA SILVA

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TOP LEFT: A young woman looks out across the village at Guinjata Bay, Mozambique. This image was created for Love the Oceans, an organization that works with the local community to create a marine-protected area as well as an eco-tourism economy.

LEFT: A young man stands proudly with his horse at the Pushkar Camel Fair in India. From an ongoing series about our connections to non-human beings.

RIGHT: A young Mongolian nomad plays with my scarf in the wind. This image was created for an organization called Ger to Ger that supports Indigenous nomadic peoples in continuing their way of being in times when climate change, technology, and looming colonization threatens it.

Our brains love good storytelling. In fact, humans are hardwired for storytelling as a means of survival and protecting ourselves.

According to Paul J. Zak, the founding director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies and a professor at Claremont Graduate University, stories that we can relate to trigger the release of a neurochemical called oxytocin, a hormone associated with connection and bonding. Paul’s work also shows that some stories produce more activity in the brain than others. Humans especially love stories about strong characters overcoming adversity for some sort of worthy outcome. Powerful journalists, filmmakers, and storytellers of all kinds know this.

Great stories can make a significant impact in terms of dollars. The Significant Objects study by Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn in 2009 “demonstrated that the effect of narrative on any given object’s subjective value can be measured objectively.” The experimenters had 100 writers create stories about items found at garage sales totalling $129 worth of items. They then sold them on eBay. The result? A 2700 percent increase in the prices for a net profit of $3.6 million, demonstrating the power of story — that ordinary objects could be transformed into significant objects just through story.

Because stories can be so persuasive, powerful and influential, it has become clearer over time that storytellers have a certain

privilege. And of course with privilege, comes responsibility.

Unfortunately, a legacy of extraction and exploitation is attached to the history of storytelling. For a long time, the story or belief of white supremacy, for example, was used to justify the capture, enslavement, and display of Indigenous human beings and humans with Black and Brown skin.

I am personally exhausted by the racism towards people from India, where my ancestors are from, which comes from exported stories that perpetuate narratives of “poverty porn,” of slums and “slumdogs,” and of white saviours and missionaries. Relatively recently, National Geographic issued an apology for the racist history of their publication.

There are obvious problems with the narratives that the stories we tell perpetuate. This is why it is so important to develop ethical literacy and to think about decolonizing our storytelling practices.

We just haven’t been telling the whole truth. As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie so elegantly demonstrates in a TED talk, there is danger in these single-story narratives.

This new reality can be uncomfortable for many. photo ED 39

I truly believe that each of us has a place in storytelling. Instead of running from discomfort, I encourage photographers to embrace it. With discomfort comes great transformation, and with transformation we become even greater storytellers.

I offer these brief tips for those starting on the path of developing ethical literacy in their practice: 1. Intention.

Start with a clear intention. What is your purpose in pursuing the story you are pursuing? What destination are you steering us to with your story?

If storytellers cannot imagine a place and cannot picture it in their minds, there lies an inherent danger in perpetuating and propagating certain stories and narratives that we have simply learned. We’ve all made some ethical missteps. Earlier in my career, for example, I documented a groundbreaking animal sanctuary that prioritizes the wellbeing of its animals and does its best to avoid exploiting them with touristy animal encounters to fund their project. I was privileged to be one of the few people admitted into the animal enclosures, and the Howler monkeys and Capuchins and Spider monkeys were quite friendly. Someone else created an image of me holding a Howler monkey that had jumped into my arms, and I subsequently posted it on Facebook.

I’ve since deleted that image.

My ethics have changed since then, and today I would never post an image of me holding an animal that is meant to be wild. Why? Because when I think of my intention today, it is to conserve our wild places, to help humans step into our roles as caretakers, and to promote healthy relationships between humans and their surroundings. The image of me and the Howler monkey does not take me closer to my intention. In fact, it’s a selfish act that distances me from it. I do not believe that the world would be a better place if more people were encouraged to have close wildlife interactions, and I also believe those types of images and stories lead to more damage than good, which is evidenced by the state of our oceans, our forests, and in how we have continued to exploit Mother Earth as well as human and non-human beings in our “race to the bottom.”

If we start with a clear intention, it indicates we have done the research and the deep thinking required to move forward.

2. Relationships and reciprocity.

Build these into your practice. In India, people often refer to one another by familial terms even if you are not blood related: “auntie,” “sister,” and “mother,” are all commonly used when I visit people I love. The same goes in Indonesia where I spend a lot of my time. In many Indigenous cultures, there is a saying “all my relations.” We are a human family, and when we start treating each other as such, everything changes. The power dynamics change. I mean, would you treat a family member as if they were an animal in a zoo? Would you walk up to them and start snapping away with your camera in their face? We probably wouldn’t. But something strange happens when privileged photographers photograph equity-seeking communities, especially in the Global South.

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Suddenly it’s okay to photograph other people’s children, or to photograph houseless people This type of zoo mentality comes from entitlement. It’s selfish. And it’s a one-way street. For a long time, we have consciously or unconsciously emulated the colonial processes of extraction and exploitation in our photography practices. We benefit financially without disclosing how we are benefiting. We are sneaky in how we obtain consent. On the contrary, in a relationship, there is reciprocity and accountability.

There is free and prior informed consent. And yes, a relationship indicates a possible bias. However, objectivity is a fallacy. We all come with limited life experience and preconceptions. To be objective would have to mean that only one reality exists, when in fact there are many realities occurring all at once, depending on which perspective you hold.

3. Free and prior informed consent (FPIC).

This, to me, is one of the most thorough consent models that applies to storytellers. According to the United Nations, “FPIC is a principle protected by international human rights standards that state, ‘all peoples have the right to self-determination’ and — linked to the right to self-determination — ‘all peoples have the right to freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.’ Backing FPIC are the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the International Labour Organization Convention 169, which are the most powerful and comprehensive international instruments that recognize the plights of Indigenous Peoples and defend their rights.” You can find out more about this model here: www.un.org/development/ desa/indigenouspeoples/publications/2016/10/free-prior-andinformed-consent-an-indigenous-peoples-right-and-a-goodpractice-for-local-communities-fao/ 4. Words matter.

The narratives, words, and frames we use make a difference.

These choices reflect how we’re thinking as we are telling a story. What brings us closer to our intention? The language of photography can be problematic. We use terms such as “shoot,” “capture,” “headshot,” “subject,” and so on, without really thinking of where these words come from or how they perpetuate problematic frameworks. Even some camera functions still use the terms “master” and “slave.”

5. Follow a code of ethics.

It’s always good to have personal ethics and principles to reference. This resource from Photographers Without Borders is freely available: www.photographerswithoutborders.org/codeof-ethics So where are we going? What stories do we tell to get us there?

PWB is a small non-profit organization run by dedicated staff and volunteers that also offers certification courses to help you on your path to becoming a more ethical and impactful storyteller. www.photographerswithoutborders.org

Imagining an archive of civil rights activism

BY GABRIELLE MOSER

A GRAINY BLACK and white photograph shows a 32-year-old Black woman, Viola Desmond, standing in line to purchase a ticket in the lobby of the Roseland Theatre, a cinema in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. It is November 8th, 1946, and Desmond’s hair is perfectly coiffed, a fur stole is draped over her shoulders to ward off the Atlantic autumn air, and a small handbag is tucked into the crook of an elbow. There is confusion at the ticket booth: Desmond requests admission to the orchestra level, but when she attempts to take a seat on the lower level, the white usher stops her and tells her she holds a ticket for the balcony and must sit upstairs. Thinking there has been a mistake, Desmond returns to the cashier and again requests a downstairs ticket, offering to pay the 10-cent difference in cost. She has poor distance vision, she explains, and needs to sit nearer to the screen in order to see. The white cashier tells her, “I’m not permitted to sell downstairs tickets to you people.” The photograph cannot capture these verbal exchanges but registers them nonetheless.

The next image is so dimly lit, the figures are nearly obscured, but we can just make out Desmond’s profile in the back of the orchestra, where she has turned in her seat to respond to the theatre manager standing in the aisle. He demands that she leave, threatening to call the police. In her affidavit, Desmond would recount that the manager loudly confronted her, explaining the back of her ticket confirmed

the theatre’s right to “refuse admission to any objectionable person.” She, in return, politely asked if he could acquire a downstairs ticket for her, at which point he became angry and threatened to have her thrown out. An exterior view of the cinema, taken from the sidewalk a few moments later, shows Desmond being carried out of the building towards a taxi waiting at the curb. Starkly lit by the camera’s glaring flash, Desmond’s shoulders are tightly grasped by a police officer while Henry MacNeil, the white theatre manager, carries her feet. A shoe is missing, as is her handbag. In an image taken an hour later, Desmond is in a county jail cell, awaiting arraignment the following day. Her shoe has been retrieved, as has her purse, and she sits bolt upright on a cot: a single bare bulb casts shadows on the cinderblock wall behind her.

Two more photographs, taken days later in the bleak light of a physician’s exam room, document bruises on Desmond’s shoulders and ankles.

These images constitute an important part of the archive of early civil rights activism in Canada, but they do not exist. They are instead “untaken photographs,” a category of images introduced by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay that do not visualize the spectacular moments of regime-made disasters and therefore “tend to evade the archival filter, or to deceive it.” But these untaken images can be imagined through their traces: the photographs taken just before, just after, or at the periphery of events.

The photograph of Desmond that does exist and has most often accompanied stories of her act of civil disobedience and her subsequent arrest and trial, is a studio portrait of her taken six years earlier. In it, Desmond gazes seriously but

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serenely into the camera, her hair immaculately styled. A heartshaped pendant at her neck and her darkly pigmented lips suggest the visit to the photo studio was a special occasion, or perhaps its inverse: that Desmond was perennially presentable, using every public appearance as an opportunity to promote her salon on Gottingen Street in Halifax, and the Desmond School of Beauty Culture, which drew students from across Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Quebec each year.

It is one of these studio portraits that took on a very different public function when it appeared on the cover of the first illustrated issue of The Clarion newspaper — the first illustrated, Black-owned newspaper in Nova Scotia — in December 1946.

Beneath Desmond’s studio portrait, under the title “Takes Action,” the text, authored by editor Carrie M. Best, tells readers a now– familiar story: that Desmond was arrested and fined 20 Canadian dollars plus 6 Canadian dollars in court costs (which is about 260 USD today), for “defrauding the Federal Government of one cent.” Under the guise of a puritanical Canadian law requiring the owners of theatres to charge patrons one cent for every ten they spent on entertainment, the Roseland Theatre manager informed the police that she had committed tax evasion by sitting in a floor level seat while holding a ticket for the balcony, a space that was, as Desmond discovered, implicitly segregated for “coloured people.” No mention of race, nor of segregation, was made in the charges nor in any of the subsequent court proceedings. The Clarion’s coverage of Desmond’s arrest ends with her biography, outlining her education and family members, and includes an appeal to readers to donate to her legal defence fund through the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People.

1900s as free Black citizens moved north to avoid the racist policies of the Jim Crow laws in the United States. The growing Black population in Canada confronted equally discriminatory policies and practices, in ways that were far more nefarious.

Unlike Jim Crow law in much of the southern United States, which mandated racial segregation, Canadian segregation was not enacted by a set of laws, but was nonetheless completely legal. The federal government hid behind a non-interference policy that allowed individual businesses to decide whom to serve and to whom to refuse service. As a result, much of the country had de facto racial segregation — in housing, schooling, juries, the military, and even cemeteries, as well as restaurants, bars, theatres, and hotels — even as the law purported to protect all subjects of the dominion equally.

It was against this backdrop of quiet, racialized violence that The Clarion deployed family photographs.

The Clarion’s particular approach to using everyday, domestic images like Desmond’s portrait, alongside family photographs, on their cover and in their pages demonstrates an urge to narrate and represent Black racism as an everyday event in the Atlantic region, and the wider national landscape, in the 1940s — a history that the Canadian national imaginary has suppressed to the point of near invisibility. At the time of The Clarion’s first issue in 1946, for instance, Nova Scotia had the largest Black population of any province in Canada, a concentration originally produced through the transatlantic slave trade, which then intensified through a series of northerly migrations beginning in the 1790s and accelerating in the early

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It was against this backdrop of quiet, racialized violence that The Clarion deployed family photographs starting with a family photograph of the Prevoe family that appeared on their cover (the first to be illustrated with a photograph) in February 1947. Subsequent issues featured group portraits of the Phyllis Wheatley Business Girls Club of Halifax and the Criterion Club. In each instance, sitters adapted the poses and dress of middle-class culture to present themselves as citizens in the absence of any other recognizable visual lexicon of photographic subjectivity. The family and group portraits featured on The Clarion’s cover were not illustrations of an urgent story of civil rights violations, as was the case with Desmond’s portrait, but were offered without explanation. Obviously, for a community newspaper with limited resources, soliciting family and snapshot photography from readers was an easy solution to the problem of not being able to afford a staff photographer. But there is a reliance on family units and affiliative groups in The Clarion that suggests these images of collectivity also fulfilled a semantic function.

Dominant histories of photography have tended to assume that photojournalism is most appropriate for documenting the loud, iconic events of public history, while family photography tends to be overlooked as banal, subjective, and private; as a mode that, at its worst, works to re-inscribe patriarchal, heterosexist, and middle–class ideologies. I want to suggest, however, that The Clarion presented family photographs alongside stories of racial violence to signal that acts of racial discrimination were as common as the act of taking a snapshot portrait. And, by entering homes alongside international news coverage of postwar destruction and reconstruction, and of US segregation, such as those covered by photojournalists, these community

newspapers also framed everyday acts of discrimination as acts of violence. These “quiet” images therefore speak to the quiet nature of racial violence in Canada: a quietness, or “politeness,” to use a national stereotype, that made it difficult to publicly challenge and contest.

I want to conclude by turning briefly to the sudden reappearance of Desmond’s portrait in the Canadian national imaginary, and to ask whether this might present an opportunity for contemporary viewers to do reparative work with her image.

Desmond died at a young age, in 1956. It was only through the efforts of her sister that her story entered the national public record. In 2010, she was the first Canadian to be posthumously pardoned by the Nova Scotia Government, in an order signed by the province’s first Black Lieutenant Governor, Mayann Francis. Canada Post then issued a commemorative stamp featuring her in 2012, and in 2018, Desmond became the first Canadian woman to appear on the country’s 10-dollar bill.

This very public circulation of Desmond’s private portrait is a mnemonic device for all the untaken photographs of her acts of resistance: an opportunity to see and recognize her experiences of segregation as forms of the pervasive and sometimes unseeable violence that structures Canadian society.

Cover images from the first illustrated issues of The Clarion newspaper.

Left to right: vol. II, no. 3, February 15, 1947; vol. I, no. 1, December 1946; vol. II, no. 4, February 28, 1947.

A version of this text previously appeared as an op-ed article in the Toronto Star (November 15, 2019). This essay is derived in part from an article published in Visual Studies (2021), available online: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1472586X.2020.1827973

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CAROLE CONDÉ + KARL BEVERIDGE

DEMOCRATIZING ART An interview by Ingrid Forster

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ARTISTS CAROLE CONDÉ AND KARL BEVERIDGE have navigated working as both activists and artists for over 45 years. The duo began making political art in the 1970s after questioning the art world’s lack of connection with working people. Carole and Karl’s socially and politically engaged practice is rooted in collaboration and dialogue with trade unions, community organizations, artists, and activists.

Meticulously constructed and staged photographic works combine arresting visual aesthetics with powerful storytelling to address contemporary social, political, and cultural issues. Photomontage, tableau vivant, and techniques often used in painting are their trademarks in crafted, layered images that ask the viewer to think critically about social values.

Carole Condé + Karl Beveridge, “The Fall of Water,” 2006–07.

Beyond their practice, Carole and Karl have endeavoured to democratize access to the arts and cultural resources, as well as to improve working conditions for artists and arts workers in Canada. They are founding members of the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre (WAHC) and the Mayworks Festival of Working People and the Arts. They are actively involved with Canadian Artists’ Representation (CARFAC) and A Space Gallery. For their contributions, they were awarded the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts for Artistic Achievement. photo ED 45

IF: What are some of the challenges of making work that is socially and politically engaged?

KB: In the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, politics wasn’t considered to be a legitimate subject for art. While there is more openness to the kind of work we’re doing today, the challenge now is how to be politically and socially relevant, as well as aesthetically or culturally current.

CC: It’s always been equally important for us not only to develop political social content, but also to make it interesting and formally challenging. There was this debate, particularly in the ’90s and early 2000s, between what was called process and product. Some artists believed that the process was the critical thing and whatever product came out didn’t matter. Then there were others who believed that what you made was the important part. We’ve always tried to maintain a certain balance, probably leaning slightly more towards the product. For us the process is critical, but we don’t necessarily believe the process has to be out front. The work that you create has to stand up in the end, not only socially and politically, but also aesthetically and culturally.

IF: Working collaboratively with communities and workers is an important part of your artistic process. You aren’t just making work about them, but with them and for them.

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KB: Absolutely. When we began questioning the mainstream art world back in the ’70s, trade unions appeared to us as not only political entities, but as the major organization of what you could call “ordinary people.” What was evident to us as artists was that if we really wanted to work with them, we had to find some mechanism that could quickly create connection and a context in which we could work. Unions were one of the obvious choices: they are a kind of major civil society organization. Raymond Williams said that the greatest cultural achievement of the working class is unions.

CC: We are getting their voices into spaces that would not be heard otherwise, like in an art gallery. Their voices are not necessarily being heard in that institution and we are giving them a space to be able to see themselves represented and their positions put forward.

IF: How has photography proved to be a powerful tool for telling the stories you want to tell?

KB: Initially, what was attractive to us about photography as opposed to painting, which is a more individual practice, is that it’s a medium that lends itself well to collective production. It is also a familiar language that the people we worked with felt comfortable with and could relate to. However, our photographs

LEFT: Carole Condé + Karl Beveridge, “Burial at Oshawa,” (Part 6), from the series Oshawa: A History of Local 222, 2019.

RIGHT: Carole Condé + Karl Beveridge, “Ill Wind: Mary-Ellen and Peggy,” 2001.

are a lot like paintings in the way they are constructed, and we work very hard to make them like that.

IF: Can you describe the visual language in your work?

CC: Our images are often referred to as puzzles. You have to decode them, deconstruct them, and read through them. Using actors, staging the photographs, and using props allows us to tell a more cohesive and complex narrative without compromising the individuals whose stories we are telling. Storytelling is important to us: how you piece an image together, from the kinds of props you put in and the poses you establish, to the kinds of characters that you incorporate. Because many of the pieces we do are a series, they’re sort of like a photo novella or a comic strip that tell a story.

IF: How does this tie in with your efforts to build visual literacy?

KB: Our society is saturated with visual imagery and people have become kind of visually illiterate: glossing over images without a deeper understanding. Just as you would when you read anything else, you need to read an image critically. You should be questioning the image and saying, why is that there? What is being said? We feel that it’s important to create images that are readable, that need to be read, because we should be looking at things critically and closely.

People often incorrectly assume that if you want to engage a working-class audience you have to simplify things. We’re making work that not only reflects and is of interest to working class people, but also work that challenges them. We used to make the joke that the art world accuses us of being too didactic and the labour world accuses us of being too complex and, in a sense, we are in between, playing that middle ground.

IF: You mentioned that you feel there has been a shift recently towards audiences being more receptive to socially and politically driven work. Do you feel more supported now than you did when you both began making this type of work?

KB: We’re getting more support now than we would have 10 years ago and a lot more than we would have gotten 20 years ago.

But, I want to note that we have been well supported through all those periods. We’ve received grants and exhibitions, but most importantly, support has come from the arts community itself: other artists and arts workers.

CC: And artist-run spaces. That is the essence of how we’ve survived or how art that has content in it survived. Otherwise, you’ve got private dealers and you’ve got somebody trying to sell an object and the visual look of it to a collector. Whereas when you get involved showing in a place like A Space Gallery, for photo ED 47

example, you’ll find artists who have a political practice, that’s the basis for their support, within the arts community itself and within the artist-run movement and smaller public institutions.

questions in the back of our heads and it was one of the things that politicized us. We asked ourselves why we were making work that people had no interest in beyond the art world itself.

IF: Why is making the art world more accessible and democratic important to you?

KB: Culture is of the people and the world we live in. It seems logical that the art that is made, which is a formal culture, connects to that informal culture of everyday life. It’s really about the audience/people being part of what that whole process is. If we are “professionals” creating big art statements, those need to be accessible to the informal culture/people.

CC: It has always struck us as strange, right from the beginning of our careers when we were doing more minimalist and abstract work, that nobody really felt comfortable walking into a gallery.

It also struck us as strange that if we are talking about the world around us and the world around us doesn’t want to see it [the artwork], there’s something not right. It’s always been one of the 48 photo ED

CC: If you look at who are on the boards of public arts institutions such as the Art Gallery of Ontario, for example, they are mostly

Carole Condé + Karl Beveridge, “The Plague,” 2009.

Carole Condé + Karl Beveridge, “Virulence I”

“ OUR IMAGES ARE OFTEN REFERRED TO AS PUZZLES. YOU HAVE TO DECODE THEM, DECONSTRUCT THEM, AND READ THROUGH THEM.”

wealthy collectors and business people. Occasionally, you might find a politician or even an artist. Ordinary working people have little say in what gets made and seen in the arts. To democratize culture means that culture should be a public undertaking, that people should have a role in the production and reception of the arts. It’s not saying that everyone should be an artist, but that the arts should have some connection to people’s lives and experiences.

Like education and health care, the arts and culture should be a public right. This means that cultural access is a political issue.

KB: It’s critical that you maintain a connection to the community you’re working with, and, in a sense, to become part of that community.

IF: What advice do you have for emerging artists who might want to follow in your footsteps?

condebeveridge.ca

CC: If the audience in the art world is having a hard time reading your work or understanding it, you just say fuck the art world.

On the other hand, it’s important to get the community that you’re in — whether it’s a union or a women’s movement, etc. — as an audience. It makes you aware of what’s not working and what is working.

L E T Y O U R C R E A T I V I T Y F L Y

FIND THE BEST ASSORTMENT OF CAMERAS, LENSES, ACCESSORIES AND MORE AT HENRY’S. SHOP IN STORE OR ONLINE AT HENRYS.COM. CONNECT WITH US @HENRYSCAMERA

THE GALLERY SUBMISSIONS BY OUR READERS

OLIVER FLECKNELL THE WATCHERS Fredericton, NB “ Change is in the air; you can smell it from behind your mask. Children are pushing politics, the government is selling weed, winter is getting warmer while summer’s heat is killing the elderly. The eternal flame now burns in the Amazon, California, and British Columbia. Lethal flooding is common around the world. But climate change is fake news. Change is coming but the super-rich resist, rebelling against the science, profiting on the laziness of humans, putting their faith in the dollars they’ve stashed on the islands. Like pirates, they stash their stolen bounty, while their workers visit food banks. The children skip school on Fridays, you won’t find them at the mall though.

They’re in the streets. They’re at the legislatures. They’re trying to teach science to the clueless politicians who only listen to the super-rich pirates that need bailout money in a “crisis.” Little do they know, not even the super-rich will survive the end of the human era. These scientists, these activists/rebels/protesters/watchers, are the only true visionaries of our future. Their intentions are pure.

Their future is unwritten.”

IG: @oliverflecknell

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HENRY VANDERSPEK Toronto, ON

EXPRESSIONS OF LOVE

One of my running routes this year took me past a post that was regularly

lockdowns, I was inspired by many who used their creativity to express hope,

updated with fresh artwork.They were all signed by someone known as “Mrs.

solidarity and love to those around them.

D”. My thanks to “Mrs. D” for taking the time to share her art for all to see.

“ While 2020 brought a great deal of hardship with the COVID pandemic and

You shared love with many and it made a difference! (Woodfield Road, near Here are a few of the creative interventions that some members of my neighbourhood publically displayed. Where we typically consider homemade signage as speaking out against something negative, these same tools in caring peoples hands help us see the world with fresh eyes, and to free us from negative perspectives that may understandably set in due to societal stress’”.

Wapole Avenue in East York)

Henry VanderSpek is a Toronto-based photographer specialising in compassionately documenting whatever is happening on the street and in the community.

From North America and Europe to the dusty roads of rural East Africa, he finds joy in capturing vibrant local atmosphere and drawing the viewer to celebrate the many ways that people live a full life.

Henry’s images have been published on TheGlobeandMail.com, BlogTO, CTV Ottawa, Vice Canada, CNN.com and he has appeared to speak about his various projects on numerous media outlets including CBC Radio’s Metro Morning, and CBC Here and Now.

www.culturesnap.ca Facebook: @CultureSnapPhotography Instagram: @culturesnap Twitter: @culture_snap

GABRIELLE DE MONTMOLLIN Welland, ON

HEAR ME CRY “ Still life photography is a genre I like to stretch beyond its traditions. This is a series, where I present arrangements of attractive objects set against backgrounds of provocative or disturbing images, sourced from my daily electronic newsfeed.

I want people to see that if they have beauty in their lives they are very lucky and privileged, but they should never forget about what is happening in the background. I highlight specific horrors so as not to allow them to be forgotten as they’re replaced by more unsettling images in the unending ‘disposable information’ that we experience, yet ignore, everyday.”

www.artishell.com IG: @demongab

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SID NAIDU Scarborough, ON

SCARBOROUGH MADE

Canadian Hip Hop Artist, Maestro Fresh Wes, 2019.

Scarborough Made at Nuit Blanche Toronto, 2019.

SCARBOROUGH MADE is a social impact documentary project we developed to champion Toronto’s East, and through this project, storytelling became our activism.

This project was our realization that we have a crucial role to play in sharing the narratives of the communities.

For too long, our neighbourhoods have been labelled ‘disadvantaged’ and lacked resources and opportunities that could improve our socioeconomic conditions. It began from a vision to capture stories in our neighbourhood, and lead to something so much more significant for the community.

Along with my fellow co-founder, Alex Narvaez, we’ve documented 34+ stories and developed three public art installations.

Scarborough is an area rich in diversity as an arrival suburb, home to people from all around the world. Growing up here, we often felt misrepresented in how traditional media outlets depicted our neighbourhoods. Narratives of culture and community had been missing in mainstream media.

We wanted to shift the negative perception of how our communities were being portrayed, so we decided to pick up the camera to document and share the stories that could highlight the everyday heroes and cultural changemakers of Scarborough.

Scarborough Made as part of BigArtTO, 2021.

We documented stories of cultural instigators like Maestro Fresh Wes, Canadian Hip Hop Pioneer and Hall of Famer who penned his hit song in our local mall and Scarborough’s own Randell Adjei - Ontario’s first poet laureate.

We documented stories of everyday heroes like the late Doris Sneddon, a 104-year-old resident who watched the neighbourhood evolve over the years, and Rookz, who went from being homeless to becoming a successful entrepreneur supporting others.

We developed public art installations to engage the community and foster the arts here. We wanted people to see and celebrate people like themselves through large-scale portraits within civic spaces.

What started as us wanting to document and share positive stories, grew to mentorship of local youth to become storytellers for their own neighbourhoods. We now have support for a second year of production with the City of Toronto, and our growing team is working on a new project under the theme of “City of Industry”.

Scarborough Made as part of ArtworxTO, Toronto’s year of public art, 2021 - 2022.

Growing up in Scarborough, there was a lack of opportunities for pursuing the arts or photography. It now feels like our work has come full circle. Championing storytelling in underserved spaces was our form of activism, to change the way people saw our community and to provide the next generation with the tools that could help them succeed as creators gave us a strong purpose, a reason to create, and amplification of new narratives.

Scarborough Made Community portrait photography, from the Resilience series, 2021.

Top two, left: by Sid Naidu Top two, right: by Alex Narvaez + Scarborough Made youth artists, Bottom row left to right: Photography by: Alicia Reid, Ferdinand Orlain, Nithursan Elamuhilan & Millicent Amurao

Curator & Creative Director, Ashley Mckenzie Barnes, 2019.

Celebrity Portrait Photographer & Visual Artist, Trevor Godhino, 2019.

Federick’s Restaurant Owner, Jennifer Lee, 2019.

Spoken Word Artist & Ontario’s first Poet Laureate: Randell Adjei, 2019.

Project co-founders, Sid Naidu + Alex Narvaez

SCARBOROUGHMADE.COM

KRISTIN MAN Vancouver, BC

A-MARE “ A-MARE” (to love-to sea) is a project about humanities connections with the sea as a metaphor. There may be many seas but ultimately, only one ocean.

Kristin Man’s work speaks to various types of connections, such as our humanity, ecology, materiality-spirituality, memories and the relationships in-between. She chooses weaving photographs of seas important to her as a means of demonstrating connection, and how if one strand is broken, the rest of the piece is impacted.

She encourages viewers of her work to question unauthentic boundaries. For example, by turning her photographs into 3D image-sculptures, she invites the viewer to explore their concept of what a photograph is.

This piece, is called, “Tribute to Zong the Slaveship”. The work is inspired by J.M.W. Turner’s painting and Marlene Nourbese Philip’s poetry on the mass killing of slaves in the ocean. It was part of her solo show “A-MARE” at Canton-sardine last year. Social justice and ecology are two top priorities of her activism.

IG: @kristin.man

@Canton.sardine

ADAM KINGSMITH Toronto, ON

“ In the 2018 I was appointed as the role of archives officer for CUPE 3903, a public sector union representing thousands of teachers and researchers at York University. What followed over the next 143 days was the longest post-secondary strike in Canadian history.

My role was to document the workings of the union and the actions of the strikers. I took hundreds of pictures on picket lines, in town-hall meetings, and during marches and demonstrations across the GTA. The images I have included use my custom fractal lenses on Ilford HP5 B&W to document the largest march of the strike in April 2018.

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The march down University avenue was to show solidarity in rejecting the forced ratification vote put forward by the employer and to celebrate the renewed energy of CUPE members to continue striking for a better contract. I intentionally used fractal lenses to document the march because I wanted to give the images a grainy, timeless quality, as if they could be from a strike in 2018 or 1918. My aim was to showcase the mass of entangled bodies and ethereal fractal reflections in the street, swaying in unison towards a shared purpose. My focus is on the continued importance of collective action and solidarity when fighting for social justice.”

IG: @8tking Twitter: @atkingsmith

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ERIN WALKER Edmonton, AB “ I ’m a queer liaison, and an ADHD whisperer. I understand my neurotypical, heteronormative privilege, and as such I use my resources and abilities to be the best support that I can for those around me who haven’t had the ease that I’ve had growing up. This is where my activism starts.

This is a story of a trans man who is navigating his way through transitioning, mental illness, and life. He’s learning to communicate his needs. He’s learning to accept himself”.

IG: @walker_visuals_ Model: Frankie Schifano / frankieschifano.com

In need of a helping hand.

Photography can notify others of how gratifying helping the planet, a community or even your own neighbourhood can be. Not to mention that pictorial activism doesn’t have to be expensive. Head to one of our auctions, fairs or sales for pre-owned equipment bargains that are fun, practical, and will give your wallet, along with the aforementioned planet, a break.

www.phsc.ca