I'm back

Inspired by Folkiebooknerd, blipping while she has Covid, and not too chipper myself, I made this self-portrait as a way of coming back to Blip. The third antibiotic is working on the sinus infection, and I am clawing my way back to the world. Standing and sitting fifty times to make a few self-portraits was exhausting, and given the size of my bedroom and my one and only 35mm lens, I couldn’t make a full-body portrait like Folkie’s, but here I am, still somewhat alive.

I’ve been curating my photos over the course of the illness, asking myself why I do what I do and whether, if I ever get well, I want to go on doing it. I spent time with Milton Rogovin, my virtual mentor, again. I have the book by Melanie Herzog called Milton Rogovin: The Making of a Social Documentary Photographer (2006). But better than that, I found that if I paid the world’s richest man $1.99, I could watch a one-hour documentary called The Rich Have Their Own Photographers, so I watched it. Twice.

Here’s what Rogovin says about his politics and his photography: “It should be obvious to everyone that when we go into an area [to make photographs] we do not do so with a ‘clean slate.’ On the contrary we come, like a turtle, carrying our prejudices, our racism, our political orientations…. I feel my priority should be to create through my photography a better understanding of the problems facing working people, the unemployed, the women, the children—the ‘forgotten ones.’ The rich have their own photographers” (p. 86). He lived to be 102, and he was still making photographs when he was 92. You can see his work and read his bio for free here, if you don’t want to pay The Man to see the documentary.

I noticed that he didn’t mention people who are living in tents and doorways in the streets, unable to earn a living wage, their children taken from them, nowhere to wash themselves or empty their bladders. Rogovin came to political consciousness during the depression. Things in the USA have gotten a lot worse since then. I wrote my own little manifesto after thinking about him in a haze of napping, coughing, and blowing my nose for two weeks:

All people should have housing, food, and the opportunity to be educated; but many do not. Capitalism, class, and white supremacy are poisons that divide us from each other, blind us to each other. So it is our job--we who see this, who care--to change it. We are here to care for each other, to laugh together, to relieve each other's suffering. So I make photographs to document those who try to change the world and those for whom it must change. Maybe some will see these photographs and feel connection with the people in them, and will be moved to do what they can to make change.

Of course I also make photographs of the children, Sue, Margie; the places I go and the people, always the people I see and love. I could stop all that if I had to. But I can't stop wanting to document the many good people working to make a better world, wanting to live in a better world: because their work gives me hope, keeps me going.