[anti-Islamophobia awareness campaign in Edmonton]

An anti-Islamophobia Awareness Campaign launched in Edmonton on August 19, 2023 with a photo exhibition and playback theatre performance.

"The Muslim Women Tell It As It Is campaign will be launched with an interactive community playback theater performance in collaboration with Thirdspace Playback Theater and an exhibition of images of diverse Muslim women taken by Faisa Omer. The same images will be advertised on ETS transit buses and LRT stations in Edmonton, for an 8 week period from August 14, 2023. Our approach recognises gendered Islamophobia, and thus centers the experiences and stories of Muslim women and girls."

Sisters Dialogue is a diverse group of Muslim women based in Amiskwacîwâskahikan, Treaty 6 Territory (Edmonton) with a goal to provide culturally safe spaces and supports for racialized Muslim women and girls through an intersectional, collaborative, and women-centered framework. We are a grassroots organization created by Muslim women for Muslim women. We came together in February 2021 in direct response to the spree of attacks on Muslim women, particularly Black Muslim women in our city. www.sistersdialogue.ca"

(text above from https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/islamophobia-awareness-campaign-with-photo-exhibition-playback-theatre-tickets-694201664867?aff=erelexpmlt)

If you are in Edmonton, be sure to visit Edmonton City Hall to see the photo exhibit which continues into September, along with an 8 week campaign on ETS buses and LRT stations.

[god as a black woman]

"Harmonia Rosales is a 33-year-old artist based Chicago who’s doing something really powerful. She’s recreating some classical paintings, but portraying God as a black woman instead."

Here's one example of her work:

Read more:

This Artist Reimagines Classic Paintings With God As A Black Woman And They're Beautiful

Harmonia Rosales' website:  https://www.harmoniarosales.com

Harmonia Rosales' Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/honeiee/

[on the importance of representation...]

Jamal Jordan writes about growing up in a world where he saw no examples of queer people of colour, and how he began taking portraits as part of changing this.

"As a child, I thought all gay people were white.

By the time I was 18 and living in Detroit, being gay was no longer a “problem” for me. I was out of the closet, and my family and friends were supportive, even encouraging. Yet, as I set off for college, and grew more comfortable calling myself an adult, a man — a gay black man — I was convinced that no one would ever date or love me.

Growing up, I had rarely seen queer characters of color in the gay young adult books I read, in episodes of “Queer as Folk” I watched or issues of “XY” or “Out” magazines I stealthily bought at Barnes & Noble."

Jamal Jordan, photographer, in Queer Love in Color

Read the rest of the article and see more portraits at: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/21/us/queer-love-in-color.html

See also https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/27/insider/brown-black-queer-and-invisible.html

[mary]

 "Courage 3.0" by Tim Okamura. Found via a tweet.

For more of Okamura's work:
https://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/en_uk/blog/tim-okamura-women-of-color-portraits

not so white after all?

I love Angélica Dass’ photographic project Humanae!  (see previous post)

So I decided to see how white I am…
… and clearly, I am not so white after all.

Ms. Dass’ method is a bit complicated, so I did this the simple way:
I had one of my daughters take my picture.
I resized a copy of the photo to be really small, so that the colours would consolidate into an average colour.
I opened the photo in Paint (yes, good old fashioned Paint) and used the eyedropper to sample that colour.
I painted the entire background in that colour.
I looked at the RGB value for that colour, and used an online service to convert it to Pantone. That’s so I know what Pantone colour I am, to put under my picture.
In my case, I am Pantone 7618 U.

[what colour are you?]

Brazilian photographer Angélica Dass is working on a large project which she calls "humanae". She takes portraits of people and then matches their skin tone to a Pantone colour, The portrait is then printed with that Pantone colour as the background. This challenges how we consider skin colour and ethnic identity,..

Watch her TED talk:


Alternate video link.

Check out Angélica Dass' website:
http://www.angelicadass.com/humanae-work-in-progress/

[these beautiful photos set trans and gender queer people free]

"An Australian photographer [Emma Leslie] created a breathtaking photo series that shows gender diverse and transgender children exactly how they want to be seen. The images are meant to give these children a voice, as transgender and gender queer people as a whole are often misunderstood."

Source

Read the whole article and see more pictures at:
http://www.attn.com/stories/7606/photo-series-trans-gender-queer-kids

[we all believe in you]

A community for those struggling with mental illness developed by survivors of mental illness because... we all believe in you.

"We All Believe in You is a rapidly growing movement developed to de-stigmatize and  de-mistify mental illness. WABIY serves to put a face to a typically faceless struggle as many live in the shame and anonymity of their disease. It is the goal of WABIY to use art, honesty, education, and community  to abolish pre-existing ideas and beliefs about mental illness. And above all, for those that are struggling with mental illness to know that they are not alone and We All Believe in You."

(from the WABIY website)

Featured on:

CTV News

http://www.weallbelieveinyou.com/

[photo session with a twist]

An interesting experiment done by Canon, showing the power of labels...




Link to video 

[red works photography]

redworks.ca profiles the amazing work of Nadya Kwandibens, an Ojibwe (Anishinaabe) from Northwest Angle #37 First Nation in Ontario, Canada.

I love her vision statement:

We, as Indigenous people, are often portrayed in history books as Nations once great; in museums as Nations frozen stoic; in the media as Nations forever troubled. These images can be despairing; however, my goal seeks to steer the positive course. If our history is a shadow, let this moment serve as light. We are musicians, lawyers, doctors, mothers and sons. We are activists, scholars, dreamers, fathers and daughters. Let us claim ourselves now and see that we are, and will always be great, thriving, balanced civilizations capable of carrying ourselves into that bright new day.

Love the photos on her site too! Check it out at www.redworks.ca!

[mc1r photo project challenges how we see race]

Thom Dunn, in a recent Upworthy article, asks:

Despite making up such a small percentage of the population, most of us have the same stereotypical image in our heads when we think of redheads: light-skinned, freckled white people with curls of flaming hair and a fiery temper to match.

Aside from the obvious issue of assigning a temperament to someone based on hair color, there's one other weird conclusion here: Why do we think that all redheads are white?

(source, emphasis added)

Michelle Marshall, a photographer based in London, has been taking portraits of redheaded people who are black or biracial. Dunn's article features some of her portraits interspersed with some of Marshall's thoughts.

Read the whole article -- easy (and beautiful) to read and thought-provoking at the same time.

Visit Michelle Marshall's website for more photos.

[re-imagining disability]

Portraits of L'Arche Daybreak members by Warren Pot. See more of them here.

Related to this, Professor Pamela Cushing discusses how photographs tell a story, and can also accomplish ethical work and confer the dignity of full personhood on their subjects.

Here's an excerpt:

However, photos can also accomplish ethical work. They can influence how we think about people who are different from us. Formal photos like portraits can be particularly transformative since they disrupt public expectations. The subject of a portrait is recognized as worthy of being photographed. The format implies that you are worthy of contemplation and commemoration. So the very acts of staging and taking the photos symbolize their membership in a valued group – those who ought to be gazed at.

(source, emphasis added)

Read her succinct and interesting post here.

[see me: picturing new york's homeless youth]

"For the Reciprocity Foundation’s 10-year anniversary, Tagore [co-founder of Reciprocity] teamed up with award-winning photographer Alex Fradkin to challenge common perceptions of homeless youth — by giving these young people the power to portray themselves on their own terms."

The result is an exhibition and a full colour book See Me: Picturing New York City’s Homeless Youth.


Check out more portraits at the See Me book website.

Read the buzzfeed article.

[touching strangers]

For six years, photographer Richard Renaldi has been working on the "Touching Strangers" project, where he asks complete strangers to pose as couples, friends or family members, and takes their portrait.

Many of the portraits show a surprising degree of comfort, even though the people in them have never met before.

And some speak of feeling connected to the other person, based on this shared experience. 

Interesting, how little it can take to connect people to one another — no matter how different, yet how rarely we connect.

Read an article "New York photographer turns strangers into friends" Link

Check out Richard's book Touching Strangers.

[homeless for the holidays]

Carl Siciliano, Executive Director of New York's Ali Forney Center, writes:

Over the past few weeks I have been meeting with homeless LGBT youth. Each young person was, at the time I met with and photographed them, struggling to survive out on the streets as they waited for one of the few youth shelter beds in New York City to open up to them.

Read the rest of his account, along with the eleven photo+words vignettes that tell the stories of some of these youth who have been rejected by their families because of their sexuality and are now living on the streets of New York:
Homeless for the holidays: portraits of New York City's homeless lgbt youth

Their experiences are not unique to New York City. LGBT youth are mistreated and kicked out by their families regularly, including families who claim to be Christian and who devoutly attend church.