Photography is my life

I had the pleasure of being apart of a workshop in 2006 at the International Center of Photography with renowned documentary photographer Joseph Rodriguez. 

Stumbling upon a recent interview with Rodriguez in the BBC, and his candid exposure of his troubled youth reminded me of my own entrance into the world of multimedia storytelling.

 

He managed to turn his life around by becoming a successful photographer - he often likes to say that his life changed from one of shooting drugs to shooting pictures.

But not everyone finds a way to break free from the cycle of offending.

His sentence informed a life-long personal interest in prison experience, and inspired his work documenting families on the wrong side of the law.

After a long bout with living on the streets, I was lucky to find a way out. For most, my life story is a bit of a fairytale but for me it’s reality. Upon acquiring my first apartment in Harlem, NY I was confronted with a reality that’s all so true for most African and Latinos living in neighbourhoods in big city’s throughout the US that used to be theirs.

Get out! We’re revitalizing the hood.

Determined not go out without a fight I introduced myself to NYC housing laws, put together my case, borrowed a friends camera to document the building violations and the rest was history. 

Not only did I win my case but I discovered the lens of my spirit. Photography.

[Photo: Papa Smurf. NYC. Part of my homeless face series]

The camera become a new tool in my bout to reach several stations in the perilous journey of a sufi. Being displaced, living as a beggar, a victim of police brutality and constantly being subjected to American injustice led me to dedicate my journey to witnessing the world’s injustice.

Writing came along later but both the camera, words and audio were self-taught instruments that have allowed me to find, strengthen and share my invisible voice.

One day into the weekend workshop Rodriguez says to me, “You need to just go out and shoot!” Five years later those words and passion have landed me in the Middle East and North Africa. Despite the hardships of not knowing where and when money will come from, rumours to ruin my credibility or jealousy I am thankful for the lessons because what don’t break you will make you.

After writing this post some two weeks ago, I come back upon reading an article profiling war photographers in the New York Times, which states:

The moral implications of their work are not quite so readily dismissed. Any photographer who has snapped memorable images has had the experience of being damned for it, and it is something the most thoughtful of them take to heart.

One familiar indictment, a moral corollary to their ostensibly hardened hearts, is that they are voyeurs, paparazzi of doom, exploiting the misery of others. Three months before he killed himself, Kevin Carter won the Pulitzer Prize for a picture published on the front page of this paper: it showed an emaciated Sudanese toddler doubled over, as a vulture lurked behind her. Afterward, Carter was asked over and over, What became of the girl? He stammered through a variety of answers, failing to comprehend that while his picture, by awakening the world to a famine, may have saved many lives, he was being judged as a heartless opportunist for not rescuing the one life that he had put at the center of attention.

The other knock on combat photographers is that they are cynics who have no loyalties or values.

As I was reading this it reminded me of an encounter I had on several occasions with my ex-lover, who was also a photographer. A very talented one at that. Rather than listen to the inner truths of my work as a person who has chosen photography, writing and other multimedia tools as a means of not only telling stories of injustice but it also allows me to tell my own bouts with injustice and develop true compassion for the earth, which is the path all sufis embark upon.

I was saddened that my passion could be ridiculed and belittled in a way that would discredit my intentions. Ignorance is a horrible. The ego is even worse. We can’t expect the world to stop and cherish every opportunity to learn and listen but we can make those attempts ourselves.

Knowledge of the self is sometimes the best remedy when all the world turns on you.