BAGnewsNotes

Parisian Nights

by BAGnewsNotes contributer Zoriah Miller

I recently spent some time on the streets of Paris with several groups of homeless refugees from Afghanistan. Stuck in a state of limbo, unable to gain official refugee status and the right to work, unable to make the difficult and illegal crossing to England where they would be able to gain that status and employment, they spend their days and nights on streets trying to survive.

Villemin Square Park in Paris is home to between 150 to 300 Afghan refugees. They store sleeping supplies such as cardboard and blankets in the bushes during the day and at night, after the police have cleared and locked up the park, they enter by sneaking back through a loose fence. They do their best to remain clean, doing laundry and bathing in a park faucet. They sleep through rain and cold temperatures only to be woken up in the morning by the police who clear the park and then re-open it to the public. After coming back they shave in the bushes and all 300 share three overflowing, portable toilets outside of the park, along with the other homeless in the neighborhood.

Our Man In Tiananmen: Then and Now (Or: It's A Hell Of A Lot Better Using An Umbrella Than A Machine Gun)

Some comments from contributer Alan Chin, who made these photographs in and around Tiananmen Square yesterday:

It was very weird for me to be back, exactly twenty years later. Most of these people here today were children or weren't even born yet when the masscre happened.

I tried to remember the approximate spot on which the statue of democracy had stood. I remembered the student loudspeakers playing Beethoven's Ode To Joy and the stench of garbage after many weeks of the sit-in. I had seen the wreckage of makeshift barricades and heard automatic weapons firing for the first time in my life when I went down to Changan Boulevard. I wasn't really a photographer yet, or anything else, of course.

It's a cliché, but a bargain was made back then between the government and the people: leave the politics to us and you can make money. That was the deal, and its basically worked. People were protesting for economic rights as well as political rights. For hundred of millions of people, those economic opportunities have come true. One cannot deny that.

It's emblematic that they didn't fill the Square with soldiers today, but instead filled it with plainclothesman.

Grand Rapids Auto: The Obama Bankruptcy Announcement

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This is the third post of a BAGnewsOriginals series, Grand Rapids Auto, exploring the economic crisis through the life of a family-owned Chrysler dealership. Christina Clusiau is a New York based photographer who has been returning to her hometown in Northern Minnesota to photograph and interview members and employees of Tom Clusiau Sales and Rental Service Inc.

The image above captures customers and staff of the dealership watching President Obama on TV announcing Chrysler's bankruptcy and restructuring, April 30, 2009. The people in the image (l to r) are: Kelly Wohlers -- wife of Pete Wohlers, the General Manager; a customer; Don Helmbrecht, salesman; General Manager Wohlers; a customer and former employee; Tom Clusiau, the owner.

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The following was published by Tom Clusiau in the local paper, the Grand Rapids Minnesota Herald, shortly after:

The Texas Pioneer Adventure Is Closed

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The Iraqi refugee dips her head. Her child -- in the Winnie the Pooh hat -- clutches to her. The trees block a wide marine vista. The Texas flag doubles back on itself. The wagon ride is that way. The sign on the chain reads: "The Texas Pioneer Adventure is closed."

This photo, taken by contributer Nina Berman, shows an Iraqi immigrant on a group visit, with other Iraqi women, to a park and arboretum in Texas. It does not specifically show discouragement or exclusion. It does not specifically demonstrate Iraqi refugees coming to the U.S. in a pioneering spirit and being effectively denied access to our culture, history and pastimes.

Still, given the dire circumstances Iraqi immigrants are facing here in the U.S., this is effectively true -- the image, in fact, juxtaposing this hokey monument to the pioneer spirit with an Iraqi struggling with the recession, local indifference and limited if any support from the U.S. to help establish herself "in the homeland."

I recommend you go over Alternet to read Nina's report on Iraqi refugees in Dallas, and to see her accompanying slide show.

(image: Nina Berman, Dallas, TX. 2009)

Grand Rapids Auto: The Owner

Christina Clusiau is a New York based photographer who has been returning to her hometown in Northern Minnesota to photograph and interview members and employees of Tom Clusiau Sales and Rental Service Inc. This is the second post of a BAGnewsOriginals series, Grand Rapids Auto, exploring the economic crisis through the life of this family-owned Chrysler dealership.

Her father Tom Clusiau, the owner, speaks about how he got involved in the business.

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I went to college with the life-long dream of becoming a corporate litigation attorney. Upon graduation, while I was waiting for a law school acceptance, my dad asked me to help out for a while in the dealership. Since my older brother was already working in the store, I thought it would be nice to stay together.

I liked the people part of the business and felt that a break from school would be good, and my high school sweetheart (now my wife of 32 years) was back in town, so I decided to give it a year.

It was kind of an accepted thing that you grew up in the business and lived the business for life. But I had never wanted to have anything to do with it as I watched my father struggle with his father and brother, as they were partners. I thought being in business together would affect our personal lives.

Well, it did! All we ever had in common was the company. Sunday dinners, Christmas, weddings, funerals, etc. was all about the business. It was very challenging and I must say, working with my dad and brother was not easy and we all broke up in 1990 when things were not good with us personally. We could not get along.

I decided I could do things much better on my own, using my skills, experience and ideas. We were still operating my grandfather's way, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it," and my dad didn't have any interest in listening to anyone else about how to come into the present era. So I purchased both my dad and my brother's shares, worked my rear off and had success. After that first year, I never looked back. I love the auto business and almost everything that goes along with it. It is exciting, fast paced, people driven and I am good at it. Our community is great.

Today, my wife and I have my niece and her husband working with us, and it has worked out so far. But I have been reluctant to have either my son or daughter join us as we value our relationships with each of our children and do not want to chance having family issues again.

(images: Christina Clusiau, April 2009. See slide show captions for photo information)

Grand Rapids Auto: An Introduction

Christina Clusiau is a New York based photographer who has been returning to her hometown in Northern Minnesota to photograph and interview members and employees of her family’s auto dealership, in light of the economic crisis which has forced the car companies to ask for bailouts from the federal government. This is the first post of a BAGNewsOriginals series documenting daily life in one family-owned business.

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Grand Rapids is the county seat of rural Itasca County, pop. 8000, in the Iron Range of northern Minnesota. It is the headwaters of the Mississippi river, and home to a thousand lakes. The region is known for its mining and timber, and excellent hunting and fishing.

Historically, the Iron Range was settled by many nationalities: Italians, Slovenes, Bohemians and Finns, to name just a few. They came from afar looking for a new life in America, and learned to survive the brutal frozen winters and baking summers. That meant back-breaking and dangerous work in the iron mines, and they developed a conservative, strong work ethic, saving a great deal of their income.

Tom Clusiau Sales and Rental Service Inc. was founded in 1957 by Arthur Francis (Bud) Clusiau, my great-grandfather and Arthur David Clusiau Sr., my grandfather. My father Tom started in the business with his dad David out of college, purchased it in 1990, and he and my mother Patricia both work full-time in the dealership.

Gitmo Details #1: Club Survivor

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In conjunction with Daylight Magazine , BNN takes a look at a series of images by photographer Christopher Sims taken at Guantanamo Bay. The photos were recently the subject of an exhibition at Civilian Art Projects, and are also featured in a Daylight multimedia podcast viewable here. Given BNN's unique mission to fix on, delve into and create discussion around single images, we feel Chris' photos, taken in 2006 and capturing atmosphere and character through mundanity, actually grow more curious as Guantanamo -- having outlived the Bush Administration -- retains its notoriety. Chris expands on the details with a few notes.

This is a photograph of Club Survivor.

At first glance, it could be any beach shack bar in any out-of-the-way place in the Caribbean. It’s the type of bar where people would hang out on Friday night, or unwind after work. It’s located near Camp Delta and it’s where guards might spend their free time. Looking closely at the building, we see hand-painted iguanas and palm trees and hand-painted signs. There are four windows into the bar, but we can’t see in. Instead we see reflections – reflections of the ocean, but also in two of the windows, reflections of flood lights used for security at the prison.

And, most prominently, hand-painted on the side of building, perhaps about five feet across, is a large painting of an old-fashioned rifle. It’s a painting based on the Combat Infantryman Badge. Whoever reproduced it on the side of this building managed to achieve something I found quite remarkable – to make the painting in a way that it is both menacing and child-like at the same time.

Christopher Sims teaches photography and multimedia at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. He worked previously as a photo archivist at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

Walled Street Protest

BNN contributer Nina Berman offers us this view of the Wall Street protest this weekend. (If you missed it, we ran Mario Tama's take-away on Sunday.)

Noting the relative lack of emotion, enthusiasm, anger, Nina writes:

Most demonstrations are this way now in the US, because of the security barriers in place, and the restrictions on permits. Demonstrating on Wall Street on a day when no one is working, definitely robs the action of any confrontational energy.

The irony here is overwhelming, including the stillness of "the canyon," the solitary policeman married to the unnecessary double- and even triple-barriers, and the hand-held banners juxtaposed with the fluttering Wall Street health club sign.

(image: ©Nina Berman. New York. April 1, 2009)

Reflecting On The Meltdown

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Getty photographer Mario Tama sends in this evocative image from yesterday's demonstration in New York's financial district.

It captures a two-day anti-capitalist rally protesting the Wall Street bailout. Through the use of reflection (in this photo of a restaurant, as well as this one playing the street off against a corporate lobby), Mario portrays America's class schism (note the guy in the lime-colored reflective vest overlapped with the guy in the jacket with the wristwatch); America flip-flopping between awareness and denial; and the strange disconnect these days between crisis and "business as usual."

Mario's photos from New Orleans will be the feature of a BAGnewSALON, our on-line discussion series, here tomorrow.

(image: Mario Tama/Getty Images. New York. April 3, 2009)

World Press Photo Awards/Your Turn: Now War Is Coming Into People's Houses Because They Can't Pay Their Mortgages

The winners of perhaps the most visible and prestigious photojournalism award were announced today. World Press Photo has named this image by Anthony Suau as the 2008 Photo of the Year.

The World Press Photo site offers this description and analysis from the jurors:

The picture shows an armed officer of the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Department moving through a home in Cleveland, Ohio, following eviction as a result of mortgage foreclosure. Officers have to ensure that the house is clear of weapons, and that the residents have moved out. The winning photograph, taken in March 2008, is part of a story commissioned by Time magazine. The story as a whole won Second Prize in the Daily Life category of the contest.

Jury chair MaryAnne Golon said: "The strength of the picture is in its opposites. It's a double entendre. It looks like a classic conflict photograph, but it is simply the eviction of people from a house following foreclosure. Now war in its classic sense is coming into people's houses because they can't pay their mortgages.

Fellow juror Akinbode Akinbiyi commented: "It is a very ambiguous image. You have to go into it to find out what it is. Then all over the world people will be thinking ‘this is what is happening to all of us'."

Juror Ayperi Ecer said: "We have something here which visually is both clear and complex...It's not about issues - 2008 is the year of the end of a dominant economic system. We need a new language, to learn how to illustrate our lives."

Of course, I'm interested in your reaction to the photo, and your response to the juror comments. For the sake of argument, I might ask the question: How much is this photo actually reflective of war? And to the extent it is, how much does war, and war photography, represent an accurate or effective lens through which to view the world-wide recession? And, especially relevant here at BNN, how effective is the ambiguity here, and where is it taking you?

(I'm going to keep this post at the top of the blog through Saturday evening to foster discussion.)

Suau's original slideshow: "Tough Times In Cleveland" for TIME

Anthonysuau.com