It’s been rather quiet here in this space these last months, as I was spending much of my time coordinating PhotoSensitive’s The Energy Project: Through a Young Lens.

Most of the submissions can now be found on the site in the Student Gallery. We are currently in the process of selecting the best images for the Energy book as well as the Young Lens show, which will debut in October at the Henry’s Photographic, Video and Digital Imaging Show before touring schools across Canada.

Back in May and June on the PhotoSensitive blog, I posted some of my favourites at the time. I also posted a few on our Facebook page, including this creation from OCAD University’s Emily Doyle, which arrived just before the June 30th deadline. It’s electric.

Another new Canadian collective made its debut this week, officially launching their website, blog and Twitter feed. They are called Rogue, and with 10 photogs from Victoria to Montreal (and one in New York), they – Deddeda Stemler, Brett Beadle, Todd Korol, Jason Franson, Tim Smith, Marianne Helm, Jennifer Roberts, Christopher Pike, John Morstad and Jimmy Jeong – have most of the country covered.

On Thursday night I had a quick Skype chat with Brett (Vancouver) and Jimmy (New York), who said Rogue has been in the works for about two years — or at least the idea for the group was first ignited about that long ago.

As with most of the collectives popping up, support is a key reason for coming together. But so too is collaboration, as their first group project is already in the works. Says Beattle, ”Being able to approach a situation and say, the 10 of us want to work on this, and make it happen, that final product will be so much more valuable, in my mind, than if we did it separately.”

Related links:

NPAC Photographer’s Q&A: Jennifer Roberts, Jimmy Jeong, Jason Franson, Tim Smith, Brett Beadle, Deddeda Stemler

“I knew he was tuned differently, and I needed to build a bridge, get inside his head, learn what made him tick.’’ – photographer Timothy Archibald on his son Eli (above), on today’s Lens blog.

For a while I’ve been wanting to post something about Timothy Archibald’s Echolilia after coming across it this summer when I began work on a story about a young woman with Asperger’s syndrome.

Today Lens has posted a a story about how Archibald collaborated with his first son, Eli, who is autistic,”in formal shooting sessions that rarely lasted more than 5 or 10 minutes but were regularly scheduled and initiated by an object or notion that interested Eli.”

Archibald’s wife, Cheri, initially wasn’t too sure about the project. Jane Gross writes:”She worried that Eli was being exploited to serve her husband’s need to make sense of his own suffering. Eventually, however, Mr. Archibald said (Cheri) grew enthusiastic as she saw Eli’s pleasure in the work and the results.”

On Alison McCreery’s Photographers on Photography blog, the photographer explains the title.

For me, I wanted a title that people would approach without any previous baggage…something no one would know what it meant, but they could kind of figure it out by the sound. My word, ECHOLILIA, sounded like “echo” and sounded like a pretty flower “lily” and those two things summed it up for me. In medical books about Autism, the word “echolailia” appears, which refers to this type of verbatim copying of sounds and sentences. I liked the actual meaning because it reminded me of what I was doing: copying my kid, copying his stuff, photography is like copying something…it could go on and on. And I liked the meaning one would guess at, even if they didn’t know what it meant.

Related links:

Look inside the book
Feature Shoot Q&A, Sept. 10, 2010
Discover magazine’s Inside the Brain/T.A. blog, Sept. 27, 2010

I’ve been a little MIA in posting recently, instead often using Twitter to share things of interest. I’ve also started a new job, working a couple days a week for PhotoSensitive. The non-profit Canadian photo collective has embarked on a new project, Energy, and I’m helping to get students involved in a mini version of the show, “Through a Young Lens,” a concept first tried for Cancer Connections. If you’re a Canadian student or a teacher who’d like to get involved, drop me a line at tanya@photosensitive.com

A couple for the notebook

Meanwhile, I’m constantly thinking (okay, aren’t we all?), which made this video I came across yesterday — via Finn O’Hara on Facebook via APhotoEditor via duckrabbitblog — appropriate viewing. The four-minute piece is a book promo for Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From and another ever-clever timelapse animation from RSA Animates. Nothing against getting things done quickly, but I get/like/understand his notion of “the slow hunch,” especially via RSA’s doodles, as well as how it relates to connectivity. Johnson’s longer TED talk from July on ideas can be found here.

On a similar theme … A week ago I also attended some of the lectures at the Magenta Foundation’s Flash Forward Festival in Toronto. I’m hoping someone (obviously not me) was smart enough to record Stephen Mayes’ hour+-long talk on restructuring the photographic process, as it was another one of the VII managing director’s speeches that should be out their circulating. Mayes touched on many of the points also in his June Sortir du Cadre interview with Gerald Holubowiz (below) — the currency of ideas, the changing value of photography as a product,  VII’s shift to publisher from supplier, the emergence/importance of transmedia. Just my own two cents, but I think if Mayes’ thoughts were condensed to four minutes they’d also make a good RSA animation (hint, hint).

Related link: Tribble & Mancenido blog: Stephen Mayes

Also a winner in the New Approaches field was the New York Times‘  One in 8 Million, which received the Emmy in the Documentaries category. As of this morning, I can’t seem to find much of anything about the win on their site, but perhaps they’re holding off to put together a piece for Lens?

Update, September 29: A Q&A with three of the people involved in One in 8 Million – photographer Todd Heisler, senior multimedia producer Sarah Kramer and photo editor Meghan Looram – went up today on the Times‘ Lens blog.

Related links:

Full list of winners
Documentary by UBC journalism students wins Emmy
Archived transcript of G&M chat with Paula Lerner and Jessica Leeder
Talk to the Times: One in 8 Million

On September 1, six up-and-coming Canadian photographers — Rafal Gerszak, Brett Gundlock, Simon Hayter, Jonathan Taggart, Aaron Vincent Elkaim and Ian Willms — announced they had formed Boreal Collective, a “dedicated group of Canadian-based photojournalists who are committed to the documentation of injustice and inequities that exist environmentally, socially, culturally and politically in Canada and abroad.”

As I’d met B.C.-based Jonathan two years ago in a photography workshop, knew Aaron and Ian through our shared connection to Loyalist College’s photojournalism program, had previously been in touch with Simon for an NPAC Q&A (Jon, too) and was familiar with both Brett and Rafal’s work, I was curious: how and why had this particular group of six gotten together, and how Boreal will work?

Writing from various places in and outside the country, five of the six guys submitted answers to a Q&A via email.

Whose idea was it to start the collective, and why?

Rafal: A couple of us were sitting around in Toronto talking about the minimal support for documentary work in Canada, what with all the Canadian talent running around, and that’s when we decided to start something to support ourselves and the work we do. As group, I think we can accomplish more, and I feel I have already benefited from Boreal in terms of my project edits, contacts and general info about our industry.

Brett: I had been following the new photojournalism collectives popping up in the States last year, and the idea of like-minded people forming a community to support each other intrigued me. Photojournalists generally create a competitive environment in social situations; for me, support from a peer is generally more fulfilling then competing with my friends. When I met 
Mustafah Abdulaziz at the 2009 Missouri Photo Workshop, 
he talked to me about his collective, MJR,  based in Brooklyn, and my interest was further sparked.

All of the photographers in Boreal already had loose connections with each other. We are all going in the same general direction with our work and we felt by banding together we would benefit from each other’s experiences and become stronger. Each member has their own personal goals for the collective, but in general we wanted to create a support system for each other, which we felt was lacking in Canada.

Jon: I was riding the edge of a reception zone on a ferry in B.C. when I got a crackly phone call from Brett with this seed of an idea. We’d all thought about a collective at one point or another, having seen a number of them pop up in the States recently and how they’ve created a presence within the industry that is hard to maintain as an individual. For us as emerging and concerned photojournalists, the format just made sense.

Kyle holds his daughter Aryanna in his basement apartment, March, 2009. Calgary, Canada. (Photo by Brett Gundlock, from the story The Movement.)

I know some of the basic connections, including that Ian and Aaron went to school together and both worked for newspapers in Toronto, as Brett presently does (at the National Post), and that Jonathan curated Stories From Vancouver, which included Rafal’s work. How did Boreal become this particular group of six photographers?

Brett: When Rafal approached me with the idea, I had already been working on contests, grants and edits with Ian and Aaron. They were instantly on the list. Simon has had a lot of influence on me over that last two years and I knew his perspective would be a nice fit. I knew Jon when he was in Toronto for school (at Ryerson). I had a lot of respect for him and his work, so we approached him as well. There were a lot of people we considered, but we wanted to keep it to a small size of like-minded photographers and keep the group’s goals focused. Overall, I think we have a great mix and I am very happy to have my work beside all of theirs.

I gather you are all pretty independently-minded. Would you say you are like-minded in your approach to photojournalism, editorial work, personal projects?

Ian: I think you nailed it with that first sentence. We are all unique in our approaches to the various forms of photography. What brings us together is a passion for documentary photography. The Boreal mission statement explains it best.

Jon: I think our approaches are quite varied — we certainly all have very different visual styles and work within certain areas of interest — but the impetus behind all our work is a collective desire to tell meaningful stories with our images. Our strength as photojournalists comes from that shared narrative sensibility, but our strength as a group is built upon the diversity of the work we produce.

J.A. visits with his three children in East Vancouver’s Trout Lake Park on the occasion of his son’s fourth birthday. Over half of the children in foster care in B.C. are Aboriginal; J.A.’s children, ages 4, 1 year and 5 months, are all in the temporary care of the Ministry of Child and Family Development. (Photo by Jonathan Taggart, from recent work Aboriginal Youth in Care.)

You plan to be collaborative but support each others’ individual projects. Practically speaking, how will the collective work/function?

Brett: We are still figuring out the logistics. We have goals of what we want to do as a group and have already been working as a group for close to six months. The possibilities are huge for work; each photographer has a unique skill set to offer.

Jon: As a decentralized collective our infrastructure needs and overhead are next to nil, and now that we have the website in place (thanks again to Andrew Spearin) most of the logistics are taken care of. Photography can make for a very solitary and isolated profession, especially when you don’t work a regular city beat, so Boreal’s most important function is as a conduit for dialogue, whether it be critical or supportive. Having a group of colleagues whose work and opinions you respect really pushes you to be innovative and discerning in your work.

Aaron: I believe that by bringing ourselves together under one umbrella we will have a greater presence within the industry both as individual photographers and as collaborators. We also gain support from one another, for editing, developing stories, bouncing ideas, referrals, etc. In terms of how the collective will actually function, we are still figuring that out day by day.

Habad, a would-be suicide bomber sent from Pakistan, is seen at the Pul-i-charki prison east of Kabul, Afghanistan, on September 7, 2009. He turned himself in to Afghan authorities after arriving at his target in Paktika province and realizing that there was no American forces at the location, only Afghan forces. “I had to find the strength within myself to go into Jihad. When I arrived and saw no Americans I could not bring myself to killing my Muslim brothers.” (Photo by Rafal Gerzsak, from the story Capital.)

“Inspiring great social consciousness in their communities, in Canada, and around the Globe.” What does that really mean to you?

Jon: I think as citizens of the Western world, and especially as Canadians, it’s easy to rest on our laurels with the thought that we have it all figured out as a culture. We are accustomed to comfort and convenience and we keep the consequences of our habitual actions at arm’s length. “Social consciousness” to me suggests an understanding of our butterfly effects and hopefully a willingness to interrupt them, I take it as my responsibility as a journalist to create as much awareness of the periphery and the down-stream as I can, whether it be awareness of marginalized cultures, communities or environments.

Ian: I’m just trying to create something that has more of a positive impact than a negative one. Every little bit of truth does still count for something in this world of propaganda. I don’t expect to change the world, I just hope to help it a bit.

Rafal: The idea for me is pulling all our recourses together while maintaining an independent point of view. In addition, I believe Boreal is another portal to get our work viewed. Look, this is the way I see it: each of us has a certain number of regular viewers, editors we deal with, contacts in the field, etc. When everybody pulls together and shares you each raise those numbers significantly. The end game for me is for the work to viewed by as many as possible in hopes of making some sort of impact and being able to continue what we do. Each of us has the same end game, standards, beliefs and ethics, but different personal views. I think this is what makes Boreal so great. The drive is the same, but each of us has our on unique vision of telling stories. The core of Boreal is we start out at one point, but take different paths and roads to meet at the end.

Aaron: I feel that often within our media and society, large issues are often overtaken by an overly simplified perspective. This often ends up creating a black and white type mentality. There are always layers to every social issue; in my work I strive to reveal some of these layers and show the stories on the periphery that give greater context to these larger issues.

Rawalpindi, Pakistan – Lawyers protesting then-president Pervez Musharraf are beaten back with tear gas and water canons. February 2008. (Photo by Simon Hayter, from the story Pakistan.)

A couple of you (Brett, Ian) got caught up in the G20 protests this past June in Toronto, were arrested, had gear broken. How did that experience affect you? Did it change anything about how you feel about your role as a photographer?

Ian: That experience was absolutely heartbreaking, not because of the attacks on Brett or me, but because of the attacks I witnessed on freedom, democracy and the truth itself. In a country like Canada, this came as a shock to me. As a result of that, my personal opinions of the police, Canadian military and Canadian government will never be the same. Between the media’s sensationalism of the so-called “rioting anarchists” and the Toronto police deliberately misinforming the public about some of their actions and tactics, the purpose and value of meaningful and accurate journalism became very apparent. I came away form the G20 protests feeling both grateful for having been there as a journalist and extremely motivated to document more G20 and G8 summits in the coming years.

You can see the photographs I made during the Toronto G20 summit at www.ianwillms.com/g20.html

Brett: I learned a lot about our society over that weekend — the power that that the authority has, the destructive possibility of groups, the sensationalism and biases of media and the compliance of the general population in our society. I witnessed a lot of horrible actions that upset me and had a major impact on me. Being arrested and charged was a horrible situation, I have never felt as degraded in my life, I didn’t feel like I was a Canadian citizen at some points of my detention. It is really hard to explain why the situation was so horrible. In the end I am thankful for the experience, I learned a lot and it has helped to shape my perspective and ideals.

http://brettgundlock.com/blog/photojournalism/g20-toronto-2010/
http://brettgundlock.com/blog/photojournalism/toronto-g20-ptii/

Untitled, Detroit, February 2010; (Photo by Ian Willms, from the story Detroit, on exhibit at Toronto’s Pikto Gallery until September 23.  Detroit was awarded 2nd place, Domestic News Picture Story in the National Press Photographers Association’s annual Best of Photojournalism contest.)

What are you each working on now?

Jon: For the last few years I have been focusing my work on a number of issues facing Aboriginal communities, both urban and rural. The statistics show radically disproportional representation of Aboriginal Canadians in instances of poverty, addiction, violence, suicide, incarceration and homelessness, and I think these inequalities are largely ignored in the mainstream. I’ve just begun a project focusing on Aboriginal youth and families coming through the foster care system in B.C. (where Aboriginal children make up over half of the total number of those in care), and in the coming months I will be looking at options for publishing and exhibiting that work. I’m currently wrapping up a gentrification piece for Vancouver’s Granville Magazine, and I am continuing my non-profit and advocacy work with a number of organizations in the fields of immigrant employment, autism awareness and youth empowerment.

Ian: I have an exhibition of my Detroit photographs presently hanging at Pikto Gallery in Toronto and I am spending September working on a documentary project in Alberta’s Oil Sands. September’s Applied Arts and Briarpatch magazines are also featuring some of my documentary work.

Brett: I have just finished a long-term project on neo-Nazi skinheads in Canada, looking at the relationships that are formed in environments of hate and how it continues as society progresses. I was forced to finish the project prematurely due to a conflict, so I am now editing and looking for possibilities to show and publish the work. I am also trying to recover the hard drive with the majority of my archive of the work on it — not cool. I also shot some small projects over the summer and am planning on starting a big project on immigration in Toronto this fall.

Rafal: I am working with a publisher on a book about my experiences documenting Afghanistan. In addition, I am very excited to have my work from Afghanistan part of the Warzone exhibition. Warzone had two preview shows including in Amsterdam at De Nieuwe Kerk and the New York Photo Festival. The final exhibit will show from September 5 to October 31 as part of the Noorderligth Photofestival 2010 in Leeuwarden, Netherlands. Being part of the exhibit is a great opportunity because of the amount of people that will have a chance to view this work.

Aaron: I have been working on a long-term project on the Jewish history of Morocco over the past year or so. The work addresses the history of  co-existence between Muslims and Jews and the peripheral costs of Zionism. I am currently editing and looking for places to publish and present this work, although it is a project I wish to continue to develop in the future. I am also planning on beginning an environmental project that will compare and contrast the modern commercial perspective of the natural world with that of Canada’s aboriginal people.

Zubeida, 28, opens the door to the Synagogue, which she has been the guardian of since its restoration in 2002 in the small southern village of Irill Noro, Morocco. (Photo by Aaron Vincent Elkaim, from the story Co-Existence: Jewish Morocco.)

Additional links:

• Rafal and Simon are recipients of the Magenta Foundation’s Flash Forward 2010. The festival takes places October 8 to 10 in Toronto
• Simon is featured as “one to watch” in the August/September issue of Photolife
• Aaron’s Fire, about the fire that destroyed his grandparents’ cottage, is featured on the NFB/interactive site

Lots of good stuff here, including the managing director on:

- being open-minded re: distribution platforms and interactivity
- why the first thing out of a photographer’s mouth shouldn’t be, “I’ve done this story, now pay me for this.”
- engaging an audience/following
- partnering with NGOs
- Magnum’s pressman archive and the reason for its recent sale
- explaining to photographers that if they want to be part of the conversation, it all starts with the iPhone
- why chaos can lead to opportunity
- forthcoming iPhone/IPad apps
- and educating the general public on what Magnum is, among other things

Poem and performance by Tanya Davis, film (animation, photography and editing) by Andrea Dorfman. Walter Forsyth is the producer.