That Place He Goes. By Carole Mills Noronha.

Carole Mills Noronha is an Australian photographer who started the beautiful project "That Place He Goes" a few years ago documenting her father's Vascular Dementia and Alzheimer's journey, born in 1932 and officially diagnosed with dementia in 2018. "This project is a way to create more permanent memories for dad of his life as his own fade over time. My photos, in a way, replacing lost memories" (via).

December 19, 2021 Portrait of my 89 year old father.
Dad has Vascular Dementia and Alzheimer's. He spent most of 2020 & 2021 in lockdown in Aged Care. After months of window visits, I'm once again permitted to visit dad in his room. As I'm not permitted to take dad out, I instead bring some outside to dad. His face filled with wonder. Dad later releasing the butterfly in a nearby courtyard. (literally via)

March 12, 2021
Every Friday at dad's Aged Care Home they celebrate 'Happy Hour'. Truth is, it's never just an hour. It goes for much longer than that. Birthdays are celebrated, cake and alcohol is to be had. After time, with afternoon naps missed and sugar rushes over, 'Unhappy hour' begins. Personality clashes erupt and colourful language is used. We left 'Unhappy hour' and moved to a quiet area where the sunflowers grow and all is good in the world again. (literally via)

January 3, 2021
Today was dad's birthday. He was surprised to hear it but even more surprised to hear his age. We had a lovely, quiet few hours together. So lucky we could given some easing in Covid restrictions. There are studies saying that red is the last colour those with Dementia recognise. (literally via)

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photographs by Carole Mills Noronha via and via

Multikulti Berlin

In 2020, Berlin became the first German city to pass an anti-discrimination law aiming to eradicate systemic racism (via). The law bars public authorities, such as police and public school, from discriminating people based on their skin colour, their religion, gender, background, German language skills, worldview, age, sexual identity, physcial or mental disability (via). Several campaigns, initiatives, festivals and networks are dedicated to support and celebrate diversity in the city (via).

"Open-mindedness, tolerance and mutual respect are the norm and discrimination is not tolerated." (Because Berlin)

Immigration has shaped Berlin and "allowed the city to become the European metropolis that it is today." However, the positive aspects of ethnic diversity have been acknowledged only recently. Immigrants used to be seen as a burden who needed to be tolerated rather than included in society. Today, Berlin is promoting itself as a city open to different cultures and ethnicities (via).

Berlin likes to portray itself as Germany's most international city, a capital with a tolerant, worldly population that celebrates its diversity in street festivals, ethnic restaurants, and demonstrations for minority rights. "Multikulti," slang for multikulturell (multicultural), denotes an accepting attitude toward different cultures and religions, and by any standard Berlin is indeed international: 13% of its population has a non-German background (more than any other part in Germany); the culture, nightlife, and social scenes are a global potpourri. (via)

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photograph (Berlin, 1971) via

That one can love another...

"That one can love another of the same gender, that is what the homophobe really cannot stand."

Stephen Fry

photograph by Garry Winogrand via

Narrative images: A Sunday in Central Park Zoo, 1967

“In the photograph, we see a white woman and a black man, apparently a couple, holding the product of their most unholy of unions: monkeys. In projecting what we will into this image - about miscegenation, our horror of difference, the forbidden nature of black men with white women - we see the beast that lies in us all.” 

Hilton Als

"I think part of the aim was to unsettle people's ideas, whether his own or other people's. To move people out of an unquestioning space and to some less settled space in which the authority of rules and structures was broken up a bit."

Eileen Hale, Garry Winogrand's widow

"(...) there is one photograph in “The Animals” that resonates more deeply than others. This picture shows, in medium close-up, a black man and a white woman. The man wears a jacket, a shirt and a tie. She is blonde and sports a head scarf. The man and the woman are each carrying a baby monkey. The monkeys, by implication, are the product of miscegenation: that is, born of parents who defied a natural law - the marriage of black to white - and whose only natural progeny could be… animals."

Hilton Als, The Animals and Their Keepers

"(...) And so, one Sunday, on an early spring day about a year after we’d met, Garry and I found ourselves walking through the Central Park Zoo. I was 20 or 30 yards ahead of him when I noticed a handsome couple walking toward me—they looked like fashion models, in their 20s, both well-dressed—improbably walking with a pair of chimpanzees who were as immaculately attired as they were (the animals even wore shoes and socks). A New York City piece of strangeness, it seemed to me, strange enough to take a picture. So I did.

Then, bang!, I felt myself being pushed in the back away from this odd little group. A real shove, unfriendly, hard. And, of course, it was Garry, camera already up, making pictures, who’d done it. (...)

By now, both chimpanzees were off the ground (as my picture shows, one had been toddling between the couple when I first saw the group), and I finally noticed that the man in the little quartet was black, and the woman white and blonde. I’d already recorded that fact with my eyes, I’m sure, but what it may have meant, or could mean, in a photograph, was something I hadn’t had the time or the consciousness to process.

Garry Winogrand, however, had obviously processed the fact: where I saw only the possibility for a joke that, at best, touched on the crazy-quilt nature of city life, you could say that Garry, by not so much seeing the group itself but instantaneously imagining a possible photograph of it, placed meaning, particularly as it might gather around the question of race, at the very center of what he was doing.

In other words, quite apart from whatever Sunday pleasure or notion of self-advertising had actually brought that couple together with those two animals, Garry’s quick mind construed from their innocent adjacency a picture (or the projection of one) that could suggest the improbable price that the two races, black and white, might have to pay by mixing together. He was speculating, of course, playing an artistic hunch, but a large and important enough one that he felt it was worth pushing his friend aside for. So he did what he had to do, and then, a moment later, I answered by making a picture of him standing by the same family group as they continued their stroll through the zoo. (...)"

Tod Papageorge, 2014

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- Papageorge, T. (2014). About a Photograph: New York, 1967, Garry Winogrand. Aesthetics of Theory in the Modern Era and Beyond, 2, via

- photographs by Garry Winogrand via and via and via

Life Expectancy & Ethnicity

In Brazil, in 1950, the life expectancy at birth was 47 years for whites and 40 years for Afro-Brazilians. The seven-year gap remained unchanged fifty years later despite Brazilians experiencing improvement in life expectancy rates in the late 1990s (70 vor whites versus 63.5 years for Afro-Brazilians).

In Australia, life expectancy (based on 1996 data) of an Aboriginal person is twenty to twenty-five years less than that of a non-Aboriginal.

In the U.S., indigenous Americans and Alaskans have a life expectancy that is five years lower compared to the general population (overall population: 76.9 years, whites: 77.4 years, blacks: 71.8 years, indigenous: 71 years) (Torres Parodi, 2005).

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- Torres Parodi, C. (2005). Racism and health. In K. Boyle (ed.) Dimensions of Racism (67-81), via
- photograph by Garry Winogrand via

Quoting Bob Marley

"Prejudice is a chain, it can hold you. If you prejudice, you can't move, you keep prejudice for years. Never get nowhere with that."
Bob Marley

photograph of Bob Marley via

French, Italian, Polish or German? The Othered Disease.

If a disease is repugnant, it can only be foreign. And if sex is involved, "it's always somebody else who is the dirty, rotten scoundrel", preferably the enemy (via). When, in 1494, King Charles VIII of France invaded Naples, his army collapsed within a few months, not because of the Italian army but a "mysterious new disease" that killed his soldiers or left them weak and disfigured (via). Italian doctors called it the French disease, the French called it the Neapolitan disease. As it spread, it became known as the "French disease" in Germany, Scandinavia, Spain, Iceland, Crete, and Cyprus (via).

"French soldiers spread the disease across much of Europe, and then it moved into Africa and Asia. Many called it the French disease. The French called it the Italian disease. Arabs called it the Christian disease. Today, it is called syphilis." (via)

In England and Ireland, syphilis was named after two enemies of the English crown: the French or the Spanish disease, the latter being popular in Spain's enemies, such as Portugal, the Netherlands, and North African countries, but also Denmark. In Poland, it was the German disease, in Russia it went by the Polish disease. The furher away from Europe, the more these distinctions based on hostile attitudes blurred into one. In the Ottoman Empire and on the Indian subcontinent, syphilis simply became the European or Christian disease (via).

The “French disease” as the English long called it, is an infamously “othered” illness. In 2014 academics in Bucharest traced its linguistic history and found that, even as the English used to call it the French disease, the French called it the Neapolitan one. The othering didn’t stop there. The Russians called it Polish, the Poles called it German, the Germans called it French and the Danish called it Spanish. The Turks eschewed nationalism for sectarianism, calling it the “Christian disease”, while, as the researchers observed: “in Northern India, the Muslims blamed the Hindu for the outbreak of the affliction. However, the Hindu blamed the Muslims and in the end everyone blamed the Europeans.” (via)

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image of the amazing Annie Girardot and Philippe Noiret via

The forgotten victims in Africa's conflict zones

"We found that time and again older people were at risk of abuses during the armed conflict, including summary execution, arbitrary detentions and rape.… The reality of the war is that no one is spared and that older people remain ignored and invisible victims."

Bridget Sleap, Human Rights Watch

"Older people can be heightened or particular risk of abuse for a number of reasons. One of them is when they are unable to flee the fighting when it comes to their communities. Some choose to stay to protect their property or to protect their homes. Others are unable to run away, to escape the violence or sometimes they don’t have family members to support and help them flee."

Bridget Sleap, Human Rights Watch

"Older people must be included in the pre-conflict warning signs, in the pre-conflict arrangement, older people must be included in the discussion so that their interests are known to the community and also known to the warring parties… it's possible during the conflict the harm that happens to older people could be minimized."

Carole Agengo, HelpAge International

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photograph by Johnson Donatus Aihumekeokhai Ojeikere (1930-2014) via

Queen of Soho

"‘Excuse me, would you mind if I took your portrait?’ 

‘Yes ,you can. If you’re quick.’ 

‘Absolutely. I’m Rory by the way, what’s your name?’ 

‘Oh no, no we’re not doing that, you don’t need my name, just take the photo.’ 

‘No problem. Would you mind if you took a little step this way into the light?’ 

‘You don’t want me in the light, surely you must know that as a photographer?’ 

I didn’t argue my case for lighting, so I quickly shot the photo in the shade."

Rory Langdon-Down

 

"Queen of Soho" was taken by Rory Langdon-Down, one of this year's Portrait of Humanity prize-winners.

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photograph via

"... not a one-size-fits-all phenomenon."

"Sexism isn't a one-size-fits-all phenomenon. It doesn't happen to black and white women the same way."
Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

 

photograph by Joel Meyerowitz via