Quoting Lemmy Kilmister

“I don't see why there should be a point where everyone decides you're too old. I'm not too old, and until I decide I'm too old I'll never be too f*** old.”
Lemmy Kilmister



photograph by Eddie Malluk (1992) via

Stefan Zweig's Last Letter

Stefan Zweig (1881-1942), Austrian and Jewish, left Austria in 1934 for England, then New York, and finally Brazil. His work - once the most translated one - had been denounced, banned and vilified in Germany and Austria.

During political disturbances early in 1934, policemen arrived at Zweig’s house, demanding to search it for weapons. As soon as they had gone, Zweig packed his bags for London, where he had recently rented an apartment, and he never lived in Austria again.
Leo Carey, The New Yorker

Zweig, who had been "one of the most renowned authors" (via) and "an object of admiration" and envy before, lived in exile (via), in Brazil "the only place where the race question does not exist", Zweig wrote. He continued: "Blacks and whites and Indians, the most marvellous mulattos and creoles, Jews and Christians all live together in an indescribable peace." Brazil was ruled by Vargas, an anti-Semite dictator who only offered Zweig asylum because he was so famous (via).

On 22 February 1942, he combed his hair, buttoned his collar, straightened his tie, took an overdose of sleeping pills and lay down. His death, together with his second wife Charlotte Elisabeth Altmann, is often interpreted as a political act. In fact, he was "anything but outspoken" which frustrated writers of the time (via)

If Zweig’s death wasn’t quite the political act it seemed, the popularity of that interpretation is understandable. A man in whom genuine modesty and a genius for self-publicity existed side by side, Zweig spent his life backing into the limelight, and his death followed the same pattern. The day after their bodies were discovered, Stefan and Lotte Zweig were given a state funeral. President Getúlio Vargas attended, along with his ministers of state. Petrópolis shuttered its shops as the cortège passed and deposited Stefan and Lotte in a plot near the mausoleum of Brazil’s former royal family. A day or so later, a friend received a farewell letter from Zweig, asking that his burial “should be as modest and private as possible.” Leo Carey, The New Yorker

In his suicide letter (entirely written in the first person singular although he committed suicide together with his wife), he wrote:

“Every day I learned to love this country more, and I would not have asked to rebuild my life in any other place after the world of my own language sank and was lost to me and my spiritual homeland, Europe, destroyed itself.
But to start everything anew after a man’s 60th year requires special powers, and my own power has been expended after years of wandering homeless. I thus prefer to end my life at the right time, upright, as a man for whom cultural work has always been his purest happiness and personal freedom – the most precious of possessions on this earth.
I send greetings to all of my friends: May they live to see the dawn after this long night. I, who am most impatient, go before them." (via)

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image via

Graciela Iturbide: Taking Pictures of People with Dignity

“Whether in my country or in other places, I notice the pain as well as the beauty, but I never shoot poverty. I am interested in taking pictures of people with dignity.
Graciela Iturbide



"For us Mexicans, there is no American dream. This is our fault, because we don't create opportunities here in Mexico. Crossing the border is hard, life is really hard for migrants. So we need to educate ourselves as Mexicans, create jobs in Mexico, for people to stay here. There's so much Mexico has to offer. There is no need to pursue the American dream. We have our own here, too."
Graciela Iturbide



"I am a feminist. And as I am, in my photographs, my way of being is revealed. That does not mean that I deliberately do feminist photography. I do what surprises me."
Graciela Iturbide

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photographs via

David Fleming and the Perfect Museum

"In terms of museums as part of the overall cultural life of a society, we can be a platform to enable people to be visible, not hidden, we can encourage empathy, respect and understanding, we can be a positive platform, we can be a supporter, campaigner and active participant/collaborator. Museums are places that can enable many voices to be heard. All of this work comes down to the teams working within museums being aligned with the framework of a strong mission and linked policies. Being active about inclusion means being outward facing, aware of societal and global inequalities and their causes, and seeing contemporary life and the future as being influenced by the past. Being active about inclusion is a mind-set and means working hard to include."



"Museums working with an inclusion mind-set will think about the broader context of any subject or theme they deal with. They will need to take a fresh look at the past, working with people whose histories have often been excluded from the main narrative, looking at uncomfortable (or controversial or contradicted) subjects in an honest and open way. But working with culturally diverse people/communities, migration and refugees is not always about a museum being a campaigning organisation and a platform for debate; it can also be about being a ‘safe’ place."
David Fleming (Director of National Museums Liverpool, 2001-2018)

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- Fleming, D. (2017) Thinking strategically about inclusion in museums. In M., Vlacou (coord.) The Inclusion of Migrants and Refugees. The Role of Cultural Orgnisations (50-57). Acesso Cultura
- photograph via

The Weathering Hypothesis

"When Arline Geronimus was a student at Princeton University in the late 1970s, she worked a part-time job at a school for pregnant teenagers in Trenton, N.J. She quickly noticed that the teenagers at that part-time job were suffering from chronic health conditions that her whiter, better-off Princeton classmates rarely experienced. Geronimus began to wonder: how much of the health problems that the young mothers in Trenton experienced were caused by the stresses of their environment?
It was later, during her graduate studies, that Geronimus came up with the term weathering — a metaphor, she thought, for what she saw happening to their bodies. She meant for weathering to evoke a sense of erosion by constant stress. But also, importantly, the ways that marginalized people and their communities coped with the drumbeat of big and small stressors that marked their lives." (via)



"There have been folk notions and laypeople have thought that health differences between populations — such as black versus white in the U.S. — were somehow related to differences in our DNA, that we were, in a sense, molecularly programmed to have this disease or that disease. But instead, social and environmental factors, can through what's called DNA methylation, which occurs — I don't know how technical you want to get — but that occurs when a group of molecules attach methyl groups to specific areas of a gene's promoter region, and either prevent the reading of certain genes and sort of forms the gene's product, and you have genetic expression of that gene. That's a pretty powerful idea, and it sort of refutes the kind of more DNA-centric one, that you are destined by the literal DNA you have to have certain diseases or not.
But what I've seen over the years of my research and lifetime is that the stressors that impact people of color are chronic and repeated through their whole life course, and in fact may even be at their height in the young adult-through-middle-adult ages rather than in early life. And that increases a general health vulnerability — which is what weathering is."
Arline Geronimus

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photograph (HD-1469 (Pineapple), 1969, The Estate of J. D. 'Okhai Ojeikere/Victoria and Albert Museum) via

Angela

"I'm someone who is very supportive of us eliminating all discrimination."

Angela Merkel

Herlinde Koelbl has been photographing Angela Merkel since 1991. Koelbl says that photographing her has always been "a bit awkward but you could feel her strength at the beginning." (via)

International All Women's Day

They are invisible, we don't see them often in campaigns celebrating women's day, womanhood, so-called power women, girls' power, working mothers, young women entrepreneurs, in campaigns fighting gender pay gap and femicide that targets young women killed by a jealous ex, etc. Yes, "older" women are women, too. 

Older women are not counted in statistics, overlooked by the police, marginalised by services and many are left dangerously at risk in a relationship because the few exits available to them are barred by ageism, stereotyping, underfunding and ignorance.

Women over 60 are killed, the homicide toll is "horrifying", cases often dismissed as accidents. Until three years ago, they were not counted in the Crime Survey for England and Wales which had a cap of 59 years, now it is raised to 74. Institutions such as care homes and refuges are excluded creating a hidden death toll. One in four domestic homicides involve people over 60, half of the victims are killed by their sons (parricide), grandsons, and relatives. Older women are missing in police data on abuse, rape, and murder. The crimes are either not looked at or treated as a "safeguarding issue, gender neutral, 'elder abuse' with no perpetrator". Doubt is quickly cast on the older victim's mental capacity or veracity removing her to residential care making her lose her home. In some cases, extreme violence is involved, older women are "more likely to have suffered five or more injuries than younger women, known as 'overkill'". Nine out of 13 victims aged 80 plus were victims of sexual assault, their murderers "the least likely to express remorse or empathy". Older women also tend to stay in abusive relationships longer than younger women which again increases the chances of fatal violence. But they don't really have many options. In 2017, only one out of 276 refuges offered services for women aged 45 and over (via). So, yes, "happy" International Women's Day ... but let's celebrate all women.

"Once a woman reaches 60, the response from agencies and families to abuse is completely different. That's a violation of older women's human rights. It denies them justice." 

Rebecca Zerk

"If you are found at the bottom of the stairs at 40, the police are probably going to ask questions. Deeply entrenched ageism means that if you are 80, it’s, ‘Well, she probably fell.’" 

Hannah Bows

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photograph via

Stereotype Threat in Black US-American Children

In a study, black US-American children (n=190, age 10 to 12) completed the Stereotype Awareness Task (participants were asked to list all stereotypes they knew about Black people). One to two weeks later, they were asked to read a target word list and choose which two out of five words fit best the concept represented by the list. For this purpose, they were randomly assigned to one of two groups: a) threat condition, i.e. the children were told the test was a measure of intelligence and the scores of Black and White children would be compared, b) neutral condition, i.e., no reference to skin tone.



Some results: The most common stereotype listed by 44% of the children was that Backs are less intelligent than Whites. The children in the stereotype threat condition performed more poorly on the academic task compared to the control group; the stereotype threat effect was moderated by both the awareness of stereotypes and Black identity (measured using the Multidemensional Inventory of Black Identity-Teen, children were asked about their feelings toward Blacks as a group, their view of society's beliefs about Blacks as a group, the importance of being Black to their self-concept, and their approach to dealing with issues about Blacks).

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- Hines Shelvin, K., Rivadeneyra, R. & Zimmerman, C. (2014). Stereotype threat in African American children: The role of Black identity and stereotype awareness. Revue Internationale de Psychologie Sociale, 3-4(27), 175-204.

- photograph via

Queering the Collections

During Euro Pride 2016, the movement "Queering the Collection" worked together with Dutch museums voicing concerns that museums would be too heteronormative - hence underrepresenting queer people and reestablishing binary ideas about gender. Generally speaking, museums are not places that provide truthful, objective information about history, culture, and other aspects of society, although one might think so. Different strategies were used, each having a different but positive effect: highlighting the sexual orientation of artists, setting up a queer exhibition that offers new stories to visitors, using a queer prospective as interpretative tool, i.e., switching the perspective (Barendregt, n.d.)



- Barendregt, L. (n.d.). Queering the Museum. How do queering strategies in museums change the representation of queer people? Thesis: Utrecht University.
- photograph by Richard Kalvar via

Meet me in St. Louis

Webster University's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Virtual Conference, 23-25 February.



My lecture: The Urgent Need for a New Narrative on Ageing; 24th February, 11 AM - 12 St. Louis time

Age is not a popular diversity dimension to focus on. Research shows comparably little interest, there are no allies, no hashtags trending. The reluctance to turn it into an issue society discusses leads to little awareness. Ageism hardly elicits emotional responses in everyday life – no matter if encountered in health care, design, language, marketing, movies, urban planning or at the workplace, to mention a few. We are taught gerontophobic stereotypes in younger years and start developing prejudice against our future selves early which makes them appear more acceptable at a later stage and us vulnerable to self-stereotyping. Despite the need to act and the fact that old age, if we are lucky, affects us all, stigmatising ageing is widely accepted.

APA Guidelines: Bias-Free Language for Age

"Avoid using terms such as “seniors,” “elderly,” “the aged,” “aging dependents,” and similar “othering” terms because they connote a stereotype and suggest that members of the group are not part of society but rather a group apart (see Lundebjerg et al., 2017; Sweetland et al., 2017). Do not use these stigmatizing terms in your research even if your participants use them to refer to themselves (also see guidance regarding disability). Likewise, avoid negativistic and fatalistic attitudes toward aging, such as age as being an obstacle to overcome (Lindland et al., 2015). Do not use “senile”; it is an outdated term with no agreed-upon meaning. Use “dementia” instead of “senility”; specify the type of dementia when known (e.g., dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease). Be sure your language conveys that aging is a normal part of the human experience and is separate from disease and disorder." 

::: More: APA Guidelines



photograph by Lee Friedlander via

Self-Stereotypes and Handwriting

Abstract: (...) Handwriting samples of 20 Ss (mean age 71 yrs) were randomly selected, with half of the sample taken from individuals who had been subliminally exposed to positive stereotypes of aging while the other half was taken from individuals who had been subliminally exposed to negative stereotypes of aging. The handwriting samples were produced both before and after the priming. 40 individuals (aged 16–36 yrs) then judged the handwriting samples according to how much they felt the samples were characterized by six attributes: accomplished, confident, deteriorating, senile, shaky, and wise. The age of each writer was also guessed. Results found that judges were able to distinguish the writers who had been exposed to the negative stereotypes from those exposed to positive stereotypes. It is concluded that self-stereotypes influence mental functioning and behavior in the elderly. (...)



- Levy, B. (2000). Handwriting as a reflection of aging self-stereotypes. Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 33(1), 81–94.
- photograph by Leon Levinstein via

Sweet Country

"Thornton’s sensitively scripted story, which draws on the conventions of the western, is simple. Its social and ethical implications, though, are not."
Lucio Crispino

"Its political messages are unsubtle, but the tone is meditative and the drama achingly personal."
Luke Backmaster

"It resonates in a strange way with people. It’s a classic tale. It’s about land grabs. It’s about taking over the country. It’s a basic western that people relate to on a range of different levels, based in a place they don’t have access to: 1920s central Australia."
Warwick Thornton



images via and via and via and via

Drawn to the fundamental question of what's happening in the world: Susan Meiselas

Susan Meiselas, member of Magnum Photos since 1976, is committed to sharing the stories of women (via), but not only. Basically, she is "drawn to the fundamental question of what's happening in the world" (via). "A Room of Their Own", for instance, is a project of hers about women in  a refuge centre in the UK (more).



"By intuitively following her own instincts over the course of her career, Meiselas has built a unique body of work that examines the many lives and stories of women that might have otherwise been overlooked. Her inclusive process brings a diverse array of voices to bear on issues from human rights to civil conflict, and encourages us to become more responsible in how we consume and interpret images."
Lisa Sutcliffe

"I think it’s crucial to acknowledge one’s outsiderness, and perhaps the limited capacity to ever become an “insider” unless you’re reporting on your own subjective experience. You’re faced with that “other than” status all the time; how you resolve it in each situation doesn’t always feel the same. In the classical sense, ethnographers speak about deviants: the people who reach out and—for reasons that one doesn’t necessarily understand at the time—become the people who start to introduce you to their community."
Susan Meiselas



From 1972 to 1975, Meiselas documented women performing striptease at small-town carnivals in the US which she followed from town to town (via).

"I met Lena on the first day she arrived to get a job at the girl show near her home town in Damariscotta, Maine. The second portrait shown here is long after that ‘first day’. She’d worked the shows for three summers; her body revealed the wear of those years. She was astoundingly articulate and open to sharing her feelings. She at times expressed alienation or sudden ecstasy. She was defiant. She challenged the managers, both male and female, and was erratic in her moods when performing. I wanted my photographs of her to convey her complexity. We knew each other over many years. When her mother sent me a letter saying she had died of an overdose, it was just after I’d been photographing the insurrection in Nicaragua (1978–9). There I had seen a very different kind of death. The idealistic Sandinista slogan was Patria libre o Morir (‘a free country or death’). I was in the midst of covering this phenomenally collective, enveloping movement, and in contrast Lena seemed so isolated and alone."
Susan Meiselas

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photographs by Susan Meiselas via and via

Doing Gender in Coffee Shops

"Overall my observations confirmed my assumption that the majority of customers frequenting Coffee Corps displayed either hegemonic masculinity or emphasized femininity (Connell 1987). However, the focus of my research was to identify gender maneuvering strategies (Schippers 2002), therefore the results of this study suggest that many individuals performed gender displays which differed from their perceived primary gender expression to varying degrees...



...These displays often seemed to reify hegemonic masculinity when enacted by individuals displaying an overall masculine or feminine gender display, and conversely a few individuals appeared to challenge the gender hierarchy through a display of an alternative femininity. Examples of gender maneuvering were often observed in the interactions of mixed-gender dyads in which individuals attempted to access masculine cultural capital through a temporary display of hegemonic masculinity or emphasized femininity." 
McClean, 2014 

"The way in which customers interact with employees shapes and reinforces present notions of gender. Many of my coworkers are verbal about their under-standing of male and female gender performances. At times, they were quick to assume passivity or compliance from female customers regardless of their engagement with emphasized fem-ininity as well as assumed assertiveness and confidence in men regardless of the performances of hegemonic masculinity. In es-sence, they were quick to essentialize male and female behavior based on the traditional gender performances that took place at The Coffee House. Therefore, traditional gender performances were also upheld by my coworkers through their narratives of essentialist gender differences." 

Limbourg, 2003

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- Limbourg, A. (2003). Large Americano, Extra Masculine: How People Do Gender at the Coffee House. Journal for Undergraduate Ethnography, 3(2), link
-McClean, J. (2014). Gender Maneuvering over Coffee: Doing Gender through Displays of Hegemonic Masculinity and Alternative Femininity. Journal for Undergraduate Ethnography, 4(2), 19-31.
- photograph by Saul Leiter via

Sunny and cold with a small chance of snow and a higher chance of inclusion

New German Media Makers, an association of journalists with different backgrounds, has named a low-pressure system bringing low temperatures Ahmet, after a boy's name of Turkish origin in order to make weather news more cross-cultural and make the country's ethnic diversity more visible. Other names to follow for low-pressure systems are Cemal, Goran, Hakim and Dimitrios, and Bożena, Chana or Dragica for high-pressure systems (via).



"The weather-naming project, which the group dubbed #WeatherCorrection, is a symbolic initiative demanding that Germany’s diversity be better reflected across society. The group is lobbying German media outlets to establish hiring quotas for journalists of colour and from migrant families. The group estimates that journalists of colour are vastly underrepresented in the media in Germany. They say only between 5% to 10% of reporters and editors in Germany have migrant roots."

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photograph by Saul Leiter via

The Pandemic. The Best Time for Elder Financial Abuse.

"Abusers are using the threat of the virus and the isolation to provide misinformation to people. One of the threats that abusers are using is… 'If you don't hand over your check, I can get you put into a nursing home, and you will die there' or 'If you don't hand over your check, I'll come visit you, and I've been out and exposed. Being locked in the house with the person they might be most afraid of — who might be threatening, hurting or manipulating them — it takes a situation that was rocky beforehand and makes it worse in this environment. We expect that it's getting worse."
Bonnie Brandl



photograph by Richard Kalvar (NYC, 1969) via

Rodriguez. Bigger than Elvis.

I wonder about the tears in children's eyes
And I wonder about the soldier that dies
I wonder will this hatred ever end?
I wonder and worry, my friend
I wonder, I wonder, wonder don't you?

"The first white anti-Apartheid movement derived [inspiration] from a few rock bands. Rodriguez was the first artist that actually had political content that was anti-establishment that got heard. ... By remote control, Rodriguez was actually changing a society." 

Malik Benjelloul

In the 1970s, Sixto Rodriguez was a superstar in South Africa where some of his songs became anthems of the anti-Apartheid movement (via) ... making him bigger than Elvis ... and where his music was "outlawed by the authorities and only played on pirate radio" (via). 

It’s the plaintive, yearning, totally honest-and-true way that Rodriguez sings, combined with his easy fingering on a six-string guitar, that touches the heart and mind. That’s why his music is said to have the political impact and cultural clout of the early Bob Dylan. (via)

Rodriguez grew up witnessing first-hand the oppression throughout the city (Detroit). What he experienced on the streets inspired his songs, and he began his musical career–or attempted to. During the day, Rodriguez was a hard-working laborer who worked in demolition and housing restoration, and by night he was a melodic, poetic messenger, a voice for the locally oppressed. (via)

photograph via, song "I wonder" via YouTube

... entirely spurious ... but important

"All nationalistic distinctions - all claims to be better than somebody else because you have a different-shaped skull or speak a different dialect - are entirely spurious, but they are important so long as people believe in them."
George Orwell



photograph by James Barnor via