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 All of my projects are works in progress—as I am constantly observing, photographing, writing, and learning about the worlds that I am documenting. The lives of the individuals are also changing and my themes of injustice, struggle and hope, though similar, take on various renditions as my focus evolves, shifts and grows. Rest In Peace: Spontaneous Memorials is a field sociology study that consists of fourteen sections of photography and text (resident interviews) depicting neighborhoods where young people have been killed in Newark and East Orange, New Jersey. Each section highlights in images and words insights into the loss
and grieving as well as the rituals and spirit of the street and wall
memorials. Larry and His Family: Covering Light Years in Minutes, or A Motherhood in Quicksand. (Both are working titles.) Larry is sixteen. For the past thirteen years I have chronicled his life amid his family struggling to survive living in one of Newark's harshest neighborhoods. He has gone from hope of being an artist to playing hookey, to the streets, to juvenile detention and has just returned from being incarcerated for the past twenty-six months. Larry is still considerate, gentle, thoughtful and despite his immersion into the world of poverty where police brutality, gang and drugs plaque the neighborhood, where programs and hope for the future have been cut back. He told me that he still looks for the good, but is ready for the bad and it is the police who cause the violence. His mother said there is nothing here that is good so she plans to send him to live and work with his father, who has a sheet-walling business in Virginia. This photo-essay is a micro insight into a world common in urban America—a world where it is easy to blame the victim rather than look at the system that causes and creates so much of the violence and despair. My website section on WATCHING CHILDREN GROW has images of Larry. A publisher is needed. As a sociological project I Interviewed and photographs twenty white people in Chicago, Florida, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. I asked them How would they feel if they became a minority in America? I have had the interviews transcribed and so far have two expert acedemics Molefi Kete Asante, Ph.D. and Tim Wise responding to a number of the interviews. This project is educational and brings insight into the common thoughts of everyday people on their views about minorities. Most of these interviews are somewhat boring and so similiar in thinking that they are interesting and make an important contribution to the studies on white views. I am looking for a publisher for this project. Why Don't They Move? I am in the process of writing an anwer to a question that other white suburbanites have asked me numerous times over the years, since they know I am involved with residents in the inner city. Why don't people move if it' s so bad in the ghetto? I am including stories and interviews about African Americans who have moved into the suburbs and their experiences, as well as, people trying to move out of the city and their problems, and some attitudes of white suburbanites. I am also combining this question with another question that I have been asked: Why don't battered women leave? I am looking for a publisher for this work in progress. |
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