June 16, 2009
Claire Martin – Photographer
I stumbled across Claire’s work this evening whilst reading through some interviews at a new site. This pushed me in the direction of Claire’s personal site. I thought her work stunning. It’s rare I see photos I wish that I had taken but she has many.
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The interview with her struck me as spectacularly unilluminating, but I very much like her work.
I used to drive my wife to work downtown through the Vancouver Eastside in the wee hours of the morning. It really is the side of Vancouver that many people don’t get to see. So many people that through a wrong turn of events ended up there. Thanks for this, I found it profoundly moving.
Chris, you mention how easily a “wrong turn of events” can land people in such circumstances as those portrayed in Martin’s Vancouver series.
That observation hits home. I think of my own life over the past ten years and of times when, admittedly, I have chosen to live in my car or sleep in a stairwell or spend the night in a ditch — hungry, frightened, tired, disoriented, and dirty.
For various reasons at various times, available alternatives to these desperate measures seemed to me unacceptable. What in my case were more often than not choices felt like necessities.
Over the past six months, and the past few weeks especially, I have found myself at times edging closer to such choices out of something closer to pure necessity. That’s a scary place to be, and I am reminded that no one really chooses, freely and joyously, to live as the people in the Vancouver series live.
And I know just enough about Slab City (another realm documented by Martin) to know that for many of its residents, the choice to let their freak flag fly is not one they might have embraced given a different roll of the dice.
Sheila— you have just perfectly expressed something I’ve spent ages trying to state. I love my neighborhood out here in San Francisco, but most people don’t understand why. Just in accessing my front gate, they cross paths with a man peeing himself in his wheelchair, with his head agog and mangled paper cup outstretched. So much of my life (granted, a relatively short one thus far) has been spent in a misery not too far from the woes of the people living on the streets here in the Haight.
So, thank you. As for Ms. Martin, her work renders me speechless.
I have trouble expressing this as well as I’d like to. I think it’s a matter of “Grace”, in that we don’t get to choose how we come into this world, so many things get decided for us before we get to have a say.
I wonder how I’d have turned out if I’d grown up in the house next door,next town, another country. The variables are huge and we just have to run with it. These days I’m not much of a sprinter, cross country seems to be my bag. Got to look out for the ditches.
Kelsey, perhaps you’ve traveled beyond that mode of being wherein we regard the misfortune of others and mouth the platitude, “There but for the grace of God . . . ”, and you live in a state of recognition that approaches communion.
What I just said sounds far more abstract and lofty than I intend.
But I’m glad I articulated something you feel. I was worried that I might come off as a self-absorbed drama queen, which I’m capable of being and no mistake!
Chris, seems you and I were submitting comments at about the same time! I don’t want you to think that my reference to “There but for the grace of God . . . “ in terms of a platitude was a response to what you said about ‘Grace’.
There are people who both comfort and distance themselves by means of some version of that sentiment, but you do not strike me as one of them, and I hope you know my observation was not directed at you.
Thanks for looking at these, guys. I had a feeling that Claire’s work would hit a note here. She also has a Flickr stream for those that want to follow her there.
Sheila, I know where you’re coming from with the “there but for the grace of God” comment, don’t worry I didn’t think it was aimed at me.
That’s good, Chris.
Here’s an extreme version of “there but for the grace of God”.
Years and years ago (1981) I was sitting with friends at work when someone walked in with the news that Egyptian president Anwar Sadat had been assassinated. We all sat quietly for a few moments, taking it in and thinking, “Whoa. This is heavy.”
Finally, one person broke the silence.
“Well, better him than me,” she said in a tone both tongue-in-cheek and rueful.
This hits me hard. I have spoken here before about the images from my El Paso childhood that have shaped me–children in Mexico without shoes in winter, prostitutes walking topless along the side of the road, women with dead eyes holding crying babies, worried men standing outside businesses hoping to find work. What I wrestled with at the time–and wrestle with still–is the ease with which so many people in our country can view such people, or images of such people, and come to the convenient conclusion that it really isn’t what it appears to be. Those barefooted children aren’t really cold–they’re just part of a scam, getting people to feel sorry for them and give them money that they take back to their rich uncles. If those men weren’t so lazy, they’d have jobs. I remember wondering, like Chris, what if I had been born across that river?
As I’ve aged, my feelings have changed a bit. I still feel the same weight of injustice, of fate, of chance. I still feel the same outrage at people who are blind to their own privileges, who believe they have done everything for themselves without recognizing the advantages they were born with. But now, when I wonder what it would have been like if I had been born across that river, my deepest wish is that I had been.
sheila,maybe you know that helmut schmidt was a big friend of sadat,
phil , the photos of claire martin are awesome,
and i can see a nice heart in many of this people..
and many times i dont wanna look in some rich people hearts
Oh, Cindy. Cindy, Cindy.
women with dead eyes holding crying babies
My first recollected image of of my first stay in Mexico, when I was sixteen: A woman with moist eyes, holding a dead baby strapped on her back — the baby staring with dry dead eyes long past crying.
She was walking to the cathedral.
It took me a while to realize that the baby was dead, as I was young and ignorant.
Lars, yeah, I do remember that Chancellor Schmidt and President Sadat were of one mind — or at least close.
I hate it that the opportunity available in the days of Schmidt and Sadat and Carter was lost.
My deepest wish is that I had been. [Cindy Scroggins]
schmidt is now 90, i think, still smoking, even at places its not allowed,
and his wife loki is smoking the same,
and they like to play chess,
they are beautiful normal, and maybe she was even stronger than him, if its possible….no the same, i think
he was growing up the place i live…in barmbek, hamburg
Smoking and chess. Beautiful.
“Those barefooted children aren’t really cold–they’re just part of a scam, getting people to feel sorry for them and give them money that they take back to their rich uncles. If those men weren’t so lazy, they’d have jobs.”
I think these are things people tell themselves so they don’t have to deal with it. One of the companies I work with has a safety motto “If you see it, you own it”, meaning you’re responsible for the solution, if you ignore it and someone gets hurt, you’re responsible for that too. Wouldn’t it be good if we applied that to the world at large and we stopped ignoring the things that make us uncomfortable?.
I do mean what I said about smoking and chess most sincerely. No joke. Although I have not smoked regularly since I was 23 and I am a perfect idiot when it comes to chess, I still think they are beautiful human activities.
if you know someone that you really wanna play chess with, it must be a big friend, because, it can be a hurting thing…
is it a game?
only with real friends,but i can smoke with anybody..
if you still know the age of 23 stop smoking., you have to be a good chess player…or a gambler
That is a fine motto, Chris–and it would be good, as you say, if people applied it to a larger realm. In this country it seems that many people only recognize need when it appears in their own lives–and then suddenly the new cry is: “Somebody should do something!” Yeah, that big government you don’t want should get busy, for instance.
i know, you dont talk to me, daryl , even my second name is christian,
but the truth is, everyone has to look for himself..
i can tell a lot ,and feel a lot..
if you have friends, you are lucky…
but its good what you want…