Real Pictures for Real People: No Bullshit

New York, NY. 18 June 2008
Long moments of respectful silence were punctuated with soulful reflection, confessions, dreams laughter and even some arguing: Philip Jones Griffith’s memorial at Aperture on a recent night was as anarchic and enjoyable as the man himself.

The 72 year old photojournalist and warrior of peace died in March after an eight year battle with cancer. He was no stranger to death, having photographed its ravages in Vietnam, Cambodia and in other conflict zones around the world since he began working as a full-time freelance photographer in 1961.

In the course of his career he accumulated many thousands of negatives, some of which were reproduced into books as epic as the tragedies they depicted. Perhaps his most famous is Vietnam, Inc., published in 1971, exposed a reality that has existed in times of war for centuries, yet in his singular way, Jones Griffiths framed the ravages of war in such a way that helped turn the tide of American public opinion regarding the war.

Through Jones Griffiths’ subtle but poignant black and white images, he draws the viewer in rather than repulses with the vulgarity typical to images of war. A pacifist and fierce opponent of the war, Jones Griffiths never considered himself a traditional reporter or war photographer.

The photograph of the Vietnamese woman cradling a babe in her arms while a US soldier stands behind watching her, cradling his machine gun; or of the young boy who lay on a bare mattress, contorted, chained to the metal post of his bed with his pants pulled down below his knees (he lost his mind when he lost his mother to the war), are just two such images on view the other night.

The memorial at Aperture opened with documentary photographer Donna Ferrato asking the one hundred or so gathered to embrace silence, even during moments of tempted hilarity, as we embarked on a journey of remembrance on screen. In typical fashion, Ferrato had gathered up whomever happened to be around when it came time to interview Jones Griffiths’ pals for the film she was making as memorial to her past lover, and managed to pull together a splendidly intimate and fittingly offbeat portrait of Jones Griffiths from his images, his words, and the responses to both by friends and colleagues.

Although I never met him, I learned from the film that Jones Griffiths was the kind of man you want on your side in the worst situations because it would ensure: (1) his methodical nature would get you out alive; (2) his argumentative nature would distract you and keep you thinking; and (3) his comedic delivery of even the worst news would leave you uplifted no matter the circumstance.

While he lost pints of blood from a constant nose bleed in the final days, suffering paralysis in the hand that he forced to sign hundreds of his photographs as he lay dying, Jones Griffiths asks his and Donna’s daughter, Fanny, to hand him a collection of Welsh poems. Jones Griffiths, who was born in Wales in 1936, in the film lies in what appears to be a hospital bed with a Wales-London rugby match (his beloved Welshman win) playing on the television. From the book Fanny retrieves him, Jones Griffiths reads an ode to rugby that includes the line, “Sing no song of rugby when the match is over they’re at the bar in throngs.”

In the movie he says he will start from the beginning, as if to say, “Here: listen. This is what I want you to remember.”

With grave tone he begins, “Good orgasms are hard to find. This is something we should care about.” As the audience erupts in laughter, Jones Griffiths waxes on about how fidelity is for the weak-willed who have fallen victim to the mores of a society that, “is all fucked up – it’s all done to make us feel insecure…love is always something you give, never something you take…love yourself first and have faith in yourself.” Throughout, Jones Griffiths comes off as deeply funny and deeply serious. Simultaneously.

In the film he is described by photographer Elliott Erwitt (think black and white photos of little dogs on the streets of New York) as a “moral compass” of how photography should be done (straight, unadulterated), and by Eugene Richards (a photojournalist known for his portraits of drugs, gangs and other gritty experiences) as a “forensic scientist” of history.

A contemporary of Jones Griffiths, the respected war photographer Don McCullin, perhaps considering his own legacy, sums up that of his deceased friend in terms of how people will continue to respond to his work. To the sound of the shutter release click-clicking as Donna takes Philip and Don’s last photos together, McCullin intones, “He tried to make a difference. Generations to come will be holding Philip’s hands and saying, ‘thank you’.”

After the credits roll and the lights get turned on (and then quickly turned off after Ferrato grabs the mike and shouts, “Lights off! Lights off! You jumped the gun, lights off!”) Alex Webb, an American photojournalist, offers the wisdom given to him by Jones Griffiths when Webb was first applying for membership in Magnum. At meetings of Magnum when you’re a nominee, he’s told, you say nothing. When you’ve become an associate member, you say nothing. Once you are a full member, then you say (and Webb pantomimes the appropriate arm motions to go with the phrase), “‘Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!’.”

Jones Griffiths pissed off a lot of people in his years. He could also take apart a Leica and put it back together. He also built his own industrial-size enlarger and, according to David Burnett, installed the landing light from nothing less than a 707 airplane as his light source. Everything with Jones Griffiths was larger than life, and not surprisingly, left unforgettable impressions on the people he knew.

Bring a group of passionate photographers and powerful women together and you’re bound to create a little friction. The night did not disappoint in this regard, with one particularly tense exchange between Ferrato and a woman named Alberta who stood up in protest after one of Jones Griffiths’ past assistants, Lila Lee, told of a dream she had in which a bed full of women (a theme running throughout the night was that Jones Griffiths loved to surround himself with women who are easy on the eye) were fighting in the deceased’s apartment on West 36th Street.

Alberta pleaded with the sound of disbelief mixed with disgust, “Can’t we have some boundaries? This is out of hand,” to which some snickered, others nodded their heads in agreement and Ferrato, who held the mic at the time, responded that Lee’s comments were beautiful and desirable, and others were welcome to follow suit.

Perhaps the most memorable commentary, for me, came from Tom Keller, a former director of Magnum, the picture agency where Jones Griffiths also served as director from 1980 through 1985.

Referring to the Biblical creation story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, wherein Adam eats the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge and is thus banished from Paradise, Keller suggests what remains for me, days later, the defining reflection on Jones Griffiths.

Through the lens of Milton’s version of the Fall in Paradise Lost, Keller describes how Jones Griffiths lived and moved and made choices. Without Eve Adam does not want to stay in paradise and so consciously chooses to eat, chooses to see, chooses to leave Paradise. Keller chokes back tears as he speaks:

“Philip spent his life eating from the tree of knowledge and knew an awful lot. I’m pissed off he left us here.” Keller pauses, and then adds, “And this isn’t Paradise.”

I still feel the lump in my throat that I felt when I heard his words, maybe because I hope to leave a legacy that stimulates and challenges, that brings Truth, or at least begs others to question what is Truth, where is Meaning, to the table.

As if in response, a young man and aspiring photojournalist who did not know Jones Griffiths personally, stood up to speak and offered, simply, “How can we live up to it? How can we not try? [Looking at Jones Griffiths’ work] inspires me to try a little harder because he did it so well.”

When Jones Griffiths stopped breathing the clock read 10 to 2. No more debates, no more soliloquies. No more poetry. No more photography. His daughters, Fanny and Katherine, lay in bed beside him not wanting to let go. In Donna’s words, “Philip believed being a photographer was an honor and that there’s no room for bullshit. Real pictures for real people. With Philip you got as good as you gave, and he always gave more.”

Proud in Jackson Heights, Queens

In its 16th year, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride parade and festival brilliantly tramped down the streets of Jackson Heights in Queens earlier today. Demonstrating the great diversity of this neighborhood of more than 100 languages, parade participants, festival vendors, performers and spectators hailed from a multitude of countries and New York City neighborhoods.

Queens native and Italian-American Vinnie Barone said he, “must be famous somewhere,” given the number of times his photo has been taken over the many years he has been selling his shop’s wares at street fairs in the City. The yellow tent of his and wife Selma’s Ipanema Girl cast a soothing shadow in the early morning sun as they stocked their tables with green and yellow soccer jerseys, orange flip-flops and other brightly colored items one could imagine teenagers flocking to. Referring to his store in Astoria, Barone quipped, “everything’s imported, including my wife!”

Many of the crews setting-up on Sunday morning were family affairs – including a Colombian couple selling grilled corn on the cob and “fresh” lemonade (juicy lemons accompanied by ample amounts of boxed corn syrup). Father and son duo John and Michael Chan were expecting Mrs. Chan at any moment to help with the display of what Mr. Chan called “authentic gem stone” sculptures. The elder Chans were born in China and are raising Michael in Flushing.

Another father-son team have been hauling equipment from their large Islamic community in Ozone Park to this parade as well as many others for over a quarter century. NY Chair Rentals proprietor Waheed Khan, who was on hand to direct his son, Omar, and a crew that included an Osama, an Antonio and a Fernando. They had the main-stage tent up by 9am.

Russ and Paul Feddern, brothers in more ways than one, were on hand to assist with the first booth their group had staged at the event. Members of Chapter 32 of the Vietnam Veterans of America, the Feddern brothers did tours from 1966-1967 and 1967-1968, respectively. At the festival to educate and fundraise for their group, the veterans laid out $10 ball caps, an assortment of trinkets and kept busy sweeping their area. “We’re a place where vets can go for help – vets helping vets,” said first vice president Paul Narson.

Brothers and family of another sort were excitedly unpacking their car of give-aways. 2008 marks the 25th anniversary of the LGBT Community Center in Manhattan where, “300 groups meet monthly and 6,000 people are served weekly,” according to Rob Zukowski, pride coordinator for the Center. When asked if they look forward to the day or if it’s one long drain in the sun, intern Sterling Taylor responded that the pride season, which runs from June through August, is a great time. Arriving at a big day like the Queens event is like Christmas in June; “this is the easy part, like unwrapping the present,” said Taylor who also called Zukowski the “coordinator of all things prideful.”

Speaking of gifts, non-alcoholic drinks were being freely distributed and eagerly snatched up at the Englewood Cliffs-based Fuze Beverages booth. In a small attempt to “go green,” (or more likely meet the non-green demands of a grab and go culture) Fuze is transitioning from glass to PET plastic, the easiest plastic bottles to recycle. Marketing rep Joey Hodges was on hand to coordinate his team of Fuze-enthusiasts promoting "Plastic on the Outside, All Natural Inside" campaign, many of whom were eagerly looking for somewhere to relieve themselves of all the Fuze they’d drunk in the almost-80-degree weather.

In addition to the usual restaurants of Little India, a multitude of food vendors heated up 37th Road between 73rd and 77th streets. Cheesey corncakes were frying at Mozzarepas where Brian Leon and Ed Gonzalez were flipping the popular twist on a Colombian mainstay. The scent of Italian sausage, onions, peppers and fries cooking under the able supervision of John Thornton and Wess Charles at the Brooklyn-based Ned’s booth drew a large collection of NYPD officers, pregnant women pushing strollers and multi-tattooed and pierced women and men carrying rainbow flags.

A mix of parade and community party, the day also made room for the usual politicking of the local elect and candidates. Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-New York), State Assemblyman José Peralta (D-Corona) and City Councilwoman Rosie Mendez (D-District 2) were among the many politicians who shook hands, shouted into blow-horns and, in the case of Mendez who is an out lesbian and one of the grand marshals of the event, rode in an old convertible while waving to the crowd.

District 24 representative Rosemary Parker and other marchers from the United Federation of Teachers spoke out against what they are calling, “decades of chronic under-funding” of New York City schools. Claiming that Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration has taken $450 million promised to the schools out of $600 million from the New York Senate, they chanted to spectators to call the Mayor and demand he, “keep his promise.”

Danny Dromm, the event’s founder, who is also a public school teacher and a candidate for City Council, detoured off the purple-marked parade route to embrace the parents of a young man who was beaten to death in August of 2001 after leaving a gay bar in the neighborhood. Leonor and Armando Garzon carried a large photograph of their son Edgar Garzon, joining the parade at the corner marked with his name and remembered as the place where he was slain. The grief over a similar hate crime that took place one block away but eleven years earlier, when Julio Rivera was beaten and killed in a schoolyard, is considered to be the original battle cry that rallied the local gay community to action.

Since 1993 when the parade was first staged, it has continued to grow, reaching an estimated crowd of 30,000 in 2007. This year, more than 75 vendors and some 100 parade participants, according to Harry Roach of Clearview Festival Productions, who puts on the event, offered something for everyone. Kids shrieked and parents cheered approval of the folk dancers from Raices de Mexico, male baton-twirlers and cartwheel-turners, and the award-winning music by the Lesbian and Gay Big Apple Corps marching band.

For a day that started before 7am with members of the traffic division relocating cars illegally parked on the parade route along 37th Avenue and ended with the Sanitation Department’s street sweeping machines making the rounds as police officers removed the street barricades after 7pm, it was a good, long, hot, proud, peaceful addition to the history of Jackson Heights.

Additional photographs with captions can be found on my Pride'08 Flickr page.

A Quiet Rest for Cornell Capa

Photojournalist Cornell Capa, founder of the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York City, passed away in his sleep on Friday, 23 May 2008 after a battle with Parkinson's Disease. His death came just two days shy of his brother's death 54 years ago, when Robert Capa was killed instantaneously after stepping on a landmine while photographing in Vietnam. The older brother was the more famous photographer, perhaps in part due to his tragic, early death (much like how JFK carries a mystique his brother, Robert, almost approached). Yet Cornell, who lived into his 90th year, spent decades pursuing the "concerned photography" (a term he coined) to which both he and his brother were dedicated.

Cornell Capa, born Cornel Friedmann in Budapest, Hungary, in 1918, was a Life Photographer and then a photographer for Magnum Photo Agency, an association that his brother had founded in 1947 along with David "Chim" Seymour, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. According to the National Press Photographer Association's website, "Capa said he was motivated 20 years later to found ICP at a time when photojournalism seemed to be taking a back seat to television and film, and over his concern about how to 'keep alive' the work of photojournalists after their death (a personal experience for the photographer in light of his famous brother's work)."

Robert, a non-practicing Jew and a pacifist who covered wars and died while covering one, was buried at a Quaker cemetery north of Manhattan. Since then, Cornell's wife Edie, the Capa boys' mother Julia and the family biographer Richard Whelan have all been buried together. The Friend's Meeting House in Amawalk, less than two miles from my childhood home in Yorktown Heights, will welcome Cornell to his final resting place with a private ceremony on Wednesday.

I'd driven here yesterday, on a warm and sunny Memorial Day afternoon, with my sister and father. We did not, at that time, see where the family plot was located. The cemetery was empty of the living except for us, although a number of American flags placed at various tombstones throughout this small cemetery indicated others had been walking through recently. We made a somewhat perfunctory attempt at locating stones with "Capa" or "Friedmann," unsure of which name the family had been buried under.

When I went for my morning run, I headed to the cemetery. This time, I couldn't enter even though I enjoy being in cemeteries - I feel protected in them, somehow. Today, though, I simply stood on the threshold of the driveway, unable to go further. I wanted to return showered and quiet. That time came this afternoon.

Pops and I stopped in on my way to the Metro North train station in Croton Harmon before I headed back to Queens. Just as we were about to leave, unable to find the grave, I spotted a large mound of dirt covered in a green mesh tarp on the downward slope of the cemetery, in a spot on the edge of the grounds. The undertakers had just prepared his grave when a light drizzle began to fall.

Surrounded by woods, the four markers stood two feet tall: Robert, Edie, Julia and Richard from right to left. In between Julia and Edie's tombstones lay the wood planks covering the whole in the ground that will receive Cornell's remains tomorrow. The sound of thunder ushered in a heavy downpour.

At first I felt a rush of energy and pleasure at the discovery of this treasure practically in my backyard. But as I stood there, then knelt, sheltered from the rain by the boughs of the trees above, I felt awe, respect, and the profound quiet of those woods around, and those lives before me. These men, and the women who loved them, are a significant part of the legacy I have inherited as a woman who wants in my deepest desire to live: as a concerned photographer and journalist. So I did what came naturally - I made photographs to capture the moment in time, to collect in some small way the experience of being in the presence of the greatness of their lives. Before walking back up the hill to where my father was waiting, I touched the ground and thanked the earth for giving them life and giving them rest.

The Little Flower of East Orange

Stephen Adly Guirgis writes with an emotional intensity that bursts forth in anger, sorrow and biting humor. Well-known for his work Jesus Hopped the A Train, Gurgis' characters alternately cover themselves with street-harsh words and reveal their desperate agony to create a roller-coaster ride that is often loud and cathartic.

In The Little Flower of East Orange, a co-production by the LAByrinth Theater Company and the Public Theater, where the show is staged, Guirgis presents the relationship between an addicted son and his passive-aggressive, partially paralyzed and suicidal mother. Under the direction of LAB co-artistic director Philip Seymour Hoffman, Michael Shannon plays Danny, who narrates Little Flower as a series of flashbacks as he sits in jail after another relapse. When his mother goes missing, Shannon's Danny, alternately loving and bitter, abandons rehab with his perpetually high companion (played by Gillian Jacobs), to reunite with his mother.

Danny and his sister Justina, ably portrayed by Elizabeth Canavan who calls herself "the cold bitchy hysterical one who is also known as the only one who gets things done," find Therese Marie in a Bronx hospital after she tries to roll herself off a cliff in the Cloisters one night. While begging for scotch to ease her pain, Therese fakes amnesia so as not to bring her children to her bedside, wishing she were dead, or hoping to drink herself to death. When they finally find her, Justina panics at the thought her mother has died, but then screams what a bitch Therese is for trying to kill herself the one night Justina couldn't look after her. All three play the martyr to each other, all three jostling for the title of Greatest Victim, all seeking redemption from their anguished and co-dependent existence.

While never fully explored or explained, demons haunt mother, son and daughter all of whom feel they haven't measured up somehow - and never will. Their psychic turmoil throws them into strained interactions indicating undying love and utter misunderstanding. Danny taunts his mother in their final scene together, ultimately forcing her to admit that her deaf father's abuse caused her paralysis, but never revealing the causes of his own self-abuse.

From the vantage point of his jail cell from which he tells the story, Danny finds, at the end, his beginning and states, "let the state of incarceration do for me what I could not do for myself." And in this dead-end, where he cannot choose to leave like he did time and again when in rehab, and now after his mother's death finally sees "there is no precipice, no stopping point, no deluxe accommodations for martyrs. The only thing that stops you is death. Grace does not reveal itself to anyone who isn't looking for it...Grace is like the next breadth, it's always there."

Grace offers them acceptance - of themselves, of the ones they love, of the ones who have beat them down. It's theirs to accept, or go to their graves denying.

Recycling in the Pink

Did you know you can take your old running shoes (or any soft-soled sneaker by any brand) to your local Nike Town store and they will use it to create athletic surfaces like tracks and basketball courts and children's playgrounds? You can learn more on their Let Me Play Reuse A Shoe website.

Or that Clif Bar, based in Berkeley, CA, has partnered with TerraCycle to reuse its energy bar wrappers? Their joint initiative, called the Wrapper Brigade, is one of many that TerraCylce has created to reuse recyclable materials and, in the process, donate to charities.

Here's how it works:

Charities go to www.terracycle.net/brigades and apply to become one of the recipient organizations. Once approved, the charity receives collection bags that, once filled and returned to terracycle free of charge, receive .02 for each item recycled. In addition to collecting Clif Bar wrappers, TerraCycle collects Capri Sun and Kool Aid drink pouches, 20oz plastic soda bottles and Stonyfield Farm yogurt containers, among others.

See this video of Soyeon Lee, pianist, wearing a dress fashioned by TerraCycle. She performed in the recycled pink pouch dress at Carnegie Hall on 19 February in what her site calls an Eco Concert.



TerraCycle has limited the number of collection sites it will partner with, but the good news is that some of the companies gladly accept their used containers...like Stonyfield and Brown Cow who's number-5 containers are not recyclable by most municipalities.

Unfortunately, the organic yogurt makers, Clif, Capri Sun, TerraCycle and all the others promoting reuse are still only offering an in-between solution to the issue of using plastic, petroleum and other eco-unfriendly resources to service our food needs (mine included...I love my energy bars and handy yogurt servings). In Clif Bar's newsletter, they noted this less-than-ideal solution as well:

"We're not psyched about the fact that our wrappers end up in the garbage. We've been working hard to come up with a more sustainable solution; since we haven't found the answer just yet, we've partnered with TerraCycle to launch the Energy Bar Wrapper Brigade. Get this: TerraCycle will convert all of the energy bar wrappers they receive into handy accessories and will donate two cents for every wrapper to the charity of your choice. Sign up for free and become a shepherd for the program."

Related to this, I came across a great blog called Fake Plastic Fish by a woman named Beth Terry based in Oakland, CA that tackles this and other sustainability issues. I am impressed by her knowledge and dedication. And my friends think I'm an eco-nutso. Go, woman! Fake Plastic Fish, "They're cute, and if we don't solve our plastic problem, they could be the only kind we have left."

Cuba's Long Black Spring

If you don't know them, change that today: Citizens for the Protection of Journalists, a professional organization and non-profit I joined almost a year ago when I first came across one of their reports on human rights abuses.

Today's focus at their monthly luncheon was on Cuba's policy on independent journalists. In March 2003, the government went after and arrested 75 dissidents, 29 of whom were journalists, and 20 of whom remain behind bars in sub-human conditions five years later.

While the Spanish government has worked to release many of them, the American government remains mostly silent on the topic. While it is better to get them released, the speakers at today's luncheon suggested that neither the Spanish policy of engagement with Cuba (which on the one hand encourages Cuba's employment of dissidents as human bargaining chips) nor America's economic embargo serves as a model response to Cuba's human rights violations.

For more details on what CPJ has uncovered and recommends, see their report, Cuba's Long Black Spring, available on their website, at CPJ.org.

An Evening with Akram Zaatari

Akram Zaatari was an adolescent, a teenager, a bored observer of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Or so he tells us on March 17th as we gather at a theater of the Museum of Modern Art for the US premiere of his latest documentary.

Excavating his journals, audio recordings (on audio cassettes), photos and knickknacks of that time, Zaatari (born in 1966 in Saida, Lebanon) desires to see with the eyes of other men, his peers in age and nationality, who experienced the occupation differently. On this night, we were treated to excerpts of four of the more than thirty films in Zaatari's oeuvre: All Is Well on the Border (1997), This Day (2003), In This House (2005) and Nature Morte (2008).

An anthropologist of sorts, Zaatari literally unearths the story of one of his peers, Ali Hashishu, now a foreign correspondent with Agence France Presse, who served in the resistance army; his communist ties and experience on the front continue to serve him in his role as journalist. "Following the Israeli withdrawal from Ain el Mir in 1985, the village became the frontline. The Dagher family was displaced from their home, which was occupied by a radical resistant group for seven years. When the war ended in 1991, Ali Hashisho, a member of the Lebanese resistance stationed in the Dagher family house, wrote a letter to the Dagher's family justifying his occupation of their house, and welcoming them back home. He placed the letter inside an empty case of a B-10, 82 mm mortar, and buried it in the garden." In November 2002, Akram Zaatari headed to Ain el Mir to excavate Ali's letter and outsprang the film, In This House.

In another film, Neruda (a nickname given to him by another soldier because of his romantic and poetic sensibility) learned how to dismantle an AK47 at the age of ten. Once he could successfully make his target in seven of ten shots, he was promoted to RPGs at the age of 13. By 16, Neruda was caught during a bombing mission and held in detention-pseudo-jail by the Israeli army until he could legally be tried and imprisoned at 18. Neruda spent ten years in captivity. His story, shared primarily through the letters he exchanged with his devoted mother, and through interviews Zaatari held with other Lebanese prisoners in Israel, provide the context of the film, All is Well on the Border, completed in 1997.

In the artist's desire to relate his peers' experience of the invasion, Zaatari, the founder of the Arab Image Foundation, comes to understand that, "the story of resistances is really tied to mediation." In the attempt to tell a story of in-betweens, of ambiguity, of individuality, forces weigh against the storyteller leaving binaries of victim and victimizer, soldier and civilian, good and bad. Zaatari strives to get beyond these dualities, but feels hampered at every turn, with the characters in his stories, the audience, the government, all pushing toward black and white understandings and oversimplifications.

In the fourth film excerpted at MOMA, Nature Morte is a self-described, "poetic document that is not a fiction, but not documentary either." Commissioned by the Centre Georges Pomipidou in France, the film excerpt we see at MOMA is bare bones: no dialogue, one room, two characters who interact by mostly not interacting.

An older man wears a black nit cap, his dark eyebrows offset by a graying beard and few days' beard growth. Working under a kerosene lamp he hunches over a table low to the ground, where he is sitting and methodically assembling an explosive device. Behind him a younger man dresses in winter outer clothing, also seated, silent and methodical. He concentrates on sewing - mending a torn clothing article. He wears muted colors of army green with dark mustache and beard against a white-washed wall. After a number of minutes of this silent preparation, the older man loads a gun, the two stand facing each other, silent, inches apart. Who will go? Both? I assume the younger...isn't it always the young that we send to fight our wars? We break to the outside, flash from one man to the other, still unsure who will leave. And one finally does begin to climb up the hillside bordered by a low rock wall as birds chirp in the wintry low light heralding the almost-dawn of spring.

Zaatari's exploration of war, of objects, of experience over the decades appears to herald the dawn of spring, as well - both for him and for the world in the grip of wars worldwide.

From the MOMA catalogue:
An Evening with Akram Zaatari
Lebanese artist Akram Zaatari interweaves documentary and personal narrative to examine the complicated social, political, and cultural issues of a country shaped by extended territorial conflict. His videos and installations speak of the contradictions of everyday life within regions of conflict further fragmented by media. Al Yaoum (This Day) chronicles thirty years of Lebanon, and in How I Love You, five Lebanese men speak about their passions and relationships. Presented in conjunction with Asian Contemporary Art Week. 90min. Monday, March 17, 7:00pm.