In 2013, Mohammad Ali Atassi and several colleagues formed Bidayyat: an organization that sought to teach Syrians how to make documentaries so they could take ownership of their wartime narratives. It was one of several such initiatives in Syria. An anonymous collective called Abounaddara had been active since 2010 with a focus on “emergency cinema,” […]
This post is a placeholder or a scaffold for something I will return to in the future. For now, all I want to say is that I am now clearer on one reason for my maintaining a stubborn, some may say perverse, commitment to ongoing learning from and teaching with documenta 14, split between Athens, […]
Every night I sat watching [TV] with a shutter release in my hand… In the middle of the week the shooting of students by National Guardsmen occurred at Kent State University. This tragic event produced the most powerful images that emerged from the camera, yet I felt a reluctance to use any of them. It […]
This morning in Ohio, I’m thinking about last Summer in Scotland, specifically this stunning tapestry by Scottish artist Sam Ainsley I saw in Perth. Ainsley made the tapestry, depicting the Highlands, in 1982, for the foyer of the General Accident Fire and Life Assurance Corporation Headquarters (now Aviva UK Insurance Building) and when I went […]
