Living Proof
i always forget what a mountain to climb publishing a book can be....from the germ of an idea, all through the often grueling shooting process, editing, finding a publisher, doing the layout, to the final moment of realization that a book is actually finished....for me the living proof of publishing is when a book sits on my mother’s coffee table...
only then do i know the process is over, and i am free to move on to new horizons....new ideas.....other mountains...other valleys....and back again to the acts of discovery that gives being a photographer real meaning...
“Living Proof” is not really a “photo book”....not a collection of my best photographs at all....more of a “photo record” or diary during my short but intense journey through the world of hip hop culture...or rather, i should say, as a visual representation of all the lyrics of rappers that i read who are at the end of a long chain of african storytellers (griots) who spun their tales, became enslaved, shipped to the americas, and whose lyrics are manifested in gospel, blues, jazz, rock n’ roll and finally rap.....
a cultural chain linked around the world...from the south bronx of new york to the wall slicing through jerusalem to the ghettos in paris and the favellas of brazil and on and on and on...oppressed people everywhere using rap as a way to “get it out”, “get it down”.......words as mirrors, words as swords....
yet, while the pen may be “mightier than the sword”, unfortunately the words often reflect “real world”...my “main man” Uptown, who you may remember from other posts, and whose prison based poetry graces “Living Proof” and who has been my friend for three years , lies tonight in a hospital bed with multiple gunshot wounds (four i think) and a bullet still lodged somewhere in his 32 year old body...
with weak voice he called me on my cell phone as i was having noodles here in Bangkok ...Uptown has spent a third of his life in jail and was jailed the night of my opening exhibit back in june when i had fantasized him being the celebrity of the evening...jail or death are the most likely ends for men who live Uptown’s lifestyle....men who are unlikely to have been dealt a winning hand....
i hope Uptown is around to sign books whenever i have a book signing...but, my white middle class fantasies of what should be or not be for Uptown are over.....actually, they were over long ago.....if you can find a copy of “Living Proof” somewhere, skip the pictures and go straight to the last page....read Uptown’s poem “The Struggle”....he says it all right there....
