Tag: politics

by jad

Keffiyeh Day

Yesterday was Nakba Day, and these were taken on Keffiyeh Day, May 11, in Westlake Park, at a rally marking the 76th year of rallies just like this one. The same chants, the same keffiyehs, the same fury in the face of the same injustice. I took these on expired film because these images could have been taken decades ago. I pray that they won’t be taken decades from now. Free Palestine. The rallies are the same, but the passion this year feels different. We’re at a tipping point of some kind. One of the UW student protestors spoke of … Continue reading “Keffiyeh Day” →

by jad

Empire of Lies

The other morning was like any other one of my mornings these days until I came across a series of garish yellow stickers with two ghoulish words in black: H X M X S R X P E Now, if someone had felt the need to put these up in October, I would have left them alone. If someone had felt the need to put them up in November, I would have left them alone. In December. Probably left them alone. In January. Maybe. I don’t know. But definitely not now. Definitely not after six months of genocidal madness and … Continue reading “Empire of Lies” →

by jad

The Machine is Broken

“This machine is broken.” You can’t read it, but that’s what the piece of paper says in the third and fourth slides. I took these Polaroids earlier today because I’ve been searching for a means to articulate a melancholy that’s become neck deep; a feeling of fundamental disjunction between how I spend my days and my weeks and what this particular time in history is actively asking of you and me. There’s a break between my life’s work and our common purpose that’s become increasingly impossible to ignore. How are we to look back on our actions today?How am I … Continue reading “The Machine is Broken” →

by jad

Cornish BFA ’24

There’s a Netflix docuseries on 9/11 and its aftermath where a veteran from the war in Afghanistan shares an epiphany he had on a watchtower one night. “It’s the freedom to pretend,” he exclaims, suddenly realizing what “freedom” means in America. “Everyone feels entitled to their fictions.” There’s something about his insight that resonated with me and how I read the representational politics interrogated and poked fun of at “The Freakshow Show,” this year’s BFA show at @cornish_artdept. Much of the work from this year’s cohort seems to be about laying bare such American fictions. We’ve made it a little … Continue reading “Cornish BFA ’24” →

by jad

Seattle’s Nuclear History: TerraPower

“Nuclear power gambles with disaster; even proponents acknowledge that accidents are inevitable. Smaller reactors would mostly be clustered together to generate more power and offer no more safety than larger ones … Nuclear power is of course far less dangerous to human lives and the environment than fossil fuel power. But this comparison is irrelevant. The proper comparison of nuclear power is not to fossil fuel energy but to renewal alternatives like wind power, solar power, and geothermal power. These are far less risky, dangerous and costly than nuclear power. Hydropower is also a renewable energy technology; however, it has … Continue reading “Seattle’s Nuclear History: TerraPower” →

by jad

Black History Month

There’s a lot of talk right now in astrology circles about stepping into our most future-forward selves with the turning of the plutonic clock towards an age of Aquarius, and the best advice has been to figure out what that means by looking at how far we’ve come. There are certain dates they suggest to help mark these shifts, but I’m less interested in the details of the plot than I am in the overall shape of the story being told: that our tomorrow is forged in yesterday’s fire and quenched today. I had the honor of being invited into … Continue reading “Black History Month” →

by jad

Thereness & Hereness

Yesterday, I used the word “thereness” to express how I look at the world photographically, but that’s a retrospective notion – in the moment of decision, the feeling is best captured by “hereness” – here I stand, I cannot do otherwise, so help me God. I’ve noticed this before, whenever I’ve walked through familiar places with a camera in hand; somehow, the world makes itself manifest in a different light that way. But a photo walk with others doing the same adds yet another dimension: the rhythm becomes corporate, a pooling of a liturgy of attention that’s more than idiosyncratic. … Continue reading “Thereness & Hereness” →

by jad

Merry Christmas from Lebanon

Merry Christmas from the land of prophets and profiteers; a country with too many shrines but not enough saints. Merry Christmas from the place that sane people go to lose their minds, according to my grandma. She said I haven’t changed one bit. “”But when will you make your mother a teta?” Merry Christmas from the room Ma Sœur said there’s nothing to photograph. Swipe to see where she took me to take photos instead. Merry Christmas from our abandoned ancestral home. My uncle had big plans for this place my whole life. It still looks exactly the same: like … Continue reading “Merry Christmas from Lebanon” →

by jad

Nuclear Vancouver

We packed a lot into our very short time in Vancouver, but my favorite stop was the opportunity to visit and hang out with atomic photographer, filmmaker, and sole @uraniumfilm festival coordinator in Canada for the 2024 tour, Jesse Andrewartha, in his East Van home. Here we are in his darkroom. And here he is displaying the radioactive properties of his prized slice of polished uranium ore. Let me tell you: that crackling of the Geiger counter is an eerie basement sound! Jesse Andrewartha is a Canadian filmmaker, photographer, and visual effects artist specializing in historical & obscure darkroom techniques … Continue reading “Nuclear Vancouver” →

by jad

Infra-Politics & Photography

The thing about infrastructure is that it never just does what it’s supposedly designed to do. Infrastructure congeals and conceals social interest. It’s “inevitably imbued with biased struggles for social, economic, ecological, and political power to benefit from connecting (more or less) distant times and places” (Graham and Marvin, 2001). In other words, “one person’s infrastructure is another’s difficulty” (Starr, 1999). Highways, dams, and pipelines have always been flashpoints of protest when they displace and disrupt lifeways and communities; they leverage the same logic as that of nuclear “sacrifice zones” – those spectacular feats of dispossession for the national good, … Continue reading “Infra-Politics & Photography” →