Tag: seattle

by jad

The Harrowing

I’ve been co-convening a little get-together of 20/30-something church types who are into “questioning” and “wrestling” with matters of faith. Yesterday’s topic was empire and power, and someone raised the question of whether Christianity lost its ability to speak back to power after 313, when Constantine made it a state religion. I rambled a response about the paradox and scandal of incarnation – how, in an abstract and philosophical way, things took a turn towards human corruptibility the moment the Word decided to become Flesh (which got a laugh from the room) – and, at some point, I used the … Continue reading “The Harrowing” →

by jad

Transit Equity Day: RR x TRU

I want to use this last post of a gorgeous bus stop from my time in California as an opportunity to ask for your financial support of @RidersRightsLB. Next Saturday is #TransitEquityDay, and, to coincide with this occasion, the #Seattle Transit Riders Union has launched a crowdfunding campaign to support a mutual aid initiative that RR is coordinating in #Lebanon. I’ve put a link where you’d expect to find it on my profile. Please consider supporting mobility justice in Lebanon during an extremely difficult economic and political time there. The parallels we are drawing between our two very different contexts are deliberate. Rosa Parks and … Continue reading “Transit Equity Day: RR x TRU” →

by jad

Assemblage & Photography

Someone said that the best camera is the one that inspires you to keep using it. This is my #FujifilmXT4 with an old #NikkorLens originally designed for film cameras, with a focus wheel that’s a little loose but is light enough to feel like nothing on this camera body. It’s fun. It’s imprecise. Adapted to this body, it’s completely manual. How does one assemblage inspire what another does not? x This is the same route I take every time I walk to work. Sometimes, things change and I notice them in a #superordinary way, but most of the time, things are exactly the same, and so … Continue reading “Assemblage & Photography” →

by jad

#AdventWord 2022: Corinne

Corinne isn’t really on Instagram anymore, but this is how we connected: pouring our little hearts out into this app until we became friends a couple years ago around this time, after a chat about some #AdventWord posts I’d made. Since then, we’ve worked together on a couple of things, including the coolest battle vest you’ve ever seen and that gorgeous set of portraits that David took for @inconjunct. Though I’ve known her primarily as a visual artist, I’m touched and honored to share Corinne’s moving poetry in the next three posts: x WILDERNESS by @cascadiacore Once a wolf swallowed me, andcarried me in … Continue reading “#AdventWord 2022: Corinne” →

by jad

Doing Photography

I never intended to actually start “doing” #photography when I first started posted those little excerpts from Sontag and Barthes all those months ago, but here we are, featured in @anna.s.snapshots‘s Issue 3 of Plastic Perspective. It’s a portrait of Christine that I took on my very first roll on my #Holga135 at just the right moment, in just the right light. It’s all kind of surreal. And here we are playing photographer and model. I’d be cringing if I weren’t so grateful for Christine’s steadfast support, encouragement, and patience as I turn her into guinea pig slash muse for this strange new hobby that’s … Continue reading “Doing Photography” →

by jad

A Fire is Lit: Concert Photography

This was my first time attempting to take anything more than smartphone snaps at a concert, and it turned out to be a lot of fun. Bar House wasn’t what I expected. It’s a great space but a little difficult to navigate with a chunky camera. I found it almost impossible to capture the frenetic energy from my cramped vantage point, so I’d assumed that most of my shots would have to be scrubbed off my SD card at the end of the night. But when I scrolled through them later, sitting by Fremont’s Lenin statue, I realized that much … Continue reading “A Fire is Lit: Concert Photography” →

by jad

September Estrangement Series

Over the next few days, I’ll be sharing an assortment of #analogphotography from recent happenings and wanderings. This set’s from a staff retreat I was on earlier this month, my third time on this former military base. The first slide’s taken with a #Holga135 on #fujifilm200; the second’s almost the same shot taken on my phone. I greatly enjoyed my pre-dawn and early morning walks and felt like I’d completed some kind of cycle by being here, having sat with hesitation at the threshold of belonging the last time I was in this place. I’ve walked across now. I’m there. x The last night of … Continue reading “September Estrangement Series” →

by jad

New Aura of Old

“Aura is a quality integral to an artwork that cannot be communicated through mechanical reproduction techniques – such as #photography. The term was used by Walter Benjamin in his influential 1936 essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Benjamin argued that ‘even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: Its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.’ He referred to this unique cultural context i.e. ‘its presence in time and space’ as its ‘aura’.” (TATE / ART TERMS) I’m not sure … Continue reading “New Aura of Old” →

by jad

Neither Art…Nor Nonart

“Artistic production begins with ceremonial objects destined to serve in a cult. One may assume that what mattered was their existence, not their being on view. … Certain statues of gods are accessible only to the priest in the cella; certain Madonnas remain covered nearly all year round; certain sculptures on medieval cathedrals are invisible to the spectator on ground level. … In #photography, exhibition value begins to displace cult value all along the line. But cult value does not give way without resistance. It retires into an ultimate retrenchment: the human countenance. It is no accident that the portrait was … Continue reading “Neither Art…Nor Nonart” →

by jad

An Alright Journey

‎الى اين‎بين النهرين‎بين سطرين‎لا يهم و نمشي ‎الى متى‎سار الفتى‎اين اتى‎لا يهم و نمشي x his is Christine holding a Polaroid we took earlier, outside the USCIS building where I got quizzed on civics, could not recall my social security number, and renounced all loyalty and fidelity to any prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, except that of these United States, so help me God. I like to think of it as an ad hoc aura photo of my total ontological reconstitution in this civil rite of baptism. Blessed be. It was an expedited oathtaking ceremony to get through the backlog of … Continue reading “An Alright Journey” →