Photographer Roy DeCarava : 'The Sound I Saw'

Photographer Roy DeCarava. Photo by triggahappy76 / Flickr.
Roy DeCarava : 1919-2009

Photographer Roy DeCarava, who died Oct. 27 at age 89, dedicated his 60-year career to capturing images of African Americans. His subjects ranged from daily life in his hometown of Harlem to the Civil Rights movement, but his most noted work featured photographs of jazz greats like Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong...

The first black photographer to win a Guggenheim Fellowship, DeCarava was also awarded the National Medal of Arts... In 1996, his work was the subject of a major traveling retrospective organized by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

NPR / October 30, 2009

"pepsi," 1964. Photo by Roy DeCarava.
The Sound I Saw:
Photography from a black point of view

By Carl R. Hultberg / The Rag Blog / October 31, 2009

Pictures of a man leaving the subway, of a saxophone, a black woman’s face. John Coltrane. Langston Hughes. The black New York City photographer who captured this Harlem history in its latter heyday was Roy DeCarava.

Educated at Cooper Union, and struggling to survive working as an illustrator, Mr. DeCarava always managed to find time to photograph ordinary life in his neighborhood. Whether it was the murky view out a dirty window from a cheap room, or the iconic image of a (now) Jazz Giant, Roy had a way of ennobling everything he snapped. But not in the usual style of strictly European art based traditions or sentimentality. It was as if the simple objects portrayed were the same as the faces of the people, of the Jazz musicians -- all possessing a story to tell.

What Roy DeCarava accomplished, and what we now take for granted, is a black point of view. What English word do we use to describe this type of vision? Good question. Perhaps it is better that it doesn’t have a name like “Soul” that could be easily turned into advertising copy and lose all meaning. What Roy DeCarava photographed was the tenderness and quiet pride flowing through everyday Harlem life, the smoldering Jazz solo across a smoke filled club, the structural beauty of a black person’s face.

Included in the seminal photo collection The Family of Man (1955), DeCarava was still mostly intolerant of the white art world. Although he received a Guggenheim Grant in 1952, Roy felt no need to acknowledge that art world or participate in the mainstream art scene. Instead he turned his own apartment in Harlem into a gallery for a few years, exhibiting the work of other art photographers. Instead of working for Life Magazine full time like black photo pioneer Gordon Parks, Roy DeCarava sponsored a protest against the publication.

Roy was also a great photography teacher (at Hunter College), sending hundreds of student camera eyes out into the streets in search of poetic truth. Roy DeCaravara’s great cultural accomplishment was to equate black street life with black Jazz, seemingly in an effort to ensure that one would not rise without the other. It was all about timing, whether it was Jazz, or Photography, or Life.

Asked what he saw in the Jazz performance that made it like photography he said: "I improvise. Improvisation is all about individual interpretations, individual expression. And that's what I'm doing." He also said: “in between that one-fifteenth of a second, there is a thickness.” That was a poet speaking. Roy DeCarava passed on this week, but his photographs are still telling their simple eloquent stories of black life.

Also see:

• Roy DeCarava, 89: Photographer acclaimed for haunting Harlem images by Matt Schudel / Washington Post / October 30, 2009
• A gallery of Roy DeCarava's photographs.
• An NPR interview with Roy DeCarava from May 1996

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Stephanie Chernikowski : 'Looking at Music: Side 2' at the MOMA

Sonic Youth. 1983. Black-and-white photograph, 11 x 17" (27.9 x 43.2 cm). Photo by Stephanie Chernikowski / Looking at Music: Side 2 / Museum of Modern Art, New York.

That is a very early shot of Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth playing at CBGB. They are both multi-talented, as are many of the artists in the show. Looking at Music: Side 2 examines a movement of downtown artists, musicians, photographers, and film makers who enjoyed breaking rules and usually did their art on the cheap. New York was broke and so were we. It sounds like a brilliant show and includes artists I really like -- Patti Smith, Richard Hell, Jean-Michel Basquiat. I look forward to seeing it.
sc nyc 6.2009

Stephanie Chernikowski / The Rag Blog / June 9, 2009

Stephanie Chernikowski, a former denizen of the Sixties Austin artistic and literary bohemia who now resides in New York City, is featured in an exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MOMA).

The show, titled Looking at Music: Side 2, opens June 10, and runs through Nov. 30.

Stephanie Chernikowski moved to New York City from her native Texas on Columbus Day of 1975. She began working as a photojournalist shortly before her move and has continued to view life through a lens. Her concentration has been on 35mm black & white portraiture and documentation of the downtown music and arts scene, with occasional digressions.

Looking at Music: Side 2
June 10, 2009–November 30, 2009
The Yoshiko and Akio Morita Media Gallery, second floor

The Museum of Modern Art presents Looking at Music: Side 2, a survey of over 120 photographs, music videos, drawings, audio recordings, publications, Super 8 films, and ephemera that look at New York City from the early 1970s to the early 1980s when the city became a haven for young renegade artists who often doubled as musicians and poets. Art and music cross-fertilized with a vengeance following a stripped-down, hard-edged, anti-establishment ethos, with some artists plastering city walls with self-designed posters or spray painted monikers, while others commandeered abandoned buildings, turning vacant garages into makeshift theaters for Super 8 film screenings and raucous performances.

Many artists found the experimental music scene more vital and conducive to their contrarian ideas than the handful of contemporary art galleries in the city. Artists in turn formed bands, performed in clubs and non-profit art galleries, and self-published their own records and zines while using public access cable channels as a venue for media experiments and cultural debates.

See the online interactive presentation of the works included in Looking at Music: Side 2, with a slideshow of selected highlights, interpretive texts, and original acoustiguide conversations recorded for the exhibition. The site will launch by June 17, 2009.

Go to MOMA's public flickr page for Looking at Music: Side 2.

Visit Stephanie Chernikowski's website.

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Annie Leibovitz and The Gay Tax : The Cost of Love

Susan Sontag. Photo © Annie Leibovitz / Politics, Theory & Photography.
Annie Leibovitz and the gay tax

Same-sex couples do not have the same privileges as straight married couples when it comes to inheritance. If your partner passes away and leaves her estate to you, you have to pay up to 50 percent of the value of your inheritance in taxes. However, if you and your partner were recognized as a married couple, you wouldn't have to pay a dime.

By Nancy Goldstein / March 5, 2009

Poets swoon about it and singers croon about it, but LGBT people can calculate the cost of love down to the last penny. In my household it comes to around $329.25 monthly: that's the gay tax my wife and I shell out for me to be on her health insurance plan, because her company must treat that benefit as additional taxable income. It doesn't matter that our Massachusetts marriage is recognized in New York. Companies pay for their employees' health insurance with pre-tax money through a federal program, and same-sex marriage isn't federally recognized.

But that's chump change compared to what love is currently costing celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz. Back in late February the NYT noted that Leibovitz had borrowed a total of $15.5 million from a company called Art Capital Group using "as collateral, among other items … town houses she owns in Greenwich Village, a country house, and something else: the rights to all of her photographs."

But what the NYT missed, along with every other straight newspaper that picked up the story, is why Leibovitz suddenly found herself in such dire financial straits. It took AfterEllen's Julie Miranda to put two and two together and figure out that "most of Leibovitz' financial woes stemmed from her inheritance of her longtime partner, Susan Sontag's estate." Writes Miranda (who, in turn, is channeling Suze Orman's Valentine's Wish for Gay Marriage):

"Same-sex couples do not have the same privileges as straight married couples when it comes to inheritance. If your partner passes away and leaves her estate to you, you have to pay up to 50 percent of the value of your inheritance in taxes. However, if you and your partner were recognized as a married couple, you wouldn't have to pay a dime...When Sontag died in 2004, she bequeathed several properties to Leibovitz, who was forced to pony up half of their value to keep them."

Will this profoundly unfair issue be challenged now that attention's being drawn to it by the situations of couples like Sontag and Leibovitz who are far higher-profile than me and my gal? We're about to get a shot at finding out. As my Broadsheet colleague Judy Berman reported on Tuesday, Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders filed suit earlier this week on behalf of same-sex couples who have tied the knot in states that have marriage equality, seeking to challenge their blocked access to federal benefits. The plaintiffs include Dean Hara, spouse of the late Rep. Gerry Studds. But even with the spectacle of a U.S. Congressman's widower being denied Social Security benefits, the case isn't a slam dunk, since its slingshot is aimed at the big federal law that institutionalized this discrimination: the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. It's likely to face a long slog up to the U.S. Supreme Court. Until then, there's a high price on our heads, dead or alive.

Source / broadsheet / salon.com

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Alan Pogue : My History With Violence

Alan Pogue and Tracey, the woman whose life he saved. The photo was taken by D'Ann Johnson on Nov. 4, 2008, during the trial of Willie McDade, Alan's assailant.

"One late night in late April of this year, Alan Pogue was severely beaten when he tried to save a woman’s life on a street corner in east Austin. The woman. . . was being pounded by two others. Alan -- the noted Austin photojournalist, social activist and frequent contributor to these pages -- pulled the two women away from their victim but was sucker punched [by a man he hadn't seen]. . ."

I wrote those words in The Rag Blog last November, introducing an article Alan Pogue wrote for us about that incident -- where he risked his life to save another. Alan, was the staff photographer for The Rag in late Sixties Austin, and for a time lived in his darkroom there. [The Rag, our inspiration, was an underground newspaper, now something of a legend in these parts.]

Alan Pogue has written a remarkable article for The Texas Observer about that harrowing night at Chicon and Rosewood in east Austin. He also recounts his personal history with and his philosophy about the use of violence – from being beaten up as a kid and serving as a medic in Vietnam to a series of incidents in recent times where he has turned to his knowledge of self-defense to help himself and others.

That Observer article, My History of Violence, appears in full below, preceded by some further reflections Alan has written for The Rag Blog.

Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog / February 27, 2009

Remembering Kitty Genovese, and buying a gun.

In March of 1964 Winston Moseley stabbed Kitty Genovese on the street in Queens, New York... I vividly remember the article on this crime and that no one helped. I never want to be like those 38 people who would not help.

By Alan Pogue / The Rag Blog / February 27, 2009

The Texas Observer asked me to write a first person account about being jumped while helping a woman in distress at Chicon and Rosewood in Austin. Here is some background on my attacker. He was 25 years old and has been in and out of detention since he was 12. His aggravated assault on me was his third conviction. His father has four felony convictions. I'm told his family does not want him around. He had been out of prison only for a few months when he attacked me. He and his friends were using and selling crack. One may assume he has mental problems.

At the trial his lawyer did his best but there was little doubt about the facts of the case. My attacker showed no remorse or even that he cared at all about what was happening at the trial. Now he is in prison where I doubt anything good will be done for him. On the other hand he is a clear danger and needs to be off of the streets.

The drug bazaar at 12th and Chicon has been there since I came to Austin in 1968. The drug dealers there keep to themselves and their customers. There are some people there who clearly have mental problems. Also there are runaways. Some are prostituting themselves for drugs. Since this is all very obvious one wonders why no concerted effort is made to address the problems. There are plenty of churches nearby but they only do occasional and superficial forays to 12th and Chicon. Much of the action has moved east down 13th street. The drug dealers usually wear something red to indicate they are with the Bloods, or are Blood wannabes. There are other hot spots in north and southeast Austin. The Capitol is another story.

In March of 1964 Winston Moseley stabbed Kitty Genovese on the street in Queens, New York. Thirty eight people heard her screams but no one helped. Moseley went away but then came back and stabbed Genovese again, killing her. I vividly remember the article on this crime and that no one helped. I never want to be like those 38 people who would not help. Moseley is still in prison and he has shown no remorse. He escaped and committed a brutal rape before he was caught again.

But if you do stop to render aid you better be prepared for the worst. Besides not calling 911 before I got out of my car I failed to look around carefully for others who might be involved. Sometimes situations like this are set up to trap people who might help. Stopping to help with a flat tire could be a life threatening situation. That was not the case this time but the result was the same. In the past I have been able to handle attackers that I saw coming.

This time my attention was fixed in front of me, bad. Reflecting on what happened I now know that my attacker had another friend in his car. Had I overcome my attacker I might have had to deal with the other man and the two women. As it is I am fortunate not to have lost the sight in my right eye. As bad as I was hurt, at least I was not shot or stabbed.

But the ghost of Kitty Genovese is still with me. If I come upon another person who is in danger of being raped and/or killed I will help. Since my incident many people have stopped me to relate equally horrible stories about what happened to them. Just a month ago a couple was brutally beaten by four men at 4th and Colorado in Austin. Two people who stopped were also beaten.

So, thinking about all this, I did some research on pistols and came up with the Taurus "Judge" .45/.410. It is a five shot revolver that fires either .45 Colt bullets or .410 shotgun shells. The medium sized shot (like little BBs) .410 shell throws a very wide pattern, about 36" at eight feet. This is a much wider circle than a regular shotgun throws. So with medium to small shot it would not be lethal unless the attacker insisted on getting very close. "00" buck shot is lethal, as well as are slugs and the regular .45 Colt bullet.

Of course one may not use any kind of gun unless actually under immediate threat of death or serious harm. As I was. But once you are out of your home or car you may not legally have a handgun unless you also have a license to carry a concealed handgun. I went to the considerable effort to obtain one. The backgound check took 120 days. I know they had a lot of files to go through in my case but there is no felony there so I got my permit. I had to take the 12 hours of instruction, pass the firing range and written tests, and pay for that course and the license. I got my senior citizen discount and paid $70 for the license and the full $120 for the course.

I suppose some people are horrified that I did this. I ask them to seriously consider what they would do if they came across someone who would be killed in a minute or so if they did nothing. Screaming does not count toward helping in the case I envision. The two women who were beating Tracey did not stop until I got very close to them. The fellow with the tire tool would not be deterred by verbal threats. He would not be deterred by pepper spray/mace. I did save Tracey's life but it almost cost me mine. One of the doctors in the emergency room asked me if in the future I would stop again. I looked at her through my one good eye and promised that I would.

Don't worry, I am not going all vigilante on you like Jody Foster in "The Brave One,” in which an NPRish woman gets beaten and then goes out of her way to shoot people. The drug dealers at 12th and Chicon have not bothered me and I am not going to bother them. As the Observer story relates I have been in some very dangerous confrontations and have not used any more force than was absolutely necessary.

Pacifism in the political arena is a valid method of social change.

Not stopping to help someone who is being beaten is not legally criminal negligence. Certainly there is no law that says one must risk life and limb for someone else. One may stop and render aid but that does not include taking a punch for someone.

Not responding to a murderous attack is suicide. Refusing to be ready is very ostrich like.

One of the two APD officers took this of me at the scene. They took five pics but the frontal one tells it all. I think seeing it helps people to understand the gravity of my injuries, how vicious the attack was. It was "Exhibit #1" -- gruesome, but helpful to understanding my situation. Words can only explain so much and that is why I am a photographer. -- Alan Pogue

My History of Violence

By Alan Pogue / February 20, 2009

It was Tuesday night, and I was unable to sleep. I decided to go pick up a book—Can Humanity Change?—a dialogue between Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti and Buddhist scholars, from my darkroom studio on East Martin Luther King Jr. Street in Austin.

I was driving there when I saw two women beating another woman in the street. I steered straight at them, thinking the attackers would back off as I approached, but they kept kicking and beating their victim, who was curled up into the smallest ball she could make of herself. They were hitting her so furiously that I didn’t feel I had time to call 9-1-1, so I jumped out of my car, intending to break up the fight.

The women finally looked up, angry at the interruption, and sprang at me, throwing wild punches. That gave me an opening to shove them away from the woman on the ground, who slowly got up and began dusting herself off. That’s when I was hit twice in the back of my head, shocking me and turning my reflexes to mush.

I managed to turn around and face my attacker, and saw an African-American man in his mid-20s wearing knee-length shorts. I could see his left hand coming up to hit me again, but I was unable to jump back or raise my arms to deflect the blow. He hit me across the right side of my face with a metal object, then for good measure hit me three more times, as though he were working a speed bag. The pain from the blows nauseated me, and I turned away. One of the women took my wallet.

Someone from the nearby apartments must have called the police, because the three suddenly disappeared, leaving me stunned but still standing. Their first victim was sitting on the curb. With my mind on autopilot, I got back into my car and continued to my darkroom, where I could see in the mirror there that my right eye was swollen nearly shut, there was an inch-long gash over my left eye, and two of my front teeth were cracked.

I picked up the book and my laptop and drove back down Chicon Street toward home. Police and emergency vehicles had gathered at Rosewood and Chicon, so I stopped to talk with the woman I’d tried to help. Her name was Tracey, and she thanked me. Plenty of cars had driven by, she said, and some of them honked, but no one else had stopped.

The EMTs took my vital signs, looked into my eyes, checked my reflexes and asked a series of simple questions to determine whether my mind was functioning properly. I explained that I lived only a few blocks away. They reluctantly let me go. Knowing how awful I looked, I called my wife to warn her.

When I got home she took me to St. David’s hospital, where the doctor who stitched me up told me about a man who’d been brought in the night before. He’d stopped to help a woman with a flat tire, only to be beaten and robbed.

The psychological fallout has been complex. For weeks I was edgy. At night I dreamt of being attacked. Realizing that I had failed to watch my back, I became hypervigilant. Driving down Chicon felt like walking trails in Vietnam in 1968. Instead of watching for tripwires and punji pits, I began peering down alleys and between parked cars. An old high-school buddy delivered a 12-gauge “home defense” shotgun to my bedside, and I admit it gave me some degree of comfort.

Still, the old saw that “a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged” hasn’t turned out to be true in my case. Getting hit in the face with a tire tool simply highlights the necessity of being able to defend oneself in an occasionally savage environment. Bad air, worse water, rare jobs and inequitable health care are their own forms of social violence, but as threats go they don’t carry the immediacy of a knife at the throat, a gun barrel in the ribs, or an iron bar to the face. The political right often seems unable to address social pathology without resorting to quasi-fascism, and the left wing sometimes appears almost programmatically incapable of defending itself.

What’s a self-protecting person of humanitarian instincts to do? If I’m philosophically opposed to employing potentially lethal physical force in self-defense, then isn’t it hypocritical of me to ask the police to apply that force on my behalf? Physical violence may not be the best way to solve a problem, but if I’m confronted by someone who intends to kill me, loaning them my copy of Can Humanity Change? isn’t likely to be the most effective defense.

My personal history of violence began when I got punched in the nose in the first grade. My father asked me how it happened, explained that I’d be meeting other bullies at school, and taught me how to box so I’d be prepared to take care of myself. There’s usually a bully in every class, and I changed schools often. I took judo lessons at the YMCA.

There was no fighting at St. Edward’s High School in Austin, but W.B. Ray High School in Corpus Christi was rougher. Two upperclassmen there singled me out for harassment, but after I bested them in boxing matches, no one else bothered me.
Attending the University of St. Thomas, in Houston, I finally had a chance to study shotokan karate. My instructor, Sensei Richardson, introduced me to aikido techniques as well. In San Francisco I was able to use those aikido moves to save a man from a beating by deflecting, but not hurting, his attacker.

In 1966 I received my draft notice and said goodbye to California. We practiced hand-to-hand combat in basic training, but my first real fight for my life took place in the latrine at Fort Carson, Colo. A soldier with a knife had me cornered at the end of a long row of sinks. Fortunately, I was able to dodge his attempts to stab me. The military police took care of him after that. In all my previous fights, I’d never had to worry that my opponent might kill me if I faltered. My boyhood was over.

In Vietnam, at different times, I carried an M-14 rifle, an M-16 rifle, a .45-caliber machine-gun, and a .45-caliber pistol. I almost always carried hand grenades. My chaplain had me carry his weapons as well as my own so no newspaper photographer could snap a picture of the armed man of God. The machine gun and pistol were his, the big sissy. The M-16 rifle was mine, even though, as a medic, I never used it. I managed to give away all but one of my ammunition clips so I could carry more bandages. I knew we shouldn’t be there, and I harbored no fascination with fully automatic weapons.

I’d grown up in Corpus Christi, close to Kingsville and “uncle” Mike Gallagher, my fifth cousin. Uncle Mike, at 21, had been the youngest man ever to be made a foreman at the King Ranch, but he was in his late 50s when I first met him. He used a straight razor to shave. He trimmed his thick fingernails with a fine Italian switchblade and filed them with a heavy triangle file. He was very kind and very tough. He never married and had no children of his own, so he “adopted” me and two other boys, David and Ernesto, took us to roundups, bought us baseball gear, and taught us how to ride and rope.

He also taught me how to use guns, so my association with firearms is a positive one, and inextricably entwined with my memory of him.
Uncle Mike had me out shooting cans with a .22 when I was barely old enough to hold a rifle.

Uncle Mike gave me a .410-gauge shotgun for my 10th Christmas and took me deer hunting on the King Ranch that same year. He handed me a Winchester .30-.30, lever-action rifle that I had never fired and told me to hold the butt of the gun firmly to my shoulder because it kicked so hard. Don’t press your cheek to the stock when you’re sighting, or it will rub a burn on your face, he told me. Aim right behind the deer’s shoulder.

With that sage advice taken, I shot my first deer.

My father had given me a Remington repeating, bolt-action .22 rifle when I was 9, and he took me hunting for dove, duck and quail, but he didn’t care for deer hunting. Only years later did I understand his reasons: He was proud that I could shoot better with my little .410 than he could with his 16-gauge Browning with its gold trigger.

My father’s father drove train for the Southern Pacific and the Katy. When he died, I inherited his pocket watch and the pistol he carried to ward off train robbers: a nickel-plated, Colt .44/.40.

Those who grow up without any functional or familial relationship to guns may associate them solely with crime and war. They’re not likely to understand, never mind share, the passion that many people—even nonviolent people—have for gun ownership.

Back in the 1970s, I lived in a small, windowless room in the University YWCA on the drag in Austin. Late one night, someone tried to get into my room. I knew it was no one who belonged in the building since I was the only person who lived there. The incident bothered me enough that I purchased a small 9 mm pistol to keep on the bed in my little cul de sac. One day I got a call from a sweet reader of The Rag, a long-defunct alternative paper, saying that an aggressive heroin dealer was downstairs and would I please photograph him. I went down and took his picture. He charged at me with a small crowbar. I ran toward Les Amis Café, and when I got to the outside seating I picked up a metal chair and threatened to hit him with it. I asked the café patrons to call the police, but they all just sat there transfixed. The heroin dealer finally turned and ran off. I published his photo in The Rag and gave a copy to the police. I carried my pistol until he was arrested.

Another time, I was walking down West 22nd Street around 9 p.m. when I saw a man trying to rape a young woman. I got him off of her, but then he attacked me. My martial arts training allowed me to subdue him even though he was wild on drugs and seemed not to feel any pain. A friend walked by and called the police.

Back in the Y late one evening, I heard the sound of a hammer striking metal. I put my 9 mm in my back pocket and looked out into the hallway. A young man, maybe 15, was attacking a vending machine. He pulled a pistol and pointed it at me. I could have shot him, but I did not. The glance I got of his gun made me think it was only a starter pistol, not a lethal weapon. We had a standoff. In the end, I was not going to shoot anyone over robbing a Coke machine, so I let him pass. I called the police, and an officer came out and took my report. He spotted the 9 mm in my back pocket and berated me for not having shot “the little punk.” In the hallway I found a book with a girl’s name in it. She was a client at the Women’s Center, and from there we learned the name of her boyfriend, the Coke robber.

The “little punk” is still alive because he encountered me and not the police. They would argue that my kind of restraint would get them killed; I’d say they’re too ready to use maximum force.

That encounter at the Y made me realize I’d better augment my 9 mm with nonlethal pepper spray and handcuffs so I’d have more options. One afternoon I was chatting with friends inside Les Amis when a distraught young man burst through the front entrance with a beer bottle in his hand. He rushed onto the wait-stand, broke off the neck of the bottle, and started screaming at the waitresses and cooks, waving the broken beer bottle at them. I approached so he couldn’t see me and grabbed him, pinning his arms to his sides, and threw him to the floor. He dropped the bottle to catch himself and then bolted out the door. Everyone was surprised mild-mannered Alan had done this. Surprised but happy.

Time passed. I lost the handcuffs, and the pepper spray turned stale. The 9 mm stayed locked in a filing cabinet. There have been other incidents, but nothing on the order of what happened to me last April 29. After thinking about the fellow who hit me in the back of the head I’ve come to the conclusion that if I’m going to help people in distress, then I better get some more pepper spray and another type of pistol—one I’m willing to use on a human. There is a pistol on the market that fires .410 shotgun shells, as well as .45 caliber bullets of the same diameter.

I’m thinking about using the .410 shells. A small amount of birdshot would hardly be lethal, but it would be loud, it would generate a huge muzzle flash, and it would hurt. It would be a convincing deterrent.

Some would argue that this arrangement won’t have the stopping power a “real” bullet would exert on the worst-case scenario: a 300-pound homicidal maniac on drugs. Maybe so, but I’m more worried about being able to keep multiple attackers at bay—a situation in which a mere taser would be inadequate. Not killing anyone is as much a priority as not getting myself—or an innocent victim—killed. Until I have to deal with a sniper, a shot pistol will be good enough for me.

Paying attention to your surroundings is the first line of defense. Avoidance is best. Running is good. If I ever again have to save someone from being raped or beaten, I promise to call 911 first, use my pepper spray, and perhaps, as a last resort, deploy my .45/.410.

In addition to psychological trauma, I also now have $38,000 in medical bills to deal with. My present battle is with the insurance company. Tracey has left Austin and is receiving counseling. My attacker is in prison. Tracey’s attackers are at large.

A word of caution. Anyone who owns any kind of firearm must keep it under control. If it is at home, it must be locked up in such a way that no unauthorized persons can unlock it.

When I was a boy, I kept my .22 rifle and my .410 shotgun in my closet. Children were not shooting children in those days. I didn’t own a bicycle lock, either, because no one was stealing bicycles where I lived. No one worried about their children going “trick or treating.” Those days are gone. I wish we had them back. Until they return, I’m relying on more than wishes.

[Alan Pogue has photographed for social justice organizations since 1968. He studied martial arts intensively at John Blankenship’s Cha Yon Ryu and Jo Birdsong’s Aikido of Austin. He apologizes to them for his recent lapse in attention.]

Source / The Texas Observer

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Alan Pogue, Good Samaritan, Reports on the Man Who Beat Him

Alan Pogue wrote at the time on the subject of his new look: "All I need is the two knobs, one on either side of my neck, for the perfect Halloween mask." Halloween has passed, as all things do, and Alan is back to being pretty.
Painful self-portrait by Alan Pogue / The Rag Blog.
'The premiere episode of Law and Order: Austin? Not this time. It was a very real night scene in the mellow central Texas mecca, where, as with every other American city, much lies beneath the surface.'
By Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog / November 25, 2008

See 'Willie McDade: A report on the man who attacked me' by Alan Pogue, Below.

One late night in late April of this year, Alan Pogue was severely beaten when he tried to save a woman’s life on a street corner in east Austin. The woman, presumed then by Alan to be a prostitute, was being pounded by two others. Alan -- the noted Austin photojournalist, social activist and frequent contributor to these pages -- pulled the two women away from their victim but was sucker punched by their pimp.

The premiere of Law and Order: Austin? (Episode: “Pimp wars in music city: A sour note for a good Samaritan?”) Or maybe Friday Night Lights Out? Sorry, no “day for night” here. It was a very real night scene in the mellow central Texas mecca, where, as with every other American city, much lies beneath the surface.

Alan’s injuries brought a lot of pain and required surgery to his eye socket, but mostly he had to suffer through being not so pretty for a while.

His assailant went to trial this week, and below Alan turns court reporter, updating us on the legal developments. But he also gives us some background on the perp and the victim and places it all in a societal context so often lacking in today’s world of news reporting.

Following Alan’s update, we are publishing again his original story which was reposted widely and drew much attention.

Willie McDade: A report on the man who attacked me
By Alan Pogue / The Rag Blog / November 25, 2008

The trial of my attacker, Willie C. McDade, Jr., 25, was held on Nov. 4. He had two prior felony assault convictions, one of them a domestic case, so this conviction triggered a 25 year minimum. The jury was confused about the importance of the weapon and the theft. They convicted him of the aggravated assault with serious bodily harm, only. Had they convicted him of assault with a deadly weapon while in the commission of a theft then he would have gotten life in prison.

McDade had a bad attitude and displayed it. He showed no remorse, not even fake remorse. His defense attorneys did everything they could for him. He will come up for parole in 7 1/2 years. The problem for him is that he was already fighting with the guards in the county jail. I discovered that his father has four felony convictions. His mother is nowhere in sight. No one came to the trial for him. His brother is married into another extended crack family. But even within this group Willie is persona non grata.

The boyfriend of the mother of the other man who had been with McDade did testify that it was the two women who beat me up. The jury discounted the "women" part but this witness did identify McDade as being there and so unwittingly helped convict McDade. The woman I stopped to help, is in another state with her sister. She has a job and is receiving counseling.

She and her mother, who I met at the trial, thanked me very much for saving her life and turning her life around. It turns out that the knowledge of how badly I was injured is what snapped Tracey out of her self destructive pattern. I do not suggest this as a form of social work or psychological intervention.

This is a big onion. There is McDade's whole extended, intertwined crack family. There is the crack cocaine and where it comes from, how it gets here, and why so little is done about that. More of what Gray Webb was writing about in the San Jose Mercury News series The Dark Alliance on the Contras, cocaine and the CIA.

McDade's criminal career started when he was 12, with his father as a role model. His siblings and their partners are in and out of prison on a regular basis. I am thinking of producing his family tree and where everyone is on it in relation to the illicit drug trade. They are all small time dealers but they have to get the cocaine from others higher up the drug food chain. No Serpico here. I can get the information I want without hanging out in alleys.

Now that I have been sensitized I am noticing the other drug bazaars north, 290 and Cameron Road up to St. Johns, and southeast around Oltorf and Montopolis Blvd. My friends in Lago Vista tell me about the meth labs there. But meth can be made anywhere. Cocaine has to travel a long way, needs lots of help to get here.

Alan Pogue : Photojournalist

Other Scenes: Shaking Hands, Palestine, 1998. Rabbi Arik Ascherman, co-director of Rabbis for Human Rights, shakes hands with Atta Jabber in Atta's home near Hebron. Rabbi Ascherman often goes to visit Palestinians who have received home demolition orders in order to offer his moral support and sometimes to be arrested peacefully opposing such disrespect for his fellow human beings. Photo by Alan Pogue / The Rag Blog.

'No good deed goes unpunished': A cautionary tale of east Austin
By Alan Pogue / The Rag Blog / May 3, 2008

Rag Blog contributor Alan Pogue was staff photographer for The Rag, Austin’s legendary underground newspaper, in the late sixties and seventies, and has served in the same capacity for The Texas Observer. He began his career while serving in Vietnam in 1967. He later documented Texas farm workers and has photographed in Texas prisons, in Cuba, in Iraq and Pakistan, in Latin America and the Caribbean. His book Witness for Justice was published by the University of Texas Press.

Alan’s work has often placed him in physical danger but, as it turns out, none as dangerous as the corner of Chicon and Rosewood in east Austin, Texas.

A few nights ago I stopped to help a woman who was being beaten badly by two other women. It was 11 p.m. on Chicon and Rosewood in east Austin. I got the two women off the one on the ground but the pimp for the two women (I hypothesize) snuck up from behind and sapped me. I had to spend a few hours at St. David's and then Brackenridge hospitals so they could scan my head and put a few stitches in my face. I will recover fully but I will require a bit more surgery on my right eye socket, an "orbital floor fracture".

Looking on the bright side, the pimp didn't shoot or stab me. My wallet was taken but somebody found it and called me so I got my ID and checks back. This character was smart enough not to try and cash them. The EMS and emergency people said this type of assault is on the rise. They told me about a man who stopped to help someone with a flat tire only to be beaten very badly. Bad times for good Samaritans, so watch out.

I'll be back on the job in the middle of next week if all the surgery goes according to plan. I am ok with soup and ice cream. Someone gave me a fine bottle of Scotch but I will have to wait to drink it.

It could be that the beaten woman was on the other women’s turf and the pimp sent them over to run the third woman off. The beaten woman was very thankful to me. We both answered questions put to us by the police. The pimp was upset that I stopped the beating and wanted to show that he was still in charge. After I was assaulted I drove a short distance to my home and splashed water on my face to check myself out. When I returned to the scene the EMS and police were there. I will work with the detective on the case and try to talk to the woman I kept from further injury. There is the possibility that she too was in on a decoy action. I will know she is not if she was willing to identify the women and/or the pimp.

Darn it, I didn't have a camera on me because it was a short trip to pick up a book to read, "Can Humanity Change?" by Khrishnamurti, kind of ironic. While taking it easy, as my face returns to its normal shape, my mind looks to the wider social context.

Drug dealing and prostitution are a big feature of the stretch of Chicon between Rosewood and MLK in Austin. There are also many churches in the area. Yet the churches do not minister to those most in need. The epicenter of the drug trade, for the impoverished, is 12th and Chicon. This has been the case for decades, sort of an informal red light district. Indigenous eastsiders have been complaining about this crime scene for many years. The police cruise the area frequently but there seems to be no coordinated social services plan to address the problem at its root. Surprise!. No kind and creative approach has been used. Only a minimalist military mind set has been used by the Austin police to maintain an uneasy status quo for this drug district.

The vacant lots are being filled up with new home construction so the territory for illegal activity is shrinking. Much of it has moved down the alley between 12th and 13th off of Chicon. Some truly dangerous characters hang out in that alley (I spotted a fellow with a 12 gauge pump shotgun under his trench coat), so I have not taken to documenting the culture. The open solicitation for drugs and prostitution rises and falls in an unpredictable tide but the activity is constant. Red is the color of the dominant gang so one sees red pants, red caps, red sweat shirts. This level of organization means that there are other people involved who aren't there.

I see younger people hanging out at the few public coin-operated phones to take drug orders and pass them on to older people. As Jesse Jackson said, "Fourteen year-olds on street corners are not importing drugs. Bankers are importing drugs."

Many of the people I see at 12th and Chicon are mentally and /or physically impaired. Old people in wheel chairs often sleep on the street in their wheelchairs. More than once I have been offered sex by psychotic homeless women. In the past none of these people has ever done more than offer me drugs or sex. Once I declined they did not persist. Most of the solicitation is done with subtle eye contact so I have learned not to wave back or make eye contact with the solicitors.

In breaking up a fight among three women I stepped into their culture in a big way. The problem all around is that gentrification is forcing two cultures to overlap. I didn't see "three prostitutes" fighting over territory, I saw one woman being beaten by two other people. They and the pimp made their activity very public in a new overall environment. I wish for the kind and creative approach but as we have seen in Waco and Eldorado, "Shock and Awe" seem to be the only tactics the authorities care to use. When the territory shrinks a bit more"something will have to be done" about what has been ignored for years. The East Side has been the recipient of planned neglect until such a time that it was worthy of being taken over by the West Side and the real-estate interests, both east and west.

I will try and look into the situation for the young woman I saved from a worse beating than she got. Her story should cast light on many forms of neglect in Texas which is always vying for last place in social services.

Go here for the original posting of Alan Pogue’s story on The Rag Blog on May 3, 2008

Also see Man gets 30 years in attack on photojournalist by Steven Kreytak / Austin American-Statesman / Nov. 6, 2008

Please visit Alan Pogue: Texas Center for Documentary Photography.

Find Witness for Justice: The Documentary Photographs of Alan Pogue by Alan Pogue, on Amazon.com.

The Rag Blog

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Rachel Papo : Face of the Day

See Rachel Papo's statement about this series below.

One photograph from Rachel Papo's photo series on female Israeli soldiers.

At an age when social, sexual, and educational explorations are at their highest point, the life of an eighteen-year-old Israeli girl is interrupted. She is plucked from her home surroundings and placed in a rigorous institution where her individuality is temporarily forced aside in the name of nationalism. During the next two years, immersed in a regimented and masculine environment, she will be transformed from a girl to a woman, within the framework of an army that is engaged in daily war and conflict.

Almost fifteen years after my mandatory military duty ended, I went back to several Israeli army bases, using the medium of photography as a vehicle to re-enter this world. Serial No. 3817131 represents my effort to come to terms with the experiences of being a soldier from the perspective of an adult. My service had been a period of utter loneliness, mixed with apathy and pensiveness, and at the time I was too young to understand it all. Through the camera’s lens, I tried to reconstruct facets of my military life, hopeful to reconcile matters that had been left unresolved.

Walking onto an army base after all these years was very disorienting, as memories began to surface, and blend with feelings of estrangement. The girls who I encountered during these visits were disconnected from the outside world, completely absorbed in their paradoxical reality. They spoke a language now foreign to me, using phrases like “Armored Cavalry Regiment” and “Defense Artillery.” Would it have made any difference to explain to them that in a few years the only thing they might remember is their serial number? Photographing these soldiers, I saw my reflection; I was on the other side of a pane of glass—observing a world that I had once been a part of, yet I could not go back in time or change anything. It felt like a dream.

The photographs in this project serve as a bridge between past and present—a combination of my own recollections and the experiences of the girls who I observed. Each image embodies traces of things that I recognize, illuminating fragments of my history, striking emotional cords that resonate within me. In some way, each is a self-portrait, depicting a young woman caught in transient moments of introspection and uncertainty, trying to make sense of a challenging daily routine. In striving to maintain her gentleness and femininity, the soldier seems to be questioning her own identity, embracing the fact that two years of her youth will be spent in a wistful compromise.

Rachel Papo

More images here.

Source / Andrew Sullivan / Daily Dish / The Atlantic

Thanks to Harry Edwards / The Rag Blog

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