Greetings and welcome to this blog.
Before I get started I must confess this is the last thing I thought I would ever do. I’m the person least expected to create a blog, really. I’m shy and often times not comfortable putting my opinions and thoughts out there, or here, for all to view and comment on. Timid by nature but not enough to eclipse my curiosity to learn new skills I’ve placed personal uncomfortableness aside for self-exploration on a larger scale. So here I am. I’ve visited my friends’ blogs and am amazed how well and with apparent ease they engage in dialogue and conversation dispensing humor and insight on matters of personal interest and global concern connecting to a community that reaches out to parts unknown from the mere stroke of the keys. It is this sense of community that draws me to this exercise and I enter the common ground of blogging with an adventurous spirit and a challenge to myself to “get over it” and enjoy the experimentation. This will be a space for exploring what comes my way and hopefully providing a connectedness for others in their self-exploration travels as well. I definitely see this as a work in progress. Enough said.
Other than being shy, who am I?
I hail from Vermont, born and breed and recently transplanted to Salt Lake City, Utah. I currently work in broadcast television, behind the camera. My past employment includes, media libraries, public access television, producing, directing, editing, camera and teaching. My camera experience includes musical performances (lots), sports, weddings, talking heads and experimental. I’ve had the great fortune to work with talented artists on a large-scale video installation, learning as I went along and hope to do more in this area. The documentary format also intrigues me. And I’m a strong supporter of First Amendment issues in the media and in every day life.
Recently I discovered the work of photographer Sabastiao Salgado, a photojournalist working on humanitarian issues in Third World countries. His images are riveting. Here’s a sample of his work from a recent exhibition in SLC entitled Exodus. The Leonardo a developing science/art center that is emerging in the community was the host.
In his own words:
Salgado on Exodus
An extraordinary journey through photography
“I was born in 1944 on a farm in the rural state of Minas Gerais in Brazil. When I was five, my father moved to the small town of Aimorés; in my teens, I went to Vitória, the capital of Espírito Santo state, to finish high school and attend university.
After meeting Lélia Deluiz Wanick, who became my wife and later the curator of my shows and designer of my books, we traveled to the metropolis of São Paulo where I continued studying to become an economist. Every step was a move into a denser urban world. Then, in 1969, with Brazil under military rule, we left Brazil for Europe and found ourselves to become part refugees, part immigrants and part students.
Three decades later, we still live in a foreign land. It is not surprising, therefore, I should identify myself with exiles and migrants—people who shape new lives for themselves far away from their native countries. A Salvadoran waiter in a Los Angeles restaurant, a Pakistani shopkeeper in the north of England, a Senegalese worker on a Paris construction site—all these people share the same experience and deserve our respect. Each has traveled an extraordinary journey to reach where he is now; each is contributing to the re-organization of humankind; each is implicitly part of our story. In human history people have always migrated but something different is happening today. For me, the current population upheaval across the world represents a change of historical significance.
We are undergoing a revolution in the way we live, produce, communicate, and travel. Most of the world’s inhabitants are now urban. We have become one world. However, in distant corners of the globe, people are being displaced for essentially the same reason.”
—Sebastião Salgado on EXODUS
pics coming soon....still figuring out the technical specs.
. karen .
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