Don't [Say] Shoot
It's difficult not use the word "shoot" in discussing photography, so deeply is the firearm metaphor wound up in our vernacular. But I take, or make, most of my photographs in a city colloquially known as "Bodymore" with a somewhat embarrassing murder rate per capita, known outside its own borders primarily through television in the form of Homicide: Life on the Street and The Wire. Never mind that the violence is almost entirely geographically restricted to small areas being squeezed out by gentrification and almost entirely socially restricted to members of poor minority communities and not random between strangers, and never mind the rest of the city is a hodgepodge of historic Southern charm, left-wing unionized blue-collar pride, and progressive queer-friendly art scene. Still, I photograph abandonments here, and that means I as a small white lady venture in broad daylight near areas that in the wee hours do see gun violence. Saying the words "shoot" and "West Baltimore" in the same sentence makes people I love worry about me. I am trying to unlearn a terminology I never liked in the first place.
I've been taking photographs, then, of West Baltimore, using thrift-store film and outdated digital cameras I'm less afraid of having stolen from me than a brand new DSLR, stopping my beater of a car now and then to capture grand Victorian architecture overgrown with trees and structures marked with echoes of current human habitation, occasionally talking with friendly residents, but doing my best not to photograph anyone I can't get to know. It is difficult to explain in words why I keep wandering like this, here, other than to say these places haunt me as much as overgrown castles do, and that I remember being closer to all of this.
When I originally picked up a camera, my shyness, my strong feelings on the necessity of consent, and my own discomfort at being photographed directly informed how sparsely-populated the wastelands of the world I photographed would appear. Over the years I have developed fantastic friends who invite me to include them and their likenesses in my wandering adventures and my photographic take on the world. But when it comes back to the abandonments as it always does, or to the wastelands the urban poor can't afford to abandon, I try to avoid incidentally including people, still. I'm aware I'm more of a tourist here than I used to be, that in my having crawled out of being a missed paycheque away from starving and having moved on to more comfortable housing, I've lost some of my connection to parts of this town in sad ways, too. Casual photos I would take of strangers here today don't automatically say "these are the people in my neighborhood and they are real with real stories that deserve telling"; there is a very real worry of accidentally saying "look at those exotic savages in their war-torn village down the street tut tut" and that horrifies me to consider. I have a lot of soul-searching to do regarding what, and whom, it is fair or ethical or kind to photograph here, if I can find the social energy to even briefly reach out to people, or if I can't. Because I assure you real people still live here, every day, even in some of the formerly grand old houses boarded up and condemned, even in the ones that were never grand. These are the few places I wish we as a society could afford to just abandon and let the trees take over, and really, well and truly, every single poorest one of us, move on.
I've been taking photographs, then, of West Baltimore, using thrift-store film and outdated digital cameras I'm less afraid of having stolen from me than a brand new DSLR, stopping my beater of a car now and then to capture grand Victorian architecture overgrown with trees and structures marked with echoes of current human habitation, occasionally talking with friendly residents, but doing my best not to photograph anyone I can't get to know. It is difficult to explain in words why I keep wandering like this, here, other than to say these places haunt me as much as overgrown castles do, and that I remember being closer to all of this.
When I originally picked up a camera, my shyness, my strong feelings on the necessity of consent, and my own discomfort at being photographed directly informed how sparsely-populated the wastelands of the world I photographed would appear. Over the years I have developed fantastic friends who invite me to include them and their likenesses in my wandering adventures and my photographic take on the world. But when it comes back to the abandonments as it always does, or to the wastelands the urban poor can't afford to abandon, I try to avoid incidentally including people, still. I'm aware I'm more of a tourist here than I used to be, that in my having crawled out of being a missed paycheque away from starving and having moved on to more comfortable housing, I've lost some of my connection to parts of this town in sad ways, too. Casual photos I would take of strangers here today don't automatically say "these are the people in my neighborhood and they are real with real stories that deserve telling"; there is a very real worry of accidentally saying "look at those exotic savages in their war-torn village down the street tut tut" and that horrifies me to consider. I have a lot of soul-searching to do regarding what, and whom, it is fair or ethical or kind to photograph here, if I can find the social energy to even briefly reach out to people, or if I can't. Because I assure you real people still live here, every day, even in some of the formerly grand old houses boarded up and condemned, even in the ones that were never grand. These are the few places I wish we as a society could afford to just abandon and let the trees take over, and really, well and truly, every single poorest one of us, move on.