Dori Sill has been in her new, Los Angeles Family Housing-subsidized apartment for over a month now. She’s gradually getting her things out of storage and putting the pieces of her life back together.
Her small apartment is filling up with the vintage furniture and artifacts that were once taken for granted, back in her salad days…
Her career and lifestyle as a professional musician now in the distant past, Dori hopes to put her arsenal of guitars and keyboards back to work… Now in her early 60s, it may be her best chance to earn a living on her own, as the aneurysm and coma which left her physically hobbled makes it a strain to even climb the stairs to her second-story apartment.
Max, Dori’s constant canine companion during the homeless years, recently passed away, but Dori still has two large cats to keep her company.
No longer homeless “but still poor,” Dori takes her lunch each Saturday at the Hope of Valley in Van Nuys, among dozens of others in various stages of homelessness and impoverishment.
One lasting sensation from today’s bike ride was the reminder that outdoors, even on a moderate, not-yet-cool late-afternoon in March, the blast of warmth that comes from the tumbling dryers when you pass or enter the open door of a laundromat is comforting, when not a reminder of what you no longer have access to. The not-so-homeless Colonel is back on the ramp, he who survives entirely on socialist subsistence programs and the kindness of strangers (as though those two things should be mutually exclusive in cases of dire need)?
The Colonel has seen them all come and go, and still knows the whereabouts of a few, or who might have last been camping on a local sidestreet. Now 80, he has worked the off-ramps of the 405 for woe these many years while shacked up in a motel room along the strip on Sepulveda Blvd. The Colonel still has the glint in his eye as he recounts surviving many health challenges, even as he must now cart around the oxygen that keeps him afloat.
This gentle soul will converse with a friendly stranger… he expresses his lamentations in abrupt tones… one of those that are said to not want to accept the offer of a shelter bed, has worn out his welcome, or prefers to scratch out a meager life in the margins.
…of Gracie and Craig, Terry and Amie, Lynda and the others who plied their trades and tried their luck and laid their head and money on the dirty ground to weather the weather whether or not they might be a number in a homeless count counting their blessings for Hope not hopelessness and domicile deprived not homeless…
Community pride…. The off ramps and underpasses are back, well let’s say order has been restored. The old gang is pretty much broken up and dispersed by now… not too many happy endings, hardly any down here in fact. Funny thing is, they chased the people away but the detritus remains unattended to by any and all who were advocating for a “cleanup” of the neighborhood.
Synchronicity… worlds meet at the 2nd Annual Homeless Initiative Conference, Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, Feb. 8th… Sheila Kuehl of the LA County Board of Supervisors brought our friend Dori in front of the 500 participants, and related her story. Dori was somewhat bemused by the attention, but much more relaxed and happy now that LAFH has provided her with shelter.
The event organizers asked to display some of the One of Us art, including this one of Manuel Flores, Community Liaison for the North Valley Caring Services.
When I first met and spoke with Dori last August at the St. Charles Borromeo Church in North Hollywood, the most enduring impression was her cheerfulness in the face of great hardship. As her story printed below testifies, Dori’s life was shattered by a tragic fate, a brain aneurism which derailed her dreams, put her at death’s door, and still affects her physically and otherwise…
Revisiting Dori’s story today, after finally locating her cluttered but homey RV (a camper shell) parked for now on a residential North Hollywood street, I’m struck by how little she talked about her early career in music. She had told me about a song she had once written that was included in a high-profile movie soundtrack, but not much more. Today she shared an old CD which contained that song and five other well-written and produced tracks, recorded by the band she sang and played keyboards in. The music is lovely, her voice sweet and strong. As she sang along with the CD, it was still her song, still her voice. Dori also took out an old 11x14 portfolio that held several high-quality black and white portraits of her in those salad days, portraits of a beautiful and sensitive artist. There were also pictures taken with Rick James, Gary Wright and other luminaries of that era. Most surprising, among the memorabilia stuffed in the side pockets of the portfolio, was a card (a love letter really) written to her by Prince. It’s envelope also held a color Polaroid of Dori and the legend, taken sometime in the late-70s before he hit superstardom. She mused about selling it to some collector, but seems to have decided that in spite of her dire straits, it’s not worth it.
“Because of my aneurism I might
forget some of the things you ask me, My name is Dori, my age is 58. Before I
had a brain aneurism, I owned a spa called the Oasis Day Spa in Studio City and
we did facials, massage, nails. I had about ten employees and I was working
about eight days a week. And I think the stress of it all just got to my head. One
night I was working in my studio at home and writing music and then I suddenly
started to feel lightheaded so I went down to the bathroom and looked at myself
in the mirror and I saw this black blood that was under my skin and I had white
circles through my eyes, then I just fainted and then went in a coma from that
point.
I was in the hospital when I
woke up … I came out of that stroke and was like ‘okay I have to get back
to work.’ You know, I was telling everybody I’ve got to get to my spa because I
just started it four years prior and I really wanted it to do well. And it was,
and I was very busy that day, so my receptionist kept calling me and she said
you always answer the phone so what’s the matter with you Dori? So she came to my house and found me in bed
with the two dogs next to the bed lying there and I couldn’t move so she called
the ambulance and they took me into the hospital and said that I was
experiencing a brain aneurism.
Actually I could talk or think
about what people were saying but I couldn’t respond. So that was what the
scene was all about for three weeks. They were going to take me off life
support and then Greg, my ex-husband, came up to me and said Dori, I want you
to know that it’s okay if you go but if you want you can stay. But they are
going to take you off life support so you need come to and give me a sign that
you are going to come to so I squeezed his hand and he said ‘I think she’s
awake come on in,’ and they all came running in saying ‘yep she’s out of the
coma,’ so get it out so we can get her going.
Now I didn’t have my business
because it had died probably a couple months before I was out of the coma
because they just didn’t know how to keep it running you know, which I
understand. So that died and then I had a house that was going to have to be
put up for sale, which I went bankrupt on. So I went into bankruptcy from that,
and then I got an apartment, which I could afford because I was babysitting
dogs on the side too as well as getting money from the government.
And then the rents went up and
from there I lived in a house on Irvine. For six years I rented a room and he
let my dogs in and let me do music and everything so it was fine but then he
decided he wanted to sell the house. And when he sold the house, looking at
rents and stuff and how much they are, it was so expensive I couldn’t afford
it. So I got an RV. And that’s where I live now, in the RV. Since probably, six
months now. The police say that neighbors are complaining occasionally because
I was living with a guy that we’d fight a lot. And so he’s gone now thank God. I
got a ticket the other day for being there for more than three days because the
police had come.
I love the homeless people that
I meet. To me it’s like another family you know, it’s a good family and the
food is good that we get too because we can go to different places everyday and
get fed. So that’s helpful. I’ve never been homeless, I never ever thought I
would even be in this position. I get money from the government. Every month I
get like $889 for disability. And then I’ll house-sit on the side and (watch) animals
you know, which brings in a little cash. And that’s really what I live on. Six
hundred of it is already spent with the storage that I have and that kind of
thing.
My family, both my parents died
and my sisters, one lives in Nashville and the other one I’m not sure where she
lives. They don’t even know. Because I don’t know if they know how expensive
rents are …
Yeah it would be nice if I could
write a hit song, that would be good. That’s about what I want to do now. And I
have a whole studio setup. I’m trying to get the electricity so I can plug it
in and work on my keyboards. But I’ve got 15 songs that I wrote on my own that
are pretty good.”
AFTER TWO YEARS OF BEING HOMELESS, LOS ANGELES FAMILY HOUSING FINALLY MOVED DORI INTO A ONE-BEDROOM APARTMENT IN VAN NUYS. Activist Laura Rathbone, most instrumental in moving the process along, recounted the saga in a Facebook post January 19, 2018.
I picked this sign up outside a 7-11 along my regular bike route today. Folded and tucked under my arm, it was a symbol of abject poverty and marginalization, so I anticipated or channeled a measure of resentment and pity. I detected a mini-gamut of reactions, from the grim smile to the grim encouraging smile (more eyes), or being ignored outright. (So many people frown these days out in public so I couldn’t gauge a difference from my usual rides).
In spite of and because of the ratty condition and the felt marker mix of upper and lower case italicized san serif lettering, it will become a piece of documentary evidence, an indictment or an artifact, either way a receipt littered on the ground elevated to the status of Art in the service of social justice.
Pedaling into the late afternoon sun with Bob Dylan philosophizing in my ears, it was just a reminder, a pinprick, more than it was a meaningful experience…. Reports abound that it costs $2000 to some guy named Mike to experience professional or recreational slumming. Such naked voyeurism evokes Binyavanga Wainaina’s poverty porn sentiments on patronage and exploitation.
Well you know there’s that lingering guilt about turning a person’s disadvantage into an artwork, with the whole notion of context thrown up for grabs. Displaying their words, as they shared them, hopefully helps to recontextualize the portraits … This project used to be called One of Us
I used to bump into Lydia and her partners on Broadway Street during the years 2007-2009. Big Gulp cups of liquor took the edge off life on Skid Row, and they’d move up to Broadway Street when they preferred to pass the day somewhere less violent.
Consoling one another while talking about a fire that had destroyed most of their possessions.
Evelyn demonstrates a stabbing they witnessed on Skid Row earlier that day.
“’Humanitarian imagery,’ the historian Heide Fehrenbach
suggested, ‘is moral rhetoric masquerading as visual evidence.” (63)
Amie and Terry are caught in an unforgiving phalanx of substance abuse and poverty. January 6, 2018
“In fifty years much of Western society has inched toward a
public-service-lite ‘hollow state,’ a term used to describe a society, most
pronounced in the United States and Britain, where the state withdraws from
primary responsibility for public-service provision. The move in this direction
is based up ‘trickle-down’ economic theory and the belief that self-regulating
markets will solve social problems with minimal care in the community.” (66)
“In 1975, more than a quarter of the British population were
living in or on the margins of poverty. However, discovering this as a
process—explaining why many people remained in poverty—proved more challenging,
as the photographers discovered: ‘To document a condition is not to explain it.
The condition is a symptom, not a cause; more precisely, it is the outcome of a
process.’ The Survival Programmes
photographs in themselves were, ultimately, unable to develop a narrative that
entirely succeeded in explaining inner-city poverty, although the interviews
helped. They hinted at a sort of self-perpetuating ‘culture of poverty’
exacerbated by families unprepared for the form of social change that the
political class deemed to be good for them.” (68)
“Documentary photographers committed to exploring the
condition of those living in poverty have struggled to understand its nature.”
(68)
“Many of the issues that photographers have sought to
address in the medium’s first 150 years have been driven by outrage at various
forms of what the economist Amartya Sen calls entitlement failure. Sen used the
term to imply that problems faced by the poor were not necessarily of their own
making. His context was famine, but the same thinking might easily be applied
to landlessness, drug addiction, domestic violence, poverty, foreclosure and
inner-city housing.” (69)
“Whenever we want to write
principles of ethics and there is a major differential between the powerful and
the suffering, then the weakest are the optimum test of rightness or wrongness
… the challenge for us who are interested in intercultural communication is
to say how we can articulate an ethics that enables us to actually make the
minority, or the weak or the suffering, the optimum standard.”
Does God only help those who help themselves? What is the point at which a human being ceases to matter….we find so many who seem at face value to be their own worst enemies; have they forfeited their right to assistance? Where may a person’s individual right to liberty be impeded by state or community intervention? Should those who are unwilling or– perhaps affected by substance abuse and/or mental instability– unable to proactively seek relief, be subject to the uncertainty of not having a safe haven to stake their claim on what is left of their lives? How does our society feel about the confrontational relationships with law enforcement that result from the inevitable intransigence on both sides, when the compassion training officers might receive to help deal with society’s outliers breaks down?
At the scene of an encampment raid which resulted in several arrests and incarcerations, a young LAPD officer remarked that he and his fellow HOPE officers were “social workers with guns.” That most of those arrested that day have been engaged in an endless cat-and-mouse game with authorities in the same location since that incident (of last December) raises questions about not necessarily the intention but the efficacy of the effort there. In the media, the urban poverty and homeless problem has devolved into a dystopian morality play. Unmediated, it is laden with harshness. That is why it is so good to find so many well-intended, even passionate people working on untying this most Gordian of knots.
I used to bump into Lydia and her partners on Broadway Street during the years 2007-2009. Big Gulp cups of liquor took the edge off life on Skid Row, and they’d move up to Broadway Street when they preferred to pass the day somewhere less violent.
Consoling one another while talking about a fire that had destroyed most of their possessions.
Evelyn demonstrates a stabbing they witnessed on Skid Row earlier that day.
At that moment, in that encounter, what is there for the photographer to do more than respect the space needed for the subject to feel ready… contextualized by their surroundings. appearing authentically self-actualized and comported at the moment their gaze finds the lens and our own gaze (the viewer of the resulting image).
Borana girl with grandmother. Sololo, Kenya
Then we tend to read all kinds of narratives into the image based on prior knowledge. So it’s a lot to ask of someone when that moment occurs, and while it’s often a furtive moment (taken away in silver halide crystals), there are times it pulls at the heartstrings as you wish you could be sure you were conveying the gratitude you felt for the privilege of being allowed to render the fossilized image…
Karimojong family, Uganda
At the same time, they are just “snaps” to the vernacular crowd, which is everyone else, including some in this group portrait…
“When does enough turn out to be
enough– when do we leave reasonably satisfied, and if so, with what messages
given to the people with whom we have worked? What is our responsibility to
such people … When does honorable inquiry turn into an exercise in
manipulative self-interest, even ‘exploitation’?”
* Robert Coles, Doing Documentary Work
What survived for several months as a collective, familial effort to hold things together among the concrete bridges, ramps, sidewalks and cul de sacs has morphed into something even less optimistic, if that’s a term that could ever be used. Terry and Amy are occupying the narrowest strip of asphalt imaginable on an off-ramp, certain by be rousted out again soon, only to build camp somewhere else in the vicinity or do a spell behind bars; Gracie is now rooming with a couple Craig once denounced as grifters and opportunists; Lynda clings tenuously to a modicum of sane, reasoned hope, with her artworks finally about to go on public display at an Art Walk, on invitation from a local politician’s office.
Discovering Lynda’s new kitty brings a feeling of hope and tenderness that is minutes later dampened by Craig’s terse recounting of his recent confrontation with law enforcement nemesis Officer Diaz, which he retells with tired and pitiless eyes as an impasse during which both men reportedly told the other that they never want to see each other again. With their dead-end encampment now overrun with the hoardings of others and no longer the place of relative solitude it proved to be for several weeks, Craig may be getting harassed (two new tickets and counting) out of what he calls Diaz’s “perimeter,” and threatens now to seek less hostile pastures.
56.11 tent violation, for an abode blocking a remote dead end sidewalk where nobody walks.
I had a very interesting 15-minute conversation with Gracie as she panhandled on the off-ramp this afternoon. As she brought me up to date on the whereabouts and news of the others, I commented on the way most drivers and passengers looked the other way or straight ahead as they passed by or sat waiting for the light to turn green. She responded by coming up with a new slogan for her next sign, “those who can, don’t, and those who can’t, do…” It’s a telling bromide and one that can join “homeless, not hopeless,” and “not homeless, houseless,” among the battle cries written with markers on cardboard.
As much to mollify Gracie as to justify my presence on that freeway offramp, I told her how I wished (and have proposed) that each and every one of the people who are on display as 4x4ft prints in City Hall could have their lives intervened in by the city’s social services departments, with something positive being done for each of them. I swore out loud in frustration that instead, she is still out there… then she swore and I told her not to copy my bad habits and we laughed, and the people looking at us from their car windows might have thought, well they don’t look so miserable after all…
Many people associate the term “skid row” with an end-of-the-line, bottom-of-the-barrel location where the poorest of the poor end up, either mentally ill or strung out on one illegal substance or another. Life skids to a halt here, by this reasoning. But the actual origin of the name refers to the skid marks left by the lumber dragged through the streets in times long since past. General Jeff, known in some circles as the unelected “mayor” of Skid Row, insists that those who want to change Skid Row’s name to something less stigmatized, for commercial or other reasons, are wasting their time. Skid Row’s many problems, including its status as the epicenter of homelessness in Los Angeles and perhaps the entire country, does not mean its people and history should be forsaken or erased, especially not for public relations purposes. To the contrary, he and others fighting for the souls that live there believe that redemption will come not from sanctimony or patronage, but from an insistence on better representation and policies toward the community.
If you want to at least scratch the surface of the mind-bending situation in Skid Row today, General Jeff is the right person to start with. The South-Central native has taken on what should be respected as one of the hardest jobs in Los Angeles– to keep things moving in a positive direction in the face of the common sense deficit that plagues the social service, political and law enforcement sectors… General Jeff does in fact fill the void left by a lack of action from City Hall, involved in all aspects of Skid Row life. Mayor or not, he’s been at the forefront of the ongoing move to obtain Neighborhood Council representation for the community. He wants the local businesses in the area to be more understanding and responsive to the residents. To steer the population away from associations with the lowest common denominators of popular culture he fights to have salacious billboards advertising the sex-industry taken down.
Touring the area with General Jeff is a lesson in both history and civics. He is greeted in the streets with respect and love, fist bumps and handshakes. The landmark mural, created in the image of a traffic sign, is his bold proposition that Skid Row deserves to be respected and taken seriously as something more than the dead end it is dismissed as. Asserting sovereignty for residents who cannot afford or survive gentrification, to use one example Jeff looks at the fishing industry’s use of prime real estate within the Skid Row borders for storage and distribution as a symbol of inequality and the disconnect between the business world and the people. His movement would be happy to see the business owners take a more balanced interest in the welfare of those they are keeping off their properties with coils of razor wire, security gates and fencing, or just dull, windowless, undecorated walls.
The door in the background was once the entry to the Salvation Army kitchen, located in one of the many early 20th century buildings in the area. That this particular building stands is in disrepair is a symbolic and ironic testimony to failed philanthropy.
With four major missions and numerous other charity organizations, Skid Row on a Sunday morning features sidewalk sermons, with people lining up in several locations for meals and other services. General Jeff firmly believes that not enough scrutiny is paid to the operations of the charity industry, and also decries the “shell game” that is too-often played by governmental bodies at the expense of the Skid Row community, hindering real development and making it more difficult for the residents to rise up.
General Jeff is frequently approached with questions and concerns. He is known as a fearless and tireless representative of the community, and does not suffer fools gladly…
Along with the tents and tarps that line the sidewalks on most streets in Skid Row, the most glaring sign of municipal neglect is the sheer volume of trash gathering in the gutters and elsewhere. One of many concerns is the pollution caused by this trash (which includes syringes and other toxins) entering the drainage system openings along the curbs … one wonders how often city sanitation trucks visit these streets.
Outside the Hippie Kitchen, where meals and other services have been provided since the late 1960s…
Mural in progress by Dimitri; General Jeff speaks adamantly about bringing positive imagery and lively colors to the community, to counter the oppressive facelessness and the outdated negative artwork that currently marks much of the industrial and commercial property on Skid Row.
This is the cliché that has come to represent Skid Row. It is a common sight and a sobering reminder of the enormity of the task.
A stark reminder of how dangerous life can be; burn marks on the wall where a tent was torched in retribution for an unpaid debt.
General Jeff, the “Mayor of Skid Row,” before his very informative, frank, generous presentation to our documentary photojournalism class; his message is one that anyone interested in matters of urban poverty, homelessness, the situation in Los Angeles and especially the ins-and-outs of the ongoing full-blown humanitarian crisis on Skid Row had better learn. Not unlike any settlement where the inhabitants are essentially displaced peoples, Jeff is part of the heart that asserts its autonomy and demands self-respect. And not unlike, for example, a refugee camp, where the inhabitants have no real power in the face of violence and levels of degradation most only have to wonder about, his leadership is heroic and essential and relentless.
FLASHBACK: Street kids of Nairobi...
A young boy was recently being interviewed by Undugu social workers. His only possession seemed to be an old burlap sack. When asked why he wouldn't put the sack down as they talked, the boy replied warily, "This is not a sack. It is my father and my mother, my house, my car, my farm and my daily bread. I can't steal without it."
Combined excerpts from two separate articles, originally
published in Kenya in Executive Magazine,
January 1993, and Survival, Spring
1994.
Being at the
forefront of street children-related work in Kenya, it is sometimes necessary
for the Undugu Society to assume the role of advocate. This is especially true
when cases arise where it is obvious that the rights of the children, as
espoused in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, have been
violated. One such case occurred when government authorities decided to close
down a rescue center at Kariokor Market, one of the busiest sections of
Nairobi. An extremely harsh crackdown left several boys incarcerated among
adults- - a direct contradiction of the statutes related to child protection in
Kenya. The boys were hounded and even physically assaulted during their ordeal.
While it is true that many of these boys were not model citizens in any sense
of the word, they are citizens, and human beings, nonetheless. And though we
wish in all good conscience to be able to report that this incident was an
isolated case of overzealousness by a few officials, we are sorry that our
pursuit of the truth in such matters does not allow such a softening statement
to be made. To the contrary, such occurrences are so commonplace that to report
them regularly would entail the hiring of a full-time investigative reporter,
to be assigned solely to the juvenile courthouse, the approved and remand
school systems, and the police stations citywide. Reprinted here is the
editorial column from the March 1994 edition of Flash, the in-house quarterly
newsletter of Undugu.
In
the April –June, 1993 issue of Flash, our editorial outlined the work being
done by the Child Law Project, whose proposed Children’s Act seeks to refine
and consolidate the often conflicting and unclear legislation pertaining to
child protection. We noted then that Attorney General Amos Wako has said that
this act should become law sometime during this session of Parliament.
To
date, this has not yet been done, thus the Children and Young Persons Acts,
Chapter 141 (last revised in 1972) remains the definitive legislation on cases
specifically dealing with juveniles and others, including street children. In
light of the recent developments involving the boys from Kariokor, it is
instructive to note the following sections of this act, and we would ask the
proper authorities to pause and consider whether the rights of these children
are in any way being violated:
CAP
141, Section 23: (1) If any person who
has the custody, charge or care of any child or juvenile-
(a)
Willfully assaults, ill-treats,
neglects, abandons or exposes him, or causes or permits him to be assaulted,
ill-treated, neglected, abandoned or exposed, in any manner likely to cause him
unnecessary suffering or injury to healthy shall be guilty of an offence and
liable to a fine not exceeding five thousand shillings or to imprisonment for a
term not exceeding six months or to both such fine and such imprisonment…
CAP
141, Section 5: Arrangements shall be
made for preventing persons under sixteen years of age while detained in a
police station, or while being conveyed to or from any court from associating
with adults charged with or convicted of any offence other than an offence with
which a person under sixteen years of age is jointly charged or convicted…
CAP
141, Section 14: Every court in dealing
with a person under eighteen years of age who is brought before it shall have
regard to his welfare and shall, in a proper case, take steps for removing him
from undesirable surroundings and for securing that proper provision be made
for his maintenance, education and training.
In
the first two instances (Section 23 &6), readers of our special report in
this issue (the closing of the Kariokor Rescue Centre) will not have to stretch
their imaginations too far to acknowledge the possibility of violations against
our children by the very agencies entrusted to protect them. With regard to
Section 14, a recent visit to the Juvenile Remand Home in Kabete, (one of 10
such home throughout the republic) revealed a situation so shocking and
depressing in its scope, that it is hard to imagine how the courts assigned to
deal with these children would be able to abide by that law.
Built
to hold 80-100 children, Kabete’s population fluctuates from 200-300 and has in
recent months reached as high as 500. With manager Bakala Wambani lamenting a
near total lack of funding from the government, the children held at Kabete
have no salt or milk in their diets. Many appear to be malnourished, a worse
condition than we find them when living on the streets. Scabies is rampant, as
there are precious few medicines to treat this or any other illnesses. There
are only two qualified social workers, with ten other staff members handing
various responsibilities. Even with probation officers sent periodically from
the Children’s Department to help follow-up the vagrancy cases (which constitute
the majority), processing is slow. It is not uncommon for a child picked up on a
street corner to end up spending more than a month waiting for some decision to
be made on his future. In the meantime, those categorized as needing protection
and care (P &C) are mixed together with those officially determined to
require protection and discipline (P&D).
The result—hardcore cases end up influencing and often spoiling the more
innocent children. In December last year, the government released 17m shillings
from the Treasury, to go towards the “repatriation” of children to their home
regions. Already dozens of children have been shipped to police station in places
such as Kakamega and Mombasa.
This
may stem the flow of children to the streets temporarily, but realistically it
is like trying to empty a sinking canoe with a spoon. Long-term solutions are
needed. Just as Undugu Society needs funding to maintain our programs, so the relevant
government ministries need to allocate sufficient funds to improve the quality
of services at the remand home and approved schools. It was pointed out to us
that there was once a “ State Maintenance Fund,” which was used to finance the
education of needy children. There were even cases of children being sponsored
clear up to university level. Reviving this would be a major step in the right
direction.
Without
such efforts of good faith, and until policeman and others in positions of
authority learn to treat street children as human beings, not whipping boys,
the chances are the system will continue to further harden, rather than help,
society’s most unfortunate souls.
Representation and ownership; the delicate case of W. Eugene Smith’s Tomoko image
“Even the most compassionate
photojournalism is under pressure to satisfy simultaneously two sorts of
experiences: those arising from our largely surrealist way of looking at all
photographs, and those created by our belief that some photographs give real
and important information about the world. The photographs that W. Eugene Smith
took in the late 1960s in Minamata … move us because they document a
suffering which arouses our indignation—and distance us because they are superb
photographs of Agony, conforming to surrealist standards of beauty.”
* Susan Sontag
You will be
told we must continuously show these images as a reminder of what must never
happen again! These arguments, I believe, are specious when looked at without
the filter of the mass media. The classic Aristotelian notion of tragedy, which
calls for the dramatic presentation of “
… incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis
of such emotions,” seemed prescient in the age of photographic
representation. Yet while such
photographs may arouse pity, fear or anger, it is hard to imagine what
cathartic value the perpetual viewing of, to put things crudely, a dead or dying
body might have, regardless of it’s historical or political significance.
To this end, Sontag
has also written:
“To suffer is one thing; another
thing is living with the photographed images of suffering, which does not
necessarily strengthen conscience and the ability to be compassionate. It can
also corrupt them … after repeated exposure to images it also becomes less
real … The sense of taboo which makes us indignant and sorrowful is not
much sturdier than the sense of taboo that regulates the definition of what is
obscene. The vast photographic catalogue of misery and injustice throughout the
world has given everyone a certain familiarity with atrocity, making the
horrible seem ordinary …”
Outside the
realm of censorship, however exercised, photojournalists, documentarians and defenders of the genre have historically shown little restraint or reflection in the use of more
“important” images. Actions against this deeply ingrained sense of
representational duty are rare, if not blasphemous.
In 1998, pundits
were aghast when Aileen Mioko Smith, the widow of master photo-essayist W.
Eugene Smith, heeded the pleas of the Uemura family to bar all future use of
one of Smith’s most enduring images, “Tomoko is Bathed by Her Mother.” The photograph, a classic example of Smith’s
unabashedly Romantic sensibility, with trademark high-contrast printing to
further enhance the chiaroscurolighting, had been taken
in 1971 as part of an essay on the effects of mercury poisoning in the Japanese
fishing industry. The photographs published in Life magazine, and in the book entitled “Minamata,” came to
symbolize the plight of the families afflicted with birth defects and other
illnesses. Notwithstanding concerns expressed by purists that Smith had engaged in
some decidedly questionable journalistic ethics by staging the image in the
most dramatic light that could be found, the photograph is held up as a shining
example of humanitarian documentary work, nearly as impressive symbolically as
it is narratively.
The Uemura family
eventually prevailed in the first Minamata Disease trial against the Chisso
Corporation, but a few years later Tomoko, only twenty-one years old, passed
away. In an emotional letter written in 1998, Tomoko’s father outlines how the
famous photograph has, over the years since their daughter’s death, become a
crucible, outliving it’s original usefulness:
“ … we were faced with an
increasing number of demands for interviews. Believing that it would aid the
struggle for the eradication of pollution, we agreed … as a result rumors
began to circulate … `They must be making a huge amount of money from all
the publicity’ … I do not think that anybody outside our family can begin
to imagine how unbearable these persistent rumors made our daily lives … in
1977 we were contacted by a French television company who were planning to
produce a program entitled `One Hundred Photographs of the Twentieth Century,’
and they said it was vital for them to use … Eugene Smith’s `Tomoko.’” I
did not want to take part in this program so I turned them down … I wanted
Tomoko to rest in peace and this feeling welled up in me steadily.”4
In response,
Smith, who had worked with her husband on the Minamata project, and had been
intimate with the Uemura family, agreed. In a letter to the media, she wrote:
“Generally, the copyright of a
photograph belongs to the person who took it, but I think that it is important
to respect the subject’s rights and feelings. Therefore, I … promised that
I would not newly exhibit or publish the photo in question. In addition I will
be grateful if any museums who already own or are displaying the work would
take the above into consideration …”5
Aperture magazine, widely respected as among the most excellent
arbiters of important photography, dutifully published a response that brushed
aside copyright concerns. Instead, it served
to chastise Aileen Mioko Smith for giving away what was not hers, violating a
trust rendered sacred forged by an unconditional, long-held sense of protective
ownership. Never! Imagine the precedent!
Aristotle himself might’ve appreciate the manner in which the removal of the
photographs from public view would provide those most personally affected with
the catharsis necessary to complete the dramatization of the tragedy, but it
was not to be…
Eugene and Aileen Smith’s
Photograph of Tomoko and My Family
by Yoshio Uemura
Tomoko was
born on June 13, 1956. A few days after her birth, Tomoko began to exhibit
trembling fits. She cried every day and we were unable to leave her side. We
thought this strange and took her to various hospitals in Minamata City, but
none of them were able to say what was wrong with her. She was later suspected
to be suffering from cerebral palsy. However there was really no treatment for
her but to give injections to her tiny, thin body.
It was not
until November of 1962 that Tomoko was recognized as suffering from congenital
Minamata Disease. At this time she already had three younger sisters. On
December 26th of that year another sister was born and by 1969 she had a total
of six siblings. Despite having so many children, looking after Tomoko took a
lot of our time. A single meal would take about two hours for her to eat and so
just feeding her would occupy more than five or six hours every day.
The first
Minamata Disease lawsuit began in June 1969 and went through forty-nine
hearings before the proceedings were concluded with the final judgment being
handed down on March 20, 1973. During this period, people from all over the
country offered their support and among them were Eugene and Aileen Smith, who
had rented a house near ours in Detsuki from Tadaaki Mizoguchi and were
photographing the families of the victims of the disease.
Among the many
photographs they took, there was one of my wife Yoshiko holding Tomoko in the
bath. Yoshiko told me that Tomoko had let her body lie straight without trying
to curl up. To be honest, we had thought that the photograph would only take a
brief moment so we had agreed to the shoot without giving the matter a second
thought. I was told that Tomoko seemed exhausted when she got out of the bath.
The photograph
went on to become world-famous and as a result we were faced with an increasing
number of demands for interviews. Believing that it would aid the struggle for
the eradication of pollution, we agreed to the interviews and photographs and
the organizations that were working on our behalf used the photograph of Tomoko
frequently in their activities. However, as a result, rumors began to circulate
in the neighborhood and among other people around us. “They must be making
a huge amount of money from all that publicity.” This was untrue. It had
never entered our minds to profit from the photograph of Tomoko. We never dreamt
that a photograph like that could be commercial.
The truth is
that we did not benefit financially at all from the photograph. I do not think
that anybody outside our family can begin to imagine how unbearable these
persistent rumors made our daily lives. Sometimes we had to face the flashes
and hot lights of television interviews, and although she could not speak
herself, I am sure that in her heart Tomoko felt that because of her, we –her
father, mother, sisters, and brother– were having to go through such pain. As
her father, I found the thought that this concern existed in the corner of her
mind extremely unpleasant. Several years before she died, she began going to
the hospital many times and each time she came home she was smaller than when
she went in. She never smiled any more and seemed to become progressively
weaker.
Despite this,
Tomoko still had a strong will to live and she was treasured by everybody in
the family. I regret so much that I could do nothing to soften her pain…the
fevers from colds, the suffering, the only slight relief she could get from the
injections and medication. The treatments probably provided but slight relief
for her. I have now come to believe that the sole thing that sustained Tomoko
was her parents and siblings, her family’s love gave her reason for living, and
perhaps enabled her to survive as long as she did.
I am sure that
it must have pained Tomoko not to be able to express her gratitude to those who
helped her come as far as she did, but I think it was the absolute love and
affection my wife offered her that made her life worth living. The industry as
well as the national and regional government sent us and untold others to the
bottom of hell. And the whole lot of them neglected to save lives but instead
bailed out the company. And the company that caused thousands to fall victim
now survives as though it has never committed any sin.
The court case
was concluded, but victory has no value to the deceased and the seriously ill.
And even if the government were to apologize officially, this would do nothing
in the slightest to relieve the symptoms of the victims. Tomoko died on
December 5, 1977. She was 21 years old. All we could do was to hold vigil
before Tomoko who had departed us in silence. I could not hear the words of those
that paid homage to her in the funeral procession. Their words could not enter
my ears. In blank stupor, Tomoko departed to heaven ahead of her parents,
leaving behind her sisters and brother…
In 1997 we
were contacted by a French television company named CAPA who were planning to
produce a program entitled, “One Hundred Photographs of the Twentieth
Century” and they said that it was vital for them to use “the picture
that captured the environmental problems of Minamata, Eugene Smith’s
‘Tomoko’.”
I did not want
to take part in the program so I turned them down. I know what television
interviews involve and also, many of the organizations that are working on our
behalf are using the photograph in various media, many of them in places we do
not know about. I realize that this is necessary for numerous reasons, but I
wanted Tomoko to rest in peace and this feeling welled up in me steadily.
Hearing the
way I felt, Aileen came all the way from Kyoto to visit me on June 7th last
year and she promised to revert all rights of decision to the picture of Tomoko
to my wife and I. We later received this promise in writing and a copy of it
appears on the following page [below]. I and my family are filled with
gratitude from the bottom of our hearts toward Aileen. I thank her deeply for
this wonderful gift to Tomoko. I feel that Tomoko is now finally resting in
eternal peace. I ask all of you for your support and understanding.
His letter ended:
1. I, Aileen Smith, return the photograph entitled
“Tomoko is Bathed by her Mother” to Mr. and Mrs. Uemura.
2. This means
that the right of decision concerning the use of this photograph reverts to Mr.
and Mrs. Uemura.
3. In the
future, when any requests are made to me concerning this photograph, I will
explain the following (see separate sheet) and refuse use of this photograph.
October 30,
1998
Aileen Mioko
Smith
Regarding the Photograph, “Tomoko is Bathed by her Mother”
by Aileen
Mioko Smith
The photograph
entitled “Tomoko is bathed by her Mother” was taken in December 1971
by Eugene and Aileen Smith. At the time, Tomoko was a plaintiff in the first
Minamata Disease trial and was suing the Chisso Corporation for damages. Her
parents wanted society to know about their daughter and therefore agreed to the
taking and publishing of the photograph.
Since 1972,
this photograph has been published in Life
magazine, a book of photographs entitled “Minamata” (1975 in English,
1980 in Japanese) etc., causing a huge response, and became a symbol of
Minamata Disease.
The plaintiffs
won their case in March of 1973 but sadly, Tomoko died in December 1977 at the
tender age of twenty-one. Despite this, however, the photograph continued to be
used as a symbol of Minamata Disease in books and exhibitions, leaving a strong
impression on a large number of people. I later heard that this resulted in a
certain amount of conflict within the minds of her family, who wanted to see
the end of the kind of pollution that caused the problems, while at the same
time wished to let Tomoko rest in peace.
Generally, the
copyright of a photograph belongs to the person who took it, but the subject
also has rights and I think that it is important to respect the subject’s
rights and feelings. Therefore, I went to see the Uemura family on June 7, 1998
and promised that I would not newly exhibit or publish the photograph in
question.
For the above
reasons, the photograph entitled “Tomoko is bathed by her Mother”
will not be used for any new publications. In addition I will be grateful if
any museums etc. who already own or are displaying the work would take the
above into consideration when exhibiting etc. the photograph in the future.
“… Marx
asserted, ‘They cannot represent themselves; they must be represented.’ His
doubled sense of representation is a political practice; someone must speak
for, stand in for, perform as, the inchoate and unformed group—not yet a class
because it cannot represent itself, yet surely a class because it can be
represented—to and for itself and others. If representation is crucial to class
formation and expression, then class, like gender, is performative …”