Murray Foote
Member
I visited New York in October 2011. I didn't know in advance how safe it was likely to be wandering around with a camera and it was more of a social trip than a photographic trip so I just took a Fujifilm X100.
I'd never really done street photography before and I had in mind some of the images of Fahim at the time where he walks the streets of Africa or Asia and discovers compelling portraits. I quickly discovered that I am not Fahim and that the way I see and produce images on the street is quite different. New York is in any case probably not so suited to taking intimate portraits on the street. If I had any example on my mind it was Cartier-Bresson, though of course I'm not trying to compare myself with him. I just took what I found, in the way I saw it, to reveal such meaning as appealed to me.
It so happened I was there when Zuccotti Park was still a political event. It's now eighteen months later, but the underlying issues have changed little.
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On the 31st of October we visited Zuccotti Park, the focus of the Occupy Wall Street movement, still fully in place at this time. The occupation had begun a little over a month earlier, on the 17th of September. A fortnight after our visit, the police would clear all protestors from the park.
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The Occupy Movement is remarkable as a practical exercise in anarchy. There is a commitment to non-violent action and collective decision-making with no leadership and no hierarchy.
The people who gathered in Zuccotti Park were open and inclusive and provided food and shelter to all comers. One unanticipated though predictable consequence was that they became a magnet for people such as the homeless and the mentally ill who Society has largely abandoned. They did what they could to assist those people but they did not set out to be a welfare group and this often made political coordination more difficult.
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"We are the 99%" is the clarion call of the Movement. It refers to the vast inequality of income and opportunity in the United States in particular and Western societies in general. It is an issue of key relevance to the vast majority of people.
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The website Occupy Together also lists other key issues including excessive influence purchased by large corporations, student debt, home foreclosures due to irresponsible practices of banks, "too big to fail" banks, profiteering of private institutions in healthcare, a living wage to the 99% and budget cuts affecting the 99%.
...
I'd never really done street photography before and I had in mind some of the images of Fahim at the time where he walks the streets of Africa or Asia and discovers compelling portraits. I quickly discovered that I am not Fahim and that the way I see and produce images on the street is quite different. New York is in any case probably not so suited to taking intimate portraits on the street. If I had any example on my mind it was Cartier-Bresson, though of course I'm not trying to compare myself with him. I just took what I found, in the way I saw it, to reveal such meaning as appealed to me.
It so happened I was there when Zuccotti Park was still a political event. It's now eighteen months later, but the underlying issues have changed little.
...
...
On the 31st of October we visited Zuccotti Park, the focus of the Occupy Wall Street movement, still fully in place at this time. The occupation had begun a little over a month earlier, on the 17th of September. A fortnight after our visit, the police would clear all protestors from the park.
...
...
The Occupy Movement is remarkable as a practical exercise in anarchy. There is a commitment to non-violent action and collective decision-making with no leadership and no hierarchy.
The people who gathered in Zuccotti Park were open and inclusive and provided food and shelter to all comers. One unanticipated though predictable consequence was that they became a magnet for people such as the homeless and the mentally ill who Society has largely abandoned. They did what they could to assist those people but they did not set out to be a welfare group and this often made political coordination more difficult.
...
...
"We are the 99%" is the clarion call of the Movement. It refers to the vast inequality of income and opportunity in the United States in particular and Western societies in general. It is an issue of key relevance to the vast majority of people.
...
...
The website Occupy Together also lists other key issues including excessive influence purchased by large corporations, student debt, home foreclosures due to irresponsible practices of banks, "too big to fail" banks, profiteering of private institutions in healthcare, a living wage to the 99% and budget cuts affecting the 99%.
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