#humanrightsday Rabiya, age 18, at dawn in her housing space at Putugalong Refugee Camp, 2018, in Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh. Above image from a series entitled "Night" that conveys individual women and women gathering in private spaces at night where their single source of light comes from a candle or Unicef given lightbulb.
#humanrightsday Girls stand with their faces to a wall. In the center, Anna*, age 9, is detained for hitting her mother. Upon detainment, it was discovered that Anna’s mother’s boyfriend sexually abused her; she was held indefinitely until an investigation was launched and she could be placed with a foster parent. Over 90% of girls held in US juvenile detention centers are survivors of sexual or physical trauma; common offenses of theft, drug use, and domestic violence, where they are accused of hitting a parent or sibling, are often cries for help to be removed from an abusive situation. The rigid concept that people, especially young individuals, are their actions is very problematic because sometimes actions are steeped in traumas and violences that control choices beyond the rational. How can we seek to comprehend without an understanding of someone’s personal history? Girls are pathologized before they are understood as survivors with learned behavior patterns. They are shamed and labeled “bad girls” before they are even able to grasp their denied innocence. In the legal system, there is little integration of knowledge about the nervous system, gendered abuse, PTSD, attachment issues and repetition compulsion (reenacting trauma in different manifestations). As we move towards a more progressive grasp of individuals who have been subjected to war, it’s about time that we accept girls and women who have been subjected to prolonged violences as veterans of their own war and a very private one they carry in the depths of their consciousness. When will we move out of denial and accept that safety is a privilege for some when it should be a human right for all (girls)?
Madeline asleep next to her mom at her grandfather’s funeral.
She called me earlier this day, telling me she was going to leave him. I sat facing this trailer, as she talked to him in front of his door. I took this photo on my phone. She told him she was leaving. I kept thinking she should have opted to have police present. I didn’t know what he was going to do. To her. To me. She walked from the trailer poised for a moment. But once she made it past his window where he couldn’t see her, she started sobbing. I was the only one who saw her face and it haunts me. I couldn’t photograph. I only have this photo. And the memory of her face. #16daysofactivism
Krysta and Nathaniel #internationaldayofdisabledpersons #lovers
I spend my life making sense of the ghost world of others. Recently, I’ve been writing a 25,000 word piece about the ghosts inside and outside a woman I’ve been shadowing. Inevitably, my ghosts come out too. Last night after writing for hours, I dreamt a new manifestation of a recurring dream I’ve had for years. I dreamt that I received a phone call in the present day that my grandmother had died. I was confused upon receiving this news, because my grandmother passed away 12 years ago. The voice who spoke to me in French instructed me to come to France, an uneasy place for me, and retrieve my grandmother’s body. I complied and flew there, learning that my grandmother has actually been alive all these years and that my now estranged family has been hiding her as part of a hoax. I learn that the body I kissed 12 years ago at the morgue was actually a double. When I arrive, I follow directions, strangely, to the Chateau of Fountainebleau. I meet a group of women who are holding my grandma in an empty room. I notice frescoes on the walls, misleading archetypes of girlhood and womanhood that have led me astray since her death. In the end, these women refuse to allow me to have my grandmother’s body. They want to keep her and won’t give her back. I realize by the end of the psychic cinema played out when my eyes are closed that what is gone is gone. So, too, not coincidentally, “gone is gone” is the crux of many of the stories I aid to tell. #ghosts
Caitlyn’s, age 17, hand on the wall of her cell at the juvenile detention center. Caitlyn is detained for punching her boyfriend; “he’s hit me too so...” she says to me. #16daysofactivism2018
#givingtuesday
A date to McDonalds #iphone
International Day for Elimination of Violence Against Women #internationaldayforeliminationofviolenceagainstwomen
Bianca, age 93. A nurse told me that they moved Bianca to a new room because her roommate, Nancy, threw water on her. Bianca was yelling and screaming due to dementia; Nancy threw water on her cause she “couldn’t take it anymore.” I told Bianca, “that must have been upsetting and disorienting to have water thrown on you like that. That isn’t ok.” She responded, “yup, I know.” Then she started humming “Besame Mucho.” And told me to sing with her. #besamemucho #iphone
Shayna, age 17, lies in her cell at night and holds her stuffed animal at the juvenile detention center in Albuquerque, NM • Read a report this week from @miamiherald concerning the treatment of minors in Miami-Dade juvenile detention centers. As someone who has spent years documenting youth involved in the juvenile justice system, I am distraught to hear of abuse towards these young people who come to these facilities in need of help and trauma-informed support. They enter these institutions and are faced with violences similar in nature to what they endured in their families of origin, leaving them to wonder whether there is a safe space for them on this earth.
#thanksgiving Jessie, age 23, holds her son, age 2, during a Thanksgiving bonding visit at the Lowell Correctional Institution in Ocala, FL. Jessie is incarcerated for 4 years for bringing controlled substances to her boyfriend during a prison visit when he was incarcerated. "Sometimes you just want love. And you're willing to do whatever you can to get it," she shares. Nov 2016.
Thankful for the people who shut their eyes to fear and uncertainty and let me in to sit, stand, and walk with them. There are too many people to name. There would be too many images to share. Just know I carry you with me. The privilege to document your most intimate moments, to know you is something I hold the highest gratitude for. To be truly known to someone is vulnerable and requires courage. Thank you for not being subjects, but for being teachers of life. Thank you to those who left the door unlocked for me and who considered me family when knowing little explicitly about me. Thank you for allowing me to listen (in all ways) and for listening to me in a non-verbal way that makes our bonds mysterious. Thank you for sharing your food with me, for allowing me to lie on your floor, for not getting tired of me for years, for believing in what we do together. And thank you to my loved ones and friends who don’t hear from me for days or see me sometimes for months, but who honor the unconditional love I feel for what I do and the necessity I have held since the start. Thankful for the “many different types of love,” as Adina would say. Thank you for the heartbreaks too. (Above image Jeanie, from my photo documentary Senior Love Triangle). #thanksgiving
Dave stands in the living room of the mansion that he is helping to remodel. Dave was once in the Navy. He then became a truck driver. Thereafter, he became addicted to methamphetamine. He has used meth for over 20 years. 11 years ago, he was arrested for trafficking meth in Texas and went to prison for 18 months. His son, David, then age 11, witnessed his arrest. After his release from prison, Dave became homeless in New Mexico. He now sleeps on a friend’s couch and remodels houses during the day. #home #shotoniphone
Davion • @pulitzercenter #inprogress
M sign engulfed in smoke and darkness from the #campfire. Officials are already telling the community of Oroville to start preparing to evacuate as winds will potentially push the flames towards this area tonight. The Camp Fire destroyed nearby Paradise, CA, and has taken 23 lives. There are still people missing. Paradise is predominantly a community of retirees. The Camp Fire is the most devastating fire in the history of California.
#campfire A statue inside the Jewish Cemetery dating from the Gold Rush located a few miles from the ongoing Camp Fire that has destroyed Paradise, California and continues to spread. The Camp Fire has taken 23 lives. Today, I could only make out an orange stencil of the sun underneath a dark smoke that made this area that I know so well appear like a world I hadn’t seen before.
Bianca on her couch