The Magic Money Tree, Showing My Age, and Films for Social Change
Or: Dispatches #12 IWD Edition
Tomorrow, I turn 45. I'm not entirely sure how that happened. I remember turning 42, just over a year into the pandemic. That was exciting as the number has always had Douglas Adams connotations to it. I made a big deal of it. Posted screenshots of Deep Thought announcing the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. 45 felt like it was miles away. I closed my eyes for a few minutes and when I opened them it was staring me straight in the face.
In my 30s I thought I would fight my age and yearn to be younger than I am. I've always looked a little younger than my years - I suppose it helps that I continue to dress like a 12-year-old. Except for occasional wistful nostalgic looks over my shoulder, I don't think I resist it. I feel I've settled into my mid-forties as best as one who overthinks things can do. Still, the disappearing hair on my crown is causing great concern, though admittedly more so than the slight silvering of my temple.
On Saturday past, at the pro-Palestinian march, I met the excellent writer and memoirist, the charming
. If you are not reading her What Now? newsletter, I can't recommend it more highly. Get on it. We met at the red-coloured communist party tent. Two Leicas and the communist party tent felt very on-brand for me at the moment. Lindsay's efforts in writing her memoir have sparked a desire to write something myself one day - I suppose the anxiety is whether anyone would want to read it. Mind you, maybe the writing of it is reason enough.Ok, enough blethering. Let's get to the news.
What's been happening this month
The Guardian featured photographer Kirsty Mackay’s project The Magic Money Tree, documenting the UK's cost of living crisis which is showing at the New Art Gallery Walsall until July. (The Guardian)
On International Women’s Day, Leica announced the recipients of its fifth Leica Women Foto Project Award, celebrating photographers whose work embodies reclamation, resilience, and rebirth. (Petapixel)
In time for IWD, Aperture created a list of 12 essential photobooks by women photographers. (Aperture)
IWD also saw Blind magazine featuring Chloe Sherman's work revisiting intimate pictures from San Francisco's radical Queer scene of the 90s. (Blind)
And to celebrate IWD, in their From the Archives section, Musée magazine is sharing articles from their issue 13 - Women. (Musée)
Dispatches from Substack
Towards the end of February, Stella Kalaw took her readers on a photographic walk through some fog and down to the edge of the pier at her local marina - and all to make some lovely black and white photographs.
On Behind the Lens, Clee Images marks IWD by celebrating the achievements of women and the struggles captured in some of the protest photographs she has taken.
My new pal, the aforementioned Lindsay, was part of a group of Substack writers who celebrated IWD24 with a writing project creating a Daisy Chain Flower Crown. This is her particular daisy.
Commemorating IWD, Dina Litovsky reposted a piece on the strange reality of being a woman photographer online.
Returning to the Daisy Chain Flower Crown, Lynn Fraser published an essay originally written for History Scotland on the rebellious women of Coigach.
Recommendations
Photographer
One of my favourite little tidbits of photography trivia is that Robert Capa wasn't originally a man. Robert Capa was an alias shared by Hungarian, Endre Ernő Friedmann and German, Greta Pohorylle. As Hitler's Nazi party rose in Germany, the two Jewish photographers chose to share an alias to mask their ethnicity and protect themselves from the growing intolerance. It is understood that a lot of Capa's early work was indeed created by Pohorylle, later known professionally as Gerda Taro. The latter was an exceptional photojournalist who travelled to Spain with Capa and David Seymour to photograph the events of the Civil War. Taro's photos of the bombing of Valencia are considered her greatest work. Later that same year, while photographing the Battle of Brunete, she was killed and is widely believed to be the 1st woman photojournalist to die while covering the frontline of war.
For more on Gerda Taro, Anthony Morganti wrote of her photography in the most recent issue of his newsletter.
Something Interesting
As it isn’t an experience exclusive to me, I’m sure you will recognise this. A few weeks ago while searching for something unrelated, I found a website previously unknown to me. Filmsforaction.org is a self-described wall of films. 500 movies for social change on one page. Classics such as The Corporation and Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story are on there, but then again so is Zeitgeist, and that gave me pause. Nevertheless, when looking for movies on there, I use the same discretion as I do elsewhere - choose something, do a bit of googling to discover if it’s conspiracy bollocks, and then off we go. The resource itself, though? Highly recommended.
And Finally…
Paid readers, keep a look out for next week’s email and everyone else, stay tuned for Issue 15 of Photos, mostly coming on the 27th of March.
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Looking good tho!
Tomorrow is my 40th birthday! HBD 🎉