Gone City

Post #999: accepting violence

2012-01-26T09:51:00.002-05:00

What differentiates El Salvador from Mexico is a collective will for social order, seldom obtained but sought with near unanimity. If nothing else, these people know what war is all about and few people kid themselves with the idea that some "crackdown" by the police, the army, or any other branch of the government can do anything about skyrocketing homicide rates. Hell, 20 years after the peace accords were signed between the FMLN and the government, there's been little change in the landscape, many here say. But the desire for a kind of order based on atheistic, natural law, ala, Emma Goldman, survives.

Fortunately, I have not met any delusional, Javier Sicilia-style peacenicks spreading the old lie that peace comes from old Biblical ideas like loving your neighbor. Take-it-in-the-ass, barrio punks with too much testosterone and too many guns care fuck all about social order or good will. Getting to heaven via the cross is not on their list of priorities. What has worked, historically, is to put people in prison, preferably, for life.

I guess Sicilia feels pretty god-damned good about himself. Having lost a son to Mexico's violence, he is almost, but not quite, a martyr. If the movement he leads with such egotistical zeal were of any consequence, he would have been dead by now, kidnapped, decapitated and hung from a bridge by the very people he hopes to convince that the road to the future is paved with smooth stones of pacifism. The lesson of Christianity, a dear friend once told me, is that if you act like Christ, you get crucified. The only way to deal with criminals -- whether they wear masks, white collars, or badges -- is to take away their power. Praying for them doesn't do a god damned bit of good. Nor do they deserve our prayers.

The Zona Roja in San Salvador, meanwhile, is a Caravaggio painting in garish, overblown colors. There's a kind of anarchism at play. Thieves and killers wander the narrow, smog-contaminated streets. Men too drunk to stay awake collapse at mid-day on the sidewalks, but whores and their clients protect one another.

Someone warns me to keep my camera hidden so as not to tempt thieves. Someone else tells me not to walk beyond the next corner, lest I find myself in "mara territory." Soldiers in uniform are not welcome. Anywhere. Across the street from one whorehouse, in an unpaved parking lot, Evangelical Christians with wild faith in their eyes dance and pray under an enormous cardboard billboard showing the Temple at Jerusalem. The soul of this country has been so successfully monopolized by double-dip Christians that many people don't know which of the building downtown is the Cathedral -- that historic place where Monsignor Oscar Romero's body once lay, out of reach of his followers who tried to get inside to say good-bye to Central America's one, true Saint, but who were gunned down by the dozen in the attempt.

Romero, in fact, may be the figure who marks the difference between Mexico and El Salvador. Recalling a painting by Anselm Kiefer, the sad truth of the matter is that modern Mexico has never had a spiritual hero -- only politicians posing as messiahs. Witness Sicilia's dumb-headed protagonism, which has already resulted in the death of one of his sycophants who was foolish enough to try to "forge a truce" with a drug cartel; or the false prophecies of Mexican Presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador with his ridiculous proposal for a "Republic of Love," an idea that would make Jerry Brown laugh until he pissed his polyester pants.

Welcome to the Jungle, someone posted on Twitter when I announced my arrival in El Salvador. Violence is. Violence always will be. From the crucifixion of Christ to the bombing of Dresden and the rape of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo. It can be channeled into a kind of order but never, ever extinguished. The burning bush is not a message to Moses to lead his people out of bondage, but a symbol of the rage in the human soul, put there by cruel rulers and a system that forces us to bow down to invisible gods and unreachable corporate chair-persons who would very happily watch us starve to death so they can go on playing golf, or whatever it is that the very rich do with all the money they steal from us.

El Salvador is a violent country. But Salvadorans, unlike Mexicans, understand violence. Everything from the 1932 peasant massacre to the twelve-year civil war here has taught them that violence is a part of life. There is so much yin and so much yang and pretending that the streets glow with the white light of saviors won't do much to stop the shitstorm. At the same time, they live with the dream that the land, as TS Eliot might have said, can one day be put in order. But pacifists are few and far between, which is an idea that gives me faith that El Salvador will overcome. Through action, not pretty words.

Big Fish

2012-01-24T08:09:00.000-05:00

Puerto de la Libertad, El Salvador

2012-01-19T10:27:00.002-05:00

Guatemala City

2012-01-16T08:27:00.000-05:00

Shoe shiners, Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico

2012-01-16T08:24:00.000-05:00

San Salvador at last

2012-01-15T09:20:00.000-05:00

After almost a year of delays, I´m finally in San Salvador, giving a workshop on composition for photographers at the Universidad Centroamericana. Thanks to Claudia Torres for making it happen.

Yesterday was the first of four, four hour sessions and we had a great time talking about Henri Cartier Bresson, Bruce Davidson, and even Miguelangelo Merisi de Caravaggio and Diego Velazquez.

This is a wonderful, chaotic, fascinating city where I am fortunate to have a good number of friends. Pictures will be coming but after a four day bus ride from Chicago to get here, I need to get my head together before I can really concentrate.

Apologies to everyone I didn´t or couldn´t visit while crossing Mexico. There was no time to stop, and to be perfectly honest, I love your country but it scares the shit out of me. Can you folks get rid of Calderon already, put the criminals in jail forever, and get the army off the street? Millions of people would be better off for it.

Love!

Woman in purple, NY

2012-01-10T09:43:00.001-05:00

Times Square, Manhattan, NY

2012-01-08T09:25:00.000-05:00

Two Manhattan men

2012-01-08T08:36:00.002-05:00

For everyone else waiting for the end of winter

2012-01-03T14:49:00.002-05:00

Trajectory >

2012-01-02T11:25:00.005-05:00

Something we talk about in photography composition classes is the direction in which a photograph "moves," or trajectory. Here are three photographs that "go" from right to left. This picture and the two below all direct the eye from one side of the picture frame to the other. The "tool" used to do this, in all three cases, is the direction the subject is facing.

Untitled Coney Island Beach

2012-01-02T11:22:00.002-05:00

Walking New York

2012-01-02T11:20:00.002-05:00

Sony NEX with 1960s Nikkor lens

2011-12-30T23:03:00.001-05:00

I took this picture with the lens reviewed here, connected to a Sony NEX-5 with a Chinese adapter. Works great! I've found that the Nikon lens is actually warmer and has less of a magenta cast than the Sony lenses. Not better. Just different.

Quick review: Nikkor lens adapter for Sony NEX cameras

2011-12-29T15:11:00.001-05:00

The mailman just delivered mine after I shelled out a whopping 20 bucks. This little thing looks like any other lens adapter from the old days but lets me use thousands of recent and ancient Nikkor lenses on my NEX-5. Yay! I've got no problem with Sony lenses. The 16mm is underrated and the 18-55mm kit zoom is good enough for most people, too. But I've already got tons of money invested in Nikon glass, so spending a little change to be able to keep using my old lenses, like the 17-35mm 2.8, which cost me an arm and a leg, is a no brainer.

I shot the picture above with the worst lens I own, a beaten up, Tokina 28-70mm that never really focuses dead on because it's so old and knackered. People bitch that they can't get autofocus with this kind of set up but who cares? If you grew up shooting all-manual Nikon and Pentax cameras, this is easy to focus, primarily because of Sony's "peaking" system, which you have to try out for yourself to understand. As for exposure, set it on aperture priority and the camera picks out a shutter speed by itself. Viva viva!

This is just a test shot, taken at 2.8 aperture and 70mm, or about 105mm when you factor in the cropped sensor. I'll post more after I try out some other lenses. For now, I'm extremely pleased.

Adorama and B&H sell a version of this adapter for almost 300 bucks. This one, by a company called Cowboy Studios, seems sturdy enough for me, and the premium priced version won't actually do anything better or different.

It's worth mentioning that people like me who have been throwing money into gear for a while know that lenses are more important than bodies, particularly in the digital age. Camera bodies go out of date by the time you get them home. I've had this old Tokina zoom since 1999 and I still use it.

I took the picture below at f5.6 with the same crappy lens, this time set for infinity.

39th Street, New York

2011-12-29T12:43:00.000-05:00

34th Street, New York

2011-12-29T12:41:00.000-05:00

Botanica dolls

2011-12-27T13:49:00.002-05:00

Woman on Subway

2011-12-27T13:48:00.000-05:00

Uptown Manhattan II

2011-12-24T10:50:00.003-05:00

Uptown Manhattan

2011-12-24T10:42:00.002-05:00

Street Night Light

2011-12-24T10:32:00.000-05:00

Brooklyn Intersection

2011-12-21T20:51:00.000-05:00

Brooklyn storefront rainy night

2011-12-21T19:36:00.000-05:00

Indian Summer Night, Atlantic Center, Brooklyn

2011-12-21T19:31:00.000-05:00