Holding Photos – Presence of Absence

It’s a Saturday night and I am in my studio. With my new printer, I have been getting inspired to print from all the various little projects I have going. Since I started clipping/saving images from the newspaper, I have been moved by images of people holding photos of their loved ones. It is usually someone who has disappeared – missing or dead. The Madres de Plaza de Mayo helped make it a understood political act to hold the image of your missing child as public protest. Tonight I made a grid of images I have in my computer – scanned from newspapers, magazines and grabbed from the web. When see together, the gesture of the hands holding the images speak about the loss, love, anger, and the absence. I notice more.

West Bank Flotilla and protests

Eyewitness video from protest on Monday, 5-31, against the commando raid on the flotilla at a West Bank check point just after Emily Henochowicz, a student from Cooper Union, was wounded showed her being carried away for treatment by fellow activists from the International Solidarity Movement.
more from the Lede Blog with eyewitness accounts and more links.

great reporting from Democracy Now

more links to add – no words since video and eyewitnesses show the tragedy and Israeli stupidity.

Memorializing and Gifting – Michael Reagan


great slideshow
Drawn portraits of British, US and Canadian service personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan – created by artist Michael Reagan. A Vietnam War veteran himself, he has produced more than 2,000 drawings for the soldiers’ families free of charge. He told BBC Radio 4’s PM programme he wants to document all of the Allied troops killed in action.