New shadow puppets in action for the first time at Sovanna Phum

I hardly took out my camera last month. I needed the break, and my other work takes priority. But a few days ago, I stopped by Sovanna Phum and learned they had a special event that evening–a ceremony and special performance to launch their new set of shadow puppets.  The event was attended by many of the regular artists plus people from the community, a couple of donors or their representatives, and others who straggled in like myself.

Eating in a quiet spot backstage

I’m interested in the families of performers. This boy’s father and mother are traditional arts performers. He is studying to become a drummer and his younger sister is studying dance.

Here’s a short, helpful article about how to write an artist’s statement. Why write an artist’s statement?

While I believe strongly that the work must speak for itself, and that no amount of verbal deconstruction will make up for a poorly-conceived or executed idea, a good artist’s statement is essential if the photographer has any desire for recognition or progress… I have found over the years that the photographers who can speak or write clearly about their work also produce the most affecting and powerful images.

The article goes on to say, “You have to have some idea of why you want to make the work and what you want to express with it.” Once you have the Why and What, a good artist’s statement should have the following qualities:

1. Clarity
2. Brevity
3. Humility
4. Awareness (of other work that has preceded and inspired the artist)

Here’s my take on this. The artist needs self awareness, including awareness of external sources of inspiration,  in order to articulate Why and What. Then a good statement should be clear, brief, and humble. There is no need to impress people with words if you have really done the work.

So I am giving myself an assignment to write a new artist’s statement that simply and clearly states my Why and What without falling into the traps of vagueness  or pretension.

During the next few weeks, I’m going to blog my way through a book, Walking With the Poor: Principles and Practices of Transformational Development, by Bryant Myers (1999).  I hope it will help answer some questions that I have about my own work here.

How can I walk alongside the poor in a way that lifts them up, rather than lifting up myself? How can I lead in a way that doesn’t seek control but respects the ability and freedom of the poor to make their own choices for change?  What can I do to support genuine, lasting transformation in individuals, communities, and society?

Who is this for?

In the Foreword, Paul Hiebert says Walking with the Poor is “a masterpiece of integration and application in thinking about Christian ministry.”

Christians have a mixed reputation in development. Frankly, so do non-Christians. Human beings helping others, despite our best intentions, have similar habits of playing god and under-appreciating the abilities of the poor to help themselves, even as we talk about mutual respect and empowerment.

The book is for people who want to follow Jesus alongside the poor. It’s an important book calling for much needed changes in understanding and practice. As for my blog, it’s for anyone who wants to listen and join the conversation.

Key ideas

Myers states some key ideas at the outset. I’ll list them here:

1. The Western worldview separates the world into material and spiritual sides of reality but struggles to see how the two meet and overlap. As Westerners, we tend to focus selectively on material OR spiritual reality, faith OR reason, secular OR sacred, etc.  When we want to get things done, we choose tools for either/or, but we struggle to operate in both at the same time.  Most non-Western people do not separate material and spiritual reality, but they perceive their lives in the overlapping space where both meet. They perceive unseen realities at work in the material world (such as luck, taboos, ghosts, spirits, gods , God, etc). In practice, Westerners speak of acting holistically, but it doesn’t come naturally to think that way.

2. Separating material and spiritual reality affects our definition of poverty. Westerners, and people who adopt a Western worldview, tend to define poverty and its solutions in material terms.  Jayakumar Christian, an Indian development practitioner who works with World Vision (and continually challenges that organization to its core), says “poverty is experienced most fundamentally by the poor as a marring of their identity and that this is caused both by the grind of being poor and also by being captive to the god-complexes of the non-poor. ” (Italics added.)

3. Myers says, “to the idea that playing god in the lives of the poor results in a marring of the identity of the poor, I add that it also mars the identity of the non-poor…The poor and the non-poor need God’s redemptive help to recover their true identity as children of God made in God’s image and their true vocation as productive stewards, given gifts by God to contribute to the well-being of all.”

I’m concerned about what the author calls “god-complexes,” a term that fits all to well. You would think Christians wouldn’t develop “god-complexes” (or perhaps you think the opposite). It suggests Christians have a concept of God that doesn’t really work in the “real world” (e.g., Since God apparently isn’t acting quickly or clearly enough in the people I want to change, I have to produce results myself). Are non-Christians and other religious or spiritual people prone to god-complexes, too? I think so.

I’m not reading this book to play with ideas but to consider what the author says critically and put what I learn into practice.  Welcome to the journey, and I’ll share more after I read Chapter One.

We’ve been trained to assume that working hard means focusing on a single task to completion, then doing it again. But, says Davidson, “the new workplace requires different forms of attention than the workplace we were trained for…

The result is that we feel anxious and guilty, convinced we’re not getting enough done, not achieving an honest day’s work, failing to live up to the iconic model of our hard-working, brick-and-mortar grandparents.

I am working on many things at once. I trust and hope they will all converge, but I don’t know if and when. I’m over my head trying to engage in a very complex world. That’s just as true in Cambodia, or more so, because the representatives of the developed world are here in full force trying to “help” and “make a difference” with so many anticipated and unanticipated results spiraling out of sight. This country is change too fast for anyone to keep track of. Sometimes I crave just one thing to do with my hands with simple results I can measure.

For any one of us who has been panicking about how to adapt to constant, ubiquitous demands on our attention—how to achieve relevant, quality work, even as the workplace is shifting beneath our feet—it’s comforting to know that most people have yet to figure this out, and that it’s not a reflection on our natural capacities or intelligence.

Do I need focus? Must I cut back my tasks and simplify my goals? Or do I need to embrace multitasking and a diversity of aims? Accept my inability to control results? Learn to think and focus differently? Find new and better ways to collaborate?

Workers building a new shop in the market pause for lunch

I’m continuing to photograph people and life inside the Russian Market (Psar Tuol Tom Pong). I hope to finish work by November, and we’ll see what comes next.

So far I’ve enjoyed the project. Every time I enter the market I get to practice speaking Khmer and meet new people, most of whom are friendly and enjoy having their pictures taken. This week I’m taking steps to make it official: writing a letter to the governor of Phnom Penh asking permission. I learned that I need permission if I’m not “taking tourist pictures.”

Preparing a fresh duck

“…full of things…smothered by gods”

Jesus, I come to the warmth of your Presence
knowing that You are
the very emptiness of God.
I come before You
holding the water jar of my life.
Your eyes meet mine
and I know what I’d rather not know.

I came to be filled
but I am already full.
I am too full.
This is my sickness
I am full of things
that crowd out
Your healing Presence.

A holy knowing steals inside my heart
and I see the painful truth.
I don’t need more
I need less
I am too full.

I am full of things that block out
Your golden grace.
I am smothered by gods of my own creation
I am lost in the forest of my false self
I am full of my own opinions and narrow attitudes
full of fear, resentment, control
full of self pity, and arrogance.
Slowly this terrible truth pierces my heart,
I am so full, there is no room for You.

Contemplatively, and with compassion,
You ask me to reach into my water jar.
One by one, Jesus, you enable me
to lift out the things
that are a hindrance to my wholeness.
I take each on to my heart,
I hear You asking me
” Why is this so important to you ? ”

Like the murmur of a gentle stream
I hear You calling,
” Let go, let go, let go! ”
I pray with each obstacle
tasting the bitterness and grief
it has caused.

Finally
I sit with my empty water jar
I hear you whisper
You have become a space for God
Now there is hope
Now you are ready to be a channel of Life.
You have given up your own agenda
There is nothing left but God.

After the show the headgear is put in plastic and everything goes back into a metal chest

Sometimes Japan surprises you. The cities have great parks, with carefully planted trees and occasional rivers coursing through nearly endless gray concrete neighborhoods. This park by the river in Kouzu has another surprise, an anomaly. An old man tends a shed filled with odd bicycles contrived (perhaps by him) and hand made: pandas, tandems, bicycles propelled by bouncing, and others, plus regular unicycles and ten speeds. And every afternoon he signs them out for free to whoever comes and asks. Kouzu is my wife’s home town. We often went walking and riding by the river when we stayed there.

Walsh acknowledges Hemmingway’s genius, but he doesn’t hold back.

It’s easy to be spiteful about Hemingway. All his posturing, his editing of the truth, his vainglorious fibbing… But it’s hard to shake off the feeling that what he was doing wasn’t bravery, but psychotic self-dramatisation. And when you inspect the image of Hemingway-as-hero, you uncover an extraordinary sub-stratum of self-harming. You discover that, for just over half of his life, Hemingway seemed hell-bent on destroying himself.

The article gets some push-back in the comments, probably deserved, but there’s a story here worth examining intently.

Hemmingway aside, it makes me wonder about writers and photographers losing touch with themselves and reality, or becoming prisoners of the images and stories. I know what it’s like to kick words around like stones as I walk, or eat, or drive — spinning out threads of plot and dialogue, or casting about for images everywhere I look. Sometimes it takes my wife or kids several attempts to call me back to attention; and sometimes I return on my own and wonder what I’ve missed.

I’ve claimed that writing about reality, and photography, helps me engage with the world. But that’s not entirely true. It’s engagement with reality that gives me something worth writing and expressing in images. If I don’t engage first, it’s only fabrication. The world is full of that in literature and every kind of art — not to mention in journalism. Works of pretense may be more profitable than works of revelation, certainly easier to come by, but they don’t accomplish much lasting good for me to produce them or anyone else to consume them.

I’m not in position to judge Hemmingway or the value of his work, but his story makes me pause and consider my own authenticity.

What was bugging Hemingway? Why all the drinking, the macho excess, the manic displays of swaggering? Why was he so drawn to war, shooting, boxing and conflict? Why did he want to kill so many creatures? Was he trying to prove something? Or blot something out of his life?

I’m struck that a man like Hemmingway, who seemed to live a BIG life that others aspire to, might have never been truly free; this man of far reaching imagination, a genius at crafting stories, may never have seen his own story truly.  Did he taste the fullness of life, or was he so desperate to escape a shallow existence that he attempted it with a pen and his imagination?

I know what it’s like to walk around looking for stories and pictures, spinning bits and pieces of narratives and dialogues as I walk like kicking stones. I can easily get lost in the words; it’s like listening to another voice, or voices, that can please the crowd better than I can — a fantasy. What if I got lost in that?

If I write, or tell stories with pictures or video, I want these to come from myself.  I don’t want to craft myself from the stories.

I’d rather give up playing with words and images entirely than lose my own often tenuous connections to the world and people and God in this moment — to my own wife and children, who are upstairs going to sleep as I type. The greatest story I know is the story I get to live, and it’s happening way to fast, or slow, to write about.  I suppose I could write about watching the wind blow through the grass as I walked by the river this evening, but who would want to read about that — or write about it (once the moment passes). Okay, Annie Dillard. I don’t know how she did it; and I could only read half of that book.

I think I’ll go peak in at those kids now.

The week before he joined an “art party” at the children’s center where he lives.  A teacher has been working with kids at the center since mid-2007, and some of the older students are very good. They helped the younger kids during the art party, taking up brushes occasionally to teach by example. The results were amazing, and moving if you know the stories behind them.

I made a short video documenting the event with some follow-up video the next weekend (when I took this photo). I’ll post that project eventually, but I’ve been asked to wait and keep it fresh for everyone. If they have an exhibition in Phnom Penh, they’ll debut the video then.

I like this photo. I like the image of creating a painting, and it has a subscript for me. It’s a boy at an orphanage painting his home.  I don’t know his particular story, because he’s new to the center, but it’s a fact that the vast majority of children and youth in orphanages have homes and relatives outside the orphanage: grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, brothers and sisters. Most still have one living parent (and a few have two). The number one reason they are in orphanages is poverty. There are many orphanages but few family support services.

It’s not surprising that a child in an orphanage would paint his home, but maybe it should challenge us.

Ladies at the Russian Market (2008)

I went to the Russian Market today to start work on a long term photo story. I know LOTS of people have taken pictures there, but I’ve never seen any substantive body of work to tell the story of the place. That’s what I’d like to do.

I brought a photograph that I took almost three years ago (see above). It wasn’t hard to find the shop, and though I didn’t recognize the woman behind the counter, she recognized herself in the picture immediately. That was exciting! Other vendors came, they rounded up another one of the ladies pictured, and they all talked about what has changed, and pointed out several things that haven’t. I told her my intention to visit the market regularly, and she seemed very supportive, as was everyone else I talked with. I spent more time talking than using the camera, which suited me fine. I have time for that later. It was great just practicing Khmer and starting to build the relationships I’ll need to do this story well.

This is the woman in the middle of the picture above. She started to give me a lesson in Khmer language, or cooking, based on this plant.

My daughters have a flair for drama. They all disappeared upstairs one day and came down in fantastic outfits and covered with face paint. Reia dressed up Maika in hearts, and I’ve given her an extra dose of angst in this black and white effect.

I took a group of Japanese to a school in a very poor community. They visited each grade level, sang songs, then asked and answered questions. Each time they asked the kids, “What is your dream for the future?”

A first grader said he dreams of having a job, that’s it, followed by another who said he wants to be a motodop (a motorcycle taxi driver). Several others said they dream of having a factory job. What dreams? I thought. Working in a factory is a hard life: 12 hour days, six days a week, about 60 dollars a month (25 cents an hour). That wage is just enough to survive on, barely.

Some  second graders also mentioned factory jobs, with a couple exceptions, one who wants to be a teacher and another who wants to be an engineer. The third and fourth graders gradually abandoned the factory theme in favor of more stereotypical dream jobs: doctor, lawyer, engineer…

I think the youngest children were  repeating what they overhear their parents and older siblings hoping for–steady if brutal work they can get. The older kids have learned the list of obvious jobs that are supposed to make you rich and give you a better life. But they don’t know other options in between, and likely only have impressions of what engineers, doctors, and lawyers actually do.

I have another Cambodian friend who is older and wants to start her own business. She grew up in a distant province in a very poor family. I asked her when she began to dream with such ambition, and she told about going to an English school as a child and the teacher who inspired her there. Her dream business is to run an English school making money and giving hope.

Finally, a few days ago, I met a young woman who worked in the garbage dump here in Phnom Penh from age six to sixteen. She collected stuff (plastic and items) from the trash and sold it to recyclers for a dollar or two a day. Now in her late teens, she speaks English and has a decent job in a shop at an international school. Several years ago, a foreigner sponsored her to attend school and get basic vocational training (computer and English).

I asked her how she feels when she thinks back to her life at the dump, and she said: I feel so proud of myself. I never thought I’d do anything better than working at the dump, but now I speak English and I have a good job. And I feel thankful for the man who sponsored me.”

These stories remind me poverty is not merely about money or ability. It’s about freedom, access and opportunity — and relationships.

And that….reminds me of this video…