.: 9/11 Five Years After

Monday, September 11, 2006

9/11 Five Years After

Today is 9/11, a date everyone will remember. They will remember what they were doing five years ago today because five years ago a group of people choose to fly airplane's into the World Trade Center buildings and into the Pentagon, and its a day that one group was foiled by the planes passengers as they flew into a field in Pennsylvania. The entire world changed on 9/11 and it soon became apparent that the buildings were only the secondary target, the primary being our way of life.

Not being one to fly, months later I experienced the tensions caused by the three check point requirement at Toronto's Person Airport as I boarded the first Air Canada flight allowed into Reagan National in Washington DC. So tight were the restrictions as to not even allow any of us out of our seats for the whole flight, not even for the bathroom, the penalty being that the plane would be routed back to Toronto! We landed near sunset as we passed the still scared Pentagon, Lincoln and Washington Monuments and Capitol buildings, my mind searching for what it must have been like for those who lost there life that day. The hour and a half flight made me weary and a bit sad.

I wanted to post two pictures today that were given to me shortly after 9/11. They were taken by my friend Michael who had just returned from visiting NY and ground zero. Having not yet been to ground zero, I was captivated by some of the symbolism in the photographs. The first image is about a block from ground zero on ironically, Liberty Street, a one way sign seems to be pointing in opposition to the directions sign on the scaffolding showing the way to the WTC viewing platform. A New York Fire Department Ambulance in the fore ground. Our sense of liberty which once seemed all encompassing, was now used against us as weapon.

The second photo captures one of thousands of memorials created/ collaborated on my the many people who visited the site. The yellow caution tape still surrounding the site. These pictures have meant allot to me over the last five years as they have been part of my own small alter created in the memory of those who passed on 9/11 and the world and way of life that passed on 9/11.

I moved from my home in Detroit in 1998 to come to Canada, to make a new life for myself. Living in Canada has allowed me to witness these world events from somewhat of an out side looking in perspective. My immigration delayed almost 3 years by the changes caused by that day. The armed National Guard troops often stationed at the Detroit/Windsor boarder keep the unforgivable events of 9/11 with me, I still feel sad for those who were lost, and I carry anger for those who changed our world in so many ways and I wonder... what is yet to come.
All images and written word are copyrighted by Christopher Cushman 2006

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The Dance Through Life Project

Photograph project dedicated to capture the Art of Dance within the parameters of everyday life. The project hopes to capture the innate relationships between dance and everyday life. Images of dance performed in non-traditional locales hopefully demystifying dance as being inaccessible and drawing the obvious metaphor that while all can not express life with such movement and physicality, we all love with our own signature grace. Therefore we all dance.

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Through New Eyes: The Photography of Christopher Cushman by Rinaldo Walcott

The Black male body remains an enigma despite its over representation in the public sphere. The dominance of hip hop culture globally, driven in part, but not exclusively by the innovative sounds of rap music have made Black men a standard by which Black men and other men judge themselves in contemporary culture. However, there is a paradox, because despite the prevalence of hip-hop’s popular global impact, Black men are also still some of the most despised men in Western culture. Stereotypes of criminality, disease and danger still abound and organize Black men’s lives, even within hip hop culture. Thus representations of Black men tend to be much more restricted, than open-ended. The struggle to bring Black men into complex open-ended representations has been an on-going historical struggle. One of the most potent forms of representation in the last one hundred and fifty years has been the photograph. Photography has offered the promise to represent the real in a manner that has both seduce its viewers and baffled them with its artifice. Black male photographic representations in the last half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first have promised to rescue Black men from the confines of mis-representation and stereotype. One of the most difficult and complicated circumstances of Black male representations has been in the realm of representing their sexuality. Black men’s sexuality is still over-burdened by a perceived threat and danger, especially now in the hyped-up era of the downlow. Then along comes Cushman. I first hear of Christopher Cushman’s photography from my boyfriend. He told me of a guy who was taking photographs of black nudes based upon how they wanted themselves to be seen, not how he posed them as his models. When I met Cushman he confirmed that he did indeed work from the models’ suggested posed and not impose his own. The idea is a great one because it allows the models agency in choosing what they believe to be an adequate representation of who they are. While it is now true that in contemporary culture subjects have learned to play for the camera, offering us artifice on command, this artifice can be understood as exposing inner senses of self and being. Cushman’s photography captures and reveals those inner desires. Look at me, many of the models seems to say. But look at me anew, is also what they seem to project and insist on. Cushman’s eye lavishes these Black male bodies with glimmers of light revealing their nuance personalities. While most of the men are naked their individuality comes clearly through. And yet, their eyes too reveal that they belong to a community, a family and possess desires, fantasies and needs. In these photographs, as viewers we are given new eyes to see beyond our inner voyeur. Cushman channels, Robert Mapplethorpe, Rotimi Fani-Kayode and many other artists, commercial and amateur photographers who seek to rescue the Black male body from the disastrous depths of mis-representation, and who almost always fall short. The conversations that his models create between his work and others whether unconscious or not reveal the profound influence of the image in our time. However, in Cushman’s eyes the Black male body is not being rescued, instead it stands on a self-made pedestal, not arrogantly announcing its existence but coolly (its signature) singing its own praisesong as swathes of light and behind the camera love washes over it. In each moment a small but significant revelation is made. Each revelation offers us the opportunity of an Epiphany – to think a thought about a Black man that we have not thought before. Professor Rinaldo Walcott is a cultural critic and Canada Research Chair of Social Justice and Cultural Studies at the University of Toronto. He lives and writes in Toronto.

FIERCE! Being Black, Being Gay in America

"What Chris has done with this important collection of images, Fierce: Being Black, Being Gay in America, A Photographic Essay, is to seek, lift, and affirm the identity and visibility of men-who love-men and express it in many ways. His photographs display Midwest American men from the outlandish and flamboyant, to the subdued and subtle. You’d think these were “ladies who lunch;” muscular men dressed for the “Park” in lace, and floppy hats to give effect for all to see. Brothers connecting in places we know are safe, such as our nightclubs, the discos, and special events targeting our interests.

The importance of Fierce is paramount: all men are created equal, and share a space on earth. These portraits of men have to be recognized as God’s beauty and not His damnation. Time will thank those who were strong and dared enough to express themselves for all to see and appreciate in a manner that’s loving and creative. Time will also thank us for not living in a paranoid state of mind, and afraid of our own shadows. Remember, this cluster of work isn’t Robert Mappelthope’s approach to black imagery, but the approach of documenting men as they wanted to be seen: with and without sexual stimulation, for shock value."

Curtis A. Lipscomb
Executive Director Kick – The Agency for L-G-B-T African-Americans
Detroit Michigan / 2005
www.e-kick.com