.: There's No Place Like Home (pt. 2)

Friday, April 06, 2007

There's No Place Like Home (pt. 2)

While Detroit will always be home for me Toronto is the way forward for me in so many ways. My journey here started as a career decision and over the past nine years I have grown so much. Not just work wise but personally. Detroit just did not have the challenges I needed to grow as a person and I often look back and see just why I am here now. Challenges bring growth and they have been constant and steady here. Toronto is not on the surface a very friendly city to live in, its conservative british heritage makes getting to know people and have deeper relationships initially hard. But after all these years I feel like I have cracked through and have succeeded in many areas and have a great life here.

Toronto's beauty is in its variety, its culture and people, architecture... Often compared to New York Toronto is the largest city in Canada and a fair bit cleaner than NY. When reading Foder's book on Toronto they make a startling claim that Toronto does not have any Projects or Ghetto's like most large American cities, while it may not seem as such there are clearly parts of Toronto that are economically challenged. With that said the crime rate is significantly lower here when compared to say Detroit.

My favorite aspects of living in Toronto can be found in its culture and and infrastructure. First of all ridding the subway has eliminated any need in me to own a vehicle which has reduced my stress 50% from the cost and road rage tactics of back home. Just riding to and from work can expose you to any number of languages and people. Canada by its nature is a mozaic and not a melting pot like America. People are encouraged to be themselves here, and for the most part diversity is at least encouraged, and though I am skeptical at how well they are succeeding, I have to say it is much nicer here. The beauty of living downtown offers me any number of eating choices and I have really come to love so many new foods that simply weren't on the map back home. The technological infrastructure in Toronto is also something I have come to take for granted as things like internet networks and connections are far superior to those south of the boarder. Toronto just seems newer in so many ways, constantly changing.

So when I am gone for any thing longer than a week... I begin to miss my new home.... My fantastic apartment which faces a magnificent downtown sky line inspires me every morning when I wake up. For me its always been the hum of a city that energizes me. I miss my friends and the constant happenings of my neighborhood which is a buzz nearly 24/7. I love to ride my bike down to the ferry and over to Toronto Islands on a saturday morning. I miss the choices that are always present! I always used to watch the movies from the 50's and 60's showing that urban cosmopolitan feel of living and working in skyscrapers, taking the train to work, stopping at the coffee shop on the corner... Making an evening at the club or a concert. Toronto provides me that life in abundance.

For all of its big city feel there is also a great deal of green space that while not like NY Central Park also allows moments of calm reflection and represent the level and importance to which Toronto's residents connect with nature. Toronto is my home and I wouldn't have it any other way!

Note: All images and text (not specified) is copyrighted by Christopher Cushman. This site does not specify or denote the sexual orientation of any model and as such please post your comments accordingly.

2 comments:

Spook E said...: toronto sounds really cool, never been there but i just might visit in the summer, definetely in the summer.; 10:30 PM
Shabaka said...: Glad to hear that someone else who isn't from here likes this great city of ours! Go Toronto! Great blog by the way!; 12:30 AM

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