.: Act Now!

Friday, January 22, 2010

Act Now!

I've waited over the past few days watching the news and trying to process what I was seeing. As I was surfing over the news sites I was seeing such compelling photography of this tragic human event. As my blog passes this week 140,000 unique visitors it suddenly occurred to me that I could put out this message to a lot of people! I know its easy to turn off the TV or turn away from the news and just hope that it goes away.... Its also just as easy to take a moment and give something to this effort. I've listed several ways you can donate right this very second.. Some you dont even have to give a credit card..you can simply send a text message. So please Act Now!

At 8 P.M. on (ABC, BET, Bravo, CBS, Centric, CMT, CNN, Comedy Central, Current TV, CW, Discovery Health, E!, Epix, Fox, Fuse, G4, HBO, MLB Network, MTV, My Network TV, National Geographic, NBC, Oxygen, Palladia, Planet Green, Showtime, SoapNet, Style, TNT, TV One, VH1, 21, 49) HOPE FOR HAITI NOW: A GLOBAL BENEFIT FOR EARTHQUAKE RELIEF George Clooney signs on from Los Angeles as host of this all-star, multichannel, two-hour telethon, which he helped to organize with MTV Networks. Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Rihanna and Bono and the Edge of U2 join in from London; Anderson Cooper from New York; and Wyclef Jean, above, from Haiti. Performers also include Justin Timberlake, Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift, Mary J. Blige, Kid Rock, Coldplay, Alicia Keys, Madonna, Keith Urban, Jennifer Hudson, Sting, Christina Aguilera, Sheryl Crow, Shakira, Stevie Wonder, Dave Matthews and John Legend. Other participants will include former President Bill Clinton, Ben Stiller, Brad Pitt, Chris Rock, Clint Eastwood, Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, Jon Stewart, Julia Roberts, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Meryl Streep, Morgan Freeman, Nicole Kidman, Robert Pattinson, Samuel L. Jackson, Tom Hanks, Will Smith and Muhammad Ali. Donations will benefit Oxfam America, Partners in Health, the Red Cross, Unicef and Mr. Jean’s Yéle Haiti Foundation as well as the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund and the United Nations World Food Program.

Website Here: www.hopeforhaitinow.org

Google haitiearthquake Relief Page

Yele.org

Doctors With Out Boarders

Canadian Red Cross

American Red Cross

If you have Apple itunes you can go there and donate simply by clicking $5, $10, $25, $50, $100, or $200

In the USA and you have a cell phone simply text HAITI to the number 90999. A $10 charge will be attached to your next cellphone bill.

In Canada Text "HELP" to 1291 to make a $5.00 donation via Rogers to the ONEXONE Foundation. The texting charges are waived!

Note: OK I've used images found from the net by some great photographers and I ask forgiveness in advance as I hope the readers of my blog look and click on one of the donation links and give. Much Thanks for your understanding.

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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.

Order your copy today by clicking on the books above!

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