.: 10 Years Later

Sunday, September 11, 2011

10 Years Later

Ten years ago today I went to work on a wonderfully sunny September day and before the morning was over the world changed. When the first plane hit I thought like everyone else... accident... when the second one hit I thought terrorism...

When the towers began to fall I left the lunchroom at work which was now full of people watching history unfold. The senior director realizing that I was the only American in the office ran after me into the main hall. I stood there looking at him as I began to break down... How could this happen?

The enormity of the moment was simply bigger than anyone could bare... He sent me home and told me to take the rest of the week off. He understood.

Every year I have taken a moment to remember.. The emotions in that moment have stayed with me. I knew know one who died that day personally. While I felt for the thousands who died and their families, what was damaged in me I shared with millions of Americans and I carry it with me still. For the first time in our history someone had tried to kill the American Dream.

One of my earliest thoughts post 9/11 was that the events of that day had made the fourth stanza of America The Beautiful irrelevant... My grief held me and I could not see the future.

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

But I was wrong... On this the 10th Anniversary the future is rising in the ashes of what was. The main tower of One World Trade Center stands tall and the fitting 9/11 Memorial is completed to mark the anniversary. We can begin to move forward now.

Much has transpired in the last ten years. The world has changed and in many ways become ugly and divissive and I fight everyday to not let cynicism change who I am. What was lost 10 years ago was not just three buildings and four planes and the humans beings that occupied them. It was a way of life, the loss of liberty that once existed how ever real or unreal you may have thought that concept was.

Still freedom prevails, America is still the ideal many people aspire too and the place many people hope to live.
You can't kill an idea. God Bless the United States of America.

And God Bless the the generosity of the folks in Halifax, Nova Scotia and Gander, Newfoundland who took in over 22,500 airline passengers into their collective homes on 9/11 when so many planes war forced to land out side of the United States.

Note: All text (not specified) is copyrighted by Christopher Cushman. Images used were from the web and appreciate any and all of the photographers indulgence as I use them. This site does not specify or denote the sexual orientation of any model and as such please post your comments accordingly.

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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