Category: human rights
-
displaced destinies
Today two good friends and I went for an adventure in a remote Shanghai neighborhood where mostly migrant workers from the provinces live and where their children go to special schools. These are the workers responsible for lifting Shanghai from the ground up to soaring levels with its new high rises and luxury hotels that…
-
Modernization at any cost
Shanghai, the pride of China, races towards its future, bejeweled with glitzy sky scrapers, glowing with billions of energy consuming lights, employing the largest work force in the world, day and night, 7 days a week and waiting for no one to be ready for this epic change. In neighborhoods like this one, people are…
-
The future is not waiting
The thing about the future is that is seems to happen on time and not wait for us to be ready to receive it. And always things appear to be later than we think, don’t they? Today I was with a friend on a photo walk in an old Shanghai neighborhood condemned to demolition and…
-
Life in the old lanes~ Shanghai
Behind and right next door to the glitz and glamour of Shanghai, real people live their real lives in the old lanes. The first shock you get walking through the very old parts of town is the extreme narrowness of the alleys and the very small size of the overcrowded rooms people call home. It…
-
The faceless drivers of Shanghai’s growing economy
Shanghai has recently been one the fastest growing economies in the world with yearly growth percentages measured in double digits. In this city of now over 23 million, it is the migrant workers who drive the whole giant machine forward and through it all remain faceless…
-
Day 20~ December 20th~ Guilin
There are those in the world who are destined to have their whole lives intertwined with hard labor . They accept their fates and press on through life with strength, determination and a quiet acceptance.
-
Day 12~ November 12th~ New York
La Liberté éclairant le monde~Liberty enlightening the world Quite the words to be met by upon arriving in New York, words that embody the essence of the statue of Liberty, the great lady that stands tall with her torch and tablet there on Liberty island since 1886. Liberty: the ability to have agency over your…
-
When inspired children inspire
Demobilized child soldiers dancing in Goma, October 2009 Before the trip of “by art we live” to the Democratic Republic of Congo, an open line of communication and collaboration was opened with Jody Kennedy who teaches Middle School students in White Plains Public Schools, NY. Ms. Kennedy currently serves as a virtual trainer and consultant…
-
How do we unlock their future potential?
Photographs are funny things. They can capture the state that you and your subject were in when you clicked the photo, and each time you look at it again, you are magically transported to that moment and it all returns, the smells, the weather, the sounds, the colors, and your emotional state at that time.…
-
More than one reason to smile…
—
by
Sombath Srey Toch is a 13 year old girl who has been coming to the Cambodian Children’s Painting Project for two years. Srey Toch never smiled when she first started coming and she had no good reason to. Her mother died leaving her and her brother to the care or rather abuse of an older…