amanda rivkin, photographer

Photo caption: The view of a few of the remaining buildings left at the once sprawling Cabrini Green housing project on Chicago’s Near North Side and the Chicago skyline from the corridor of a Cabrini Green high rise at 1230 N. Burling on the northeast corner of Halstead and Division Streets on December 18, 2007.

In late 2007 and through early 2008, I spent several months following and photographing the Revolutionary Communists, a group based around the personality of Bob Avakian, a reclusive Armenian-American said last to be living in Paris. At the time, they lived at 1230 N. Burling, the last Cabrini Green high-rise building where demolition will begin today. The photo essay, “Plan for Transformation” borrows its title from the name of the urban renewal scheme devised by Mayor Richard M. Daley and the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) that would see the destruction of some of the largest public housing projects in the nation (at their inception the world) which were built under the leadership and direction of Mayor Richard M. Daley’s father Richard J. Daley during his 21-year tenure as mayor for life. Previously in Fortnight Journal, I wrote in an article entitled “The Chicago Way“:

The outcome of the younger Daley’s “Plan for Transformation”–or, more accurately, the demolition of Chicago Housing Authority projects–would hand over large swaths of prime Chicago real estate on the Near North, Near West and South Sides to for-profit developers at the height of the housing boom. Local newspaper articles would first be largely positive of the effort, extolling the virtue of correcting euphemistic “blight.” The same papers would later deride the large number of unsold units and absence of so-called “mixed income” (read: ghetto people) units in the new luxury complexes.

To anyone who had paid attention, this last development was seemingly surprising only to the local newspapers, that clearly had not been paying very much attention. Nobody asked what happened to the people that used to inhabit the high rises who had vanished, somehow, seemingly overnight.

In fact, in a moment of unusual candor on the topic, Bruce Dold–editor of The Chicago Tribune editorial page and moderator of a mayoral debate on January 27 at WGN television studios–asked Rahm Emanuel, Daley’s all-but-assumed successor, if he felt he had earned the $320,000 he received from attending half a dozen meetings over the course of 14 months on the Freddie Mac board.

Emanuel responded that President Clinton had appointed him to the board as Vice-Chair of the Chicago Housing Authority at the time of the city’s restructuring according to the Plan for Transformation in the late 1990s. The reason Emanuel gave for his appointment was that “we were doing innovative things here in the city of Chicago with regard to mixed-income housing.”

What did it mean to tell a population of public housing residents, in effect, to go back to where they came from? Valerie Jarrett, the Obama aide and former Chicago Housing Authority chief, was Mayor Richard M. Daley’s go-between for the city and public housing residents as the wrecking ball’s timetable ticked. Emanuel, as Vice-Chair, was not so far behind.

But the “Plan for Transformation,” is not heralded as Daley’s greatest triumph because of its success in scattering the urban poor, once gathered around the city’s highly developed urban core, to its perimeter. Rather, the experiment signals the success of a far greater transformation in the alignment and allegiance of power in Chicago, and the largely successful and enormously financially beneficial integration of the city’s white and black elites.

The photo essay “Plan for Transformation” was also featured on The New York Times Lens blog in a post entitled, “Must See: Images on the Web,” published January 4, 2010.

My very old and dear friend Kate Levant, whose work has been featured in New York Magazine and T: The New York Times Style Magazine, has an opening April 1 at the Zach Feuer Gallery in Gallery 2. In addition to being one of my oldest friends, she is an amazing talent with a deep and pensive soul, truly:

Kate Levant This is Laced

In Gallery 2, Zach Feuer will present This is Laced by Kate Levant. The installation consists of collages made from cut up drawings, photographs and plastic that are cross-stitched into construction paper and fabric to create a ricocheting network of aspects that reflect off and weave into other aspects. The images and information in each collage are coded or camouflaged due to the patterns and weaves. In some works, plastic shields portions of the collages and in others, parts are stitched inside brown paper bags completely hidden from view. In many, Levant is “dissecting photographs of old sculptures I’ve made and reconfiguring them with the camouflage, like they’re diagrams of weird sci-fi devices that actually work…or will work…to cross over some event-horizon.” Kate Levant was born in 1983 in Chicago, IL and received a MFA from Yale University in 2010. In 2009, Levant organized/compromised BLOOD DRIVE at Zach Feuer Gallery and her work was recently included in The Island, organized by LAND and OHWOW on Flagler Memorial Island (Miami Beach, FL). Levant lives and works in Detroit, MI.

Exhibition dates: April 1 – 30, 2011

Opening reception: Friday, April 1, 6-8PM

Zach Feuer Gallery
NEW ADDRESS: 548 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011

China is blocking Gmail in China right now in an effort to stymie internet activism against the regime (given that it is an information war, seems most appropriate to link to the Voice of America story). Last year for Foreign Policy I wrote about the experiences Xu Zhiyong, a public interest lawyer and member of the Beijing City Council representing the Haidan district, a voice of dissent who has sought to work within the system to advance the causes of human rights and civil liberties. He was arrested in August of 2009 and held incommunicado for nearly a month in Beijing. A day following the arrival of former American Ambassador Jon Huntsman, Xu Zhiyong and two other activists were released. Below is my article for Foreign Policy published under the title “Raging Against the Machine” on January 19, 2010 (free subscription required for access on Foreign Policy’s website):

Xu Zhiyong was watching the 2004 Democratic convention in a shared common area at a Columbia University dormitory when we first met. After just a few words, I knew he could understand little of the speeches on television. It is so different from China, he said. Political conventions in his home country were pageants: Officials waited their turn, sat erect in their seats, and clapped only on cue and never too wildly.

Last July, my friend was the subject of a different form of high stakes political theater when he was arrested, detained, and held incommunicado for one month. As a young and extremely enterprising attorney in Beijing, he has represented a slew of disadvantaged clients in China, from a newspaper owner beleaguered by the authorities to the victims of the contaminated baby formula sold by the Sanlu company. When he disappeared, the first news I received appeared on the New Yorker’s website in the form of a headline that questioned directly, “Where is Xu Zhiyong?”

With Google’s threats last week to withdraw from China amid suggestions that the Chinese government was behind recent cyberattacks on its corporate infrastructure that specifically targeted the email accounts of prominent Chinese human rights activists, I was reminded again of my friend. This episode sheds light on the obstacles faced by those struggling to improve civil liberties within China and the consequences of Google’s potential withdrawal from that country.

In the summer of 2004, we lived across the hall from each other at Columbia University. A few nights a week, we held impromptu English lessons to improve his conversation skills. We began by reviewing formal pleasantries, one of the first steps in English language courses for foreigners. Toward the end of our first week, I realized he had only introduced himself with an English name, Sunny, and that I knew very little about him. He typed the English spelling of his name, Xu Zhiyong, into my laptop.

He told me he was a lawyer, but he struggled to describe his work in English so he reached for Google. A few articles had already appeared on his work and career, including a profile in the New York Times covering his campaign for a seat on Beijing’s city council from the prestigious academic district of Haidian. He also worked as an advocate for China’s disenfranchised petitioners who convene in the capital on the basis of an ancient tradition that allows citizens to petition the state for redress of grievances.

While we continued our formal classes, the conversation continued on the weekends, in nearby restaurants and bars. We watched gavel-to-gavel coverage on C-SPAN of both American political conventions. I will not forget how my new friend’s eyes grew wide when Bill Clinton spoke. When Clinton finished, to raucous applause, he offered just one reflection, “Wow!”

Originally from a rural village in the impoverished interior region of Henan, Sunny moved to the largest local city, Kaifeng, with his mother and brother as a young teenager. His mother was illiterate, and, as the issues that he tackled became increasingly sensitive, he resisted telling her about his work. He was concerned that she would fear for his safety and could be harassed due to his choice of career. His brother is a regional police chief.

Over time, his roster of sensitive cases, including the Sanlu melamine baby formula milk scandal, transformed him into something of a public-interest icon. He appeared on the cover of Mr. Fashion, the Chinese equivalent of Esquire. However, as he sat in an unknown Beijing jail, his name was not searchable by Google within China.

His release from detention in August was, in many ways, a greater surprise than his arrest. But he was still forced to contend with severe restrictions on his ability to communicate freely using modern technology. My friend abandoned one tampered Gmail account for another. For some time after his release, the authorities denied him access to an email account, blocking most all methods of communication but his cell phone, which we used to talk in those first few days after his detention suddenly ended.

For several years, we have communicated by Gmail accounts, knowing perfectly well that messages may be read, intercepted, and occasionally blocked. There is also nothing better; for now, we are able to communicate. If Google vanishes from the Chinese landscape, there might be no available alternative to such communication.

Google is learning a lesson my friend did years ago: There is no easy way to take on China’s ruling apparatchiks. If Google withdraws suddenly, as it has threatened, it will be abandoning China to authorities whose claim to power must be challenged, an outcome not in the interest of Google or the Chinese people. If there is a way to triumph over the authorities in China, Xu Zhiyong’s life and work reflects the need to vigorously challenge a system that has sought to fortify itself against internal and external attacks on its own terms. In the end, Google would do well to follow his strategy: displaying deference when the alternative is to be completely shut out from the country, but also pushing back hard when it is threatened.

Qaddafi is a topic of conversation in and of himself, and his family an entirely separate discussion as well. He is the center of gravity of his own regime, naturally. The U.S. has announced it is not engaging in regime change (although not quite in those words), but has struck the compound where he resides with a missile.

On another war front, Der Spiegel has announced to an e-mail list of its subscribers that in its print edition to hit news stands tomorrow, it will publish three images of U.S. soldiers posing with dead Afghan civilians. The Washington Post writes, “The photos are among several hundred the Army has sought to keep under wraps as it prosecutes five members of the 5th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, for the alleged murders of three unarmed Afghan civilians last year.” The consequences may prove more devastating than the Abu Ghraib scandal. The Guardian follows up with additional details about a dozen members of the unit, already on trial in Seattle and confronting life in prison or the death penalty if convicted:

Some of the activities of the self-styled “kill team” are already public, with 12 men currently on trial in Seattle for their role in the killing of three civilians.

Five of the soldiers are on trial for pre-meditated murder, after they staged killings to make it look like they were defending themselves from Taliban attacks.

Other charges include the mutilation of corpses, the possession of images of human casualties and drug abuse.

All of the soldiers have denied the charges. They face the death penalty or life in prison if convicted.

Interestingly, rounding out the debate on military secrecy and press affairs in the past week is the rumblings at the State Department with spokesman P.J. Crowley’s resignation in the wake of comments he made at M.I.T. criticizing the military’s treatment of Private Bradley Manning, accused of leaking U.S. diplomatic cables.

All of this brought me back to a simple moment and experience of being with the demonized “other.” As a photographer, I have had the experience twice of being with a person cast as the other for a period on a day when the demonization meets its high tide. My first experience was meeting Bill Ayers, former member of the Weather Underground and professor at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), on election day 2008. The second time was following former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich his final day in office for The New York Times. Below my favorite images from both shoots and a bit of back story below each image:

Backstory: “My editor at my agency suggested I might give obtaining a hard to get portrait of Bill Ayers a try. ‘A local kid might have a better shot,’ he advised on the phone a few weeks before the election. I sent Ayers an e-mail and to my surprise he responded not too much time before election day, writing that he had been out of the country and traveled back the Sunday before election day from Asia. We figured out a time to meet mid-morning, near a vacant lot on the near West Side. The first thing he asked me was where I went to high school. We played a few rounds of do-you-know-so-and-so but came up blank. Perhaps a bit more time would have materialized better results, afterall Chicago is the greatest small town on earth, a veritable village. After I took his portrait, he repeated over and over, ‘I am not a terrorist, I am not a terrorist…,’ appearing visibly shaken by the accusation made repeatedly by Sarah Palin in particular with regard to his past as a member of The Weather Underground and the group’s attack on a Pentagon lavatory. The accusation snowballed into an unsuccessful effort to link his past to the candidacy of Barack Obama, which failed in part because Obama was much too young to have taken any role in the bitterness of the Vietnam era.”

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Backstory: “Blagojevich was a talker but his neediness was of the most predictable sort, the vanity trap of the political class. You would never have to interrogate Rod Blagojevich. He gave me a pen, perhaps one of the last if not the last he could give out that said ‘Governor Rod Blagojevich’ while he was still Governor Rod Blagojevich. When we returned from Springfield and arrived at his house, I asked if we could go inside and he said he did not think Patti, his wife, would like that. When he got out of the car, we stayed parked a few minutes and watched as he enjoyed the stake-out, the crush of reporters, photographers, and videographers that surrounded the stairwell to his home as he walked at the pace of a crawl up the steps. He was riding out the publicity to the last moment. Little did we know that would hardly be the last moment.”

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One last note. The Libyan government is currently believed to be holding four New York Times reporters, among them photographers Lynsey Addario and Tyler Hicks, despite promises of their release made by Saif Qaddafi to ABC News’ Christiane Amanpour. Lynsey’s work has long been an inspiration since I was first introduced to her portfolio. Tyler’s book “Histories Are Mirrors” is an extraordinary visual study in comparative war and the final days of failing regimes. Anthony Shadid and Stephen Farrell are the two reporters; Farrell is British, the others are American citizens. Like many in the journalistic profession and readers of The New York Times, I hope for their release soon. UPDATE: The four New York Times journalists were released to Turkish diplomats in Tripoli, while 13 reporters remain missing according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Kinofest NYC Film Festival 2011
Tonight’s Screenings:

Torn From the Flag
7PM at the Ukrainian Museum (222 E 6th Street)

Director: Klaudia Kovacs

Hungarian/English (w/Eng. subtitles)

USA, 2007

96 min

This incisive sociopolitical and historical documentary covers the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the ensuing international decline of communism with both archival footage and interviews with then youthful revolutionaries, Russia’s Budapest-based troop commander and other historical notables. The extensive interviews span across the US, Hungary, Russia and Italy supplying viewers with lots of new information on behind-the-scenes political dramas leading up to and shortly after the revolution. This film garnered 8 film festival awards worldwide and participated in the 2009 Oscar competition in the “Best Documentary” category.

Margaret Bourke White is the ultimate trailblazer of a female war correspondent. She both wrote and photographed, owned the first ever cover of Life magazine with one of her images, and was the first ever woman to be outfitted as a GI in the U.S. Army in order to cover the Second World War’s European fronts. She is the author of They Called It “Purple Heart Valley”, an occasionally (alright, often) sentimental account of her experiences as a correspondent in the Second World War. Luckily, Georgetown’s copy is a first edition that includes a note on the copyright page “About the Appearance of Books in Wartime,” stating “A recent ruling by the War Production Board has curtailed the use of paper by book publishers in 1944. In line with this ruling and in order to conserve materials and manpower, we are co-operating by: 1. Using lighter-weight paper, which reduces the bulk of our books substantially. 2. Printing books with smaller margins and with more words to each page. Result fewer pages per book. Slimmer and smaller books will save paper and plate metal and labor. We are sure that readers will understand the publishers’ desire to co-operate as fully as possible with the objectives of the War Production Board and our government.” Here are some of my favorite images from her book:

Left: “Wherever we flew we found the face of Italy scarred like the face of the moon. This airfield shows the pattern.” / Right: “Below us, always, the tracks of war. Moving in mud, tanks, heavy trucks, artillery could not conceal their footprints.”

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“A mine is a mutilating weapon. Mine hunters’ casualties are among the highest in the Army. The job is nerve-racking, and these men have been doing it for four hours.”

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“This is, literally, a picture of the shock of battle.”

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And the correspondent herself, dashing beside a propeller airplane:

In reading The Military and the Media 1968-1973: The U.S. Army in Vietnam, by William H. Hammond, a U.S. Army study on military-media relations and the shortcomings of the latter half of the Vietnam War, over the last two days for my master’s thesis, I stumbled across some shockingly powerful images I have never seen before of the Vietnam era, one of which was even taken by a U.S. Senator (Thomas Harkin). While the entire volume includes some iconic images, real relics, and outstanding insight, these three images stood out enough to share already with viewers of my new online photo journal, where in chronicling a “visual evolution” I have placed a few limitations on myself: 1) 1-3 images a day, 2) one must be of my own creation, 3) tearsheets have no price; they are always welcome. Here are the images that struck me most from Hammond’s volume for the U.S. Army:

Photograph by AP in The Military and the Media 1968-1973: The U.S. Army in Vietnam, by William H. Hammond, p. 178.

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“Several state governors’ responded to the turmoil by ordering Army National Guard units to occupy university campuses. On 4 May [1970] one of those units at Kent State University in Ohio reacted in panic and anger to the taunts of protesters by firing into a crowd of bystanders. Four students were killed, none of them demonstrators.”

Photograph by by John Filo in The Military and the Media 1968-1973: The U.S. Army in Vietnam, by William H. Hammond, p. 317.

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This last image perhaps is most deserving of the precedent it set for U.S. congressional involvement in humanitarian affairs at the highest level and in direct violation of existing human rights treaties and conventions – the very intersection with which my thesis addresses in handling the precarious relationship between the military and the media in the United States.

“A story that broke during July 1970, when Don Luce and a congressional aide, Thomas R. Harkin, revealed substandard conditions at a South Vietnamese prison, provides a case in point… Declaring that the South Vietnamese government was employing U.S. aid in the mistreatment of both civilian inmates and captive Viet Cong sympathizers… The problem began to take shape on 2 July, when Luce visited a prison on Con Son Island, located one hundred kilometers off the Mekong Delta in the South China Sea… During the course of the visit, in violation of rules in effect at prisons around the world and over the protest of the facility’s commandant, Harkin photographed some of the prisoners. The party then chanced upon what were known as tiger cages, maximum security cells with iron grills for tops that were used to hold particularly dangerous prisoners, ‘tigers’ in local parlance. Harkin and Luce, again over the protest of the commandant, questioned some of the inmates. The prisoners claimed that when they were disobedient, the guards sprinkled them from above with powdered lime that burned their flesh and eyes. The commandant denied the allegation on the spot, asserting that the lime in evidence around the site was used only to whitewash walls. The Chief of the Public Safety Directorate of the Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Civilian Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS) Frank E. Walton, who was present, later contradicted that assertion, observing that powdered lime was evident on the top of the grillwork covering the cages.” -p. 359-60

Photograph courtesy of Senator Thomas Harkin in The Military and the Media 1968-1973: The U.S. Army in Vietnam, by William H. Hammond, p. 360.

Interesting invite arrived by e-mail this morning for a show this Saturday in Chicago curated by the lovely Dee Clements:

The Paper Crane is pleased to announce The Artist Books Show. Opening Saturday March 12, 2011 from 5-8pm located at 2846 W. North Ave on the second floor. (Please enter through the side door on Francisco Street)
www.thepapercrane.com

The Artist Book Show is a project that was developed to encourage people to see the book as more than something to read but also as an art object. 26 artists from around the world participated in The Paper Crane’s first book project. Each person either made their own hand bound hardcover book at our studio or were mailed one made by The Paper Crane. Artists had 3 months to fill their book in any way they wanted and were encouraged to ‘test the boundaries’ of the book. For many this meant re-making the book entirely, for others it was allowing themselves to let their work spill out of the 6 x 9 measurement or challenging themselves with a new medium. Each and everyone of these books is a unique artifact of it’s maker. Produced entirely by hand, each artist invested countless hours and personal time to this project. The artists listed below are applauded for their enthusiasm, effort and dedication to this project.

Artists include: Colin Palombi, Curtis Oliveira, Dennis Franklin, Eliza Fernand, Erika Miklovic-Clark, Esther Ramirez, Gabe McKinney, Hatti B. Figge, Jaime Ryan, John Philip Abbot, Josh Dumas, Josh Howard, Katy Groves, Kirk Bravender, Kreh Mellick, Margot Harrington, Matt Alicea, Melanie Parke, Nathan Vernau, Richard Kooyman, Robin Russo, Sarah Nesbit, Scott Reinhard, Susie Wilson, Tony Saunders, Trent Miller

Aleksandar Hemon in Chicago (second from left; top right on page 58) in D Della Donna, La Repubblica Magazine (Italy), “Tutta L’Enegria Per Dirlo,” page 58-9 on July 10, 2010.

Newsletter just went out:

Greetings!,

A round-up of recents publications and news from Amanda Rivkin, photographer to kick off the springtime – because what says rebirth like a look back in time:

AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHY 26

The American Photography 26 photo annual arrived recently, featuring photographic highlights from 2009 in photojournalism, fine art and commercial photography. Included is this image I took (at left) from January 29, 2009 of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich in the Illinois State Capitol his final day in office for The New York Times:

More on American Photography 26 both on the AI-AP website and the amanda rivkin, photographer blog.

RAHM EMANUEL IS OUR NEW DALEY

On February 22, 2011, Chicago got a new mayor – a rare, once-in-a-generation event if someone named Daley was in power at the time of your birth, growth or development. For the first time in more than 21 years and after nearly half a century of Daley family-rule at the helm of Chicago politics, a new mayor was anointed: Rahm Emanuel. Receiving 55% of the vote, not quite the 120% figure that was floated on late night television talk shows roughly in line with only-in-the-third-world results, Emanuel avoided a run off and became the city’s first Jewish mayor with sweeping citywide margins (including 59% of the black vote).

View images from election day from Rahm Emanuel’s victory party at the plumbers’ union hall (also available in B+W) and former mayoral candidate/former (and the first and only black female) U.S. Senator Carol Moseley Braun vote on election day at PhotoShelter.

FORTNIGHT JOURNAL: THE CHICAGO WAY

Valentine’s Day 2011 – my valentine to the world: a 2,000 word literary essay on Chicago politics, appears in Brooklyn-based Fortnight Journal chronicling 21 years of life under Little Richie M. Daley in Chicago. Neatly presented in five sections are the five pillars of the Fifth Floor (the mayor’s executive suite) under the younger Daley: efficiency, cohesion, racial reconciliation, and the promulgation of both dynastic and tribal traditions.

Read it at Fortnight Journal.

NEW PHOTO JOURNAL BLOG

In an effort to get hip to the things the kids are up to and reach both people my own age with my images and commercial clients interested in the increasingly verité style of advertising, I have launched a new photo journal blog using the popular Tumblr format.

Visit the new photo journal Tumblr blog.

ADDITIONAL SOCIAL MEDIA NOTES

I am fond of saying I do not have to like the modern world, I just have to live in it. That said, this translates into social media relevancy (or irrelevancy). In any event, I am maintaining pages on both Facebook and Twitter these days for the Facebook-erati and the Twitterati. To my amazement, some of the literati have actually followed suite. Go figure. I can only promise you will never know what I ate for dinner.

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As always, thank you for your interest and attention to my work.

Warm regards,

Amanda Rivkin