Having been away from this site for so long now I felt that a few tweaks were needed to get things moving again. I therefore spent the last couple weeks retooling the design, as well some of the technical stuff under the hood. Everything is really much the same – the content is still managed with WordPress and all the images are pulled from my PhotoShelter archive but I managed to smooth out some of the wrinkles I left behind during the last round of changes. I also tried to clean-up any annoyances I heard folks mention when looking at the site (thanks to Thomas, Simca, Ruth, and Tanya for being wonderfully critical.)

The biggest change by far is in the image navigation. I pretty much just stole the previous gallery script from another site and hacked it together so it would work more or less how I wanted it to – but it was never quite right. This time I simplified everything, started from scratch and built just what I needed. No more side scrolling (which I was sick of almost immediately after launching it) and instead a nice simple crossfade. I’ve also moved to a more friendly convention of allowing folks to click on the images to get around, as well as being able use the arrow keys on the keyboard. Previously if you clicked on an image it sent you to the archives for the licensing info which I think is still a good idea, I just don’t need it to be so blatant and I moved that feature to a simple link that appears in the footer while looking at a gallery. All of this allows me to focus the bits of text, and links I had floating around the image, and use that space much better now.

And speaking of links around the images the captions, and backstories are also a lot more flexible now. Previously they were just slides within the galleries, which was limiting, where now I can fade text up over the current photo, either by clicking a link below the images, or using the up/down arrow keys. For the moment I still have single backstories for every gallery but I have the option now to include individual image captions as desired.

Otherwise things are just a little more styled, better thought out, and hopefully just more refined overall.

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Rios Montt was one of the presidents of Guatemala during that country’s 36 year civil war. Montt was responsible for the worst of the government repression, and murdered some 200,000 Guatemalans. The majority of these victims were unarmed maya peasants from the countryside, people that Montt felt were a threat in that they were aiding the guerrillas, and even if they weren’t their deaths would send a clear message to those that were. When The Mountains Tremble is a film shot during Montt’s presidency, and narrated by Rigoberta Menchu. The film depicts not only violence of the military repression, but the resistance mounted against the army by both the guerrillas, and the Maya people. The interviews with Montt are the hardest bits to watch for me, and it’s clear he viewed the Maya people as less than human, not to mention the guerilla fighters.

Skylight pictures, the producers of When The Mountains Tremble, are about to release a new film called Granito. ‘Granito’ means a ‘tiny grain of sand’ in Spanish and is a concept used by the Maya to bring about collective change, i.e. alone we can do very little, but by uniting our individual capacity for change we can begin to make a difference. Film outtakes from “When the Mountains Tremble,” as well as secret military documents and skeletal remains are all being used in the genocide case against military dictators that ordered the murders and Granito is the story of this attempt to bring these dictators to justice. In order to make an independent run at the Oscars next year (which would be an amazing denunciation of this genocide and it’s perpetrators) Skylight needs $35,000. The money will be spent on getting a 35mm print of the film made, renting out theatres for a week in LA and New York, as well as advertising to get the word out. Granito is using Kickstarter and have only a few days left to raise the remaining 8% 7% of their money. I know from experience how nerve-wracking the last week of a campaign can be (I barely slept) so here’s to helping them reach their goal.

This is an important issue, and I think money well spent. I’m not personally a big fan of the Oscars, except for maybe a few categories which they never show on TV anyway. But Granito happens to fall into one of those categories, so this coming year I’ll be paying a little more attention. It really would be great if Granito was amongst those films considered.

Last week I launched an appeal on Kickstarter to help raise some funds to hold a series of video production workshops with the kind folks of Voces de Cambio, the program for teen girls I volunteer with in Guatemala. Voces de Cambio uses writing and photography to help young women explore issues like discrimination, gender equality, and youth leadership. It’s an amazing program and I’ve gladly given my time over the years to help with curriculum, teach photography classes, put together a couple program exhibitions, and help build their website.

Kickstarter is an online tool for ‘crowdfunding’ creative projects, that is providing a place for the general public to get behind projects that interest them and hopefully rally their friends to do the same. Since I’ve been paying attention to Kickstarter there’s been a steady stream of great projects, including a book project by Larry Towell, with scores of new projects appearing daily.

All the information about the appeal is on the Kickstarter site, but this project will help Voces de Cambio add video to it’s program. The initial beneficiaries are the program graduates, as they’ll work through a series of workshops which will give them a solid grounding in video, as well as introduce them to what other youth are doing with the medium for social change. There’s money in the budget for a few initial video cameras, so after they’ve got a handle on the basics the girls will set about making their own videos, working in groups to shoot, direct, and edit their own films. During my visit I’ll also be working on a short film of my own looking at the program, and how it’s impacted the girl’s lives, working in collaboration with the workshop participants. At the end of our time together we’ll hold a public reception and screening (read PARTAY!!) so the girls can celebrate their hard work with their friends and family. Afterwards I’ll work with the Voces de Cambio staff to refine the curriculum we developed for the workshops so that it can be rolled into the program’s main course work, allowing the program to continue benefitting from this appeal.

Kickstarter is a little daunting though, as it’s all-or-nothing, meaning if we don’t reach our goal we get nothing. This makes sense though, as with a portion of the money requested most projects wouldn’t work. Take ours for example, it includes money for the workshops, for gear, and for travel. If we don’t have enough for all three of those elements then the project falls apart. The key then becomes outreach, and getting the message across to those you feel will become backers. We’re a week in at this point, and have just about reached 20% of our goal, which is great. With more than a month to go I’m pretty confident we’ll make it.

Using Kickstarter itself couldn’t be easier, they’ve put together a really slick tool. To get started someone from Kickstarter has to vet your project to make sure it’s a good fit for the site. After that it’s a straight-forward process for setting up your project, uploading video, images, and adding your project rewards. Kickstarter uses Amazon Payments as it’s payment gateway, as they keep all the money in escrow until the end of the appeal, and apparently only Amazon can make this happen. It’s easy enough to set up, took me only 10 minutes before I was back at the Kickstarter site ready to launch. Of the money raised in a successful appeal Kickstarter takes 5%, and Amazon 2% or 3% but it’s free to initiate a project.

So, if you’re reading this before March 22nd I’d ask that you consider backing this project, and help spread the word. Voces de Cambio is dedicated, and much deserving. Together we’ll put your money to good use, and as a backer you’ll be the first to see the girl’s success, as we’ll be sending out regular news, and updates, as well as posting links to the work the girls produce. What was it Aimé Césaire used to say? “There’s room for all at the rendezvous of victory.” See you there!!

I’ve never marked a tweet as a favourite before now, but this one is pretty great:

“the British activist is saying “It’s very hard to come to Gaza” and it’s very hard to go out, too! #Gaza #Palestine” (@livefromgaza)

I just came across this footage from the early days of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo protests in Buenos Aires. A group of mothers and grandmothers who happened to meet while searching for their children who had been disappeared by the Argentinian government. Over time they formed into a cohesive group meeting daily in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, wearing white kerchiefs embroidered with their lost child’s name, symbolizing their baby blankets. They were visible (and loud) day after day after day, with their protests continuing still. They also have some lovely convictions, such as through the years of protest they’ve since become the inheritors of their dead (though some of the disappeared have been found alive, but not many) children’s dreams.

Honest, heartfelt, direct, collaborative and unrelenting. A perfect model.

It’s Photorama time again at Gallery TPW in Toronto, their annual photo sale to help support their programming. I’ve got two images included in this year’s sale (click above to see the two images together) from my work earlier this year in El Ejido, Spain. The star of the show, as he is every Photorama, is Ed Burtynsky with a print from the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico. I only caught a glimpse of the show when I dropped off my prints, and will be out of town for the duration, but it looked like there was a lot of great work up for grabs. The sale is just getting underway, and on until December 4th, so still lots of time to head over to Ossington to check it out. (I highly recommend going late (the Gallery is open until 7:00) and then heading up the road to Foxley for a snack!!)