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In the Shadow of Power
Our just published In the Shadow of Power is a penetrating collection of 92 black and white photographs about life in Washington, DC, by Venezuelan photographer Kike Arnal.
After scores of books and reports by our groups over forty-five years, where the premise was that "a thousand words is worth one picture," I am reminded of the impact of the reverse saying "a picture is worth a thousand words."
If you want to see the power of these 92 pictures aided by the
discerning eye of a masterful interviewer, visit Brian Lamb's one hour
C-SPAN program about Mr. Arnal's book (http://www.c-spanvideo.org/
The accomplished photographer Fred Ritchin captured the visual impacts in his foreword with these words: "In shades of gray the murkiness is probed, fragments of anguish exposed, painful contrasts fractionally illuminated."
Mr. Ritchin asked "how government can expect to lead a planet if it cannot properly help take care of its own."
"I was born in Washington, DC," he adds, "and left as a very young child. I never had any strong feelings about my birthplace. Now I do."
The early, intense reaction to In the Shadow of Power was quite different than the responses to factual reports about Washington, DC's tale of two cities. It's the difference between a searching look that reverberates with its own feedback and a scan of factual renditions drained of emotional intelligence.
You decide which prompts more engagement.
Week after week the newspapers report cases of dysfunction, corruption, indifference and harmful delays in the municipal government. They report less the valiant efforts of local citizen groups striving to slow the erosion of municipal functions and services. They almost never report why so many of the wealthy and powerful classes rarely come close to even a state of noblesse oblige for their adopted metropolis. Foreign observers of the way our nation's capital is run, and run into the ground, come away with disbelief punctuated by puzzlement at the vast resources and their unused capacity here. A few blocks from the White House are the headquarters of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, whose pronouncements describe other countries as under developed.
There are truly many tales of two cities in Washington, DC. There are the two cities of wealth and poverty. By and large, Northeast, Southeast and Southwest Washington cry out for repairs, for affordable housing, for public protection, for health and retail services. The other city, Northwest Washington-the part frequented by tourists-has the private schools and clubs, the gallerias and theaters, the well-kept homes and grounds befitting the affluent and upper-middle professional and business classes.
While the city is experiencing widespread gentrification, it maintains its dubious status as having the highest rate of low-income children in the United States, the highest child poverty rate, and the highest AIDS mortality rate in the country. The capital's hospitals, medical schools and clinics have co-existed with the lowest life expectancy of any of the fifty states. Scores of countries have higher life expectancy levels than what prevails in the District of Columbia.
The well-off and the poor do share some common experiences: potholes, constant sirens, unreturned calls to municipal government officials, expensive housing and gridlock traffic. The difference is that the former have the means to mitigate, endure, avoid or override. There lies the rub. Those who can make change are not part of the daily risks and desperation so they do not have to be part of the solution.
Henry Allen, the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for photographic criticism when he was at the Washington Post, summed up his reaction: "This book comes in close on Them, who are not to be confused with Us. We do well to know as much as we can and should about Them - we're all in the same boat after all."
Kike's style is not one of overt contrasting photography as in previous books about the tale of two Washingtons; it is more than artistic choice, though his photos are taken with an exceptional artist's eye. His photos, standing alone or connecting to one another without words, make you wonder and ponder. One can allow them to enter into one's thoughts and values. Perhaps they may incite you toward a new level of engagement for the human condition portrayed in this volume is, to be sure, Washington, DC-based, but it is also part of the grand tradition of photographers worldwide who have recorded the inhumanity of the few toward the many through this form of indelible visual communication.
For more information, and to purchase a signed copy, visit intheshadowofpower.org.
30 Comments so far
Show AllIf you didn't watch Democracy Now! -- both Ralph Nader and Arnal Kike appeared on the program on Tuesday, March 2, 2010. The photographs present powerful images!
http://www.democracynow.org/shows/2010/3/2
I agree that it's shameful that Washington, D.C. is home to such poverty; and again and again, we hear Obama, et. al., cheerleading the U.S. mantra -- "We're the best!" I can't help but ask the question, "At what?"
Communities across this country are falling into ruin, and some communities have been in ruin for decades, i.e. Flint, MI, with infrastructures crumbling and disintegrating beneath our/their feet. I don't see anyone stepping in to make a serious difference. I would like to think that "we the people" can turn a corner, somewhere, at some point in time, but how? My elected officials NEVER respond to me in any serious way other than, very occasionally, to tell me that I have the right to voice my opinion, which means absolutely nothing if they have already decided NOT to listen.
As Lawrence Lessig wrote yesterday, our politicians are ADDICTED to campaign contributions, and they receive their money from the corporations that care not one whit about "we the people," the CITIZENS of this country.
In some respects it is ironic that the highest poverty rates in this country are in this nation's capital, Washington, D.C. -- and then, there is K Street and the gated communities of Washington, D.C. In NYC, we have both sides of the extreme coin, too! We have Harlem and East Harlem, and we have Wall Street, along with Madison and Fifth Avenues as well.
In other words, DC is simply a microcosm of what our entire nation will soon become.
q
Welcome to the third world !
A bit off subject ... but I'm feeling guilty and I need to confess. Every opportunity I've had, I voted for Nader excepting the last election ... ever increasingly, it appears my vote in the last election was a mistake.
Kipp - If it helps at all, you're forgiven! ; - ) but the important thing is to forgive yourself. You are human afterall, and to many of us, Obama came across as a voice of reason when we had suffered so long from voices that were pure-d nutz, starting with our verbally and intellectually challenged, Selected President, George W. Bush.
We were wrong, and find ourselves with a truly flip-flopping snake-oil salesman, surrounded by snakes, apparently without a heart for The People he serves even though he always talks so glowingly about us and our values in his speeches. Then he turns around the next day and stabs us. Go figure.
Nader is in good shape, so likely you'll have another chance to write in his name for President.
But let's face it, if Ralph Nader got 200 million write-in votes, he likely would be disqualified under some technicality by the powers that be.
This has all become a very bad joke. And at this point I don't know if I want to know the punchline.
Here's to you, Ralph Nader. You are a sane voice among us, and that does help.
peace, Kipp. Tomorrow is another day.
/cm
And why don't the US Congressmen of the citizens of Washington DC speak out about this? Oh yeah, these American citizens don't have representation in Congress.
Progressive 101, the residents of DC have one non voting delegate in the US House of Representatives. Pretty much the same as having no representation at all.
A small correction to the article. The URL for Arnal's book is http://intheshadowofpower.com/ (not ".org").
I moved to DC from Chicago in 1967 and hated it. I always bristled when someone said how beautiful the city was. My route to College Park and Takoma Park through Northeast DC certainly was not beautiful. Then there was not even a subway. Construction had just begun. My husband at the time and I would drive to Baltimore to experience a "real city." I am glad I spent those eight years there, but not because I ever liked the city. And give me the grids of Chicago and New York City any day, as opposed to the radial conceit of L'Enfant.
Our democracy simply doesn't invest political power in its urban areas. As long as a single voter in Wyoming is worth more than 80 voters in California, in the Senate, money will flow to Wyoming from California. Californians get 60 cents from the Feds for every dollar in taxes they send to Washington, while Wyoming gets about $1.60 from the Feds for their tax dollar.
Even at the state level, cities are huge cash cows from state governments, who take but don't give back, preferring to spend their money in more rural areas of the state, which have more political clout, as written in the state constitution.
Thus preyed upon at both the Federal and the State level, urban areas are prone to decay that never gets addressed. To add insult to injury, rural America is largely Republican, and when these people say to the urban poor 'pay your own way', what they mean is 'pay my way', which urbanites have been doing for over a century, and we're not talking about a small amount of money, either. Detroit is now on the ropes, but follow the money, and you'll find that over the last half-century billions of tax dollars have leaked out of Detroit and have been spent in rural areas that surround Detroit, and elsewhere in the country. The bandit at the root of this theft is the state and federal government.
Rural Republicans have no intention of 'paying their way'. They never have and they hope to never have to. But the real tragedy is that our so-called 'democracy' is actually set up to abett this theft.
"..we're all in the same boat after all."
Just like Us and Them shared the Titanic together. Ist Class, 2nd Class, 3rd class, 4th, ahem, class. All sailing towards our not mutual destruction.
The power company in the DC region has deliberately not maintained the power grid in even the upper class black neighborhoods. I went to a public meeting where (in so many words) they admitted that all the power outages in poor and/or mostly black areas were due to poor planning, not enough substations, thunderstorms and squirrels (I kid you not). It's not like they don't know how to maintain the lines because the predominantly white areas don't have nearly the outage problems that the minority areas do. [This was before this years series of snowstorms, btw.]
And the power company knows how to continue to cheat minorities. At the meeting I attended, their representatives (as well as paid-off elected officials) rambled on and on with doublespeak and incredibly lame excuses until the four or five cable and network cameras left.
Citizens (all black except for three or four Latinos and me) then were allowed to speak. "Why did you reimburse white neighborhoods for the appliances destroyed by power surges but not any of our neighborhoods?" "Why are there more substations and future planning in [neighborhoods predominantly white] than in ours?" "Why can you protect power lines from squirrels and downed trees in middle class white neighborhoods more than you seem able to in ours?" "Many of us can't afford to send our sick folk to motels every time the power is out for three or four days." "We can't afford to replace a week's worth of groceries when it rots in the frig." "Are you seriously telling me that when there are no storms and my power is out for two and three days in a row time and time again, it's because of a squirrel? Are you serious?"
I've lived in many poor white areas and never have I been treated by public officials and corporate officials with the quantity and low quality of bs that these unbelievably insincere "leaders" were spewing at this incredibly polite and respectful crowd.
I lived in Prince Georges County for 8 months. Every single time I went to a store (big box or grocery) that was predominantly black, the lines were long, the prices were higher. A few miles away (farther from low income housing), the same stores would have lower prices and no lines. Time and time again I saw this. I emailed every store asking why they were charging more with fewer employees at these stores. (It's not like they were spending a lot of money on security. There were more guards at the nicer stores.) Clearly they were making more money off of poorer people, especially off of people who couldn't afford a car to go to the stores with lower prices and shorter lines. Not one store responded to my emails.
Corporate America makes more money off of minorities and the poor. And DC is lucky, lucky, lucky that the black Americans who live there are so courteous and patient and unbelievably forgiving of this appalling unacceptable disrespect.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Ralph Nader--still out there doing consistent important work to help improve the lives of millions on top of the hundreds of thousands of American lives he's improved and saved with his auto, food & drug safety and anti-poverty efforts of the past.
But WHERE IS THE LIBERTARIAN HERO RON PAUL ON THESE ISSUES??
NOWHERE.
Ron Paul gave a few hundred patients obstetrical medical care without billing Medicare so he could preach against social programs and THAT's what his legions of duped semiliterates scream in fanatically thrilled support of like he was Albert Schweitzer, Martin Luther King Jr. and Winston Churchill all conflictedly rolled into one.
*Comment deleted by site administrators for being off-topic.*
see: http://www.commondreams.org/comment-policy
*Comment deleted by site administrators for being off-topic.*
see: http://www.commondreams.org/comment-policy
Really off topic, the topic here is Ralph Nader talking about photos of D.C., but people discussing how Ralph Nader actually has plans to solve the U.S.'s problems *scares* you doesn't it Dim apologist? So quick create distraction even if it's wildly off topic.
When you pull stuff like this your troll qualities are outed. :(
Sigh!
Off topic rant
That's very damn funny considering your off topic comment just got deleted.
To those who think that rural America is living off the fat of disproportionate government subsidies, you really have no idea how bad it is for most of us. Some may be benefitting but I don't know any of them.
We have a huge federal highway project in my county that has been going on for two years and will continue for another two years. NONE of the major contractors on this project are local! All are from the major cities. Meanwhile, this project requires an additional 8 miles round-trip to the nearest grocery store because the federal highway is the hypotenuse on the county grid and is closed during construction. The federal money is assigned to the rural county but the money for it flips back to the cities while the inconvenience for this boondoggle is felt by every local citizen.
Meanwhile, urban blacks aren't the only ones gouged by greedy retailers. We have one filling station in town. It charges 30-cents more than in either neighboring town for a gallon of regular. And last week I asked a local retailer to carry Zippo lighter fluid and told him they were charging $1.49 for it at a store the next town over. He ordered it and is now charging $2.39 for it. When I asked why, he said, "because we're the only people in town carrying it." Your friendly local merchant...
You wanna see poverty? REAL poverty? How about mobile homes hidden away in stacks on tree-covered hillsides with no paved roads, with tiny yards littered with broken machines...and don't forget the constant yapping of dogs.
The last politician who thought seriously about rural poverty was Robert F. Kennedy. 1968 was a long time ago. Unlike urban poverty it is "out of sight and out of mind."
-30-
*Comment deleted by site administrators for being off-topic.*
see: http://www.commondreams.org/comment-policy
Off topic, ignore. The idea that people might actually talk about poverty in D.C. and Ralph Nader is apparently very threatening to some people and thus must be distracted from, sad.
Senor Arnall needs to change the spelling of his first name (suggested alternatives either Kiki or Keke) because as it is now, it looks like the derogtory slur used against those of Jewish descent.
The pictures and the unsettling dilemma posed by their reality is mute testimony to the hypocrisy of this nation. Bravo to Senor Arnall and shame on the US.
Poet
Perhaps the exhibit should be called "municipal porn," since by any human standard Washington, D.C., is an obscenity.
A radical all of my adult life, about ten years ago I spent two weeks in D.C., along for the ride while a friend was doing genealogical research at the relevant archives. I had time to wander and explore, by car and subway. I was surprised that even my olympic-class cynicism was tested. My "take away" was that any human being who chose to live in D.C. had to be deeply warped in all the wrong ways. And those who have to live there are no better for letting the place be as it is, or, rather, reeks.
I suppose it is fitting that our antisocial society has a uniquely antisocial city for its capital. I have seen the Beltway and it is not us (humans).
"And those who have to live there are no better for letting the place be as it is, or, rather reeks.
The plight of the people, who have to live in D.C. and have allowed the situation to deteriorate, would seem to be rather low hanging fruit for someone who has been a radical all of their adult life. Please feel free to show them how to leave a place that they have to live in.
armagen needs a course in reading comprehension. The excerpt he quotes does not urge anybody to leave where they have to live. It urges them to clean up the mess where they have to live. This is called "urging political activism." It is one of the things that lifelong radicals do.
"a thousand words is worth one picture," I am reminded of the impact of the reverse saying "a picture is worth a thousand words."
Actually, I think a word is worth a thousand pictures. For example, "tree" If 1000 people saw this post, 1000 people would see 1000 different trees in their minds.
If you look closely enough Washington, DC tells you all you need to know about America.
Thou i have not seen the pictures I can see the message well..
This is humankinds failure - to see the less fortunate among them and be willing to extend a helping hand.
To wrap ourselves in the safety of our own privileged lifestyles we chose not see them. As if their suffering is their pain only and not our failure.
Rick,
After decades of brainwashing by corporate-contorolled government and media, people are so dumbed-down that they can't even ask the simple question: How did a small group of elite bankers and corporate CEOs manage to extract so much money from the global economy while the rest of humanity struggles every day to obtain a meal or make ends meet?
Until the hard-working majority wake up and realize that class warfare is real, the suffering and pain will only get worse.
"The actions governments took did not address any of the core, systemic issues and problems with the global economy; they merely set out to save the banking industry from collapse. To do this, governments around the world implemented massive “stimulus” and “bailout” packages, plunging their countries deeper into debt to save the banks from themselves, while charging it to people of the world."
In short, the financial/corporate sectors use government to steal from the public.
As Mike "Mish" Shedlock has said: "Without jobs, all this happy talk about the impending recovery, and all of Bernanke's yapping about low rates, will not satisfy the market. It is going to take both jobs and an increase in consumer spending to lift the economy."
CLASS WARFARE!