© All text & photos (unless otherwise noted) copyright Skip Schiel, 2004-2010
A series from my earlier writing, not always directly about Palestine-Israel, this an attempt to understand my journey of discovery that continues to enthrall and mystify me.
Written September 10, 2002, revised February 9, 2010
PHOTOS
There is a principle which is pure, placed in the human mind, which in different places and ages hath had different names. It is, however, pure and proceeds from God. It is deep and inward, confined to no forms of religion nor excluded from any, where the heart stands in perfect sincerity. In whomsoever this takes root and grows, of what nation so ever they become brethren in the best sense of the expression.
—John Woolman, luminary Quaker (1761)
For my entire adult life I’ve been making visual art, first films for some 15 years, then, when that pursuit became untenable because of lack of audience and money, I turned to photography, a childhood passion. Since the early 1980s I’ve been able to follow this particular muse, at times taking part-time jobs for income and health benefits. Finding these jobs gnawingly restrictive, I sought another way, one that would provide the economic foundation for my various photographic projects. Thanks to family, friends, mentors, and ancestors, I’ve been able to derive sufficient support for my life in art.
COMMUNITY
One key: community. For years I followed the conventional dictate that pronounced art-making as singular, one brilliant individual making things that perhaps no one understood. Until after death. Virtually no support. The model of Vincent van Gogh, for instance, or Charles Ives. Vincent lived and died destitute, yet his paintings now fetch millions of dollars. Charles Ives, writing music ahead of his time, rarely found an audience, but was wily enough to never rely on music-derived income: he sold insurance. Both men illustrate the image of an individual creating great works in a world ignorant of their worth.
For my first two adult decades, I tried this, I fell flat. Painfully I’ve since discovered an ancient wisdom— refuse to be isolated, participate in community in most everything you do.
My communities are manifold:
The Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as Quakers, since 1980, one of my core communities, providing support in the forms of prayer, guidance, criticism, equipment, love, audience, incentive, ideas, and services;
Other artists, thru the Fellowship of Friends in the Arts (Quaker) and a local network of photographers meeting periodically to photograph, show and comment.
A Buddhist-led Pilgrimage to the School of the Americas-part 1
A Japanese Buddhist community, Nipponzan Myohoji, which constructs peace pagodas and conducts walks and pilgrimages, these pilgrimages the subject of many of my projects;
A lay Catholic nonviolence community in western Massachusetts, Agape, priests, nuns, friends, other lay people, all united in pursuing justice thru nonviolent means, helping me with funding, insights, a retreat center, and connection with my Catholic roots;
Family, especially my former (and enduring, in some sense) partner, Y, pairing with me on many projects, offering editorial and financial assistance, grounding my work in her strong Buddhist walking practice, and my two daughters, Katy and Joey, both artists, maybe not sharing totally my perspectives, but respectful and loving;
And where I teach usually photography, the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, a rich source of other photographers, work associates (especially people helping me with computer applications to photography), and most importantly students who teach me.
FRUGAL LIFE STYLE
The second key: a frugal life style. Unlike J.D. Rockefeller who when asked “How much money do you need to be happy?” answered “just a little more.” I reply, about “what I have.” I have enough. I live on between seven and ten thousand dollars annually. Much of what I need is in the form of bartered services— A Quaker friend and colleague lends me his darkroom—no charge. The Cambridge Center offers me its darkroom and computer center—no charge. Upwards of six individuals once volunteered their darkroom skills—no charge. My daughter, former partner, and a good friend take care of my apartment when I’m on long trips—part of the family. I pay back with photographs or friendship or volunteered time or familial reciprocity.
RELIABLE INCOME
And the third key: finding reliable means of earning income. I generate a sufficient amount of money thru teaching, donations, and grants, along with sales, fees, and bartering with my photographs.
GOVERNMENT SERVICES
And a true surprise, the fourth key: An important source of financial support, aiding me in keeping my economic needs slim, is the state. Oddly enough, the government—in the forms of national, state and local—has been generous in providing subsidies for my necessities: housing, food, health care. However, should a catastrophic event occur in my life, like a major accident, a serious illness, or debilitating infirmity from old age, I, like my wealthier peers no doubt, am vulnerable. My position is precarious, but I remain confident that if I maintain my course, I will find the support needed to live and work.
That’s the survive portion of my experience. How do I thrive?
Let me use three of my photo projects for illustration.
NOT FOREVER QUABBIN RESERVOIR
Since the mid 1980s I’ve photographed a reservoir and adjoining land in central Massachusetts, Quabbin. In the late 1980s I helped two friends find land near the watershed on which they could construct a nonviolence center, the Agape Community I referred to earlier. They asked me to join the steering committee. We meet four times each year, timed with the change of seasons. This schedule brings me to Quabbin regularly. My photo project continued, bumpingly.
In late August 2001, they allowed me to use their small cabin, The Hermitage, for a week-long retreat. Every day I walked or biked along the shores and forests of Quabbin, extending my project considerably. I felt I was making rapid progress discovering color, reflection, mood, outline, and the spirit of Quabbin itself, deep and abiding.
One week later—September 11th, 2001, the attack on the United States—Quabbin was sealed shut. I renamed my Quabbin project, Not Forever, Quabbin Reservoir. Not Forever depends heavily on my association with Agape. I thrive thru my participation in its community.
DELTA PASSAGE, A JOURNEY HOME
The second project stemmed from a pilgrimage I made thru the Mississippi Delta in late 1999 as part of a grander effort retracing the trans-Atlantic slave route with many other pilgrims, the Interfaith Pilgrimage of the Middle Passage. Raised in Chicago, fleeing the approach of Black people by moving to the suburbs in 1955, I was dimly aware of the Great Migration and its effect on the city and me. Finding myself in New Orleans, the terminus of the US portion of the Middle Passage Pilgrimage, I left the pilgrimage and decided to drive slowly north to my homeland. I explored the history of Black resistance to Jim Crow— Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, Jr, and the Freedom Riders. At the same time I dove into a more personal, less public past that Black friends in Chicago had told me about.
Twelve years earlier, while photographing the Chicago Fellowship of Friends in Cabrini Green, a notoriously violent public housing complex, I met Bernice Thomas. She’d been raised on a cotton plantation in the Mississippi Delta, she escaped the South in the late 1950s, and she told me stories of her pained experience, her flight north, her vow to never raise her children in the South. She described where she’d lived and suffered—the plantation, the movie house in Clarksdale Mississippi, her last home where she’d birthed her first daughter. I found all the sites, photographed them, visited her with the pictures and further stories. She’d never returned home. I had, for her, and discovered an eerie connection: I was her, I had come home, thus, “Delta Passage, a Journey Home” is my slide show about that experience.
How could I have traveled that course, depicted that experience without the friendship of Bernice Thomas, without the active participation of Friends in Chicago, without my Quaker connection? Would I have found this rich trove of insights without the mentoring of some of my meeting’s elders, without the many meetings with the various clearness committees that formed for me?
GAZA STEADFAST
And the third project is about Israel-Palestine. Since my first journey there in 2003 I’ve not only discovered truths often hidden by most of the international media but my Quaker connection. They are multitudinous, dating back to 1869 when 2 Friends from New England explored what Quakers might be able to do in Ramallah—founding a girls’ school because of the absence of education for girls—and for the quasi Quaker organization, the American Friends Service Committee, its service to refugees in Gaza in 1948, caused by the expulsion of many Arabs by Israel when Israel founded itself as a state. Without that Quaker connection I’d not have had the opportunities presented to me: working with and living at the Ramallah Friends School, teaching photography and photographing thru the AFSC youth programs in the West Bank and Gaza, and the haven provided by Jean Zaru and Kathy Bergen in the Ramallah Friends Meeting and International Friends Center in Ramallah.
Amal Sabawi, director of the Quaker Palestine Youth Program in Gaza, Popular Achievement Festival, August 2009
The most recent show is Gaza Steadfast. I’ve shown it nearly 30 times thru the South, at times to Quaker meetings, and now I’m preparing a Northeast tour with a new version of the show launched recently at my local meeting, Friends Meeting at Cambridge.
PRAYER
To conclude, prayer is full attention. To the inner voice, the still small voice within; to the light without, revealing and enabling photographs; to the spirits of history, those sometimes fleeting, sometimes compelling accretions of memory; to destiny, who we are yet to become, our successors, our lineage; and to the interconnectedness of all creation. By being still, I tune to these tiny signs, build on them. Thru my photography I attempt to practice this prayer, this full attention, with enduring hope that I as an artist and human being will be sustained, and will contribute to the endless flow of life.
LINKS:
NOT FOREVER QUABBIN RESERVOIR
DELTA PASSAGE, A JOURNEY HOME
GAZA STEADFAST
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