Inspired by traditional end-of-year letters from others, never having written one myself, I’m motivated to try now. Yes, a little late. But with a twist: save for last (if ever) what tends to come first in most letters—family and travels, possibly health but usually not—and begin with what’s for me juiciest. So, here’s what I’ve […]
Read More SLICES OF 2022-PART FOUR (SECOND HALF): MY PLANNED ARCHIVEInspired by traditional end-of-year letters from others, never having written one myself, I’m motivated to try now. Yes, a little late. But with a twist: save for last (if ever) what tends to come first in most letters—family and travels, possibly health but usually not—and begin with what’s for me juiciest. So, here’s what I’ve […]
Read More Slices of 2022-Part Four (first half): my planned archiveSince 2004 I continue to maintain a website which I designed and love to manage. My website functions as a directory for my digital era photography (I have an earlier analog or celluloid archive which is only partially represented on my website) and a mobile portfolio which I can lead people to with a link. It is also a form of diary, helping me remember not only what and when I photographed a particular topic, but the context for it. I find my website extremely useful, altho at times frustrating because of the constant need to update and maintain. As is well known, freshness—constant new posts—adds to audience growth.
Read More Slices of 2022-Part Three: designing and maintaining my websiteThis blog is a departure from my main photographic project in Palestine-Israel, “The Ongoing and Relentless Nakba.” I need a break as I prepare for my next journey of discovery which begins on May 19, 2022. Invited by the Agape Community in western Massachusetts to reflect on the 13th station on Good Friday, April 15, […]
Read More via dolora: the 13th station—Christ removed from the cross, Palestinian rights, and climate justiceFrom my journal, letters, and other writing about internally expelled Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and Gaza (once I can enter Gaza), plus their ancestral homelands. These dispatches based on my latest work in Palestine-Israel from mid-May to mid-July 2019. With the pandemic crisis easing, I now plan to enter Palestine-Israel in mid May […]
Read More THE ONGOING AND RELENTLESS NAKBA—NOTES FROM THE PAST POINTING TO THE FUTURE (PART 3)J. Schiele and K. Downey talk with their father, Skip Schiel, about what led him to move to Boston in the 1960s, his activism during the Vietnam War, his interest in cooperative living, and his work as a photographer and filmmaker. —StoryCorps This is one of about 7 interviews, partly organized chronologically, only one on […]
Read More My two daughters interview me for StoryCorps (January 23, 2021)During my last days exploring, searching, the ghosts of former residents of the destroyed towns and villages call out to me, Skip, we are still here. Tho expelled, please feel our presence. See us, show us, help us regain our basic human rights. We want to go home! We have a right to our homes […]
Read More The Ongoing and Relentless Nakba: searching for the shadows of ancestors in British ParkIn July 2019 during a conversation with Amos, who I met during my first trip to the region in 2003 in his kibbutz, Shefayim, and listening to his friend, Aziz Al-Touri, near the Bedouin village of Al Araqib in the Naqab/Negev desert, I heard two major claims: from Amos that one’s life is concretely determined […]
Read More The Ongoing Nakba: Amos Gvirtz and Aziz Al-Touri, a Jewish Israeli and his Bedouin friend in the southern Negev/Naqab desert(The Agape Community published an earlier version in The Servant Song, summer 2021) When passion can’t flow easily into policymaking, it congeals as angry protest, growing wilder and more paranoid. Daniel Immerwahr Climate justice or justice for Palestine? Which for me will take precedence in my activism? With limited energy and time remaining in my […]
Read More How far can outrage carry me?From my journal, interviews, letters, and other writing about internally expelled Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and Gaza (once I can enter Gaza), plus their ancestral homelands. These dispatches are based on my latest sojourns in Palestine-Israel from mid-May to mid-July 2019 and more recent writing. Currently, the Covid-19 pandemic prevents me from returning. I […]
Read More The Ongoing Nakba: “Seven years to build, one hour to destroy”—Ibrahim Eid Nghnghia (Abu Adnan) in Jenin with his son and a friend—part two
Skip Schiel & Teeksa Photography 