Border Disorder

Dance Performance, Nossa Senhora de Fatima Church
Swazi Women, Malkerns Valley, SwazilandI've been working on ideas for the border project for a while now, but am feeling real pressure about finalizing a project within our class project. I spent a bit of time exploring in Namaacha, a town in Mozambique which borders Swaziland on Sunday. The town actually fits in perfectly with another pet project I've been doing for some time-the cult of the Virgin Mary (the town hosts an annual pilgrimage once a year in May which I am planning on doing this year in Jono fashion). However, there are other ideas I have, but require some travel and would have to be done in one trip or several depending on which one I pick. Since this is a group project, a good part of what I actually do depends heavily on you.

Pack Journalism

Yesterday, I got a call that there was a "big fire" at the ministry of finance and that people were leaping out of the building to escape. I went, but despite my mental preparations of modern-day scenes from Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, it was nothing of the sort. Nonetheless it was interesting even though my photographs were not. If anything it reminded me how much I do not miss chasing spot news. When I was younger and starting out, I used to love doing that sort of thing and enjoyed the adrenaline and outdoing the competition. It had been a long time since I'd been in that type of situation maneuvering around police, crowds and other photographers and I was surprised how I just snapped right in to newspaper photographer mode like I had never been away.

Another factor was watching how the other photographers and press worked. I was always very critical of the way some press tended to work particularly when they got in the pack mode of which this was a classic example. Everybody was in a big clump behind the police lines. Nobody was moving around working the scene looking for the drama or the reaction from spectators aside from the action. If they were photographers working for me, I would have liked to line them up and slap them in Three Stooges fashion.