My Borders Proposals

Sacrificial chicken: they let me shoot the victim but not the sacrifice.

A stump I photographed before it fell and was still a tree.


Miramar beach after a long holiday weekend.

A new sea wall at Triunfo Beach.

I'm back in focus and got out to photograph for the first time in a while. I had my three year old in tow, and it felt good.

I've been hashing over what I'd be doing for my borders project for some time. Some of you have had to listen to me go in circles trying to narrow it down. I have sifted through my ideas and have come to two that I'm going to concentrate on. I have axed out all together the literal idea of going to a physical international border and working there. I wanted to be able to have access to something that I could work on close-by and two-hour or longer travel daily was not attractive. I will still do some of those stories but not for our group project.

In trying to push the borders idea a bit, I am going to concentrate on land mines in Mozambique. The concept of being constrained by a border or barrier created by man that could kill or severely injure one grasped my attention. In this country, there has been successful de-mining in the north of the country, but there is still work that must be done in the south including areas surrounding Maputo. Before the holidays, I had been communicating with folks from the HALO Trust in Mozambique and finally met with them. I made them part of my brainstorm and came to an agreement.

They will take me out to various de-mining sites in the Maputo region. Apparently they are not terribly excited. A pair of Mozambican employees will take me to meet a farming family who is typical in areas with known mines. They apparently use only a portion of their land because of real fears of mines in outer portions. They warn me that it will be tough because these people are usually quite angry with groups such as HALO even though they are trying to help them because the problem still exists. I also am hoping to make some portraits of victims of land mines. HALO has connected me with an NGO who might be able to help me.

Hopefully this works out, but they put up enough doubt with scenarios of past photographic flops that I am still leaning on plan two which is taking the advice of Paul who suggested I stick with my current project on the Marginal and the decaying coastline applying the idea of the border between land and sea. I am, as my posted photos demonstrate, still hot on this project. I've written up notes for myself of what else I need to accomplish with it and would like to do which includes doing sound of various groups I've photographed, recording interviews and making more several more photographs. The pictures I've been doing are the Australian casuarina trees that were planted to thwart the tides.

My ultimate plan is to have a show. I am going to put together an edit and proposal for a site here where I'd like to exhibit. Aside from my own pictures, I am going to ask an artist to make me a map of the Marginal and am still seeking permission to use that historical picture I did a post a while back.

In my inquiry to one of several people who have used the historical photo in question may pay off in an unexpected way. A publishing group that put out a book of historical photographs in Maputo looked at my website and various links and asked if I'd be interested in doing a book for them about Maputo. I'm certainly interested and will keep you updated on where this goes.