Category Archives: Journalism

Lessons from the X-Men

1 Reply

I look at what’s happened, and still happening in Ferguson, the attention we’re currently paying to the senseless, needless deaths of young black people in this country, but I think also of the tallying every year of the deaths of trans* folks, the numbers of deaths and violations for native, black, and latina women, I think of the challenges women face daily. And somehow I end up at the X-Men.

Now, you probably think, “what the hell does a comic series/Marvel superheroes/beloved movie series and/or acclaimed series reboot have to do with all this serious political stuff?” or you might have just stopped reading.

But there is something very important lurking in the X-Men, and in that something is the reason why the X-Men are both so successful and often the only superhero comic non-superhero comic reading people have fallen for (Watchemn excluded, that is a discussion for another time). Continue reading →

Providence Graffiti : a collection

Leave a reply
(Originally completed on July 22, 2014. Retroactively published on September 1, 2016.)

It’s been six months since I started making an effort to share and catalogue the graffiti I see around Providence. Going through and actually figuring out what I’ve photographed since last December shows exactly how selective the process of sharing it can be. Some of them, I’ve photographed and posted elsewhere, some I’ve photographed and it’s sitting unlabeled and, for all purposes, forgotten, on a hard drive or SD card. But this is what I’ve posted to social media. This is the stuff that was striking enough, odd enough, and, in a way, carelessly enough catalogued to make it onto Instagram.

I only post to Instagram from my phone, I do my best to geotag everything that is worth a visit by someone else, for which street art, whether in spray paint, sticker or other format, definitely qualifies. Geotagging also helps create a physical record (to the best of my phone’s feeble GPS capabilities) of where this art work resides or as is often the case, once resided.

Rlyeh: the home where Cthulu sleeps. The absolute ingenuity of this tag in Providence has made me happy absolutely every single time I’ve seen it. I’m, over all, not super fond of tagging as a practice because it feels juvenile to write the same thing 15 times on the same block (we get it. you were here. even though we don’t know who you are). But this one set me off to document our Providence street art in greater detail.

This ant did not start it’s life on a sticker: I first saw it as a paste on poster or as a stencil spray painted on the ground (I’m having trouble remembering exactly which one). It also did not just stick to one part of the city, I saw it on the East Side and near the Gano St. highway exit. Probably 2 years ago.

I liked the combination of the little girl carrying the weapon and “IRL Facebook is boring” — although they are not technically the same sticker, they appear to be a pair. This instance is from Wickenden street, but they also appear up on Waterman, and a free paper box that got pulled from the streets and sits next to the door of the building housing Motif has “IRL Facebook is Boring” on it as well.

I am particularly fond of the art on this one. I wish the artist would make more of an appearance, but I might also have missed them by a little bit, since it could come from any manner of quarter of college student, and they could have been transitioning either to or from Providence. It’s gorgeous and a break from a lot of the more sarcastic, ironic, or otherwise knowing stuff we get (as is befitting of street commentary).

This is one of those instances where this is one of the records of something that no longer exits. This sticker went the way of the pay phone it was attached to. It suffered a rather ignominious death, and eventually disappeared from next to the Hope & Doyle RIPTA stop, outside the Y. The art itself remains pretty inscrutable, all the same.

I feel like this sticker is a lazy-man’s tag. But it also fits into a carefully defined slot that exists in the Providence sticker scene: advertising. The guerilla advertising movement is alive and well, with stickers appearing on the fronts and backs of all kinds of signs to raise awareness for everything from food trucks, to bands, to restaurants and cafes, or even people’s personal brands: touting their website so you can check out their cool design abilities.

big robot sticker

My mother firmly believes that this is not a misspelling of “Engels” as in “Fridrick Engels”

hiya

@serpentgod

politics on the street

now!

rabbit!!!

selena gomez

Building the “Personal Brand” — On Internships

Leave a reply

There is a tension between the “personal brand” and the brand of the larger entity one works for.

It is especially true for interns. The intern has essentially agreed to work for free to “pad their resume” or, in other words, build their personal brand.

For people of certain skill-sets, the “personal brand” is less important. If you’re an engineer, or a student of another applied science, you can present lab work and other concrete examples of work you have done or participated in, and be judged on that (often you already have been, if a study is published and peer-reviewed).

But those who fall into a more “artisinal” category (designers, journalists, artists), people whose work is both becoming excessively commodified (“oh anyone can write/throw a webpage together/et. al.”), need a portfolio that clearly displays their skills to acquire work. With these areas becoming increasingly free-lance, it is even more critical.

Continue reading →

The Tale of UMass, Day Drinking, and the Echo Chamber

Leave a reply

I’ve delivered this rant, in some form, every time someone has asked me about what happened at UMass two weekends ago, on the day of the Blarney Blowout.

Usually, when someone makes this inquiry, they use the word “riot”. I want to make it unequivocally clear, I think the use of the word “riot” to describe the events that took place on Saturday March 8th are not only incorrect, but contribute to the continued misunderstanding of what took place, and the discrediting of the reputation of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Continue reading →

The Cardinal Sin (Photography)

Leave a reply

There is one rule of photography: don’t photograph your friends for their professional plans or endeavors as a favor.

There are reasons for this: if you’re doing professional work, you are a professional, and should be treated like one (paid). Work is really only professional if it is couched in professionalism, otherwise, it’s probably a hobby. If you don’t ask to be paid now, you won’t be asked how much it costs in the future.

There’s another reason why you shouldn’t do professional work for people in a non-professional capacity: your real life will come back like a howling demon, and your friend will be left hanging while you deal with stuff that actually pays the bills, or keeps you in coffee, or ensures you can buy peanut-butter cups at Trader Joe’s.

I visited a friend earlier this year who is starting up an online business, and was trying to figure out a way to get photos. I volunteered when I visited her, mostly because I was interested in trying my hand at some portraiture, a more creative endeavor than the grind of photojournalism. This was two days before I went back to school.
Now, she’s taken to hounding me via text message about her photos, while I’ve been trying to juggle my reading, organizing the anchoring schedule for the radio station (which has been a nightmare and a half on it’s own), building a routine, and running from meeting to meeting, before, after, and between my classes.

Last night, I went to bed early because I had my first migraine in two weeks, and it laid me out like a blow to the skull. This was after it smacked me across the face during a recruitment meeting, and scrambled my words until I was making a fool out of myself for every person who came over to talk to us.

The problem with unpaid work, on the consumer end, is that you aren’t getting a professional job. Because the “professional” part of the job, isn’t the act, it’s carrying it through. The professional part of any work is the deadline. And really, when someone offers to take your picture, it’s because it’s something they’re interested in doing and it’s much more likely that you’re doing them a favor. Not the other way around.

But I’ve got to get those pictures up on the internet, where she can get to them, now. There’s no point in proving that one is capable of being completely unprofessional. It might give people the wrong idea.