im crying so are you

thx @jwints for this https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2021/01/14/Photographing-Beyond-Needle-Puddle/

i want to talk more about this later

this piece is terrific. @jwints gets the complexities of representing Crisis and also how the abstract shorthand of 'needle-in-puddle' (for example) has contributed to the public's misunderstanding of this thing - this emergency. every time i see Needle-in-Puddle now, i lose it

because how can we have a real discussion about solutions to the Poisoning Massacre when people think its about a Needle In A Puddle. i wrote about how we have to get past this last year https://twitter.com/kwardvancouver/status/1331490618464374784

but "Needle in Puddle" is less harmful than much other photography - taking a photo of someone at one of the worst moments of their life to illustrate why all poor people need to be institutionalized ... if someone grabs your camera and smashes it on the ground,

theyre destroying a weapon that's doing significant destruction in self-defence. how can anyone publish photographs of what they don't even try to understand? it's another way of refusing to look.

(i keep coming back to that.)

these abstract photos, after the previous 1,735 days of this emergency, mean visually as the monthly stories "NEW RECORD DEATHS" - they mean very little. when you see these images and that story, what do you think?

"NEW RECORD DEATHS" or "SLIGHTLY FEWER DEATHS" as a story tells us nothing. this isnt a monthly event. i kinda hope that daily COVID briefings will help people see that. and importantly

death is cumulative. these are different people who we've lost. who you have lost.

there is no context and there's no history.

lethal poisons arent falling from the sky and killing people FOR NO REASON.

you will soon hear that more than six thousand people died last years from drugs in canada. they actually died from drug policy, and there are reasons that all this is happening.

like all mass social murders, you can see this unfold through time. (i sure could)

(i can also see that this will get worse.)

i know you cant stand to see this, and i know why

but how can you adequately represent the slow collapse, this neighbourhood where structures of violence collide. idk. carefully. we make art here (all the time) and self-representation is everywhere if you look

and we also made and make this place, an unfinished and difficult and demanding work and if you cant stand to see it, you're making it too http://free-futures-society.org/2017/09/15/not-our-streets/