theothergermantown-blog

[theothergermantown-blog]

I know I’ve been away from posting over here for quite a while, but I’m back to share some exciting news with you.  It may or may not have some relevancy for Germantown in particular but we’ll know for sure in a week.

In May of this year, I was commissioned by Mural Arts Philadelphia’s Trash Academy's to shoot a series of 40+ portraits for its Reusable Bag project.   Well, the photographs that I took for this project have been designed by Margaret Kearney into s series of BILLBOARDS that will be put up all around Philadelphia on September 23rd!!

The billboards are to promote the #BYOBagPHL (Bring Your Own Bag) Philadelphia campaign for a cleaner, healthier, more sustainable city with fewer plastic bags on our streets and in our waste stream.

Consider the following facts:

1. DYK Philadelphians use over 865 million plastic bags each year? #BYOBagPHL so fewer end up in our streets, waterways, and trees. 2. 91% of plastic is NOT RECYCLED. Join us in reducing plastic consumption. Show us your reusable bag! #BYOBagPHL #zerowastephilly

When I get more news about the exact locations of each billboard, I'll share it with you. When you see a billboard, please take a picture, hashtag it #BYOBagPHL, and post it to your social media.

In the meantime, Trash Academy will be sharing lots of fun photos & videos from this project, and I'll be reposting this content on my social media for you to check out.  I invite you to check out my website and link to my social media there.  

Thank you so much for your continued support of my work and please let me know if you have any questions or comments. I am beyond thrilled that I was commissioned to shoot this campaign, and I'm looking forward to seeing it gain a wider audience.

In the meantime, there are a few things you can do to be a part of the solution:

1. Go reusable to help our city’s recycling machines from getting clogged by plastic bags! #BYOBagPHL #phillyrecycles 2. Promote reusable bags to create a culture of care for our communities & our environment. #BYOBagPHL #phillycommunity #sustainablephilly 3. If you’re in the Philadelphia area, there will be a rally on Wednesday, September 25th at City Hall to raise more awareness about the #BYOBagPHL campaign and an update on the collaborative lobbying effort to secure a citywide ban on plastic bags. Link >> https://www.facebook.com/events/889985774733501

Thank you!!

[theothergermantown-blog]

Remembering Julie...2017 won't be the same without her fighting spirit.

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I visited the Sun Ra Arkestra recently,in Germantown,have you met them??

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In Memory of my Homie Howard (and a Rant about Germantown).

October 25, 2016

Yesterday afternoon, I had just disembarked a SEPTA bus, like I do almost every single day of the week, going somewhere to do something for some reason or another.  As I was crossing the street to reach my destination, I opened an email with the word “News” in the subject line, mostly out of curiosity.

In this email, I read that Howard had passed, and had been dead for over a week.  The news came in a way that most news (good or bad) about Germantown comes, from someone who heard it from someone else, with very little detail, leaving space for speculation and rumormongering. The words kinda jumped off the screen like a 3-D movie.  It was a surreal moment.

Unlike others who had died in Germantown, Howard’s death would not matter much in the big scheme of things.  There will be no memorial service or event dedicated to him in his honor (although it would be nice if there was, considering what he did for Germantown in his own way).  This is definitely no diss to others, but simply the truth of how things work in this place I called home.

Nonetheless, it fucking matters to me that Howard passed away.  He was my homie, so I’m going to write about our relationship and share some of the photographs I took of him. I wished I had videotaped or audio recorded our conversations.  I miss his distinctive voice.  

It always frustrated me the way that some Germantowners seemed to have little or no capacity for feeling, truly feeling, how a special a place it is, BECAUSE OF THE PEOPLE, on so many levels, in the way that I did, an outsider, an interloper with a camera. They would say, with a dismissive flourish, “what do you know, Tieshka, you aren’t from here.?” Yeah, I’m from everywhere and nowhere, I get it. 

But like I said before, I’ll say it again.  I can appreciate the hood elements just as much if not more than the green spaces and historic elements, because they all go into what makes Germantown so special. You don’t have to erase one for the other to have significance. We should have been able to, with all the smart people in the room, walk and chew gum and the same time, and we didn’t. 

We could have had it all.  We could have been a contender.  I digress.   

What does this have to do with a man named Howard, you ask?  Please bear with me.  You’ll understand by the end.

What frustrated me about elite Germantown was its endless intellectualizing about what the neighborhood should look like, that a vision of it had to erase certain *undesirable* parts of it, not knowing or not caring, that Germantown was not a place with parts that you could just erase.  Their masterful mind games, bullshit intellectualizing and snobbery slowly poisoned my well of love for Germantown, to the point where I didn’t want to drink from it anymore. 

These same people never stopped to focus on why it was so painful for so many people who were actually from here as well (a simple demographic majority, to be blunt), to be relegated to the fringes of a place whose lush, green and peaceful oases screamed (silently and politely of course because Germantowners abhor conflict) “off limits!! You’re not welcome here!!”

They would never understand how their dual strategy of relegation and exclusion both in theory and in practice both conspired to crush spirits and foment bitterness and resentment - namely mine, and Howard’s to a different degree, and so many others who remain nameless, but shared their stories with me along the way.

At any rate, yesterday, I stared at the email like it had reached out and bit me with poisonous fangs.  I read, and reread it, disbelieving every word, growing angrier and angrier because I knew that Howard would be no more.  I don’t know what happened to him. I don’t know if someone found him on the street or if he died in bed.  I have so many questions, and little energy to seek out the answers. 

I do know that with him being gone, I’ll have no one in particular to look for on the streets of Germantown should I happen to be in the area for a visit. There will be no one checking for me either, to be honest.  

Perhaps this is what the elites were speaking about...this idea that an excursion to a neighborhood like Germantown should be about visiting addresses and not people?  People really don’t count anyway, so come and visit our historic house museums and parks and gardens, which would have never existed in the first place without - you guessed it - people? And no, I’m not being sarcastic.

Since my move to southwest Philly months ago, I found myself having little desire or motivation to come back uptown.   Since my move, when I happened to be in Germantown, running into (most, not all) people was no longer a pleasant surprise.  But Howard made me smile.  He made me laugh and he made me think.  Now that he’s gone...what next? I don’t know. 

I will say I have no interest in visiting Vernon Park for the sake of visiting a park. If and when I come back to Germantown, it will be because of, not in spite of, the energy of everyday people who live there, animate the streets and spaces and make it real for me.  If I want to visit a park, I’ll walk to Clark Park or Cedar Park.

Howard was a complicated man. He loved Philadelphia, and he especially loved Germantown.  Both played a role in raising him up and both played a role in sucking the life out of him.  

I met him in the summer of 2013, right around the time of my solo photography exhibit at the iMPeRFeCT Gallery.  I spotted him sitting with his long legs, crossed, on one of those miserable metal posts in Maplewood Mall,  a beer bottle nearby.

Drawn to him for whatever reason, I made the first of many photographs I would take of him over our three year acquaintance.  

In the nascent stages of our relationship, he would ask me, “yooooooo, Tiesh, are you going to take my photograph?” “Yes, Howard,” I would reply.  He was my Germantown muse.  

Many of my photographs of him were of him in various states of inebriation. Yes, Howard loved his drink, and I have to disclose here that sometimes I was put in the unfortunate position of subsidizing his habit.  Sometimes we would drink together.  During the times when I was sober and he wasn’t,  I would ask him, sometimes playfully, but most of the times, in all the seriousness I could muster, “Howard, are you drunk?” to which he would reply, “Naw, homie.”

Yeah, okay Howard, as I watched him stumble away...

Sometimes I would watch him drink so much that his playfulness would vaporize into thin air, to be replaced by a feral meanness that seemed to lurk beneath the surface.  In his feral meanness, Howard would lash out and say hurtful things to others (never to me) and usually end up getting kicked out of whatever establishment he was in (usually the gallery, since the booze flowed free and easy during nights when there was a show opening or closing).  Several times, he would blackout from his drinking and end up in the emergency room.  I feared that one day he wouldn’t make it back after one of those episodes of alcohol poisoning.

Damnit Howard, you drink too fucking much.  And there was nothing I could really do.  He drank and he liked living on the edge.

But there were times when Howard would be sober and I would be sober and we would engage in long, rambling but insightful conversations.  During those moments, of which there were several notable ones, he talked about his only daughter, her husband and his grandbabies. Sometimes we would run into each other and he would talk at length about his visits (they were few and far between and I could honestly understand why that might be) with his daughter. Oh, Howard loved his daughter so much.  He would share with me his heartache and private pain over losing his mother and more recently, losing his daughter’s mother (they never married).  Women, as is the case with most black men, brought him so much joy, but they also brought him tremendous pain.

Sometimes he would slip up and share things about his encounters with other men on the street.  I never questioned or judged. It was never my place.

There was one moment in particular when Howard had decided to clean up his life and join a church (promises were made to him that he would get a job, which unfortunately, never materialized, and sadly became the turning point that put him back on the path to his eventual demise). For a time last year, I would run into Howard around Germantown, and he would sometimes pull out a well-worn copy of a Bible.  As he was “getting his life on track” he mentioned that he had met a lady and that they were acquainted through this church he was attending.  He was excited about that, but more excited by the prospect of doing meaningful work, earning a living.  Howard had a complicated relationship with work, I learned over our three year relationship.

From our conversations, I could piece together a narrative about the Howard before the drugs (yep) and alcohol (absolutely), the Howard that was a handsome younger brotha doing professional white-collar work many years ago.  For what it’s worth, none of this might have been true. But I know that he recounted the same story to me several times about how he did computer work that required a great deal of precision and intelligence.  I remember looking at his swollen fingers and thinking that what he was saying to me might be true. I imagined his hands and fingers, slender, manicured, and unscarred by the ravages of manual labor and drug and alcohol abuse.  Perhaps he really was who he said he was.

He was this person, the person he constructed for me with his memories, but he was also that person who cleaned up Maplewood Mall without getting paid.  He was the person who passed out flyers for the Councilwoman.  He knew people and they knew him.  Promises were made. Did any of it really mean anything in the long run?  Did any of it materialize into something meaningful or life-changing for him?  Nope.

He may have looked beat up and run down, but Howard had a lot of flair and style.  I remember running into him in Maplewood Mall and he was cleaned up. Fresh haircut, clean shaven, Howard was a new man, standing tall, ready to take on the world.  I made sure to photograph him because I respected him as a man, a black man who had his own story to tell and fuck what other people thought.

Sure, he didn’t have all of his teeth anymore.  But I could see Howard as a handsome man many years ago who fell on hard times and lost his way. The lesson that I learned from knowing Howard is that books are best judged after you open them and read them.   I saw myself in Howard, knowing, understanding and relating to what it’s like to be at the epicenter of soul-crushing loss related to family, the kind of loss you don’t wish on your worse enemy.

The way he ended up was a cautionary tale for what could have happened to me if I had allowed this loss to obliterate the part of my mind whose primary responsibility it is to the rest of my body to hold it all together.

Who he was during the three plus years that I knew him, was a bit of a mystery.  But he and I did a dance that seduced me just enough to keep me pursuing, kept me chasing just enough.  I’m realizing now as I write this that the relationship I had with him was similar to the one we both have/had with Germantown.

This place had a hold on us both.  At the end, we learned that it didn’t want or need us as much as we needed it to want us.  I was Howard, Howard was me, and we were both seduced by this place.  I made it out, unfortunately, he didn’t.

Despite all of that, I am so glad that I had a chance to get to know him and call him my homie.  Rest easy, Howard. We’ll have that coconut cake and sip  of wine soon enough.

Salute.

[theothergermantown-blog]

In memory of  Julie Baranauskas...

I’m shocked and stunned by the recent news of Julie’s passing. Her death is sending shockwaves through my former neighborhood and rightly so.  She was one of a kind.  

Since words (that would make sense to anyone else) escape me right now, I’ll just post up a little tribute to her the best way I know how, combining some of the photos I shot of her with my own written recollections.

First, here’s Julie in 2014 getting out the vote.  It was taken at the polling place on Coulter and Greene Streets.  I had to do this one on the sneak attack.  

Here are a few shots of Julie at a Penn-Knox Neighborhood Association meeting in 2015.  As president, she was firm, cracking the whip to keep these meetings focused and on task. Because let’s be honest.  There are a lot of strong personalities in Germantown, and no shortage of them in Penn-Knox.

The below photo of Julie (actually, her back) was shot in 2013 during the time my solo show, “The Other Germantown” was on display at the iMPeRFeCT Gallery.  I invited the community to come to the gallery and have their portraits taken in front of the wall of black and white photographs that were part of the installation. I made a bunch of portraits at the Gallery, including this one, and then moved the project over to G-Town Radio where I made more.  

I can’t remember if she told me up front to not photograph her, or if I even asked to photograph her.  At any rate, Julie was indeed a rebel and wasn’t going to follow   So I just took a photo of her back.  

How apropos, a picture of her actually looking at my work.  She studied my work.  She recognized many of the people I photographed, including our friend Howard.  And  being the veteran educator that she was, Julie asked (a lot of) questions about my practice and kept me on my toes.   She was very opinionated (in a knowledgeable way) but complimentary when it counted. 

We ran into each other on the streets of Penn-Knox, while she was walking her dog.  Or at many of the community events.  Sometimes she would be riding in her car and would see me and give me a lift.  The last time that happened, I was headed up to Staples in Chestnut Hill to make copies for something that I don’t even remember what for.  But I remember our ride together and our conversation about Germantown, politics, art, and life.  

And she got me.  She understood my frustrations with living in Germantown (and in Penn-Knox, more specifically) and listened to me vent and bitch and   Most importantly, she supported me in whatever endeavors I wanted to pursue in our neighborhood, and had no problems openly sharing her support for my wacky ideas even when it challenged the status quo and the grumpiness that would most likely follow.  

She loved Penn-Knox.  Everything about it, she loved.  The good, the bad and the ugly.  And she had no problems balancing her strengths as a leader and public figure with being of service to our community.  She didn’t just talk the talk.  She was a doer. 

I will miss her.  

Rest in peace, Julie.

[theothergermantown-blog]

The Other Germantown turned 3 today!

[theothergermantown-blog]

Happy to have my work featured on the #EveryZipPhilly website.  

I couldn't have gotten this project done without the following people:  producer Alex Lewis, Community Director of the Faith Chapel CDC Mother Ines Love, and Len 'Cruze' Webb (who is always talking me up when the opportunity arises).   

If you are in Germantown and want to support a group of dedicated people who are working very, very hard to combat #hunger and #foodinsecurity in Philadelphia, I strongly urge you to check out Faith Chapel.  They need our help and support, and deserve it and much more.   

Hunger and food insecurity are issues are very important to me, and I’ve blogged about this issue here on The Other Germantown.  I believe very strongly that a country like America that turns a blind eye to people facing the prospect of going without a healthy meal, or having access to healthy food, is a country that really needs to get its priorities together.  

Hunger and food insecurity cuts across racial and socioeconomic lines, and one of the things I learned from talking with Mother Love and others is that hunger doesn't discriminate. 

At the end of the day, this is a story about neighbors helping neighbors, and more of these stories are out there, waiting to be told.(via ZIP Photo Essay: Beyond Faith at Faith Chapel in East Germantown, 19144 | Every Zip Philadelphia | WHYY)

[theothergermantown-blog]

Germantown and Chelten Avenues, looking west. Photographed Saturday, December 5, 2015

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and now...most of Germantown is a food desert.

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Pathmark of Germantown.

Gone but not forgotten.

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From Germantown Avenue, looking west toward Queen Lane

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Sunrise, earlier today.

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Vernon Park

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at Gaffney’s