Miss-Delectable
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Cultural Diversity and Photography | Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston
On Friday I visited the Deaf Society in Parramatta on their open day to fulfil a photojournalism assignment. It occurred to me later that I felt happy in a way that I had not felt for a long time. Later that night I went to the Hawkesbury Agricultural College ball, and, if I could set down the range of different emotions that I went through on that day I think I could make a fine piece of art.
There was a big crowd full of some beautiful old deaf individuals, gorgeous in the way that the elderly sometimes are, as well as a good cross-section of the multicultural community of Western Sydney. There was a deaf woman serving Lebanese food, a young woman making jewellery and demonstrations of deaf technology. It was lively and crowded and wonderful in its way. I saw some beautiful smiles. The only Auslan sign I recognised was "Thumbs up" but it seemed sufficient. I don't usually don't need to define myself as "hearing" but in this context I was a minority. Staff were enthusiastic and it made the work a pleasure.
I felt a very complicated ethical dilemma when photographing a young deaf Hijabi, having written an essay on the use of Islamic dress in photography and the way it constructs particular types of symbolic meaning. In fact the idea to photograph the deaf was inspired by the work of Iranian photopgrapher Fariba Abazari, who took some beautiful shots of the blind reading Braille in Farsi/Arabic. Islamic dress is an obvious symbol and one which, like flags or other political insignia, are abused in photojournalism as a kind of pseudo-Bressonian "decisive moment".
I took the shot - I couldn't help myself, yet, I felt that in a way there was something a little exploitative about it, to use a person's religious obligations to make a particular visual statement. Muslims don't wear Islamic dress to represent "multiculturalism" or any other agenda, rather, they do it because it is an expectation of their religion. It makes a public statement out of private belief, and to draw attention to it is perhaps a misuse of a circumstance that that individual may feel they have no control.
After high school I spent some time volunteering with a benevolent organisation which assisted new parents in the Western Sydney area and I produced an advertisement which they used to promote their group. I had included a picture of a white baby in the poster and was told later that whilst they were pleased with the result, some versions had to be made with black children/parents in them. The phrase my supervisor used was something like "This had to be corrected". She was a lovely Islander woman and I learned a lot from her. I only had to be told this once. The reasons why this was necessary become obvious when you turn your mind to it.
I think there is a delicate decision to be made here, as the people at the deaf society requested permission to use my images in their marketing (they also had their own photographer). Consent will also have to be gathered from all the people in each photograph, which does a little to ease the dilemma, but it still makes me wonder.
Later at the ball I remember dancing and drinking (taking a night off my teetotalling) and realising that I was still thinking about Muslim integration and other such issues. I wanted to pick my eye out with an ice-pick. One of the resident assistants is a beautiful Indian Muslim, an absolute gentleman who takes his religion seriously. I helped him explain to one of the other residents the difference between Halal/Halam. God knows I don't raise my pen against him, or others like him. There is a young Pakistani Muslim who studies the same course as I, one of the few friends I made this year who lives off-campus, and my heart breaks every time I talk to her.
I don't know if the Liberal party was ever better than it is now. I am too young to make much of an assessment with any authority, though I do feel as if I have been taken down a path, led in to issues which would not naturally have occurred to me. My intense dislike of conflict has seen me attempt to resolve differences which are incapable of any meaningful resolution, and has served only to put me at conflict with myself.
I think of myself in high school, borrowing the Qur'an from the library and having it stolen, listening to Muslim radio and chants well in to the night, though I could not understand anything that was being said, except when I heard a song "Oh, Palestine!". There was the intense hatred I felt for Sophie Panopolous for the things she said, against my community, the Islamic students who faced the exact same stresses that I did at university, and, who certainly did not need this extra stress. I called her a bitch, said she should be fitted with a muzzle. I said when the wave crashes, so would she.
I tried to promote Muslims I respected like Waleed Aly or Iktimal Hage-Ali. There was my complete desolation at the field of journalism, reading an article by Miranda Devine which was absent of any argument and following a formula, where I felt compelled to write to her and tell her I was abandoning any effort to become a journalist because of her, wanting to hurt her. Then devoting myself to law I lost my mind, not once but twice, asking a Muslim psychiatrist at one point if he believed the angel Gabriel came down to Mohammed, that Islamic males have a mistrust of erectile dysfunction cures that are "psychological", then accosting him with "Allah Akbah" down the hospital corridors. Later in Paris I visited the Paris Mosque and the Arab Institute. In the Pompidou (modern art) centre I spent several minutes memorising the name of feminist Iranian photographer Shadi Ghadirian, whom I later wrote about an interviewed online, asking her if she had read the work of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She said she had never heard of her.
In the midst of all this Islamophilia there was the opposite force pulling at me. What do you do when your society is so ruptured, so torn? You adapt. I lashed out at Islam - why? I was negotiating, giving moral support to sell-outs, trying to give a voice to those who would face a right-wing media/political context and have to operate in it. A call to survive, one which was neither moral, nor wise, but heart-felt, amounting only to the message: do what you have to do. My worst fear is of nihilism, suicide, loss of hope.
On Friday I visited the Deaf Society in Parramatta on their open day to fulfil a photojournalism assignment. It occurred to me later that I felt happy in a way that I had not felt for a long time. Later that night I went to the Hawkesbury Agricultural College ball, and, if I could set down the range of different emotions that I went through on that day I think I could make a fine piece of art.
There was a big crowd full of some beautiful old deaf individuals, gorgeous in the way that the elderly sometimes are, as well as a good cross-section of the multicultural community of Western Sydney. There was a deaf woman serving Lebanese food, a young woman making jewellery and demonstrations of deaf technology. It was lively and crowded and wonderful in its way. I saw some beautiful smiles. The only Auslan sign I recognised was "Thumbs up" but it seemed sufficient. I don't usually don't need to define myself as "hearing" but in this context I was a minority. Staff were enthusiastic and it made the work a pleasure.
I felt a very complicated ethical dilemma when photographing a young deaf Hijabi, having written an essay on the use of Islamic dress in photography and the way it constructs particular types of symbolic meaning. In fact the idea to photograph the deaf was inspired by the work of Iranian photopgrapher Fariba Abazari, who took some beautiful shots of the blind reading Braille in Farsi/Arabic. Islamic dress is an obvious symbol and one which, like flags or other political insignia, are abused in photojournalism as a kind of pseudo-Bressonian "decisive moment".
I took the shot - I couldn't help myself, yet, I felt that in a way there was something a little exploitative about it, to use a person's religious obligations to make a particular visual statement. Muslims don't wear Islamic dress to represent "multiculturalism" or any other agenda, rather, they do it because it is an expectation of their religion. It makes a public statement out of private belief, and to draw attention to it is perhaps a misuse of a circumstance that that individual may feel they have no control.
After high school I spent some time volunteering with a benevolent organisation which assisted new parents in the Western Sydney area and I produced an advertisement which they used to promote their group. I had included a picture of a white baby in the poster and was told later that whilst they were pleased with the result, some versions had to be made with black children/parents in them. The phrase my supervisor used was something like "This had to be corrected". She was a lovely Islander woman and I learned a lot from her. I only had to be told this once. The reasons why this was necessary become obvious when you turn your mind to it.
I think there is a delicate decision to be made here, as the people at the deaf society requested permission to use my images in their marketing (they also had their own photographer). Consent will also have to be gathered from all the people in each photograph, which does a little to ease the dilemma, but it still makes me wonder.
Later at the ball I remember dancing and drinking (taking a night off my teetotalling) and realising that I was still thinking about Muslim integration and other such issues. I wanted to pick my eye out with an ice-pick. One of the resident assistants is a beautiful Indian Muslim, an absolute gentleman who takes his religion seriously. I helped him explain to one of the other residents the difference between Halal/Halam. God knows I don't raise my pen against him, or others like him. There is a young Pakistani Muslim who studies the same course as I, one of the few friends I made this year who lives off-campus, and my heart breaks every time I talk to her.
I don't know if the Liberal party was ever better than it is now. I am too young to make much of an assessment with any authority, though I do feel as if I have been taken down a path, led in to issues which would not naturally have occurred to me. My intense dislike of conflict has seen me attempt to resolve differences which are incapable of any meaningful resolution, and has served only to put me at conflict with myself.
I think of myself in high school, borrowing the Qur'an from the library and having it stolen, listening to Muslim radio and chants well in to the night, though I could not understand anything that was being said, except when I heard a song "Oh, Palestine!". There was the intense hatred I felt for Sophie Panopolous for the things she said, against my community, the Islamic students who faced the exact same stresses that I did at university, and, who certainly did not need this extra stress. I called her a bitch, said she should be fitted with a muzzle. I said when the wave crashes, so would she.
I tried to promote Muslims I respected like Waleed Aly or Iktimal Hage-Ali. There was my complete desolation at the field of journalism, reading an article by Miranda Devine which was absent of any argument and following a formula, where I felt compelled to write to her and tell her I was abandoning any effort to become a journalist because of her, wanting to hurt her. Then devoting myself to law I lost my mind, not once but twice, asking a Muslim psychiatrist at one point if he believed the angel Gabriel came down to Mohammed, that Islamic males have a mistrust of erectile dysfunction cures that are "psychological", then accosting him with "Allah Akbah" down the hospital corridors. Later in Paris I visited the Paris Mosque and the Arab Institute. In the Pompidou (modern art) centre I spent several minutes memorising the name of feminist Iranian photographer Shadi Ghadirian, whom I later wrote about an interviewed online, asking her if she had read the work of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She said she had never heard of her.
In the midst of all this Islamophilia there was the opposite force pulling at me. What do you do when your society is so ruptured, so torn? You adapt. I lashed out at Islam - why? I was negotiating, giving moral support to sell-outs, trying to give a voice to those who would face a right-wing media/political context and have to operate in it. A call to survive, one which was neither moral, nor wise, but heart-felt, amounting only to the message: do what you have to do. My worst fear is of nihilism, suicide, loss of hope.
