peripheral vision

photography by Kate Wilhelm

peripheral vision blog

because making photographs exposes as much about the photographer as the subject

paper planes

I have a new song on repeat these days: “Paper Planes” by MIA (which is apparently on the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack – a movie I really want to see). Go listen to it here. The other day, I tried to convince Ishra to create a tribal fusion choreography to it, but she wasn’t keen on all the gunshots. “What is it saying? ‘All I wanna do is [boom boom boom]…’ What kind of a message is that?” she asked.

Those questions hadn’t really occurred to me. I liked the beat, and thought the gun shots and cash register sounds could make for some great isolations and accents. That said, from the very first listening, it made me think of Jodi Bieber’s work, “Between Dogs and Wolves,” especially images #9 and 10 if you follow that link and scroll through. And those are pretty disturbing, so Ishra probably has a point. Before I saw Bieber’s work, probably a year ago now, I had a pretty naive view of impoverished children in Africa; I thought material wealth isn’t all it’s cracked up to be anyways, so maybe it wasn’t that bad. When I was in South Africa, I saw poverty for sure, lots of it, but I also saw so much song and laughter that I thought maybe it wasn’t so bad. Bieber’s work forced me to rethink that.

* * *

A tv crew was at the market yesterday. Which has nothing to do with anything, except that I’ve been trying to find a way to work in a quote from ER that’s been haunting me. On Thursday night, I watched a rerun of ER. I gave up on that show a year or two or three ago, not sure why now. But I was restless after my photo class and needed something to watch while I wound down for bed. Anyways, this is the quote:

“When you lose your parents, you’re an orphan. You lose your spouse and you’re a widow. But if when you lose your baby, there is no word.”

And that’s really all I have to say for myself this weekend. Oh – and thanks for voting in my last post! It really helped.

7 Responses to “paper planes”

  1. ewe_are_here Says:

    Make sure you find the time to see Slumdog Millionaire… absolutely worth the viewing!

  2. janet Says:

    My best friend saw Slumdog Millionaire on Thursday and said it was incredible.

    And that quote? Perfect.

  3. Kyla Says:

    Some things just shouldn’t happen, so we don’t make words for them…like somehow that will make it less commonplace. Verbal voodoo.

    I keep hearing about Slumdog Millionaire and have absolutely no idea what it is about. I think that’s why I haven’t seen it yet.

  4. Mad Says:

    Slumdog Millionaire will likely never come to Sleepy Town. That says a lot about where I live.

  5. Denguy Says:

    To me, that song is just some annoying words set to “Straight to Hell” by The Clash.

  6. thordora Says:

    Mad, if it came here, there’s hope for you yet. Or, come visit and I’ll go see it again. :)

  7. kgirl Says:

    That ER quote haunted me as well.

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