Perspective

I'll never forget the time I heard the French photographer Gilles Peress speak and show his photographs taken during the Genocide in Rwanda. How he came back to New York after witnessing the horrors the world would come to know as Rwanda (800,00 people murdered in just 100 days) a country only known before to the world as one of the last sanctuaries for the highly endangered Silver Back Mountain Gorilla. As Gilles slowly talked through his slide presentation, he very honestly drifted off on how he became very depressed developing his negatives, making contact sheets, and printing large b/w photographs of the most horrible images one could never believe unless they were there themselves. He spoke of "what does it all mean?" and how this work in particular just sent him down a spiral staircase of humanity until he reached rock bottom, which he did ... which we all did, those who were there with cameras, including myself.

Tomorrow I board a plane for Atlanta Georgia, we have been invited to screen our film on Saturday afternoon at a Darfur Conference held at Emory University. I will be one of the keynote speakers on Saturday addressing what I witnessed in Darfur. I must have done this lecture over a hundred times, but I have to be honest like Gilles "what does it all mean?"

Friday night they will have a screening of Darfur Now with Adam Sterling as a keynote speaker and one of the six activists in the documentary. I first met Adam in 2006 when UCLA had me down to do a slide show lecture of my photographs in Darfur. He was finishing his undergraduate degree and waiting tables on the side. His passion for Darfur amazed me, someone so young and determined to bring hope for people he had never met half way across the globe. Since then we have been at many Darfur awareness events and he has turned into a leading voice on Divestment in Sudan. I haven't seen Adam in about a year and am looking forward to it ... besides, he owes me a beer.