Rights for Nature

Rights for Nature © Jim Korpi

“Rights for Nature” chapter of the Ecuador constitution reads: “Nature or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution. Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognitions of rights for nature before the public bodies.” -The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
Recently passed in the Ecuador constitution was a clause that included the above text. As Neil Armstrong once said as he set foot on a lifeless moon, "This is one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

Work for Love

Work for Love © Jim Korpi

Revelations often come gradually. A thought is validated by something one reads, and then the revelation becomes more grounded in reality.
Outside concern has been weighing on my conscience as far as the future and careers. Often this comes in the form of comments like, "You should market yourself more. You should do more freelance work for... You should make more portraits. You should use lights when you photograph. Editors like lights." Maybe I should.
Or maybe I shouldn't. Maybe photography in its employable form isn't what I want out of it. I'm sure the great painters of the past were hired by the upper crust to make portraits of their poodles. But my hands, brains and efforts are capable of making the meeting of ends more rewarding than the forfeiture of love for a dollar.
Wendell Berry was answering a question by writer John Leax about "will" power involved in his work as a writer and what role it plays. This was part of an interview in the book Conversations with Wendell Berry and the beginning of a revelation.
"WB: Well, let me see if I can do better. I'm finding it hard to talk about the involvement of will in my work because I don't understand it very well.
Once, I would have understood it better, but that was when I was young and determined to become a writer. For a while, then, I really was writing by will power, trying to learn how to write and to make a start. But I remember a moment - in 1965, or a little after - when I realized that I didn't have to be a writer; there were other kinds of work also that required artistry and offered satisfaction. From here, looking back, I can see what a defining moment that was. I had, in effect, decided not to be a "professional" writer, but instead, in the literal sense, an amateur: I would work for love. I would be attempting a life, not a career.
After that, I knew I didn't have to try to "think things up," or try to force myself to get "ideas for writing." Will power, as an initiating force, became less and less involved. I wrote what came to me. The will was in the workmanship. I wanted to make of what had come to me the best work of art I could. But that also involves fascination. For me, the issue of will in art is impossibly complicated by the fact of fascination. Have I done what I have done - in writing, but also in the fields and woods - because I willed to do it, or because I was irresistibly attracted to it and wanted to do it? I have done it, I think, for love.
That is true, anyhow, of the novels and stories and poems. The essays, I suppose, originate somewhat differently. Love and fascination certainly are involved, but also fear. I became an essayist in order to try to defend good and necessary things that are in danger. The the essays, the issue of will seems to me to become even more difficult and obscure.
Perhaps it takes a certain amount of will to hang on for a few decades in defense of losing (though, I believe, never lost) causes. On the other hand, maybe one enters these battles not because of will or choice, but rather because, loving the things one loves, one has no choice.
Implicit in virtually all of my essays is the impulse of agrarianism: the desire for an economy that would be careful of the land, just to human workers, neighborly, democratic, and kind to all the gifts, natural and divine, on which our life depends. To a a considerable extent, my argument was my father's before it was mine; in it, I have been his ally, and I have as allies my brother, my wife, and my children.
So how does one figure in an advocacy that is a fascination, a privilege, and a nessessary result of one's most essential affections? I don't know."

Planet Ohio University

After Fest © Jim Korpi

It may be happening all over the collegiate world, and/or maybe I'm getting old, but life on Planet Ohio University functions on a different set of rules than that of Planet Earth.
Here young folks without jobs drive $50,000 vehicles, they party on Mondays, they wear their pajamas, sweatpants, and lingerie like uniforms, they talk on their cell phones and eat fast food in quiet sections of the library, they party on Tuesdays, they stand still on both sides of the elevator, they walk on a "don't walk", they live their lives to ipod soundtracks, they party on Wednesdays, they get drunk with their mothers, they cuss loudly in public areas, they use the word like following ever other word, and they are studying unemployable topics in hopes of getting a job.
Is this truly the work force of our future? If so, we're in more trouble than I imagined.

Redefining Failure

Support © Jim Korpi

It's said Michael Jordan scored high because he shot the ball toward the hoop more than most. Missing, in this case, becomes as familiar as not. With this normalcy comes a calm. In this calm there is no hesitation. Hesitation can, as a deer in headlights, lead to failure.
My past weekend was a self-analysis of failure. The advertised "cage fighting" match was actually just a typical boxing ring. The lighting was borderline candlelight, and my skills with color film and a rangefinder camera were/are in given situations in need of refreshing.
The drive was far, the cost was high and the results were poor; a fine recipe for failure.
But I shot.
This guy entered the ring, got his face pounded and then lost the match. Maybe next time he'll punch less, headlock more and go to bed earlier the night before. That night he had plenty of ring-side support.

Therapeutic Properties

Deep End © Jim Korpi

"When I'm photographing with digital I'm thinking about the photographs I've made. When I'm photographing with film I'm thinking about the photographs I will make." Jim Nachtwey said in a conversation with National Geographic's Director of Photography David Griffin when they were discussing whether or not Mr. Nachtwey would photograph the story Military Medicine in digital or film.
The process of photography has been both my therapy and my disorder. Currently film has brought about rejuvenation in the therapeutic properties of the process. The agility and quickness of digital was revolutionary, but has taken away some visceral connection I once had with photography. One is not better than the other. One is only more applicable for one personality or application over another.
Film and digital have been playing tug of war in the minds of consumers and professionals alike. With the assistance of a market driven economy it's inevitable that digital will win the war. A Wal-Mart employee told me the other day they are going completely film-free next month. No more film processing done in-house at Wal-Marts throughout the country. This comes as a shock to a small community that lost all of it's camera stores due to the arrival of Wal-Mart in the first place. In a market of plenty there are few options.