LGBTQ + BLM in Watertown, Connecticut, 6/27/20

Watertown, Connecticut

When I saw on a list published online by the Connecticut Democratic Party that this event was scheduled for Saturday at noon I knew I wanted to be there.

As with other BLM gatherings here in rural western Connecticut the participants were mostly not black, because hardly any blacks live here. However, this one had a big extra element. It was that LGBTQ+ partisans, allied with BLM, had organized it, gotten it listed on social media, gotten the Watertown Congregational Church involved. A lot of LGBTQ+ people live here. Like everywhere.

It was well organized by the young people who put it together. It began with a musician playing and singing some songs to get everyone in the mood. The Watertown Green is tiny, but has a gazebo in the center. They'd set up some minimal sound equipment.

Several of the young people who had organized the event spoke, with an interpreter signing with them. Once again I was struck by the fact that this was organized by young folks, though the turnout to participate crossed all age groups.

Connecticut's U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal showed up, unannounced. The organizers of the event and others around were a little stunned by this. They asked if he would speak to the gathered crowd after the scheduled speakers. Of course, he said he would.

One of the organizers asked for everyone to either lie down or take a knee for 8 minutes and forty six seconds. It's a powerful mechanism. I'm used to dealing with time intervals like this because of my alternate process photographic darkroom work, but as I moved around and tried to respectfully find positions I could make pictures from, I began to feel that this was the longest eight minutes I'd ever experienced. I think that's the point. It works.

Senator Blumenthal took a knee for the whole long moment.

The rainbow imagery combined with the BLM was really strong. For the Senator and the other speakers.

As always, just click on any one of the pictures to get a much larger and clearer view of them if you are using a large screen.

Goodwill Baptist Church

Ceres, Virginia, 10/23/16

Tuckasegee Wesleyan Church, Picture and Setting, #12

 Tuckasegee Wesleyan Church, Tuckasegee, North Carolina

Another shot, this one from my White Churches series, from the day in 2000 where my notes have gone missing. Again, the digital snapshots from the minicam I was carrying give enough information for an identification. Even in April the Carolina sky is filled with what farther north would be a midsummer noontime haze. Like my Drive-in Theater series, the pictures are about landscape settings as much as the structures themselves. In this case, mostly about the southern mountain setting.

Livelystone Church: Picture and Setting #10

On Rt. 16, south of War, West Virginia

While on the road searching out drive-in theaters in 2005, I became intrigued with the ubiquitous but varied white-painted churches seen everywhere along the road. The theaters required work to be found, especially back before I had GPS or many of the surviving theaters had any web presence. The churches required no searching though, they're everywhere. The problem was to stop and look and decide if any individual one was distinctive enough either in structure or situation, to make for a picture. The two series of pictures grew in tandem. This is one of my favorites, made with the 8x10 Deardorff and 165mm Super Angulon.