Human Nature Vs. Nature & Nature Vs. Nature
When I was driving on US 40 on Christmas day this year, I saw more death and carnage than a slaughter house. I like to call the stretch between Dinosaur, Colorado and Craig, “Death Highway”. One, because I have been very close to death while driving that stretch due to the amount of deer, elk and antelope. Two, because I have never seen so many deer, elk and antelope carcasses along a single stretch of tarmac. Fitting in with my juxtapositions project, I found the image of the deer sneaking across the road. I included the second photo to emphasize how remarkable wildlife is. They have to battle the elements day in and day out. Not to mention the fences, highways, farmland, cars, trucks, SUVs and hunting rifles. Respect nature, it works harder than you every day.
Monolith
I’m starting a new personal project. As I have travelled I have become very aware of human impact on environment. Beautiful landscapes interjected with track homes, telephone wires, smokestacks, shopping malls, freeways, contrails, smog and clutter. Within this new project I will be exploring juxtapositions. I will find new ways to make the artificial entities play-in with their environments. I call this ‘Monolith’, I had intended to shoot the mountain in the distance during a glorious sunset, but when I reached what I thought would be a good vantage point, I had discovered an arrested development. Trash cans, 1/2 finished roads, and a collection of concrete work, mangled and abandoned. This one was perched on its end, upright. I could only imagine what our ancestors would think it meant. A relic? A pillar? Nope, just waste, leftover from a time of economic strife and human greed.
Sundance Pt. 2
The last of the events that I shot during the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. This was the Dream House. A 20+ million dollar house at the top of Deer Valley Resort.
Sundance Thus Far
Just a few selects from some of the events and projects that I have been helping out on, here in Park City, Utah. Sundance is a pretty hectic scene with a lot of opportunities available to me and other independent filmmakers and visual artists.
Getting Weird In The Desert
On my way out to Utah last week I turned off of the I-15 at the Zzyzx exit. I drove toward a distant dust storm, which was blowing in the distance. Before I knew it, I was standing in the middle of a muddy salt flat. It got weird.
W.H.O. Leprosy Elimination Name Change Petition
To: WHO
This is the official petition of DocNOW Media to request an official change of title for the World Health Organization’s (WHO) “Leprosy Elimination” Program. The request is to have this program’s name changed to “Leprosy Control” Program to create a higher global awareness of the number of newly reported and ongoing leprosy cases worldwide.
According to the WHO website:
“In 1991 WHO’s governing body, the World Health Assembly (WHA) passed a resolution to eliminate leprosy as a public health problem by the year 2000. Elimination of leprosy as a public health problem is defined as a prevalence rate of less than one case per 10 000 persons. The target was achieved on time and the widespread use of MDT reduced the disease burden dramatically.”
- (http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs101/en/index.html)
This simply states that the WHO, end every country which openly participates in their program, will consider Leprosy eliminated, per WHO standards, if less than 1 in every 10,000 of the country’s population has Leprosy.
In a country like India, with a population of over 1,000,000 people, there can be 100,000 new cases every year and it still falls under the amount decided by the WHO.
The number of newly reported cases in India in 2008 was 137,000. This is 29,000 MORE cases than were discovered when the first survey was conducted in India in 1871-72. India announced that they eliminated leprosy as a national health concern on December 21, 2005.*
This example is true for countries all over the world with over 140 countries reporting cases of leprosy to the WHO in 2010**
The dictionary defines elimination as :
“ to remove or get rid of, esp. as being in some way undesirable: to eliminate risks; to eliminate hunger, to eradicate or kill. ”
We are asking that, to eliminate misunderstanding in both educated and uneducated areas alike, the WHO agree to change the name of their program to the much more appropriate “Leprosy Control Program”. This will promote further understanding of this disease across the planet and educate a broader spectrum of people. Although the WHO does good all over the world, their selection of wording here is only further misguiding the public about the world’s already “most misunderstood disease.”
* Facts taken from the 2008 WHO India’s publication “Elimination of Leprosy as a Public Health Problem in India”
** 2010 First Quarter WHO World Leprosy Record Report
By clicking on this link you will then be able to sign the petition here http://www.PetitionOnline.com/lf67we9/petition.html
An American Family: Zombie Edition
Last year I visited the Magee’s home in Castle Rock, Colorado, to shoot a ‘creepy family portrait’. This year, all hell had broken loose. Enjoy.
