Louisville
Similar to photo walks in Dayton and Toledo, the plan was to shoot in Louisville this past week. A couple hours of urban landscape featuring a dash of street and ambient still life thrown in to fill the day spent away from filming class videos for an uncertain summer and fall of instruction at the university. But this day was different.
The murder by a police officer of an unarmed black man, hand cuffed, with the life strangled out of him for three minutes past the time another officer could not identify a pulse has changed the dynamic of American society. Such an irrefutable offense captured on video brings into doubt all the other prior incidents where trust in public institutions led society to give those institutions the benefit of doubt. This time the evidence is too compelling and there must be a reckoning, the status quo is changing. The change was marked by protest and anger, infiltrated by opportunistic elements with dubious intentions who stole the message. Authorities overreacted, more atrocities were documented which finally has led to de-escalation and an uneasy truce that hopefully brings discussion and progress.
When the pivotal event occurred in Minneapolis, it tore the scabs off a wound in Louisville. Swept under the carpet in March, it would not be ignored anymore. There is no video to set the facts as irrefutable, but we know the outcome for Breonna Taylor. A young black woman, a paramedic, a member of the public safety establishment itself was dead of its own hands, eight gunshot wounds the cause of death. After witnessing a murder in Minneapolis, Louisville exploded. My visit took me to the aftermath.
I didn’t go with the intent of shooting the aftermath, but it could not be escaped. My last post was about reflections in urban photography. But there are no reflections when the windows are gone or are boarded up. Not wanting to gawk, I picked my moments on what to capture of the aftermath. Then the human element entered in.
A middle aged woman was live streaming her disgusted commentary of aftermath on her cell phone. Minutes later, I spotted a well dressed woman taking snap shots and selfies amid the store fronts of OSB and broken glass. In this time of vanity, I took her picture. The situation spoke to me about the part of society untouched and removed from the firestorm that had swept through. A few minutes later I saw some graffiti. It said “Poverty is…” the rest of the message was gone it was actively being painted over that very moment. I rushed across the parking in lot in order to frame an image within my fixed focal length. I could not capture the entire message for posterity, but I captured that there was a message now being covered up. It was early on in the period of unrest, surely this would not be its final outcome?
These were the images of the day, what I was meant to see and capture. I began to shoot some more of the aftermath as supporting images. As I processed the images a few days later, I started to notice details not originally seen. The well dressed woman was taking pictures of damage at a street corner dedicated to two prominent past members of Louisville’s African American community. The CVS so ravaged was in the first floor of a former department store where a sit in of many years ago demanded for the rights of all people to shop of its wares. A plaque marks the spot.
I did not intend to spend the day taking gawker images at the misfortune of the day, but there was a story to tell. I regret not having more support images with which to do that. It is a fine line between when there is a story to tell and when there are opportunistic images to steal. There is a time and place to tell every story. Discerning the appropriate time and moment is something I often think about and struggle with.