I’ve been taking notes, most of them mental ones about the past week. I don’t think I can fully articulate what happened to me in New York. My feelings ran the gamut: insecurity, awestricken, discombobulation, guilt, love, longing, empathy, annoyance but most of all – gratitude. Gratitude for the opportunity to indulge myself – to learn from one of the best, to see how fortunate I am with my life, to know that there is someone I will come home to at the end of the week, to experience someone else’s struggles and feel helpless about not being able to help them out – all behind my lens.
The week started off quite harried for me… I left Canada in a frenzy and kept thinking that I was forgetting something. I was late for the initial meeting and I hate being late. They’d been already waiting for me for about 10-15 minutes, but with my flight and the traffic from New Jersey, it was all beyond my control.
It was a small group – just the three of us all together, and of course David, who was mentoring us for the week. Ben L. who’s a psychologist and Virgil DB., a neurologist. Both knew each other and are ‘repeat customers’ of the workshop. I immediately felt at ease with these men. And we all pretty much dove right in. After introductions, we were asked the regulatory “why we were there and what we hoped to achieve” question. I felt so hokey saying “I have developed a strong passion for photography and it would be interesting to see where this can take me”… Pretty lame, right? So cheesy and almost contrived. Ick, it gives me the heebie-geebies just recalling that.
This workshop is not one where you are taught the technicalities of photography. There were no notes given on how to set up a shot, what aperture or ISO’s are and how to properly use the camera in dim or bright lighting. There was no focus on artifice or posturing. This was a workshop which asked you at the end of the day why you chose the subjects you shot, and how your personality was reflected through that view finder. Some of the pictures almost seemed insidious and not romanticized.
My chosen topic for my photo essay was about immigrants in New York. Growing up, having New York practically as part of the family – I felt a strong affinity for these people who felt the need to leave their home countries, and strike it out in the Big Apple for a better life, real or imagined.
Being an immigrant myself when I was 18, I was one of the lucky ones who moved to another country, legitimately, alongside my complete immediate family. We had a great, modest home; my mother worked the job she’s always had since I was a child – she was a nurse. She took courses and got re-certified so she can practice Nursing in Canada. My father, on the other hand didn’t (want to) go through the motions of going through courses and getting the re-certification he needed to be the engineer that he was back home. He had worked in a glass factory which he abhorred and I felt, was a bit embarrassed about. He had this “I am better than this” attitude and as far as I can remember was only showing up to get a paycheck. Eventually my mother got the divorce that she had wanted for some time. They had already been separated six years prior to moving here and my mother jumped at the chance to get her divorce as soon as the dust settled with our move within a couple of years. I guess she figured she would still include my father in the application so that he would not be away from his children. Having said that, he really didn’t want to stay here with the menial job that he had, so he went back home to the Philippines seven years later after receiving his Canadian citizenship.
I had gone to college and university, and although my line of work doesn’t line up with my Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree, I am gainfully employed, have easily assimilated and have made a substantial mark in my local community. I remember going to art school in 1990 and when I introduced myself to my new classmates, they were very surprised that I had only been in Canada three months prior to the beginning of the school year. I found their surprise very intriguing until I met another lady who had been in Canada for five years, who pretty much kept to herself and still had a poor grasp of the language. . .
Meeting all these faces you are about to see on the slide show has given me an extraordinary sense of empathy and affinity to all those who are on the other side of my own immigration story. The people who have moved to North America, on their own, having not seen their families in years, living without proper documentation as illegal aliens, working double or never-ending shifts just to make ends meet. There are a lot of great success stories like mine – happy, well-adjusted immigrants who have worked hard to assimilate and make their dreams come true of a better life for them and their families. But there are also a lot more who have sadder stories – people who are less than secure of their day-to-day existence in their new country. These are the people who hold up and make cities big and small work – they take the jobs that no one else wants: the dirty, less than glamorous, ill-paying and back-breaking jobs that they can get without being documented; getting paid under the table and mostly in (little) cash. And yet even with the hand to mouth way of life, these people still manage to live their lives with dignity and pride, no matter how bumpy the ride and rough the waters are to tread. This is their story.
New York City, NY
June 12-17, 2011
Photos by: Aggie Armstrong
Edited and Put to Soundtrack by: David C. Turnley
Music and Lyrics by: Bruce Springsteen, City of Ruins
Cablearms 