Homero Aridjis (poet), Terry Tempest Williams, Sebastiao Salgado (photos currently at the Leonardo in SLC), and the SLC Jazz Orchestra. Through most of the evening Salgado's Exodus photos accompanied the music and speakers. TTW spoke about her month in Rwanda. Again I was embarrassed for myself and my country--what a futile waste of life, of children, of millions. And to think, with all due respect for the victims, of the money, support, and anger created by a relatively few American deaths during 9/11. I'm afraid much of our outrage at 9/11 has much more to do with genetic encoded survival instincts than with charity or empathy. If it were about true charity we would have immediately restructured our way of life and utilized the money and resources now in Iraq and Afganistan in Rwanda; if it were true we would do it again right now in Darfur (I wasn't even sure how to spell it--pathetic). But, I did not leave feeling helpless.
The beauty of the music, images, and words gave me much hope. The event ended with Salgado's new work entitled Genesis--intriguing and eerie black and white photos of natural landscapes and its inhabitants. Some of the most stunning photos were of penguins in the Antartica. The sheer fecundity in this seeming barren land pushed me dangerously close to hope and faith: if this magnitude of beauty is possible then we will, ultimately, be elevated out of our selfishness and ethnocentrism by pure natural force.
2 comments:
Thank you for this post. I find myself in rather a serious frame of mind about many of the things that you've mentioned here, and related ones--the news about extraordinary rendition, taking our prisoners to other countries for torture, in particular. I wonder about the power of beauty--images, words, music--in the face of these horrors. Salgado is a hero, in my mind, for his humane and compassionate and beautiful documentation. I saw some of his Antarctica photos in a profile published in the New Yorker. Did you see it?
didn't see it but would like to.
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