Occupy Tacoma: Portraits of a Non-Violent Revolution (1)

Two Tacoma women in the Pacific Northwest autumnal rain, their home-made placard proclaiming the strength  and solidarity of a movement that now spans the globe.

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Photographs by Loren Bliss copyright 2011. Click on each image to view it full-size. 

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Three views of Occupation Park -- officially Pugnetti Park -- the downtown Tacoma tract that has been home to Occupy Tacoma since 15 October. Center: the park fronts on Pacific Avenue, Tacoma's equivalent of Main Street. Informational picketing there continues from dawn to dusk, with motorists and passers-by overwhelmingly supportive.  Bottom: a General Assembly meeting, the mode of participatory democracy pioneered by Occupy Wall Street.         

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Demonstrators gathered in a drizzle and marched in rain that became a deluge, weather typical of autumn on the Pacific Northwest coast. This was the first of Occupy Tacoma's neighborhood-information marches, part of the group's ongoing effort to bypass a near-total news embargo imposed by Ruling Class media. The demonstration, on 21 October, focused on the dominantly African-American Hilltop neighborhood, which runs the length of a high ridge overlooking Commencement Bay, Tacoma's busy seaport. 

     

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Visual Thinking: Gratitude, Reflections and Tech Data

Thanks entirely to a woman whose screen-name is the new Katney and who has become my teacher on the Blogger discussion boards, I am finally able to post the remainder of the best images from the three takes (72 exposures) I shot of the Occupy Tacoma story between 19 and 22 October. (This same work is circulated internationally via Reader Supported News, for which see “Select Your Occupation” and scroll down to “Tacoma, Washington.”) 

Beyond that, I find I have surprisingly little to say.  Now that I am actually working again (never mind the fact the capitalist economy dictates I may never be paid for my efforts) – now that I am again running film through cameras, am again embracing the infinite sensuality of light, am (albeit in my shambling and geezerly way), once more dancing the photographer's dance – I suppose my verbal acumen is again reduced to what I prefer it to be, something shared mostly with a lover or with intimate friends, above all else in an environment where I need not fear the mortification of dyslexic error.

Though perhaps I am simply so filled with gratitude for this opportunity – this rebirth of revolutionary spirit I thought forever dead, this chance to do once more the sort of photojournalism I never in my wildest dreams imagined I would do again – that I am truly speechless. Hence, given my history – given the great loss I suffered in the 1983 fire (nearly all my photographs and writing and, worse, the almost-finished book of pictures and text "Glimpses of a Pale Dancer"), given the ruinous depression that followed, and now given this astounding gift yes late in life but nevertheless so compelling – I cannot but also pay tribute to the Muse, for which purpose there is no poet on this Earth better than Robert Graves:

Her brow was creamy as the crested wave,

Her sea-blue eyes were wild
But nothing promised that is not performed.

The camera – I only carried one – was a Pentax MX, with SMCP f/2.8 lenses of 28mm and 100mm. The night photo, the 28mm lens wide open, was hand-held at 1/4 second; the result surprised and delighted me because I previously believed no SLR could be successfully hand-held at such slow shutter speeds. The medium was FujiFilm 800, which I have come to prefer because it records so faithfully the hauntingly blue-shifted Pacific Northwest light.

It seems I am again a smith, sculpting choreographies in alchemical silver.

Obviously this is a work in progress.

LB/8 November 2011

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