All right, here goes. On Nov. 5th, I am running the NYC Marathon for Legal Services NYC. A spot opened up last minute, and I decided to seize the opportunity to be the change I want to see in the world. That means I’m fundraising at least $3500 to fund legal defenses and advocacy for immigrants, tenants, women, students, workers, veterans, the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses. More
Photography: Stuart Franklin
The entry on our school calendar was unassuming and inconspicuous—”Franklin, Journalism.” The description in our student guidebook was even more humble, simply a thin line that read “Stuart Franklin, English photographer.” I glanced at it and the night before, on a lark, I decided to google the name to see Franklin’s previous work. Much to my shock, I soon realized that Franklin was a world-renowned Magnum photographer, the man who had taken the photo of Tank Man in Tiananmen Square. Yes, That photo.
On the appointed day, we eagerly gathered in class, where a bespectacled chap carried himself with distinction to the front of the classroom. “Dr. Stuart Franklin, Political Ecology,” read his first slide. The student next to me poked my shoulder—wasn’t this class supposed to be about journalism? What’s political ecology? Are we sure this Dr. Franklin is a photographer, and not someone else with the same name?
As it turned out, Franklin is a man of many talents, not only a career photographer for Time and National Geographic, but the recipient of a PhD in geography at Oxford University. He now publishes and teaches courses in political ecology and photography at Oxford.
The burning question: what is political ecology? As he defined it, it is the analysis of complex political economic relationships between society and land- or marine-based resources or products. It’s political economy + environment. It’s a network of cultural interactions with the land around them. Food chains and the working conditions of migrant workers are two topics that might fall into this lens of analysis.
Convinced? Skeptical that this is just another newfangled invention of concatenated existing subfields? Regardless, Franklin took us on a fascinating trip around the world, as we looked at slash-and-burn destruction in Indonesia and Afghans fighting in a bread queue, all photographed in pristine condition. The following are some of his thoughts on photography, politics, and the luckiest break of his career.
There was an uprising that spring. A lot of factors were in play, but it was mostly due to increasing flows of information and the large amount of corruption going on. Young people were finally getting annoyed by corruption by people in power, and so they came out to the streets. It was a huge moment for the Chinese to demonstrate, and I asked if I could go to Beijing. My plane ticket was paid for by Magnum, but when I got there, Time put me on assignment and I ended up just staying there.
The epicenter of the action was Tiananmen, and at that point, I had been working as a photojournalist for about 10 years, and I was a pretty hardened war photographer. I knew that I had to get close to Tiananmen, so I found the Beijing Hotel, and I parked myself there.
Continue reading Stuart Franklin’s Political Ecology
Photo: Valeria Necchio
Last week marked a new lunar year, so in conjunction with my UNISG classmates, we held a Chinese New Year celebration, with all the Asian-style dishes you can possibly concoct (using the limited supplies found in Italy). There were all the classic, prosperity-bringing foods, like fish and tangerines, along with Thai-style noodles, pork with black bean sauce, and a heaping bowl of deep-fried squid. Yum, bring out the Sriracha!
For the occasion, I decided to make jiaozi (餃子) and nian gao (年糕). Now, I am pretty pro at making potstickers (although I haven’t figured out how to pleat them one-handed yet), but usually I just buy pre-made wrappers. Hey, stop judging, it takes long enough to mince the filling, fold and cook everything! However, in the bountiful land of Italy, packages of jiaozi wrappers are a little more difficult to come by. I could spend the day going to Turin to search them out, or alternatively, make them from scratch. It probably would have taken the same amount of time. In the end, cost won out and I decided to tackle making wrappers by hand.
So, I skyped my mom and asked her for a wrapper recipe. Now, you have to understand that when you ask Asian moms for recipes, they tell you something like, “Oh, that’s easy. First, you take two spoonfuls of X and a bag of Y, then you mix in some Z and add a cup of water, then steam it until it’s done. Is that clear?” Wait, what do you mean a spoonful? Is that a tablespoon or a teaspoon? And a bag, how much is that? “Oh, I mean a Chinese soup spoon. And you know—a bag! The brand of flour I always buy, I just use the whole bag.” Whoa, hold on, so when you say a cup of water, what kind of cup is that? “Oh, I always use this cup [gestures], the porcelain one with the flowers on it.” Um, okay, what about the steaming? How do you steam this? “What do you mean, how? Don’t you know how to steam things? Ai-yah, college-educated and brains are still empty!” At this point, we both throw our hands up in dismay.
Continue reading Recipe: Potstickers, Politics and Pork
After football, one of the greatest past-times in Italy is bemoaning the state of Italian politics. After all, there is nothing quite like the mixture of sheepish chagrin and amusement one feels when hearing that class-act Prime Minster Berlusconi has been caught with yet another outrageous quip, like “I am a man who works hard all day long and if I sometimes look at some good-looking girl, it’s better to be fond of pretty girls than to be gay.” (You can see the news conference here…and hear the resulting applause from the audience.)
In my anecdotal experience, it seems like Italian voters are tired of the corrupt and ineffective Berlusconi machine, but there is no other charismatic leader who has stepped up to the plate and mustered the necessary votes to sweep him out of power. And thus, he stays on.
Perhaps we should go back to politics as we used to know them. I randomly stumbled upon the method for electing the Doge, or the leader of the Most Serene Republic of Venice (~700-1797 AD). The procedure was as follows:
Thirty members of the Great Council, chosen by lot, were reduced by lot to nine; the nine chose forty and the forty were reduced by lot to twelve, who chose twenty-five. The twenty-five were reduced by lot to nine and the nine elected forty-five. Then the forty-five were once more reduced by lot to eleven, and the eleven finally chose the forty-one who actually elected the doge.
The goal was to minimize the influence of the city’s most powerful families and aristocrats. It certainly seems to spread power more effectively than say, the Electoral College system.