In The Flesh

Being in lockdown for most of last year, was a time for dreaming.  We dreamt of gatherings and conversations, groups of laughing friends and face to face discussions. Well, the lockdowns may not quite be over, but at least we are now allowed to hold an event that was planned in the midst of last year’s trials.

IN THE FLESH is an exhibition featuring twenty-five artists and focuses on the lives we lived, and the work we made during that memorable time. It centres around 40 photographs that come from disposable cameras, that were sent out 20 “creative” households during lockdown. The images were selected to portray a time of solitude, domesticity, contemplation and frustration.  There is an overarching peacefulness and lack of artifice that comes from photographing on uneditable analogue film.

Planning

Planning

These photographs are supported by works from three generations of the same family, also created during last year. Judith Chew painted a series of 17 intricately adorned dead eyed mannequins along with two other oil paintings that reveal a little her state of mind living alone during this time. Mark Chew has installed a six meter by three meter paste up created from imagery made during his daily walks around the postcode in which he was confined.

Film makers, Archie Chew and Alicia Easaw-Mamutil, have documented a collection of stories from lockdown, told from Melbourne’s front porches. This intertwined narrative will be screened on a continuous loop during the exhibition.

Paste Up, Mock Up

Paste Up, Mock Up

More Planning.

More Planning.

Add to this a music and poetry performances, food from the Melbourne Farmers Markets, beer from Young Henrys and wine from Minimum, and it promises to be an enriching evening.

Landon Abbott at Melbourne’s foremost digital art printing establishment SMLXL has been extraordinarily generous in supporting the exhibition, and the PACE Development Group has continuously astounded us with there generosity and professionalism in letting us use the space.

 It’s a free event, but for Covid reasons you need to BOOK for the Opening night as places are limited. Hope to see you there IN THE FLESH

"We Witnessed a Huge Demolition"

As Melbourne emerges from eight months of restrictions and starts to put her party clothes back on, I received an email from a friend of mine in Nairobi. Sammy was born in Kibera, the biggest slum in Africa, but he has done well for himself and now lives with his wife and 2 year old son in a small flat just outside its boundary.

“About a month ago ... we witnessed a huge demolition in Kibra. The exercise took about a week and affected over 400 families.

Reason for this demolition being to pave way for the construction of a link road passing through Kibra and railway reserve areas within the slum. When complete, the ksh2 billion 600-meter long by 60-metre wide Ngong-Langata link is expected to open up the area and ease traffic to the city centre. In short, there will be a probably tarmacked highway road passing somewhere through Kibra. 

Some resource centres, five schools and two hospitals (local clinic) were among the structures flattened, affecting more than 1000 households in the informal settlement. The fate of hundreds of school going children in Kibra  is unknown after at least five informal schools were brought down in the demolitions. Some almost seven churches built in the informal settlement's constituency have also been affected by the current demolition exercise which is allegedly built along the railway line. 

The 2nd wave of Covid-19 has seen for the last one month plus cases increasing with over 500 daily positive cases confirmed by the Ministry of Health and the number of fatalities also increasing. Schools also reopened early October for only grade 4 & 8 and form four (I think year 12 students in Australia) amidst the pandemic surge which has seen some school staff, teachers and even students testing positive for the virus.

The impact of this pandemic still remains largely felt with future uncertainties to many families. (especially slum residents)... Food insecurity, gender-based violence and teenage pregnancies have and/or continue to increase and still pose a major challenge to most families. A lot of small businesses continue to struggle too.”

He attached these three pictures.

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This time last year, I had just got back to Melbourne after spending a month East Africa. I had walked through the narrow, muddy lanes of Kibera with Sammy as my minder, visiting and photographing the women and families that struggle daily to survive with a modicum of dignity.

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A year on, and I’m no longer allowed to travel to record the stories of these people. (Australia is one of the only democracies in the world that has banned its citizens from leaving the country) The bulldozing of a few houses and schools doesn’t rate highly as a problem in a continent where Yemen is in "imminent danger of the worst famine the world has seen for decades" according to the UN Secretary-General Guterres. Or where Nigeria is witnessing the worst street violence in two decades, stemming from protests against police brutality. Or in Uganda where around 40 people have been killed in the last week by police and soldiers using live bullets to disperse protests over the arrest of a pop star turned presidential candidate.

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So as we begin to enjoy our well-deserved freedoms here in Melbourne, it is important to remember that our isolation from the rest of the world doesn’t mean that other countries problems have gone away. It seems instead, they have got worse.

Take The Plunge!

“As of 11:59pm on 18th October….outdoor photography will be allowed in the State of Victoria.”

(Thanks Dan)

Aniwa, Vanuatu.

Aniwa, Vanuatu.

Erromango, Vanuatu

Erromango, Vanuatu

Aniwa, Vanuatu

Aniwa, Vanuatu

The Bankrupt Poet

This week I felt it was important to remember some of the good things about America.

“To the bankrupt poet, to the jilted lover, to anyone who yearns to elude the doubt within and the din without, the tidal strait between Manhattan Island and her favorite suburb offers the specious illusion of easy death. Melville prepared for the plunge from the breakwater on the South Street promenade, Whitman at the railing of the outbound ferry, both men redeemed by some Darwinian impulse, maybe some epic vision, which enabled them to change leaden water into lyric wine. Hart Crane rejected the limpid estuary for the brackish swirl of the Caribbean Sea. In each generation, from Washington Irving’s to Truman Capote’s, countless young men of promise and talent have examined the rippling foam between the nation’s literary furnace and her literary playground, questioning whether the reams of manuscript in their Brooklyn lofts will earn them garlands in Manhattan’s salons and ballrooms, wavering between the workroom and the water. And the city had done everything in its power to assist these men, to ease their affliction and to steer them toward the most judicious of decisions. It has built them a bridge.” 


― Jacob M. Appel, The Biology of Luck

And how apt that a New York poet has just won the Nobel Prize for Literature,

Hendrix, Brown and the Styx Valley

Fifty years ago this month Jimi Hendrix was carried into St Mary Abbott's Hospital in South Kensington, London. He was already dead.  One of the doctors who assessed the body that day was the former Senator and Greens leader Bob Brown.  Bob remembers clearly Hendrix’ panicked girlfriend trying to keep up behind the stretcher in her high heels as they rushed him through the doors.

Over forty years after this historic and tragic event, I was asked to spend a couple of days photographing Bob Brown as he went about his work in Southern Tasmania, listening to stories of his extraordinary life. I was curious to make these images. His politics and mine didn’t necessarily align but I had never doubted that his intentions were always good.

I remember a kind, thoughtful and generous man. Pulling into a petrol station to fill up his Prius in a logging town outside Hobart he was casually abused by another customer there, but he smiled and drove slowly away from confrontation saying that there were bigger battles to fight. This incident typifies why so many people find him Inspirational, not because of a charismatic personality but because of his dogged, relentless commitment to the causes he believes so passionately about.

The picture below was never used. The magazine that had commissioned me, found it too mundane. They engaged a Sydney photographer to reshoot him a few weeks later in front of fake lush green garden wall in the Qantas Club at Mascot Airport…

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Here he sits in the Styx Forrest amongst “Eucalyptus Regnans”, or giant ash. Some of these trees are more than 500 years old, 20 metres in girth and stand 90 metres tall.

When this photograph was taken old growth logging was still permitted in the forest. After a bitter campaign run partly by Bob Brown, they were added to the forest reserve system in 2013.

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Jimi Hendrix said ….

“In order to change the world, you have to get your head together first.”

Bob Brown’s head is certainly together.

And here’s a little Dylan by Hendrix to brighten you Thursday Morning.

Instagram and the Death of the Family Photograph

Instagram is ten years old next month. I remember at the time being excited by the technology, as my then 12 year old daughter explained it to me.  I thought that finally people would begin to engage more deeply with photography, the thing I had been trying to get good at for the previous 25 years. Well, it didn’t quite work out that way, despite the fact that a billion different people posted a picture on the platform last month. My now 22 year old daughter describes it as “everyday life as public performance”.

The group of 12 photographs below are of my mother and father, my sister and my grandmother and yes, the fat little boy with the worried expression is me. They were made over 50 years ago and I suppose were intended to be shared amongst limited family members. I find them enthralling and not just because they are so personal. Most of the compositions are carefully considered, perhaps because each click of the shutter cost a few pence. Yes, they are a record of people I have loved, but the unmistakable colours of Kodachrome slide film, the square format, the black boarders, the dust and scratches all contribute to an unapologetic universal sentimentality. They also ask so many questions and show us uncritically, a world that no longer exists . Why are my bathing trunks frilly? What was my grandmother drinking while lying on the sunchair? Why did the Guards at Windsor Castle have their backs turned to my sister and I? Was my mother pleased with her hairstyle on the cliff at Tynemouth? Did I really believe that dandelion clocks told the time? 

And somewhere, well hidden behind the smiling family depicted in the images, I sense a tension… Not a covering up of the truth, or a genuine unhappiness but a repression of emotion. Buttoned up like my sisters heavy tweed coat on an outing to the beach. Perhaps this was just part of being English. Maybe it’s what the suburban life in the late 1960’s demanded. And this unease, in a way, is why I cherish these images so much.

I wonder what or who is going to be the visual “truth teller” for my grandchildren? It certainly won’t be Instagram, and I can’t imagine it will be a 50 year old technologically incompatible hard drive that lies at the bottom of a kitchen drawer.

So my plea is this.. if you understand the importance of imagery as a witness to our lives ….then “PRINT IT OUT”! Not just on the laser printer beside your desk, as it will turn blue and begin to disappear within a few weeks, but properly…. in a way that at least gives our memories a chance of survival. Otherwise I fear that the generation that takes more photographs that ever before in history will leave nothing for their descendants to cherish.

Vic 3065-A Diary of 100 Images from 25 Days in Lockdown.

Layers of Meaning

We all have an interest in typography even if we don’t know it. Try saying “I love you” in Bodoni Small Caps. Our handwriting, a version of typography, is as much part of our character as a chosen hairstyle… just not as prominently displayed.

I came across some small paintings this week that were made over the pages of a book. They are by an Italian artist called Giorgio Dapino. I thought them rather beautiful. The paint on paper is tender in its own way but the paragraphs in the background are a layer of gritty texture that offsets the softness of the watercolours. 

Giorgio Dapino

Giorgio Dapino

Giorgio Dapino

Giorgio Dapino

Giorgio Dapino

Giorgio Dapino

Giorgio Dapino

Giorgio Dapino

This led me to thinking about how artists use type in their work and how it ranges from absolutely integral messaging to subliminal background texture, such as the images above. It would be interesting to know if, in this case, the German texts were chosen because they have a particular relevance to the image of if they are just from an old book that happened to be suitable.

At the other end of the spectrum, when it comes to using text in art, we might find someone like Colin McCahon, New Zealand’s acclaimed modern artist, best known for his large paintings with dark backgrounds overlaid with religious writing. Without the texts the paintings would be empty. They are fundamental to the aesthetic and the meaning of the piece.

Colin McCahon's Gate 3 being installed at Auckland Art Gallery. 1971

Colin McCahon's Gate 3 being installed at Auckland Art Gallery. 1971

Colin McCahon

Colin McCahon

In two of my early exhibitions I showed photographic images layered with typography that I had captured in the same environment. I remember feeling slightly uncomfortable about what I was doing.  

It worried me, that by overlaying type, embellishing the central photograph, I was in a way admitting that it wasn’t strong enough to stand on its own. Compounding these doubts is my long held belief in the need for a level of objectivity in documentary photography, and what could be more subjective than manipulating an image with words.

I think the danger of using text with imagery is that you spoon feed your viewer. Clumsily telling people what to think is never a good way to behave! Balancing the relationship both visually and intellectually between the type and the image is the key to making this work.

And it’s hard to tell if you got it right!

“Stumble in Life” 2009 110cm x 110cm

“Stumble in Life” 2009 110cm x 110cm

“Ahab, David, Solomon” 2017 140cm x 110cm

“Ahab, David, Solomon” 2017 140cm x 110cm

“Hotel Sentiment” 2014 110cm x 140cm

“Hotel Sentiment” 2014 110cm x 140cm

“What is Your Talent” 2017 140cm x 110cm

“What is Your Talent” 2017 140cm x 110cm

To receive notifications of new posts email mark@markchew.com.au

The Newest Country.

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I walk to the west, beside an ugly steel and concrete artery that feeds our city.  If you asked me why I walk that way, I would answer “I don’t know” but a more honest reply would be “I’m not telling you”.

On a corner beside a short sooty tunnel that passes under the railway line, there is a junk shop that also sells second-hand wheelchairs. It stands on its own, left over from a time when the street was a shopping strip rather than a traffic sewer. After a few minutes browsing a poor collection of old books, I step out of the shop encouraged to leave by the scowl of the proprietor who can see that I don’t need a wheelchair and thinks it unlikely that I will buy any of the tack that is stacked in tight rows rising close to the ceiling. 

Now, sitting in a wheelchair that’s on display outside the front of the shop, chin up, eyes closed, is an African man, absorbing what he can of the wintery sunshine. We see each other and smile, so I say “hello”. I can tell that William is tall even as he sits. He has raised welts that run in lines across his forehead; scars that come from his initiation into manhood back in Africa thirty-two years ago.  I show him the beaded bracelet I wear, made up of the colours of the Kenyan flag; black for the people, green for the land, white to symbolise peace and red for the blood that was shed for independence. He shows me his elegant wrist encircled by a similar bracelet. It has the same four colours with an additional two. Blue for the waters of the river Nile and yellow for unity, hope and determination. The colours of the newest country in the world. We laugh at the connection. 

I ask him if he came to Australia via the vast refugee camp in Northern Kenya called Kakuma. Yes. He was there for two years. After being shot by the soldiers of a warlord from a neighbouring province he escaped South Sudan by walking for four days across the desert. He lifts his shirt and shows me the scar. It’s ugly unlike the lines on his brow. He says he lost half a lung. He says this makes it hard for him to do manual work. He has a wife and three daughters back in South Sudan. He sends them money but is worried about bringing them here because Australian children take too many drugs. He says he’s a Christian not a Muslim. He says that Australians aren’t racist. He says it’s the Chinese and Indians that are the problem.

I ask about his plans for the future. His answer seems animated and positive, but a long freight train rumbles past, thumping over the joins in the tracks. Metal on metal screeching.  I don’t hear his reply.

“….The Vehicle of Novelists and Poets.”

I just got back from a circuit of the city on my bicycle. During lockdown I’m told this is legal.   It’s a sharp, still, sunny day and Melbourne is at her winter’s best. There’s hardly any traffic and those who are using the roads smile and are courteous. Melbourne is perfectly suited for cycling. Not too many hills, more and more bike lanes and a growing awareness from drivers of the habits of bike riders. My favourite hospitality family can still make me a rich coffee to take away and today I understand Heinz Stucke’s comment “It is the unknown around the corner that turns my wheels.”

It’s also a good time for thinking, and on the way home it occurred to me that at this time of year, as the days are starting to grow longer again, we should be watching the Tour de France every evening, becoming cycling experts for a few weeks every year, but of course we are not. It’s been postponed  to begin on 29th August.

A few years ago I was asked to make some portraits of Cadel Evans shortly after he won the Tour.

It was only a brief encounter and he was obviously a little jaded by the rounds of media he must have endured following his victory, but he was friendly and accommodating if little distracted.

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I sometimes feel that we are attracted to simple full-face portraits because they confirm our preconceived opinions of a person. A type of confirmation bias (this is especially the case for family portraits). Admittedly this only works if you know, or know of the subject.  

We all know who Cadel Evans is.  He won what is perhaps the toughest sporting event on the planet.  So, when we look into his face, we subliminally find the characteristics we would expect: determination, obsession, toughness. But perhaps if we didn’t know who he was, we might instead see apprehension, regret or even paranoia.

The quote in the title about bicycles is by Christopher Morley, journalist, novelist, essayist and poet.

To receive notifications of new posts email mark@markchew.com.au

Pragmatism and Principle

It’s Tenzin Gyatso’s 85th birthday today. The 14th Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959, following the brutal suppression by Chinese troops of the Tibetan national uprising in Lhasa. He escaped into exile in Dharamshala, Northern India, where he has been living ever since. Chinese officials have vilified him as a "wolf in monk's clothing" who seeks to destroy the country's sovereignty by pushing for independence. The Dalai Lama maintains that he does not advocate independence but wants an autonomy that would allow Tibetans to maintain their cultural, language and religion under China's rule.

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Earlier this week Nathan Law, Hong Kong's most prominent young pro-democracy activist wrote in a twitter post… "So I bade my city farewell. As the plane took off the runway, I gazed down at the skyline I love so much for one last time. Should I have the fortune to ever return, I hope to still remain as I am: the same young man with these same beliefs. Glory to Hong Kong,” . Nathan said that he made the decision to leave Hong Kong when he agreed to testify before the US Congress. "As a global-facing activist, the choices I have are stark: to stay silent from now on, or to keep engaging in private diplomacy so I can warn the world of the threat of Chinese authoritarian expansion"

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By the beginning of this year the Chinese government had reportedly detained more than a million Muslim Uighurs in re-education camps in Xinjiang province. Most people in the camps have never been charged with crimes and have no legal avenues to challenge their detentions. The detainees seem to have been targeted for a variety of reasons, according to media reports, including traveling to or contacting people from any of the twenty-six countries China considers sensitive, such as Turkey and Afghanistan; attending services at mosques; having more than three children; and sending texts containing Quranic verses. Often, their only crime is being Muslim, human rights groups say, adding that many Uighurs have been labelled as extremists simply for practicing their religion.

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While all this is going on, earlier this year the Chinese government strengthened its restrictions to the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly. (If this piece had been written and posted in China I would have committed a crime worthy of at least 10 years in jail). According to Amnesty International, the authorities rigorously censor all media, from print to online games.  With the assistance of private technology and internet companies, officials  have mastered the use of facial recognition, real-name registration systems and big data to keep people under indiscriminate mass surveillance and control. In July, a draft regulation on China's social credit system proposed punishing citizens for disseminating information that "violates social morality" or causes "adverse social impacts". In January, Chinese users reported that they had been threatened, detained or warned for being active on Twitter – a social media platform officially banned in the country. China also extended its control of cyberspace beyond its “Great Firewall” by launching powerful malware and denial of service attacks against overseas servers, websites and messaging apps deemed problematic.

I could go on… (capital punishment rates, aggression in the South China Sea, systemic gender discrimination and bioethical failures etc etc) but I won’t.

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Meanwhile…China has become Australia's largest two-way trading partner in goods and services, accounting for 26 per cent of our trade with the world. Two-way trade reached a record $235 billion in 2018–19 (up 20.5 per cent year on year). Our exports to China grew by 23.9 per cent to reach the highest level ever ($153 billion), driven by demand for Australian iron ore, coal and LNG. China remained our biggest services export market, particularly in education (over 205,000 students in 2018, an 11 per cent increase year on year) and tourism (over 1.4 million Chinese visitors in 2018–19).  

We have some difficult decisions to make.

All images made in Tibet with a Holga 120N on Kodak Portra 400.

To receive notifications of new posts email mark@markchew.com.au



Perspective

As restrictions in Victoria, Australia, are reintroduced the frustration is tangible. No doubt more people will lose their jobs and the economy will take another hit, as the vision of the lives we lived in 2019 fades further into the future.

I find in times like these, a little perspective can help and three reports that I’ve read over the last week, have given me so much perspective that I now feel guilty for being fed up.

Post Natal Care, The Ruben Center, Mukuru Slum, Nairobi, Kenya

Post Natal Care, The Ruben Center, Mukuru Slum, Nairobi, Kenya

Immunisation

According to data collected by the World Health Organization, UNICEF, Gavi and the Sabin Vaccine Institute, provision of routine immunization services since March has been substantially hindered in at least 68 countries and is likely to affect approximately 80 million children under the age of one living in these countries.

Routine childhood immunization services have been disrupted on a global scale that may be unprecedented since the inception of expanded programs on immunization in the 1970s. 

Scientists at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine have weighed up the health benefits of continued routine infant immunisation delivery against the risk of COVID-19 infections in Africa.

Funded by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, they estimated the impact of continued routine immunisation in comparison to the associated excess risk of coronavirus infection and further COVID-19 deaths in the household of the vaccinated child. Their results are preliminary but striking: if routine immunisation was continued, for each excess COVID-19 death due to an infection acquired during the vaccination visit (predominantly among elderly household members), they forecast around 29 to 347 future child deaths could be prevented. Without vaccination these deaths could result from a range of diseases including measles, yellow fever, pertussis, meningitis, pneumonia and diarrhoea. 

So, to put that bluntly, for every older person’s life saved, between 29 and 347 infants will die.

Vaccination Program, Kalkaji Slum, New Delhi, India

Vaccination Program, Kalkaji Slum, New Delhi, India

Pregnancy

Across Africa the rates of adolescent pregnancy have spiked in the last two months. Although many reports are anecdotal, there is a consistent picture that is as ugly as it is distressing. This issue has been reported in West Africa, South Africa and Kenya where an article in the Nairobi News makes harrowing reading.

“Machakos County has reported an increase in teenage pregnancy since the outbreak of Covid-19. According to Machakos children’s officer Salome Muthama, 4,000 schoolgirls have been impregnated in the county since March. Salome further revealed that most of the pregnancies are as a result of defilement by close family members. About 200 of the affected girls are below the age of 14 years.”

So again, to be blunt we are talking rape, incest and unwanted underage pregnancy. And Machakos is one county, in one medium sized country, in a continent of 1.2 billion people.

Early Childcare, The Ruben Center, Mukuru Slum Nairobi, Kenya.

Early Childcare, The Ruben Center, Mukuru Slum Nairobi, Kenya.

Education

The most obvious impact of school closures has been on student learning. Unfortunately, even before this public health crisis, the developing world was already experiencing a learning crisis. Fifty-three percent of children in low and middle income countries cannot read and understand a basic text at age 10. Now, as learning switches to remote platforms, this crisis is not only likely to exacerbate but also deepen along the divides between those advantaged to access them and those disadvantaged who cannot.

In 2019, the World Food Programme estimated that at least 310 million children in low and middle income countries were fed at school. Midday meals have boosted enrolment (especially among girls), improved nutritional profiles of children, and alleviated the financial strain on poor families. With the schools now closed these children face increased malnourishment and hunger. Along with the midday meals, children are also missing out on the company of friends, which is essential for their mental wellbeing.

The Playground, The Ruben Center, Mukuru Slum Nairobi, Kenya.

The Playground, The Ruben Center, Mukuru Slum Nairobi, Kenya.

Parents have invariably become the primary responders to the needs of their children. At best, they are juggling full-time jobs and home schooling their children. But mostly, they are struggling to make ends meet. Large parts of the population in low and lower-middle income countries are employed in the informal sector and they are now estimated to have seen an 82% decline in earnings in the first month of the crisis alone. With little or no safety net, they have had to make heart-wrenching journeys from cities to their rural homes, often with their children in tow. These parents have more pressing concerns than the continuation of their children’s education and understandably so.

St John’s School, Kibera Slum, Nairobi, Kenya

St John’s School, Kibera Slum, Nairobi, Kenya

Not for one moment would I want to trivialise the difficulties faced by many people here in Australia. Job losses, mortgage defaults, bankruptcies are traumatic events wherever they happen. But a bit of perspective is a useful tool.

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“Hotel Two-Six: Crazyhorse One-Eight.
Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards.”

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Ten years ago this month I was asked to make some photographs of Julian Assange. We spent a couple of hours together and as I worked I found him fascinating, if a little self-obsessed. There was something strange about his world view, perhaps because it was formed 12 inches from a glowing laptop screen. I seem to remember that I didn’t really like him but I admired his firm belief that knowledge is usually preferable to ignorance.

Ten years on, over my morning coffee, I see pictures of what seems to be a different man, peering from the back of a prison van, like a mole sticking his head out of a burrow, blinking at the daylight. Assange, at the age of 48, is wanted in the US to face seventeen charges under the Espionage Act after the publication of hundreds of thousands of classified documents in 2010 and 2011 around the time I made this portrait. If convicted, he faces 175 years in prison.

Right now he is being held at Belmarsh Prison in South London while the court system tries to reschedule his extradition hearing, which was postponed owing to the coronavirus pandemic. There are plenty of reasons not to like everything that Assange has done over the years. I doubt anybody who really knows him would deny his flaws. However, before you make a final judgement you should perhaps remind yourself of this.

There are a few interesting overlaps here with George Floyd’s murder.  In both cases an over entitled,  over armed, under informed enforcement apparatus of the USA took matters into their own hands…..and it was recorded for the world to see.

Without  Darnella Fraizer, the 17-year-old high school student who recorded and posted the last minutes of George Floyd’s life perhaps the world would not have convulsed as it has over the last fortnight.

Without the work of Assange our opinions of world order would certainly be different. Would we really prefer that we had never known?

So should the British Government be handing this Australian over to the country that is America in 2020? 
I myself would prefer a world where exposing murderer is not a crime in itself.

If you feel you want to know more visit the website of the Australian Assange Campaign

To receive notifications of new posts please email mark@markchew.com.au

The Paradox of Tolerance

“Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.”

Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies

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