Northwest Herald Front Page

Got the front page of the Northwest Herald today, a paper out of suburban Chicago. These guys were so great to work for. It was a story about Kyle Morgan who was wanted for murder in Chicago, fled to Nashville, then was caught here after running over two pedestrians with his car while fleeing police. He was having his preliminary hearing here for the two aggravated assault charges before being extradited back to Illinois to face a murder charge. I actually got to help report the story as well and got my first "Josh Anderson contributed reporting from Nashville" byline. They also ran a slideshow of the photos HERE.

It was a pretty grim and sad story to work on though.

One Word

These are a collection of street portraits that I made on Sunday, January 19, 2009, two days before the inauguration of President Barack Obama. I went to the historically African-American U Street/Shaw neighborhood in Washington D.C. and asked people on the street to think of one word that describes what Barack Obama’s inauguration meant to them without using the word “Change.” Since “Change” was Obama’s slogan for much of his campaign, I wanted to challenge the people in the pictures to think of something unique. I chose the U Street neighborhood because of it’s deep African-American history. The neighborhood was home to people like Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald, Howard University, and actually predates New York’s Harlem as a cultural center for African-Americans. Until the 1920’s, it was the largest urban African-American community in America. It is also home to places like the Lincoln Theater and Bens’ Chili Bowl.

The U street/Shaw neighborhood has since become somewhat of a hipster neighborhood, filled with Starbucks, trendy bars, and shopping, so I wanted to pick certain people and photograph them in certain places that tried to give the feel of the old, classic, U Street. While not everyone has the same sort of “timeless” look, and there were a couple of elements thrown in to give a little bit of sense of time (a cell phone, style of dress of a couple of people, Obama merchandise, etc) I tried to keep those elements at a minimum to try to convey the feeling of the history of the neighborhood.

I asked everyone to give their first and last name, their age, and their word. Not everyone was comfortable with giving there last names since I was just a stranger on the street meeting them for the first time, but everyone that I asked was happy to participate and give me their thoughts.


RICHARD JENKINS, 83. "GODLY"


TAMARA COOPER, 38. "OPTIMISM"


CORDENIA, 40. "FINALLY"


MALIK, 14. "HOPE"


WANDA, 37. "INSPIRING"


MICHAEL SINGLETON, 58. "RENAISSANCE"


KEY, 46. "TOGETHERNESS"


BILL, 46. "HISTORY"


JEROME DOUGLAS, 57. "GREAT"


ANTOINE, 22. "INSPIRATIONAL"

Find the ghost.......

44th Presidential Inauguration

I dont even know what to say. I haven't slept in two days. It was cold and amazing. Bed time.

More from the mall

Everything is building up and it feels like christmas eve tonight. Stephen Maturen and I are just going to stay up all night and head down to the national mall when it opens at 4am.

sunday

eh.....

There just isnt really a whole lot going on just yet. I think tomorrow things are going to start to get a little more crazy. I also decided that I need to head out to the neighborhood around Howard University and see if I can find anything there. Hopefully tomorrow I might make a picture that's worth a damn. Until then, its just more poking around the capitol in the FREEZING cold. Everything around here right now is pretty much setting up fences and selling things with Obama's face on them.