i have been reflecting about December 6th this week. as i always do. the montreal massacre had a profound effect on me – partly because of the sheer overwhelming enormity of the violence.....but more because the violence enacted against those women paralleled the violence i had seen and was seeing against many different women in my life.
and that violence hasn’t stopped.
because this is a very public post, i am not going to go into any specifics but, even today, right now, there are women in my life who do not feel safe, who are not safe from the violence of men – even when they have done everything they can do and they have used all the ‘systems’ that society has in place to support them.
i know there aren’t any easy answers or easy solutions to end men’s violence against women. but i do know that seeing all women as victims and all men as abusers isn’t a solution. and i do know that there is a lot more we can do before we give up and abandon the dream of a world where women, girls and children can live without violence and fear.
as i was reflecting, as i always do on December 6th, i decided to make this week’s Artifact a reflection on the montreal massacre and the last 20 years of violence against the women in my life. it is a small thing. but it’s something.
http://www.thepreservationofshadowsandlight.com/
About Me
- The Preservation of Shadows and Light
- The Preservation of Shadows and Light is the ongoing virtual craft project of Michael Erickson. The project combines original photography and poetry. The three major elements are Artifacts, Image Galleries and The Curator’s Notes. ARTIFACTS are created once a week. An ARTIFACT matches a recent photograph with an old fragment of poetry (or just short poems). The fragments are often “the only good part” of longer poems that would otherwise be....well, crap. But often even the lousiest poem has a piece worth saving. Like a relationship. The trick is to know which piece is worth keeping close to your heart when you finally walk away from the rest of the crap. The IMAGE GALLERIES are galleries of images. The CURATOR’S NOTES was supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek title, but now i think it might just sound pretentious. basically it’s a blog / on-line diary that tells you about the progress of the site, the process of taking pictures and other things that relate to my photography.
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