A nightmare or a dream?

I just woke from the weirdest dream. I was in what I thought was Saskatchewan, for a conference associated with the Kwantlen Polytechnic University Student Association.

My dream didn’t get into why but I was away from the hotel we were at, and was delayed getting back to it. I had a rental van with my luggage, a pet carrier, and luggage for two others. I assume I was taking some of our group to the airport?

Anyway, I got back to hotel late and one other from our group arrived just before me and was allowed to go back to his room for another night, as there were no other flights home leaving that day.

But the person we spoke to wasn’t just a hotel worker he was a customs official and he asked me a lot of questions about my job. I explained how I had held several positions both elected and staff positions. But in my mind I knew I didn’t have a position now as I hadn’t worked there since 2010, so I said the job I held the longest was as an events and resource coordinator.

”Well, since you love organizing things you’ll have to organize your way home” said this portly man, wearing a snug shirt that hugged his fat frame, revealing his large stomach, and breasts that might make some thin a-cup sized women jealous. “You’re going to raise the funds online that you will need to stay the extra nights, from people you don’t know. You’ll then also purchase locally several different perfumes and a cologne for yourself because your body odour is awful.”

I was in shock. I returned to my room to find my suitcase and the pet carrier by the door. My Mum and Tiffany had travelled with us but because I had the carrier only Tiffany was there. Mum had gone with others to the airport to catch the flight. As Tiff got close she scooted into this little sitting position she does, but continued to scoot closer to my feet. I bent down with my legs and scooped her up with my hands to give her a hug. I started to cry as I told Tiff how I was so sorry for being late and for stranding us here in the middle of nowhere… I felt so alone but also comforted that she was with me, and I then woke up.

It’s interesting that it was Tiffany with me, and not my own dog Kira. I remember as I was holding Tiffany I felt awful as I didn’t know where to start. I couldn’t even call Mum as she would have been flying.

The Dehumanizing of Justin Trudeau as a Tactic in the Battle over COVID-19 Mandates

On February 19, 2022, the hashtag #BlackfaceHitler is trending across Social Media platforms such as @instagram & @twitter. The hashtag has been used to primarily promote opposition to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s direction regarding the handling of the COVID-19 Pandemic. In posting about this trend on my Instagram and Flickr, I chose not to share the images I saw, but I did describe them in detail. But, to help provide a clear context for why I was upset, and for why I posted about this online, I am going to post the two images here.

Justin Trudeau: BlackFace Nazi?

This was the very first image I saw today on Instagram, by an account I actually really like. And when others as well as myself commented about why we didn’t like the image, it was eventually taken down by the account in question. But the FITgirlonFIRE account still has the image on her feed.

The post itself calls on people to “Let’s keep #BlackFaceHitler trending shall we?” Formally, this collage presents two columns of five photos of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with a block of white text on a black background appearing in the middle of the second column.

In terms of the content of the image, the top two images are unedited photos of a young Justin Trudeau wearing blackface (which Trudeau apologized for and admitted as being real during the 2019 Federal Canadian Election). The bottom three photos are of Trudeau, purportedly wearing 1930s and ‘40s Nazi style uniforms worn by individuals serving the German Government of Adolph Hitler. And the text in the middle of the right hand column of the collage reads: “Trudeau throwing around the word ‘racist’ when he was dressed in ‘Black Face’ and as a Nazi multiple times.”

This was the second image I saw today related to the #BlackFaceHitler hashtag, as found on Twitter. Normally, I would have taken a screenshot of the Tweet in question, and even copied a link to it, but in this case I didn’t.

Nevertheless, this image for me is a bit more problematic than the first one.

Formally, the image is a single shot of Trudeau appearing in the middle of the frame, and looking at the viewer. His uniform appears outrageous, in bright shades of pinks and purples. Behind Trudeau, lies a field of cut grasses, a roadway, more grasses, and further off, a grouping of trees.

In terms of the photo’s content, the most glaring thing about the photo is the ridiculousness of his uniform. The rainbow swastika stands out prominently in the image, as does the male gender symbol ( ♂) which appears in the centre of Trudeau’s hat.

Specifically, these uniform changes seem to want to present Trudeau first and foremost as being both soft and weak. Furthermore, it’s safe to assume that perhaps the creator of this image is trying to attack the Trudeau Liberal’s past support and campaign promises targeting the LGBTQ Community, even though it took almost seven years for Parliament to ban ‘conversion therapy,’ and even conservative publications such as THE National Post have criticized the Trudeau Liberal’s for not walking the talk of their own rhetoric when it comes to delivering on LGBTQ promises.

The above images certainly appear shocking, especially the ones in the first collage - which really do appear as though they could feature Trudeau dressed up as a Nazi on at least three different occasions, similar to the amount of times Trudeau was found to have worn blackface.

Enter, Major Talbot Papineau…

The thing is though, Trudeau has never dressed as a Nazi multiple times. Trudeau did wear a Canadian World War 1 uniform when he played Major Talbot Papineau, a French-Canadian First World War hero, in director Brian McKenna's 2007 film called THE GREAT WAR. Papineau, who had been a lawyer in Quebec, enlisted in August 1914 to fight for allied forces in WW1. He died at the young age of 34 in the Battle of Passchendaele near Ypres in Belgium. You can read more about Papineau in Sandra Gwyn’s book, “Tapestry of War: A Private View of Canadians in the Great War.”

In my photo collage here, you can see a photo of Major Papineau in the upper right hand corner. The other photos are of Trudeau portraying Papineau on the set of THE GREAT WAR. These three images are also the most common images that are being altered using programs like Adobe Photoshop to make Trudeau’s WW1 uniform look like Nazi uniforms.

In summary, specific alterations include:

  • adding swastikas & other Nazi emblems to the uniform Papineau would have worn;

  • making the uniform look grey over the olive green that it originally would have been; and

  • removing more of the moustache Trudeau wore while playing Papineau, to try and make Trudeau look more like German Nazi Chancellor Adolph Hitler.

Ultimately all of these altered images dehumanize not just Trudeau but:

  • the memory of fallen war hero Major Talbot Papineau;

  • the memory of those who fought for Canada during World War 1 and 2; as well as

  • the LGBTQ+ Community.

UDEMY - 2 Coloured Pencil Classes

This week, after organizing my coloured pencils into a binder like case I got on Amazon last fall, I started playing with these tools that I’ve always had, but haven’t used a lot. To give a bit of structure to my play, I started two workshops on Udemy that explore the use of coloured pencils as an artistic medium, as follows:

I’ve always enjoyed working with this artistic medium, but admit I’ve never explored it enough to really discover it’s possibilities. For example, I love the hyper realistic drawings by CJ Hendry and ones by Jesse Lane. I love how both artists work from their own reference photos that they shot.

C1: Section 1: Coloured Pencil Basics: 2-3

C2: Section 2: Materials & Mark Making Methods: 16-21

In practicing the introductory techniques presented in the courses, I started creating a non-representational abstracted piece on 8x8 watercolour paper, which has more tooth to the texture of its surface.

Techniques I’ve used include:

Here are some process shots or the piece I’ve been playing with…

The above photos were also posted on Instagram.

SKILLSHARE - Creative Journey: 30 Days of Self Portraits as a Means of Self Discovery

For the month of January I’ve committed to focussing my subverted selfie project on my participation in a Skillshare workshop that’s been designed to be done over 30 days. Specifically, the course is called “Creative Journey: 30 Days of Self Portraits as a Means of Self Discovery” and it’s taught by professor Lucy Lambriex (who also teaches the workshop I’ve been doing about overcoming cameras shyness).

Day 02: THE OBJECT

The second day’s theme asked students to choose an object that evokes a meaning, and speaks volumes about yourself… and portray it in a way that part of you is in the photo as well. This post also served as my subverted selfie post for January 2, 2022 on Instagram.

  1. Which object did you chose? I chose a small get well soon teddy bear, that holds importance to me as I got her while I was hospitalized last fall for issues related to my ongoing depression. I even wrote about the meaning she held to me in this Instagram post from September 27, 2021. At first, I thought it was going to be hard finding an object, but once I glanced at my nightstand and saw my little bear, whose name is Bianca, I knew I had found the object to portray in today’s selfie.

  2. What was it like to play with? I enjoyed holding her in different positions. She comforts me so easily when I’m feeling anxious, overwhelmed or stressed. I’ve photographed myself with this bear before, and as such, I knew I wanted to shoot this object with me differently than I have done before. I think maybe in the future, I’d incorporate movement into the shot, by perhaps tossing her up in the air somehow. But that would require more work to do, and using an interval timer to shoot several shots in a row.

Day 01: THE BODY PART

The first day’s theme asked students to explore a specific body part in a variety of different angles. It made me remember what Ron Long had to say about photographing wild flowers, in that it was best to work your subject from as many angles.

I actually made the first photo my subverted selfie project post for January 1, 2022, which is an ongoing Instagram project I’ve been trying to do daily since January 1, 2020. It’s also posted on my Flickr.

The project had me answer several questions about today’s prompt, which I answered as follows:

  1. Which body part did you pick? Ultimately, I decided to focus in on my index finger. But shooting this finger wasn’t necessarily my first choice. I actually started playing with shooting my middle finger.

  2. Why? Part of my initial choice to focus on my middle finger was as a homage to Ai Wei Wei and his STUDY OF PERSPECTIVE photographic series he did between 1995 and 2003. For me, I found myself frustrated with having to shovel the sidewalks again, as they had been filled in by the City of Surrey street ploughs, who send snow from the street flying onto the sidewalks. So I considered posting a photo and complaining about their work crews, who can and have gone slower along the streets when they see me clearing the sidewalks, and when they do that, the snow doesn’t go flying onto the sidewalks. But I didn’t like the photos I was getting. The lighting wasn’t bright enough and I wasn’t able to get my camera to focus in on my finger. Wei-Wei’s fingers aren’t always tack sharp either, but I wasn’t looking to get an exact replica of the kind of photos he took. So ultimately I moved away from that as his photos do carry a lot of history, and more serious issues that people have with more authoritarian governments, and I didn’t necessarily want to equate my gripe with my local city government to those who have much more serious concerns, which can even border on matters of freedom or life and death circumstances. I also wanted my finger to be in focus, without using flash, and that just wasn’t happening because of when I tried making this photo, in the early evening. I think that photo would have been easier to make had I done it earlier in the day when it was brighter. You can see one of Wei-Wei’s photos compared with my attempt posted below.

    The decision to shoot the other finger made more sense, it was easier to get different angles of it, and it didn’t have the negative connotations that the middle finger has, as it’s often associated with a rude gesture.

  3. Describe what it was like to chose a body part to portray? Overall, I admit I had some problems trying to figure out which body part to shoot for this project. I wish I had made the decision to shoot that finger earlier in the day as it’s easy to shoot that anytime, I could have played with it under different lighting conditions and doing different things… which would have given me more photos to choose from at the end of the day.

  4. Describe what it was like to see the result? I’m happier with my index finger photos though. I still shot them outside, but closer to my house where I got nice lighting from a motion sensor light that was on. I could have tried the middle finger again but without the sidewalk shown, it would not have had the same connotations as my original idea had - I’d have been just flipping the bird at a small pile of snow. So I took a photo of my finger shown holding the shovel, and then I took several shots of just my finger in the same spot.