Tahila Mintz
by Tahila Mintz from Haudenosaunee Territory
I am an indigenous photographer and media maker. My life pre epidemic shutdown was a majority of the time traveling the “Americas”. I make work to amplify the voices of Indigenous women, to bring awareness and guardianship to ancestral teaching and to highlight the contemporary and historical injustices done to our peoples. Now fairly alone with myself I am making images of myself for the first time.
Everyday Indigenous women are taken. They are kidnaped, raped, killed. This goes unreported in the news and ignored by Police. My sisters are warriors and I stand with this fight. I say their names every day and stand in unity with the Black Lives Matter movement. Our unity of healing the traumas of colonization and the imposed systems of patriarchy is being dismantled by my sisterhood. We bring back a healthy thriving Matriarchal Society of badass women supporting one another in taking care of our communities, supporting each one another and empowering our people.
My life for many years before the quarantine was on the road more than 3/4 of the time. I generally make images and video and create in indigenous communities across the “Americas”. Now I am still, grounded in this space. I am planting seeds, gifted to me from other communities and ancestral of mine. I am spending time with the waters where I live and breathing into the ceremonies and wisdoms of here. I am grateful for this time at home. I go inside, reflecting and relearning a rhythm of self-care. I get great pleasure, when I am in public, wearing my red bandana across my face. The same as I would be using on the frontline fighting for our waters against pipelines or in solidarity with the EZLN for indigenous sovereignty. Now no one bats an eye, no police turn to see what I’m doing just because this is on my face. I always photograph other indigenous women but now, alone, I turn to myself, to the water, to the sun, to my eagle feather and traditional skirt. I speak to medicine, our unity as indigenous people with the Back lives movement and return to traditional medicinal ways. I speak to the missing murdered and indigenous women. I speak in silence , though my images, as always, but now stepping in front of my camera. I go through fazes of sharing, posting medicine teachings to Instagram stories and being pubic, then hibernating. When people in our tribe started dying from this virus I went into full community organizer mode and have spent most of my time working to get things to our community to protect us more. This time feels to be an explosion and re- articulation that is happening over and over again. A shake up is long overdue. May the dust settle with a whole new honorable structure.
SELF-PORTRAITS: PHOTOGRAPHERS IN CONFINEMENT
Curated by Svetlana Bachevanova
A collection of self-portraits made by photojournalists from five continents during the unprecedent lockdown due to the corona virus pandemic.
Photographers are people on the road, living to document the lives of others.
Constrained by the lockdown, many of them had their first experience of being still long enough to begin seeing and understanding small details about who they are, their lifestyles and values, that were overshadowed while they were busy. These self-portraits express their experience.
This is a unique collection of self-portraits from some of the best lenses in photojournalism at an historic moment.
Photographers in Confinement is a project in process and I welcome additional submissions from photojournalists at svetlana@fotoevidence.com
I am looking for potential exhibition partners in the USA and abroad.
Svetlana Bachevanova is a founder and publisher of FotoEvidence, long time photojournalist and curator.
