My internet friend Laurie Allee in California is part of a worldwide network of photobloggers. At City Daily Photo, they each post up a picture taken in their city – well, daily. I love Laurie’s colour-drenched photographs of South Pasadena; she has a great eye for some of the things I like to look at – architecture, anachronistic detail and surprising mise-en-scene – as well as composition and light. She writes about being part of this network: “I’ve had the privilege of being part of a huge neighborhood that spans not just city blocks but entire oceans and continents. This experience has been invaluable to me…”
Well, today Laurie has more serious things on her mind than showing us her local neighbourhood. There is big trouble in her blog neighbourhood:
One of my fellow bloggers has been missing in Iran since June 17th. He is believed to be in prison after taking part in the post-election protests. His photographs of Tehran in the days immediately following the election offered the world a view of the madness — one that Western journalists were banned from capturing. His bravery in the face of such grave danger has been an inspiration.
You’ve seen the pictures taken by her missing blog-companion: he was running the site TehranLive.org, which posted up some of the best pictures of the early days of the uprising. They were everywhere, so you – whoever you are – are the direct beneficiary of his work. The problem is that he has not posted since June 17th. Four days earlier, in addition to an enormous number of now-iconic images, he had posted a quiet little postscript:
P.S 1: Thank you so much for warm and kind comments from arround the world. Unfortunately i can’t answer all comments and kindness, but i want all people support us in Iran to reach the right of Iranian people.
Thank you all again.P.S 2: This website is banned in Iran by goverment since 3 hours ago.
I’d love to have used on of Amir’s pictures in this post, but the news that the regime is now using specific photographs of the protests to encourage ordinary people to identify protesters they know makes me not want to make them any more prevalent for now. Silly of me, I know: they’ve got their own pictures. And there is a photograph of a girl that I’ve actually had on my desktop for a week, wanting to hang it on the walls of Baroque. She is so beautiful, so sweet, so almost humorous in her hopefulness, and knowing it. But the time never seemed right, because the hope gave way to that terrible urgency and horror. So instead, the picture above comes from the blog Fresh Eyes on London. It was taken outside the Iranian embassy on Friday, and has a direct bearing on the reason for this post. I think it’s also absolutely lovely.
3 Comments
June 28, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Thanks for this, Katy. XX
June 29, 2009 at 2:27 pm
I was one of those bloggers from the CDP. What has been fantastic about this is how people like yourself picked up on the theme and ran with it. I don’t think any of us anticipated that or the feedback we would get from all walks of life as one. Thank you for another excellent post on this theme. Laurie’s blog is always a daily stop for me, A wonderful writer.
The best news of all was the blogger in question was actually freed yesterday and now back home with his family.
June 29, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Oh hurrah hurrah Babooshka! Thanks so much for your kind words and for coming and telling us. I’ll link it, this makes me want to cry. Such a small thing, so big and so small. Still hundreds of others.