Who Cares? She Cares. He Cares.

"No one can dispute the importance of raising a child. Most parents, holding a new baby, face the most monumental work of their life. Perhaps the reason we often deny caregivers the social position and the respect they deserve is that we are uncomfortable with our absence from the particular chair they occupy, many hours of the day, many days of the year."

Mona Simpson discusses her experiences and the world of Nanny Care.

Michele Asselin, from Full Time Preferred

Simpson states that, "The transparency men have enjoyed for generations, about their ability to frankly work while also reveling in fatherhood, is still complicated for women. Which is not to say that anyone can have everything.

Slightly more than four million babies are born in the United States every year, and 55 percent of their mothers remain in the work force. We go to college, live together or marry and have kids — often with little more thought to the daily routines of raising children than our grandparents gave them, when women by and large stayed at home."

Nannies provide care to approximately one percent of American children.  Who cares for the rest?

From the series, Watch Me Grow

Inspiration for Documention - USPS

How to address a ubiquitous institutional and banal phenomena.

Kristoffer Tripplaar is Washington, D.C. native and a graduate of the Corcoran College of Art & Design. Currently represented by SIPA Press and published by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue, Newsweek, Time Magazine, Fortune Magazine, Rolling Stone and People Magazine.  

The Post Office Project  which evolved from a simple, one off assignment to photograph a few post offices to go along with a story on the proposed closing of several hundred branches as part of cost cutting efforts by the Postal Service. It was a slow news week so he decided to visit a number of them.  

Tripplaar's statement also inspires and clarifies:

"The post office provides us with a universal sameness. They exist for a specific reason: the distribution and entry point of letters and parcels carried by the United States Postal Service. For nearly a century it was the only place that a person could go for such a thing. Today mail volumes are dropping off and what you do receive now tends to be mostly bills, advertisements and the odd movie rental. The massive infrastructure that was built to deliver the mail allowed the rapid distribution and delivery of information and goods. That system laid a basis for the growth of this country into an economic power.

Think about it, when you mail a letter or package it spends a brief moment in a human hand. It’s then put into an automated system of sorters, conveyor belts, vehicles and planes where it crosses the imaginary lines drawn by zip codes and street numbers. When it finally arrives at its destination it’s placed there by a human hand. It’s a system unlike anything else and I am truly fascinated by it."

Shared Visual Sensibility - Fun Food and Daycare

No sooner had we gotten film back from our latest Ponder Food as Love /Food Desert work, than I noticed a new book by Marty Gitlin and Topher Ellis, The Great American Cereal Book, a history of the industrialization and "funification" of one of America's earliest of health foods.  Cereal box design, with it's  pop-culture icon spokes-characters and rainbow/dayglo pallette seemed very familiar. The same visual sensibility as the facades of  our childcare facility documents. Very obvious, but I trust this will be a helpful revelation....

Summer with Deardorff

This summer we're shooting childcare establishments with the Deardorff. Parallel lines are so calming!

Center Street, Lil' Rascals (left) and Rock a Bye Baby (center)

Inspiration from the East

Photographer Anoek Steketee, has recently completed her book, Dream City, photographs of amusement parks around the world. Another document of human aspirations creating startling landscapes.

Nanhu

Nanhu, China

Eugene's Park II
Kigali City Park, Rwanda

Ship

Turkmenbashi's World of Fairytales, Turkmenistan

Inspiration from the past

Eugene Atget (1857-1927) photographed Paris and environs in a pedestrian age. His perception makes for compositions that allow the viewer to meander deep, deep through a distinct route.

Atget PlaceDuTertre, 1922

Atget ViaDiParigi

Atget Quai d'Anjou, 1924

Robust Urban Infrastructure

from Corporate Corridors, the Changing Chicago Project

from Corporate Corridors, the Changing Chicago Project

We are included in and inspired by the Museum of Contemporary Photography current exhibition Public Works, curated by Associate Director and Curator, Natasha Egan, which runs through 17 July 2011. This exhibition comes just as we embark on another season shooting for our Daycare Project.

from Daycare, Capitol Drive