IN DUBAI, a city playground in the Middle East desert, nothing succeeds like excess.
The glitzy enclave has lavish shopping malls; uber-luxurious hotels and restaurants; neighborhoods built on artificial islands; even an indoor ski slope. And, oh yes, the tallest building in the world, the more-than-160-story Burj Khalifa.
One Dubai hotel, the 1,539-room Atlantis, goes all out with a watery motif. The hotel’s dramatic aquarium is fronted with an almost three-story-tall sheet of glass. For human water play there are massive swimming pools, water slides (including one nine stories tall) and inner-tubing streams. You can snorkel with sharks or feed rays in artificial pools.
In the searing desert of the Arabian Peninsula, where conserving water was a way of life for centuries, thank desalination plants for such an incongruously abundant water world.
And, thanks to the long reach of Emirates Airlines, which has helped turn Dubai into a bustling crossroads of international travel, you can hop on a nonstop Seattle-to-Dubai flight and be in the desert, and the Atlantis water world, in just a little more than 14 hours.
Kristin R. Jackson is The Seattle Times’ NWTraveler editor. Contact her at kjackson@seattletimes.com.
Seattle’s Henry Art Gallery poses a photographic puzzle with “Out [o] Fashion Photography: Embracing Beauty,’ a wide-ranging show exploring cultural attitudes about beauty, running through Sept. 1, 2013.
By Michael Upchurch, The Seattle Times
Frank A. Rinehart “Hattie Tom, Apache” (1899), platinum print
What is beauty? How do concepts of beauty change? And who possesses beauty — those who observe it or those who are observed?
These are among the questions raised in “Out [o] Fashion Photography: Embracing Beauty,” a new exhibit at the Henry Art Gallery, curated by Deborah Willis, the first scholar to take part in the Henry’s new Visiting Fellow Program.
Willis is a historian of African-American photography who teaches at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she serves as professor and chair of photography and imaging. A few years ago, the Henry invited her to pore through its holdings and those of the University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections, with the idea of exploring “different attitudes about and cultural interpretations of beauty.”
“Out [o] Fashion Photography” is the result. It’s a big show that weighs how men photograph women, how women photograph men, how photographers turn their lenses on members of the own sex or people of other races, and, finally, how some artists — Cindy Sherman, Robert Mapplethorpe, the amazing Janieta Eyre — translate themselves into the most unlikely photographic icons.
As the exhibit’s punning title suggests, it deals with how ideals of beauty can go out of style, while also acknowledging the role fashion has played in shaping our concept of beauty. Wildly diverse in content, it asks viewers to draw their own connections more than it spells anything out for them.
Willis has divided it into three “thematic groupings,” although she cautions in her catalog essay that “there is overlap throughout, and many images can be discussed in multiple categories.”
If that sounds vague to the point of being unhelpful, it is.
The exhibit is better approached as a free-associative romp through the Henry/UW collections by someone with a curious eye. One question that gets raised again and again, in all three sections, is: Who is exploiting whom in the photographic process?
Willis starts off with works by Edward S. Curtis, whose passion about documenting vanishing Native American cultures may have overridden a more personal connection between the photographer and his subject.
Still, Curtis’ “Two Moons — Cheyenne” (1910) is a fine thing to behold, catching the essence of the war chief’s proud, weathered character. Frank A. Rinehart’s “Hattie Tom, Apache” (1899) tells a different story: The look of skepticism the young woman levels at the camera is withering.
Honest portraiture is one thing. Voyeurism is another.
The voyeuristic norm — of a male eye trained on a female form for purposes of arousal — seems most vividly and straightforwardly represented by E.J. Bellocq’s “Storyville Portrait” (c. 1912). But in other works, things get more complicated.
Don Wallen’s “Untitled” (1976), with its live female nude draped around a plastic-white mannequin, seems to comment on how synthetic some ideals of female beauty can be. Harry Callahan’s gorgeous silhouette shot of his wife, “Eleanor” (1948), uses photographic artifice to create something intimate, loving and mysterious.
Willis includes some actual fashion photography, including items by Hans L. Jorgensen and Irving Penn, where women are idealized by the camera, surely with their own full cooperation. And in shots of famous actresses — Cecil Beaton’s “Marlene Dietrich” (1930) and Benjamin J. Falk’s “Portrait of Miss Rush, the Actress” (c. 1892/1897) — there’s little doubt that the models are shaping their own images as much as the photographer is. “Miss Rush,” in her bow-tie, jacket, vest and trousers, is a dapper gender-bender. Dietrich, here, is in pure glamour-queen mode.
The male figure, if a bit underrepresented, isn’t neglected in “Out [o] Fashion.”
Jack Pierson’s gauzy “Belvedere Clayton” (1992) portrays a dreamy young man, swaddled in a nightshirt, sprawled back in bed and gazing at the camera. There’s something so swooning and heady about his pose that he seems made of gossamer. George Dureau’s black male nude, “Glen Thompson, Rear” (1983), on the other hand, couldn’t be more directly carnal.
In some cases, subjects’ actions, more than their looks, lend a true hypnotic allure to their images. That’s the case with Lewis Wickes Hine’s “Powerhouse Mechanic” (1921) and Barbara Morgan’s “Martha Graham — Letter to the World” (1940), which are slyly juxtaposed in the show.
There’s fine work here that seemingly has nothing to do with Willis’ chosen theme. Weegee’s masterpiece “The Critic” (1943), in which a Bowery character snarls at two preening operagoers, is surely less about beauty than hostilities between two social worlds, while Lisette Model’s “Famous Gambler, Nice” (1934) comes off as a pure character study, with little thought about the attractiveness of its subject (although the photograph itself is certainly handsomely composed).
Diane Arbus’ “A Woman in a Bird Mask, N.Y.C.” (1967) delights in how artifice can triumph over age and take a turn for the beautiful-fantastical. But in Arbus’ “A Family on Their Lawn One Sunday in Westchester, New York” (1968), it’s the total disconnect between husband, wife and child that rivets you far more than the incidental detail of the sunbathing mom’s classic, brittle 1960s looks.
Some of these puzzling inclusions might benefit from more commentary by Willis on individual photographs. Without that, the exhibition is mostly what you choose to make of it.
One thing for sure: There are plenty of photographic riches here — including work by Imogen Cunningham, Dorothea Lange, Edward J. Steichen and many others — to make something from.
A federal judge told the state of Washington to get working on repairing, replacing or abandoning culverts that create barriers to salmon passage.
Source: The Seattle Times Editorial
FIX it, pay for it, get it done. A federal judge is virtually that blunt in telling the state of Washington to repair culverts that block passage to salmon habitat.
U.S. District Judge Ricardo Martinez reminded the state it has a narrow and specific treaty-based duty to ensure Northwest tribes access to healthy fish runs.
Martinez’s order last Friday in Seattle ended an extended phase during which the state and tribal parties were to sit down and work out what would come next. Nothing much happened.
The legal obligation to honor commitments made in the 1850s was not a question for the judge. Accountability for delivering on the promise is the issue.
“The Tribes and their individual members have been harmed economically, socially, educationally and culturally by the greatly reduced salmon harvests that have resulted from state-created or state-maintained fish-passage barriers,” Martinez wrote in his ruling.
The judge put the state departments of fish and wildlife and parks, which have done some work, on a path to fix culverts by 2016.
The state Department of Transportation has a 17-year timeline for an extensive to-do list.
Martinez said the state has the capacity to accelerate work because of expected growth in transportation revenues in years ahead. Separate budgeting for transportation and the general fund, the ruling notes, prevents harm to education and social programs.
The point was also made that culvert repairs will work:
“Correction of fish-passage barrier culverts is a cost-effective and scientifically sound method of salmon-habitat restoration.”
It provides immediate benefit in terms of salmon production, as salmon rapidly recolonize the upstream area and returning adults spawn there,” the opinion states.
In another case that echoes in the news, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in March that water runoff from logging roads was more like runoff from farms, and not the same as industrial pollution from a factory.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which was overturned, had found no exemption for logging.
Fish in streams have no options. They are vulnerable to the sediment collected, channeled and discharged into waterways from all activities, including logging.
The latest debris from the 2011 Japanese tsunami to come ashore on the state’s southern coast is likely the most surprising so far.
A small, 18-foot blue fiberglass skiff bearing the name Saisho-Maru was found March 22 just north of Sid Snyder Beach near Long Beach.
While finding tsunami debris on our beaches isn’t new, what was found inside the stern’s built-in compartment caught the attention of state Fish and Wildlife biologists.
“There was five fish total we found in the boat’s compartment, and this is the first time we’ve seen vertebrates come ashore in tsunami debris,” said Bruce Kauffman, a state Fish and Wildlife biologist in Montesano.
The fish are commonly referred to as a “knifejaw or striped beak fish” that are native to waters off Japan, Korea and China.
“Finding these fish alive was totally unexpected and it is pretty unusual to find live fish,” Kauffman said.
Fisheries biologists say the compartment where the fish were found looked like an aquarium with enough sealife growth that the fish were able to feed off that and survive for so long.
“The fish were found in a compartment in the very back of the boat that appeared to have been enclosed at one point, but didn’t have a lid anymore,” said Leanna Reuss, the tsunami debris coordinator for AmeriCorp in Long Beach.
“It looked like most of the boat was floating underwater, and the fish used it (the compartment) as a shelter to stay alive,” Reuss said. “Otherwise I don’t think they could have survived the long drift across the ocean.”
Reuss says the boat was taken off the beach, and is now in the shop at Cape Disappointment State Park.
Only one of the fish is still alive. That fish is being kept in a holding tank at the Seaside Aquarium in Oregon. Once it’s healthy, the aquarium plans to put it on display.
Other tsunami debris found recently on coastal beaches include a large dock, boats and even a motorcycle.
(Photos courtesy of Washington State Fish and Wildlife)
“Our tribal leadership’s main responsibility is simply to protect our people,” said Marc Gauthier, a representative of the Upper Columbia United Tribes, before leaving the meeting. “It comes down to that basic human desire to protect your family.”
The Washington State Department of Ecology has known since the 1990s that its water-pollution limits have meant some Washingtonians regularly consume dangerous amounts of toxic chemicals in fish from local waterways.
At least twice, Ecology has been told by its overseers at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to fix the problem and better protect people’s health. Ecology was close to finally doing that last year — until Boeing and other business interests launched an intense lobbying campaign aimed not just at Ecology but also at the Washington Legislature and then-Gov. Christine Gregoire. That is the picture that emerges from recent interviews as well as government documents obtained by InvestigateWest under the Washington Public Records Law.
The problem lies in Ecology’s estimate of how much fish people eat. The lower the amount, the more water pollution Ecology can legally allow. So by assuming that people eat the equivalent of just one fish meal per month, Ecology is able to set less stringent pollution limits.
Meanwhile, citing the health benefits of fish, the state Department of Health advises people to eat fish twice a week, eight times as often as the official estimate of actual consumption. The state knows that some members of Indian tribes, immigrants and other fishermen consume locally caught seafood even more often than that and are therefore at greater risk of cancer, neurological damage and other maladies.
The Boeing Co. looms large in this story. In June 2012, Boeing said if Ecology went ahead with plans to make fish safer to eat, it would “cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars and severely hamper its ability to increase production in Renton and make future expansion elsewhere in the state cost prohibitive,” according to a Gregoire aide’s reconstruction of a conversation with a Boeing executive that month.
In July 2012, Ecology announced it would not go forward with a new rule to adjust the fish-eating estimate as planned. Instead the agency launched a “stakeholder process” that would delay any new rules for at least two years. Last week that process plodded on in Spokane, where state and local government officials and others spent more than three hours discussing the many contaminants that for years have prompted official state warnings against eating Washington fish too regularly.
“All we’ve seen is delay,” said Bart Mihailovich of the Spokane Riverkeeper environmental group, one of several that have refused to participate in the new series of meetings. “Why are we going back and doing what was already done?”
At the meeting in Spokane Thursday, a representative of Indian tribes called Ecology’s conduct “a betrayal” and explained that the tribes are boycotting the current process because it is unnecessary.
“Our tribal leadership’s main responsibility is simply to protect our people,” said Marc Gauthier, a representative of the Upper Columbia United Tribes, before leaving the meeting. “It comes down to that basic human desire to protect your family.”
Ecology had at least one other false start in fixing the rules, back in the mid-1990s, an effort that petered out even before a rule change was proposed, said Melissa Gildersleeve, the Ecology manager overseeing the current stakeholder process. That followed a 1994 study by the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission that documented how the national estimate of one fish meal per month was greatly and regularly exceeded by some members of Indian tribes.
While who eats how much contaminated fish is a slippery and much-debated corner of science, few of the parties involved in the current dispute in Washington contend that the current fish-consumption rate accurately reflects the true amount eaten, especially by some groups such as members of Indian tribes, subsistence fishermen and immigrants. The figure came from a 1973-74 federal study that asked consumers to fill our “food diaries” for three days, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
GWYNETH ROBERTS/Lincoln Journal Star 1491s member Bobby Wilson (center) dances for the camera as Native Youth Leadership Symposium Participants (rear) watch during production of a public service announcement video Tuesday, April 2, 2013, at Morrill Hall.
The guerrilla Native filmmakers and comedy troupe came to Lincoln on Tuesday to help participants of the Sovereign Native Youth Leadership program shoot a video. The Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs hosted the 1491s’ visit and sponsors the youth program — high school students from Nebraska’s four tribes learning to be leaders.
Last week, to prepare for the 1491s’ visit, the students brainstormed ideas. But on Tuesday, the five members of the 1491s struggle to get students to share them.
Goldtooth, one of the group’s founders, tells students the filmmakers are there to help them find their voice.
“You dictate the direction,” he says.
Ryan Red Corn, an Osage member of the 1491s, shares the story of a young woman they met at a Native boarding school who told them about briefly escaping the school to retrieve berries from a nearby tree. The 1491s made a video about it.
The 1491s have lampooned everything from the movie “The Last of the Mohicans” to powwow emcees, and they’ve gotten hundreds of thousands of hits on YouTube.
Despite their popularity, at least two Native students haven’t seen their work.
As the morning wears on, the students begin opening up, a little at a time.
Two brothers from Winnebago speak about their dad, who once struggled with alcoholism but quit after his children were born. They talk about losing their uncle to cirrhosis, a liver disease prevalent in alcoholics.
“Top that,” student Skyler Walker says, daring the others to beat his story and eliciting laughter.
So how does a mixed bag of comedians and filmmakers get shy Native students to open up? Red Corn says it’s important to make them laugh and see themselves as important.
The 1491s spend much of Tuesday making each other laugh, poking fun at Red Corn for being half white and Goldtooth for enjoying food too much.
Eventually, they begin teasing the students, including Skyler and his brother Max, who are half Ho-Chunk and half white. The boys call themselves “half chunks.”
“Half chunk 1 and half chunk 2,” the 1491s call them.
Then they turn on each other: “Osage sounds like a drunk person speaking Dakota,” Goldtooth says to Red Corn.
But then, just a little, the tone of their conversation shifts.
As he talks about his love of gourd dancing in the Omaha tribal tradition, student Marco Ramos cuts short a conversation between Red Corn and comedian Bobby Wilson.
“Quit holding hands and pay attention,” he says, as the room erupts in applause and laughter.
Later at lunch, Scott Shafer of the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs describes how difficult it has been getting the students to open up to the presenters they have heard since the program began its second year this past fall. So often, students have struggled to connect to policymakers and professionals, he says.
That wasn’t the case Tuesday as the students and the 1491s developed ideas for their video on alcoholism.
One student describes adults who tell her not to drink but who then drink themselves.
Somewhere in the room, an idea flickers.
Filmmaker Sterlin Harjo, who has directed several movies and documentaries, offers an idea that involves the students making the video’s viewers believe they were talking about using drugs and alcohol.
“It helps me forget my worries,” Cheyenne Gottula, an Oglala who attends Lincoln High School, says before the camera. “My mom’s the one who got me into it.”
Then, the reveal.
“I like playing volleyball.”
Reach Kevin Abourezk at 402-473-7225 or kabourezk@journalstar.com.
70 sacred Hopi masks that are set to be auctioned in France are estimated to be worth $1 million. The New York Times reports, the auction is set for April 12th at Néret-Minet auction house. Néret-Minet states that the items were legally obtained over 30 years ago and that this auction should be considered a homage to the Hopi Indians and they should be happy so many people want to understand and analyze their civilization.
“The Hopi Tribe is just disgusted with the continued offensive marketing of Hopi culture.” The Hopi Tribe has attempted to contact the auction house with no luck and has sought legal council on possible ways to bring the masks back to their rightful owners, The Hopi Tribe.
The Keystone XL pipeline is in James Hansen’s sights as the famed climate scientist retires from NASA, where he has worked for more than 40 years, in order to spread the message about climate change full-time.
The veteran scientist, who has been arrested at least four times at rallies against the Keystone XL oil pipeline project, will step down this week, NASA said in a statement on April 1. For the past 46 years Hansen has worked at the agency’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City, from which perch he has spread the word about the changing climate and its effect on future generations. He has headed the institute since 1981.
“His departure … will deprive federally sponsored climate research of its best-known public figure,” The New York Times reported, but added, “At 72, he said, he feels a moral obligation to step up his activism in his remaining years.”
He has already done plenty during his years at NASA, including testifying before Congress and predicting many of the changes that are taking place today. In fact, as The Washington Post reports, he was among the first to warn Congress, back in 1988, that greenhouse gases threatened to cook the Earth, in testimony that “was one of the first and clearest public statements on global warming.”
“It is time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here,” he told Congress then, according to The Washington Post. He also predicted ice melt, cautioned that the risks of sea-level rise were being underestimated by science, and said that the international community is not adequately addressing climate change. Most recently he has been extremely outspoken against further development in the Alberta oil sands of Canada, particularly the Keystone XL pipeline that is under review by the U.S. government and opposed by many tribes.
To do this he “plans to take a more active role in lawsuits challenging the federal and state governments” for not issuing stricter emissions standards and for the governments’ support of extracting sludgy bituminous crude from the Alberta oil sands in Canada, The New York Times said.
“If we burn even a substantial fraction of the fossil fuels, we guarantee there’s going to be unstoppable changes,” Hansen told The New York Times, warning of a tipping point for Earth. “We’re going to leave a situation for young people and future generations that they may have no way to deal with.”
As of April 1, Inuktitut became an official language of Nunavut, putting it on par with English and French in the territory.
“This level of statutory protection for an aboriginal language is unprecedented in Canada,” said the Government of Nunavut’s Department of Culture and Heritage in an April 2 news release.
The passage of the Official Languages Act has been five years in the making. This act takes the place of the Northwest Territories Official Languages Act, which recognized only English and French as official languages. The older act did give “a lesser set of rights to seven aboriginal languages, including Inuktitut,” according to Uqausivut, a comprehensive language plan. But, as the plan points out, “This does not reflect the realities of Nunavut, where a majority of people speak neither English nor French as their first language, but a single Aboriginal language.”
To help support public agencies in becoming compliant with the new act, the Department of Culture and Heritage will provide $5 million for Inuit language initiatives.
“I am proud that Inuit in Nunavut now have a clear statement of their inherent right to the use of the Inuit language in full equality with English and French,” said James Arreak, Minister of Languages, in the press release.
MARYSVILLE — Before the Marysville/Tulalip Relay For Life returns to Asbery Field on June 29-30, Relay teams and organizers are offering the community a cavalcade of activities and opportunities to contribute, starting with the “Team Captain Experience” event on Saturday, April 6, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Stillaguamish Senior Center.
“The American Cancer Society is passionate about giving tools and information to our Relay teams to help them be successful,” said Stephani Earling, community relationship manager for the Great West Division of the ACS. “This event is designed specifically for Relay team captains, and will include powerful information about the latest in the fight against cancer, tips to make the biggest personal impact you can, networking opportunities, food, fun and more.”
Marysville/Tulalip Relay team captains will be joined at the event by those from Arlington, Stanwood, Granite Falls, Lake Stevens and Camano Island who will be treated to a speakers’ panel on the best practices for getting their teams and communities motivated. Earling advised the team captains to RSVP at least a couple of days before the event by logging onto www.relayrumble.org/westernwa.
Earling explained that such measures, to provide an additional push to get folks interested and involved, tie into this year’s Relay theme of “Relay Big,” which is likewise reflected in the Marysville/Tulalip Relay organizers’ goals of recruiting 80 teams to raise $200,000 this year.
“The ACS does a great job of furnishing participants with the tools and resources to conduct successful Relays, but I’ve already seen great energy from Marysville and Tulalip,” Earling said. “These communities’ levels of awareness about cancer research, and the steps that are being taken to fight back, gives me a lot of hope. They’re on an awesome trajectory.”
The Relay activities on Saturday, May 18, aim to keep that momentum going with “Bark For Life,” “Paint the Town Purple” and “Brewin’ Up the Cure.” For the third year, “Bark For Life” will also return to Asbery Field, from 9 a.m. to noon, for a fee of $20 per dog.
“We’re anticipating a great turnout,” Earling said. “Last year, we had about 35 dogs and their owners attend, and we raised more than $4,000.”
Earling expressed equal optimism about “Paint the Town Purple,” which gives businesses in the downtown Marysville area the opportunity to decorate their storefronts, in the week leading up to “Bark For Life,” to show support for the Bark and Relay For Life.
“These events are an awesome way for these area businesses to come together for the common cause of bringing awareness to finding a cure for cancer,” said Earling, who elaborated that “Brewin’ Up the Cure” is the coffee stand-specific part of “Paint the Town Purple.” “Each coffee stand will be able not only to decorate their stands, but also to sell little paper stars and moons to their customers, which will be displayed in their windows. All the money raised will go toward the Marysville/Tulalip Relay.”
Earling encouraged participants in both “Paint the Town Purple” and “Brewin’ Up the Cure” to come up with fun and wild decorations and displays, since Relay organizers are framing it as a friendly competition and will be recognizing the businesses who raise the most money and have the best decorations.
In the meantime, Marysville/Tulalip Relay Committee meetings start at 6:30 p.m. on the first Wednesday of each month, and Relay team captains meet at 7 p.m. on the second Wednesday of each month, at the Marysville Holiday Inn Express’ banquet room, across the parking lot from the hotel itself.
![Henry’s ‘Out [o] Fashion’ exhibit takes boundaries off beauty](https://www.tulalipnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/2020654376-50x50.jpg)
