Finding Something I Wasn't Looking For

Brunswick, Maine - I approached a welcoming group of hard-hatted workers building a bridge over the Androscoggin River and explained that for a project I needed an image to portray trade unions. “Do you have anything that represents unions on your hard hats?” They explained that they were not union members. Oops.

Shifting gears, I thought of The Vermont Center for Photography’s call for entries and asked if I could just photograph them at work. (Deadline is 12/31/25 if you want to submit.)  

We’re looking for images that grapple with the present: portraits about work, identity, and power; scenes at borders and in neighborhoods; landscapes marked by climate, extraction, or recovery; the built systems—water, housing, transit—that shape daily life; moments of protest and civic care; and conceptual work that questions evidence, authorship, or memory.

They all grabbed tools and pantomimed working.

Their boss, Tafarri Edwards, finished a phone call, joined the fun, and agreed to an impromptu portrait session.

I then headed upstream and walked across a pedestrian suspension bridge formerly used as a safe and convenient way for Topsham residents to get to work at the river-hugging Brunswick mills.

Love the way the swirling industrious ducks echo the motion of the tool-wielding workers.

I created this multiple exposure of shattered ice at the river’s frozen edge. When the image emerged on my camera’s screen, delight filled me as the creation evoked the multilayered abstractions of painter Kevin Xiques.  

Now I need to find a union shop.

John Nordell blogs about the creative process at johnnordell.com Instagram: @john.nordell

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Metaphorical Mental Ladders

I can clearly remember the clang of a riot cop's baton striking the aluminum ladder carried by fellow photojournalist Rick Friedman as years ago we covered neo-Nazis exercising their right to free speech in Boston.  I also remember the same cop taking aim and hitting the bone at the joint of my right knee.  I guess Rick and I needed such encouragement to move back from the action.

Acknowledging Honks

Why was Rick carrying a ladder?  Anything to get a different angle on things.  I thought of Rick as I brought my ladder to get a fresh viewpoint on the picket line of union nurses staging an one day strike in early October protesting an impasse in contract talks with Baystate Franklin Medical Center in Greenfield, MA.

Quite a thing for nurses to go on strike.  The nurses told me that the offered contract will adversely affect patient care given the terms related to overtime pay and sick time guidelines.

Dog's Eye View

I have no idea what the contract issues really are, nor what a just resolution would be.  However, it is clear that both sides have very different points of view.  With this shot, I crouched down for a low angle of registered nurse Karen Boyden leading chants.

Viewpoints.  Points of view.  Angles.  Stances.  Sides.  Perhaps we all need to carry metaphorical mental ladders to aid understanding those who think differently from the way we do. 

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The Weekend: Brought to you by Labor Unions | From Wisconsin to Bangladesh to Boston to Greenfield | Black & White 120 Film Shot with a Yashica Mat!

Have you ever felt guided?  To a person? To a cause?  To a place?  To a theme?

In Boston over Spring Break, I noticed flyer taped to a lamp post for a rally in support of poorly paid tomato farmers organized by The Coalition of Immokalee Workers.  Ever the photojournalist, I jotted down the organizer's website.  I probably noticed the flyer since I was reading Kate Furnival's The Jewel of St Petersburg, a richly textured tale of class conflict and violence in revolutionary Russia.

Bye Bye Borders

A couple of days later, driving to meet a friend for lunch, I listened with increasing disbelief and mounting concern to a Democracy Now report tracing the parallels between the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York, 100 years previously, where locked exit doors led to the death of young women workers, to a recent fire in a textile factory in Bangladesh, where again, locked exit doors fatally blocked routes to safety.

The Last Book Buyer?

After lunch, I headed to Newbury Street to photograph evidence of the bankrupt Borders bookstore chain.

Shoppers flocked to the nearby H&M store.  So I went in myself, looked at the labels of the nearest sweaters and knew before I could read the words that the country of origin was Bangladesh.  According to the Democracy Now report, young Bangladeshi women protesting for better working conditions are hosed with dye laden water to facilitate their arrests.

$9.95 - What is the True Cost?

"Where are all these groups of giddy young women coming from," I wondered.  Spring break shopping, perhaps? Some items were two for one.  Imagine drilling straight through the earth from Boston to Bangladesh to compare the lives of these young female shoppers with the young female sweatshop workers.

To find events to document, I signed up on the The Coalition for Immokolee Workers website for labor action alerts.  A week later, even before I received an email about the action, I heard about a rally on a community radio station.

Now Retired from Media, He Takes a Stand

Retired broadcaster Ted O"Brien spoke to the crowd, mentioning historical labor protests, such as the 1912 Bread and Roses textile strike in Lawrence, MA, led by women.

Carpenters Local 108 (Springfield, MA)

In solidarity with the labor protests in Wisconsin, a coalition of labor unions and citizens groups, such as Jobs with Justice, rallied in Greenfield, MA in support of rights for union labor and public workers.

Coalition

The rally took place on April 4, the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's assassination.  At the time of his death, Dr. King was in Memphis to support the sanitation workers strike.

Spend some moments and contemplate these faces and messages:

Stop the War on the Working Class

A Tax on the Corporations - Not Attacks on Workers

Corporations are not People

Hard Hat Flag Stand

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