Monday, October 16, 2006

Capitol Quarter emerges from the former Capper/Carrollsburg Projects

I began my Capper/Carrollsburg documentary project on Thanksgiving Monday, 29 November 2004 when during a photo assignment that I'd meet with Anu Yadav pertaining to a subsequent article in the 30 December 2004 issue of the Washington Spark by Judy Lem entitled Resisting a Local Diaspora: The Fight for Housing and for History in Arthur Capper and Carrollsburg.

Anu Yadav had written, produced and performed in a one woman play Capers at www.CapersThePlay.com which and not unlike my documentary project "This is for Black Men Who've Contemplated Suicide When That Rainbow ... Was Just Too Much!" was developed in a similar style as have been the plays developed and produced by Anna Deveare Smith.

A few days after my Yadav collaboration when I would return to the Arthur Capper to deliver photos to some of the subjects that I had captured just a few days before ... I was a bit taken back ... when I'd find them in the midst of moving. And had I arrived a half hour later I would have missed them, in accordance with the Capper Carrollsburg tenant relocation program.

And though I would not return to the Capper/Carrollsburg Community until June 2005 seldom have I passed through or have thought of the Arthur Capper Projects without reflecting on that Thursday or Friday evening, after Thanksgiving, when I found Brenda, Mechelle and Kia in the midst of moving. Or the many times, over the years before, that white friends would ask me if I could fetch drugs for them from 'The Projects'.

On Saturday, 14 October 2006, the Arthur Capper Projects would emerge from the gound as Capitol Quarter.

1 comment:

Stephanie P said...

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Thank you.
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