If you walk across my camera

“If you walk across my camera I will flash the world your story.” 

― Woody Guthrie

The First 10,000 photography blog's name comes from a quote by photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, “Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.”  The blog devoted a bit of space to consider what a photographer could learn from Guthrie.

There’s a simplicity and honesty to Woody’s work that isn’t such a bad quality to have if you’re a photographer. And a lot of the singer’s other qualities — the sense of humor, the willingness to collaborate, and an ability to get new things out of old subjects — would probably serve you well, too. But there’s another lesson lurking in all of this as well: perhaps the single most important thing to have in your kit isn’t your lenses, your flash, batteries, memory cards, air blower, or even your camera. Pack your curiosity first and you’ll be amazed at how much better the rest of your kit — whether it’s the physical one or the metaphysical one — works as a result.

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Photographer Jenna Pope is an activist and award-winning freelance photographer living in New York City. As a born and raised Wisconsinite, she became involved in the Wisconsin Uprising in the Winter of 2011, and spent many nights sleeping on the floor of the State Capitol Building. That was just her first taste of activism, and has been fighting for social and economic justice ever since. As she began taking photos at a very young age, there was no question that she needed to combine her photography experience with activism.

In 2011, Jenna began documenting the protests in Wisconsin's State Capitol. In November, she quit her job to work full time in support of efforts to recall Governor Scott Walker. Supported by donations from people who would like to support her efforts, she began her full-time journey to document social protest movements around the world.

From beach at Coney Island after Hurricane Sandy 

to the streets on the West Side of Chicago for the March for Education Justice

From the steps of the Supreme Court for the announcement on Prop 8

to the Mall in Washington DC for the Climate rally

taking video of people chanting “We want music, not gas” in the streets of Istanbul

sharing the view from her roof in Harlem

Out. Of. Focus.

You can support photographer Jenna Pope's work by making a donation here.


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“My eyes has been my camera taking pictures of the world and my songs has been my messages that I tried to scatter across the back sides and along the steps of the fire escapes and on the window sills and through the dark halls…”

― Woody Guthrie

This Land is Your Land

Photographer Jenna Pope took this photo of a group of women known as the Raging Grannies at this week's Solidarity Sing-Along in the Wisconsin State Capitol.

There are chapters of Grannies all over the world, “out in the streets promoting peace, justice, social and economic equality through song and humour.” The original group of Raging Grannies was formed in 1987 in Victoria, British Columbia, but today you can find "gaggles of Grannies" throughout Canada, Australia, Israel, Scotland, and the United States.  The Raging Grannies have a database of 450 song lyrics on their website that can be used “non-commercially as a form of protest, and not for entertainment,” which states, “You’ve come to the right place if you’re looking for a song to express your outrage about all of those things that threaten our grandchildren’s futures — pollution, militarism, greed, ‘isms and more.”

The Raging Grannies were in the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison to participate in The Solidarity Sing-Along, which has been happening every week day during the noon hour since Friday, March 2011.  Last week, Capitol Police began enforcing the administrative code which says that groups of 20 or more are required to get a permit.

Jenna was there on August 1st to document some of the 23 citations that were given to both participants and tourists who were there observing the Sing-Along.

A tourist from Arizona is warned that she will be arrested if she doesn't stop singing along.

The Raging Grannies sing this verse to the tune of Woodie Guthrie's This Land Is Your Land:

In the squares of the city, 
in the shadow of the steeple 
In the Capitol, I seen my people 

And some are grumblin’ 
and some are wonderin’ 
If this land’s still made for you and me

You can get a sense of the spirit of the Solidarity Sing Along in this video featured in PBS' American Masters interactive documentary, “This Land is Your Land Project” which celebrates the Woodie Guthrie Centennial.

— Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land

© Copyright 1956 (renewed), 1958 (renewed), 1970 and 1972 by Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc. & TRO-Ludlow Music, Inc. (BMI)

Woodie Guthrie's song, This Land Is Your Land, was actually the very first song that the founders of Rooftop School considered when they were looking for a song that the community could sing each day at Morning Circle. 

As I went walking I saw a sign there

And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."

But on the other side it didn't say nothing,

That side was made for you and me.

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“Anybody got a rock?
There’s a window back here that needs to be opened!” 

— Woodie Guthrie joked and sang, “We Shall Not Be Moved,” when his car was surrounded by an angry mob after a performance in Peekskill, New York.  

The 1949 outdoor concert with Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Harry Belafonte and Paul Robeson, benefitting the Civil Rights Congress, prompted one of the ugliest days in music's history. Known as The Peekskill Riots, angry locals from Westchester County New York took to throwing racial slurs and rocks in response to Paul Robeson's scheduled performance at an open-air concert in Lakeland Acres, north of Peekskill, on September 4th, 1949.

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There is a long history of social protest through song in America. The civil rights movement used songs as an expression of dissent, and this tradition has been carried forward with every movement thereafter. Rooftop School began exploring this history with Marcus Shelby's oratorio, Soul of the Movement: Meditations on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

“With this music, a rich heritage from our ancestors who had the stamina and moral fiber to be able to find beauty in broken fragments of music, whose illiterate minds were able to compose eloquently simple expressions of faith and hope and idealism, we can articulate our deepest groans and passionate yearnings-and end always on a note of hope that God is going to help us work it out, right here in the South where evil stalks the life of a Negro from the time he is placed in the cradle.  Through this music, the Negro is able to dip down into wells of a deeply pessimistic situation and danger-fraught circumstances and bring forth a marvelous, sparkling, fluid optimism.  He knows it is still dark in his world, but somehow, he finds a ray of light”.

— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I want you to go to the window, open it, stick your head out and yell...

Peter Finch posthumously won the Oscar for Best Actor for his role as "The Mad Prophet of the Air-waves" television anchorman Howard Beale in Sidney Lumet's 1976 film, Network.

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“If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.”

— Oscar Wilde

Quote by Oscar Wilde used by artist Virgil Marti for his work “For Oscar Wilde,” installed in the Eastern State Penitentiary,  an abandoned 19th century prison in Philadelphia for a 1995 show, Prison sentences: The Prison as Site/The Prison as Subject, curated by Julie Courtney and Todd Gilens.

“Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” 

— Oscar Wilde

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2013 Turkish Uprising

2013 News channel's workers chapulling. Photos by Erginbilgin, via Wikipedia

Chapulling (Turkish: çapuling) is a term, coined from Prime Minister Erdoğan's use of the term çapulcu (roughly translated to “looter”) to describe protestors in the 2013 protests in Turkey. The word quickly caught on, and was adopted by the demonstrators and online activists. Many took the concept further by integrating the unique nature of the demonstrations and defined it as "to act towards taking the democracy of a nation to the next step by reminding governments of their reason for existence in a peaceful and humorous manner."

People hanging out of their windows and banging on pots and pans, drumming, honking their car horns, or clapping their hands on the street below near Taksim Square in Istanbul, Turkey tonight. 

—  6/9/13 video by independent journalist Jenna Pope (Capucul).

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We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones, 

We turned the dusty drill: 

We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns, 

And sweated on the mill: 

But in the heart of every man 

Terror was lying still.

— stanza from Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol, a poem first published under his prisoner identification number, C.3-3.

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Pope returns to Turkey, just a few weeks later, and reports of new laws being enforced by the government: People are being fined for banging on pots and pans. It is illegal to have tables and chairs on the streets.

App - #19 Çapulcu Tencere from Kumanda TV on Vimeo.

A clever capulcu-er comes up with a solution. The "Capulcu Tencere" app can now be downloaded onto your phone for free. Protesters can still bang the pots and pans and not break the law.

People gathered for iftar (the evening meal when Muslims break their fast during the Islamic month of Ramadan) on Istiklal Street right after the march to demand the release of activists (many were university students) who were arrested after the police raided their homes several days ago. 

— 7/18/13 photo by Jenna Capulcu Pope@BatmanWI