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.

Versus to Verses

Pete Seeger's banjo head is inscribed with the singer's motto:

This Machine Surrounds Hate and Forces it to Surrender.  

The slogan on his banjo head is a tribute to American singer-songwriter Woodie Guthrie, who helped Seeger, who had just dropped out of Harvard, to discover his life's work.

"He went through WWII with a piece of cardboard pasted to the top of his guitar: 'This machine kills fascists,' " Seeger says on the recording. "He really wanted his guitar to help win the war against Hitler. When Woody went into a hospital in 1952 ... I put something similar on my banjo: 'This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.' "

— from NPR Interview, "At 93, Pete Seeger Keeps The Fire Burning Low"

The banjo is now on display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum.

 Curatorial Director Howard Kramer shares insight on his conversation with Seeger and why he decided to put his infamous banjo head in the Museum instead of on auction.

Available for free download on the Internet Archive: Hear Your Banjo Play (1947) — Pete Seeger plays his banjo and narrates the story and presents the origin of the banjo, the development of southern folk music and its influence upon Americans.

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“Participation!  It's what my work has been about.”

For over 70 years, Pete has been leading audience sing-a-longs.  Singing with young and old, rich and poor, new voices and familiar voices. He has probably done more to instill a love of community singing than any other American.  At Seeger's 90th Birthday Concert, Bruce Springsteen talked about the moment when he and Pete sang “This Land Is Your Land” together at Obama's inauguration.

... At some point Pete Seeger decided he'd be a walking, singing reminder of all of America's history. He'd be a living archive of America's music and conscience, a testament of the power of song and culture to nudge history along, to push American events towards more humane and justified ends. He would have the audacity and the courage to sing in the voice of the people, and despite Pete's somewhat benign, grandfatherly appearance, he is a creature of a stubborn, defiant, and nasty optimism. Inside him he carries a steely toughness that belies that grandfatherly facade and it won't let him take a step back from the things he believes in. At 90, he remains a stealth dagger through the heart of our country's illusions about itself. Pete Seeger still sings all the verses all the time, and he reminds us of our immense failures as well as shining a light toward our better angels and the horizon where the country we've imagined and hold dear we hope awaits us.

Musician Ruth Ungar, a longtime friend of the family, remembered seeing an old New Yorker cartoon that hung in the Seeger's kitchen.

"It's a woman answering the phone and she's got a baby under one arm, or maybe two. And she's doing the dishes with one hand and mopping the floor with [her] foot," Ungar explains. "And the quote on the bottom says something like, 'I'm sorry, my husband can't come to the phone right now. He's out fighting for the rights of the oppressed.' "

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In a 2012 interview, Pete's wife, Toshi Seeger insisted that she had no talent... 

...that she doesn’t sing or dance, she only does housework. A friend at the table who worked with her for decades, and Tinya, her daughter, urged her to take credit for Clearwater, both the sloop and, perhaps more importantly, the Festival (officially known as the Great Hudson River Revival) which has been filling the air with folk music since the 60s.

One talent: She was the key programmer for the Festival. Because she was friends with the people who organized the Folk Life Festival in D.C. and was close friends with George and Joyce Wein, organizers of the Newport Folk Festival where she was a member of the board, Toshi often knew about performers long before they were on most people’s radar, even before most of the members of the Festival planning committee had heard of, say, Tracy Chapman. Clearwater may have paid poorly, but performers came because of Toshi; she was the one who pulled it all together.

 Pete pointed out that Toshi is the one who taught him how to sail. 

“She was the one who steered the boat; she had the chart; she kept us off the rocks.”

At age of 93. Pete performed his wife’s five additional verses to his well-loved song, “Turn, Turn, Turn! (There is a Season),” written in 1954 when Toshi took care of two children ages 6 & 8.  Toshi made up 5 verses for them, and share them for the first time.
The audience is clearly delighted to hear the story from Toshi's perspective.

A time of work

A time for play

A time for night

A time for day

A time to sleep

A time to wake

A time for candles on the cake

A time to dress

A time to eat

A time to sit 

and rest your feet

A time to teach

A time to learn

A time for all to take their turn

A time to cry and make a fuss

A time to leave 

and catch the bus

A time for quiet

A time for talk

A time to run, a time to walk

A time to get

A time to give

A time to remember

A time to forgive

A time to hug

A time to kiss

A time to close your eyes and wish

A time for dirt

A time for soap

A time for tears

A time for hope

A time for Fall

A time for spring

A time to hear the robin sing

To every thing

Turn, turn, turn

There is a season

Turn, turn, turn

And a time for every purpose under heaven