“My office is in a church converted to non-profit and no-profit offices. Our office mascot is an aluminum cast of a dead cat I made in high school, which sits on a war rug from Afghanistan.”
“Sometimes my office is outside, like in these images of the Grand Canyon.”
Aaron Huey is a photojournalist who freelances regularly for The National Geographic magazines, Harper’s, The New Yorker, the Smithsonian magazine, the New York Times, GEO and dozens of others. He is also a Contributing Editor (photographer) for Harper’s magazine. Huey is widely known for his 3,349 mile, solo walk across America (with his dog Cosmo). The 2002 journey lasted 154 days. There was no media coverage. They walked everystep. Aaron now uses Seattle, WA, where he sits on the board of directors for the photographic non-profit Blue Earth Alliance, as a home base in between assignments. His work is represented by Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles.
We photographers who travel far and go deep into other people’s worlds, especially dark ones, are forced to process much more.
On December 29 1890, after decades of treaty violations with the Lakota Sioux, U.S. troops surrounded an encampment at Wounded Knee Creek and massacred Chief Big Foot and 300 prisoners of war, using a new rapid-fire weapon that fired exploding shells called a Hotchkiss gun. Twenty Congressional Medals of Honor for Valor were given to the 7th Calvary for what the Army called the “Battle” of Wounded Knee. This is the most Medals of Honor ever awarded for a single battle—more medals given for the indiscriminate slaughter of women and children than in any battle in World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan. That event is now known as the Wounded Knee Massacre, the final act of the Indian Wars. It stands as a symbol of the end of an entire way of life for the indigenous people of North America. Everything can be measured before Wounded Knee and after. Today’s Lakota live in the shadow of that massacre and carry its burden.
The place now called Pine Ridge was once Prisoner of War Camp #344, and it’s people are stillborn into a prisoner of war camp, even if the guards are long gone.
FYD: How did your billboard idea surface?
AH: I have been documenting the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation for the past six years. At a certain point I realized how inappropriate it was for the project to end with another book or a gallery show, where everyone patted me on the back and congratulated me for making pretty pictures of suffering.
FYD: How did you enlist Shepard Fairey?
AH: I had the idea to use Shepard first, but connected with an activist/artist named Ernesto Yerena through a few lucky posts that people were sending my way on Facebook about him. I decided I liked his work as much as I liked Shepard’s and asked him to join the project. It wasn’t until later that found out he was Shepard’s understudy for several years.
Now that the three of us have put these images together I think the results are quite strong. The result will be thousands of these images/posters going up on walls all over America. The project closes on Wednesday and we need all the help we can get. Please check it out HERE. This is your chance to own some original art by the most prolific street artists in America AND to support Native Issues at the same time!
Its people are stillborn into a prisoner of war camp, even if the guards are long gone.
Follow Aaron on Facebook here and his blog here, Ted talk here, DONATE here…today!
fascinating.
May I used “Still Wounded” in a blog I’m writing about class warfare (how the rich are winning)?
Janet Lachman
www://callitbyname.wordpress.com