Anna Joseph: A Grandmother’s Intellectual and Moral Legacy

I feel blessed to have spent five days at Ammachy’s bedside, touching her and talking to her before she left us on September 14.  Being physical present with her reminded me in a powerful, palpable way of the enormous role she has played in who I am today.

• Please take the time to write a condolence message or light a candle on Ammachy’s online memorial site.
• Read examples of her published and unpublished works below.
• See a picture of Ammachy below.
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Anna’s Namesake

Through her spirit, the physical strength she still had in her, her smell, her feel, and the personality she still exerted as best she could while surviving on IV fluids, I physically felt all the ties that bind me to her.  There is the wonderful intellectual and moral guidance that I was immeasurably lucky to have been born to receive from her. There are also all the emotional ties of a grandchild who learned to read, speak grammatically correctly, in a clean accent, think through, weigh and judge the world, from this wonderful person. And there are also the ties of childhood comfort, happiness, silliness, and meaningfulness that belong only to her.  I could not be luckier than to have been her grand-daughter and cherish that I am her namesake.

She was a deeply philosophical person who questioned and observed the complexities of life, but never allowed them to dissolve her into nihilism or uncertainty.  She possessed moral certitude and an unshakable faith in God’s love and Christian ethics.  She was a great observer of humanity, and in her reserved and implacable way she was a deeply self-assured and moral person.

Everyone respected her, but she was no blowhard.  She commanded attention but was never aggressive.  She stood her ground, and had the backbone to never sway.  Her command of the English language and literature was expansive. She quoted poetry and was quick to offer reflections and allegories from literature for any occasion–particularly the vicissitudes of Indian politics on which she wrote plenty of wry, activist commentaries in newspapers.   She had a humanistic outlook because of that intellectual background and a Christian outlook because of her faith.  She took the time to teach the humblest of students English conversation.  Nothing was beyond her, nothing was too low for her.

Ammachy, Anna Joseph, Baby

Writings by Anna Joseph I Want to Share!

I want to share with you a small sample of writings I retrieved from a jumble of fraying papers in the library of 249 (as we nicknamed her home) by both her and my grandfather, Rev. Dr. K.C. Joseph.  I marvel at their timelessness, the play on themes from a broad range of literature, the humanism, the activism against injustice and on behalf of the needy and poor, and the theologically thoughtful Christian belief that these writings demonstrate:

1) Caring for the Dying Patient, by Dr. K.C. Joseph (PDF, undated) (Ed: so touchingly written and so timely when I found it)

2) Children and Good Manners, by Anna Joseph (PDF, undated) (Ed: A MUST READ!)

3) Are You Mentally Healthy by Anna Joseph (PDF, Reprint from The Church Weekly, undated)

4) Learning to Love by Anna Joseph (PDF, Reprint from The Church Weekly, undated)

5) An 80th Birthday Tribute to T.B. Thomas by Anna Joseph (PDF, written out in her pearly hand, undated)

6) Austerity for Whom? by Anna Joseph (PDF, Letter to the Editor: Indian Express, undated) (Ed: on the hypocrisy of politicians)

7) An Indifferent Nation by Anna Joseph (PDF, Letter to the Editor, 1980s) (Ed: expressing outrage at an incident of Sati)

8) Politics at its Lowest Ebb by Anna Joseph (PDF, Letter to the Editor, undated) (Ed: on the role of Sonia Gandhi as a political leader)

9) Is This Democracy, by Anna Joseph (PDF, Letter to the Editor, undated)

The Future of Street Photography

Our assignment here is to push the limits of street photography as it is usually defined…  I wanted to evoke the sense of alienation of the modern street.  Despite the currently fashionable post-modernist “village-style” architecture of places such as Reston and Shirlington, they remain largely, destinations to which we drive in automobiles.  Our office parks, suburbs, and single-zoned landuses create isolation.  To walk from your office building to a local eatery for lunch might involve navigating a highway overpass. 

Modern streets are not really built for human passage.

Street As I See It

Summer evenings are for dancing in the street

At summer street festivals, people really are on their best behavior! And that’s a joy to photograph.  Community, joy, interaction, movement. It’s all there…even though we take time out to do this, rather than it being our everyday street life.

A Sense of Place

This assignment involved exploring the relationship between the people I photograph and the place where they are photographed. In other words, both the people and the place are significant.

Heba of Sudanese origin along Route 7 in northern Virginia

The New Americans

I took a trip down Route 50 West…to find the vibrant, varied new America.

Butcher in a Vietnamese grocery store

Multiple Frames of a Subject

Just when I was giving up on shooting for the day, I serendipitously ran into an animated 11-year old boy, his 15-year old brother, and the brothers friends.  They were play fighting and daring each other to do stunts, sparring, pushing, kicking, and shoving but, artfully. Throughout, the 11-year old provided rapid fire commentary on his exploits, how he could scale buildings like spider man, jump over steps, and train to be tough from his manual on Kung Fu (which was partly written in Chinese).  He readily provoked sparring with the bigger boys, confident that he wouldn’t be squashed.   Below is a shot from my contact sheet of 20 frames (PDF, 1 pp, 2Mb)

Hitching a ride with a fighting friend

Gestures and Expressions

This week’s assignment was to photograph people in public and capture their expressions.  I soon realized that adult pedestrians around here have the expressive range of Secret Service-men with darkglasses on. The middle-class world is so predictable, sanitized, and orderly that people can function almost robotically as far as emotions are concerned. There is no (need for) fear, frustration, desperation, or sadness. Occasionally, there is laughter, but that too missing an element of surprise and enchantment.

These boys at the open air festival at Dance Place in northeast DC, therefore, got my attention with their genuine exuberance and unrepressed frolicking as they got their groove on standing next to the real drummers.

Young drummers getting their groove on next to the accompanists at the African Dance Festival.

Constrained but Wiser! 50mm Fixed Lens

So, I’ve been wondering what lens length is best to be able to capture those fleeting moments or instantaneous expressions and emotions that you see all around, and you want to capture in street photography.  I learned that it sometimes helps to constrain yourself, to see what it is possible to do with one, fixed lens length.  The constraint helped me enormously in developing a shooting vocabulary of sorts.  Working repeatedly at 50 mm, I framed with my feet rather than with the lens…

Here’s an offering for the 50 mm fixed lens assignment.

A racer in the Air Force Cycling Classic, May 31, 2009. These cyclists raced 100 km on a tight circuit around four blocks in the heart of urban Arlington.

Channeling Martin Parr

Martin Parr is a British photographer whose work is characterized as documentary, intimate, social critique, anthropological, and satirical. Martin Parr’s Web site requires Flash.

Beauty in men’s eyes can often be a finished product, like a woman’s flawless, perfect skin, or made up face. But in the woman’s experience, beauty can be work, and like a garden, requires ongoing cultivation. Brows, moustaches and other facial hair are like garden weeds on a woman’s face — unwanted, often chemically treated, or physically pulled out.

Here’s my offering done in the style of Martin Parr:

Working Beauty

Learn more about Martin Parr from Wikipedia.

Rolling Thunder: a loud and characterful spectacle

A young marine held on to her flag on Memorial Bridge while thousands of motorcycles roared past for the annual Rolling Thunder event.

This young marine concentrated hard on her flag which was whipping all over the place.  She kept her eyes steady and to the front.  She was smaller than many in her group, but she was the steadiest.  Several of the others shuffled, wiped their necks of sweat, looked sideways, looked up at their wavering flags.  But this one had a steely gaze I admired.

Man and machines. This hefty biker navigated his large motorbike, and then navigates around his tiny cellphone... Taken in the middle of a sea of motorbikes at the West Potomac parking area.

What caught my eye at first was the color of this guy’s Tshirt, amidst the sea of black-leather and motorbikes.  But then I caught his cell phone and I knew he wouldn’t notice me clicking away.  It struck me later how he was using these two different machines of vastly different proportions.

Addendum

After class critique, my professor encouraged me to throw in another photo that caught her eye. The timing of this shot was sheer luck.

Rolling Thunder Flags