 For those of you who I haven't had a chance to meet, I'm Heather Farrell. I'm the curator and director of exhibitions here at BCA Center, Burlington City Arts. And I am delighted that you have been able to join us both physically and virtually for tonight's program. With our special guest speaker and artist, James Buck. James has just recently returned from assignment with Project Hope, where he has been covering the perilous conditions of healthcare workers and patients and the general Ukrainian population amidst the war in Ukraine. This is really a phenomenal opportunity to share their stories tonight. And I just like to extend a few thank yous before I begin my introduction. I'd like to thank Milton Rosa Ortiz, our BCA advisory board member for connecting us with James, as he had just returned from his assignment in Vermont a mere days before he connected us. I'd also like to thank the organizations that make these types of programs possible at BCA, including the New England Foundation for the Arts through the New England Arts Resilience Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Vermont Arts Council, and also our wonderful team here at BCA, our events and communications team, really to make this program possible tonight in its hybrid format and to get it out into the community so thank you. Before I begin, I'd like to share a few notes on our format because it is hybrid. After my introductions, James will begin his talk sharing images and stories of the people he encountered while in Ukraine and Poland. And then following the presentation, we will open up for questions from both our audience here at BCA as well as on Zoom. If you are on Zoom, please be sure to pose a question in the Q&A feature and a reminder that today's webinar is being recorded and we will be posting it without, well probably within the next week on our BCA YouTube channel. So with that, I love to share a brief bio of James, who we're so happy to have here tonight. James Buck is a humanitarian photojournalist who works to humanize global crises by connecting people through the power of visual storytelling. He works for news and NGOs, and he's responding to unfolding disasters, revealing the hidden tales of strength and suffering to help people understand and care about their global neighbors. His passion is creating connection and inspiring action by meeting people around the world and bringing their stories home. Born in India, James grew up in Saudi Arabia, and he began photographing the uprisings that led to the Arab Spring as a graduate journalism student at UC Berkeley, where he received his MJ and MA in journalism and Middle Eastern studies in 2010. In 2008, he was arrested by Egyptian authorities attempting to repress the outside coverage of a revolt within Cairo, a catalyzing event that spurred James to work on untold stories from a compassionate point of view. Describing himself as a trans man in recovery, Buck brings multiple lenses to his work as he invites viewers through his powerful imagery to experience other people's lives. We are very pleased here at BCA to welcome James Buck for tonight's program. Thank you so much. I'm James and it's so nice to see you all here in person and online. And, you know, I'm really honored to be here and this is a really fancy thing for me to do an artist talk right this is not a way I typically think of myself. I started to prepare for this. I thought, well, this is this is a great honor I'm going to get to talk to people and share my work and I also felt this weird feeling that was sort of guilty. Because what my job is is really to be a witness, and not to make an image that's about me or something cool that I found, or to tell any story I mean hopefully I'm not famous enough, nobody here came because I wanted to hear something from James Buck right before I die, which is awesome people came here because you care about what's happening in Ukraine. And that's really what is important. And what I hope what hope hopefully that's what I can transmit to you it's just what I saw and and what what, what happened in front of me and what means something to you. It's a strange job that I have because photojournalists like I am we're sort of attracted like flies to suffering. There's a Facebook group I belong to that jokingly calls ourselves the vulture club. And this photograph of the starving young boy in Sudan, because there is this weird, this weirdness about chasing after disasters but it's also really important to tell these stories and it's something that I struggle with all the time. When do I take an image. When do I stop and help. When does this photograph communicate something that's important. When am I potentially dehumanizing or harming someone that I'm interacting with. So those are questions I don't have answers to, but I will invite you to consider that, and certainly give me your feedback, as I show you some of this work. I'm going to show you the thing that I sort of meditate on before I do any, any photography always is this concept of awakening and I always ask to serve awakening whatever that means so I hope that's what that's what will serve here tonight. So, that said, I'll start in Poland. I work as a photographer. I work locally for seven days. And I shoot a lot of drag shows. I do a lot of stuff like that. And I also sometimes go places in the world where there are wars and major epidemics. And weirdly, both things are important equally in a lot of ways. When this war broke out, I have alerts on my phone set up I know when stuff is happening and when our project hope is organization I work for often. And when our emergency response director Tom Cotter starts tweeting about some event I know I'm probably going to get deployed or might get deployed. And so I got 48 hour notice that I'm probably going to get deployed to Poland and maybe it's going to be remaining and maybe it's Poland, maybe it's Moldova maybe we don't know where it's going to be. And it ended up in Krakow. And I got to crack out and I've photographed a lot of refugee situations before I photographed the Syrian refugee diaspora quite a bit in Jordan and in Turkey. And I've never photographed a refugee situation in Europe and refugee situations should be considered equal everywhere in the world right now one person suffering is more important or different from anyone else's but there's something really that hits home and is just crippling I'm genuinely frightening about seeing hundreds of thousands of people who look exactly like you pouring out of a country on buses clutching suitcases, and that's what I saw when I got to crack out. The first day, we were at a transit station basically the team I was with was a logistics team they are trying to set up the ability to supply medic to send medical supplies into Poland. Excuse me into Ukraine from Poland and I'm the only photographer among all these logisticians and emergency responders. So I'm sort of a little barnacle on their team trying to photograph capture what they're doing and hopefully bring it home to the team and to and to news outlets as well. One of the challenges of doing this type of photography as I said is that I'm right there in people's faces when they're at the worst moment in their lives when they're really suffering. And I immediately saw people sort of streaming streaming off of buses and this huge it was a crazy place it was actually what looked like it had been a customs mall. It was one of those places where there are like lots of perfume and those giant Toblerone bars and a bunch of because I eventually figured this out I couldn't figure out what kind of place we were in. But it seemed that these makeshift centers had been set up to accommodate the huge numbers of people that were coming in and people were actually being sort of housed in the these little what had been these duty free shops, it seems so this is where East from Krakow near one of the border stations near Ukraine, and I'm trying to get the sort of lie of the land and what what's happening and not be too much in people's faces not be overly intrusive, and I worry a lot about authorities as well because I have been arrested. And so the first day I'm trying to just orient myself to what's happening. And what's happening is that people and their pets and their kids are just showing up in these huge numbers. And they're coming in on these buses just one after the other like imagine, you know, Penn Station there's just these huge buses coming in from wherever they're coming in, and people are just unloading from the buses coming into the transit station and the people who are responding are actually are Polish are local Polish firefighters, these weren't federal authorities. This wasn't the UN. High Commission on refugees who are usually there at refugee camps, there's at this point anyway I couldn't speak to today, but there wasn't that level of international organization this was sort of a good will of the local fire department out here unloading bags, and it's I know we live in Vermont and, but it's this is this is cold. And so they're unloading bags and just bringing people into this sort of station to be sort of processed. And I noticed right away that there wasn't, again, that infrastructure that there often is where people are people's IDs are kind of being checked or numbers are being taken down or some kind of registry of where people are coming from or where people are going instead what's happening is people are just standing in lines trying to find buses to various places in Europe. So there might be one coming in to Lisbon, maybe there's something going to Paris maybe there's something going to Warsaw. So people are just trying to figure out where they can go how they can get out of where they are, and sort of lining up for hours in the cold. And it's very difficult, difficult to witness is difficult to try to photograph, and I always feel like a creep. I'm the only guy there with a camera, and the only person there is not really helping anybody, I'm sort of taking something from the situation instead of giving something to people and and that doesn't really feel very good but I tried to interact with people the most respectfully I can. And I noticed that the Polish authorities were really helping they weren't they weren't averse to cameras that's my big fear is first I do sort of a limit that could just a test with the camera. Sort of bringing it out just seeing if people respond to it what what happens when you can get it out because someplace in the world as soon as I take the camera out stuff starts really going off. And here people weren't responding to it too much. So I was able to sort of capture the scene and what was happening which was mostly just people at this point really cooperating with each other and really trying to help each other. Get somewhere and I had a lot of, I was glad to see that level of cooperation and I also know from experience I couldn't say for sure about this situation but typically refugee situations tend to strain local populations after a period of time. Goodwill can change and I had this sense like this is great that there's this level of cooperation right now but I know. Gosh this is going to be hard if this situation continues at this volume. I wasn't allowed to photograph inside the shelter but I sneaked a few iPhone iPhone photos, which is always a little iffy, but I wanted to get a sense of just what it looked like. So you can see the kind of sleeping conditions and the close quarters that people are sort of stuffed in with their bags together. And there was a sign I had to take a picture of because it's in Poland for Ukrainians in English, and it's like, are you fleeing your country, go to this website, you know, I just sort of couldn't believe that you know it's helpful I mean it's it's helpful, but that's that's sort of what what you're being met with as a resource and I'm seeing stuff like this which again is an iPhone photo from the hip but I thought this was important to show because. This is not a woman's story but what you can see here is an example that she's looking for a place in Germany for herself and her two kids. And I started to think immediately about the risks of trafficking, because you've got a vulnerable population. Mostly women and children who are fleeing I'll talk about that in a minute, and people are just trying desperately to get anywhere and I started thinking about assignments I've done on sex trafficking in Eastern Europe where people are being promised like work in this place but then they take your passport and stuff like that Oh God that you and really needs to get in here and and kind of, you know, keep an eye on things. I went outside and this is what I do when I, this is what I do this keeps me going is I just play with kids a lot of the time and now with my camera I can flip the screen around you know I can show the kid is their photo and I look oh my God it's you it's you and then the kids like oh my God and it doesn't every language every country in the world this game works you know the kids kids love it. And then I'll get somebody who doesn't love it but this, you know I spent maybe three. And it's one of the few things I can do sometimes really it's just to give people a little bit of a human interaction sometimes I can be a therapist I can listen. Sometimes I can just play with the kids from it I try as hard as I can to give people a positive experience of me, even in those few moments and I played with this kid for a while as his mom I don't think was too impressed but we had a moment and I put my hand up and you put his hand up and we hung out and then the bus pulled away and I don't know where they went. We went to another one of these stations and saw a really similar set of really similar scenario where we saw people being fed, given sort of basic basic needs, being met at the scene. And their pets and carriers every belonging that they had on their back huddled out in the cold and just waiting for buses trying to figure out where to go. People of all ages trying to bring their families somewhere. This woman here I met and I spoke to for a while I often do this. Especially when I'm doing this work alongside emergency responders I don't tend to have a reporter of any kind with me so I'm the only person and I my Ukrainian is, you know, I don't have any. So, Google translate app is I'll put some basic explanations of what I'm doing and some very basic questions and I'll just record people in their native language and I'll try to send it home and translate. But I find that a lot of times people, even though they know I can't understand their language they just like they really have this urgency to get their story out there and some of the best interactions I've ever had have been just using, like a Google translate app and people just said thank you for listening to my story so this woman. I love to name that for everybody is Anna. She said that she told me the story which I got later translated she's just pouring out the story in Ukrainian and I'm going, uh huh, uh huh, you know, and I'm making I'm like doing the body language that I can because she's so emotion I'm trying to to be there for her as best I can will also taking a photo and also trying to record the story that I don't understand but I can. What she's telling me without without knowing what she's telling me and later I heard that she said, um, she said life was really traumatic. Air raid sirens rang out day and night she was unable to sleep she kept sheltering in basements and she had a panic attack after days of intense stress. Now she's fled to Poland and she's boarded a bus for town in Europe that she had never heard of before. She said it's so hard to live like this I left my home and my job and came here. I fear my house will be destroyed and the buildings in our town will be demolished. I want to go back because Ukraine is my home. I dream that we will be told the war is over. I want it so much. And I spent some time with her family. And what ends up happening inevitably in the situations these are some of my team members. There's nothing we can do so we just help whatever we can we start loading bags on two buses, and we got on a onto a bus these are some of the guys I've responded to in many situations around the world with. And I actually don't even know where that bus is I keep my Cyrillic isn't very good. I don't know where that bus is going. Maybe someone who reads Cyrillic can read it but that was on a that was the last I saw of her and she was gone. Back in Cracow. We went to the Children's Hospital where project hope has supports a pediatric wing. And this is a pediatric oncology center. There are two photos there's two stories I can tell in every situation. And one of them is this story where I come in and I interact with the kids and I play with them for a minute. And we do this stuff you know the kids are really happy to see us we maybe bring them some toys or supplies this is my colleague lot co who after this interaction we went down to the gift shop and buy all these toys for the kids because we just really wanted to give them something you know. And then there's this photo, which is also true. This, this boy, Dimitri, 10 years old, when the conflict began in Ukraine he was preparing for his 10th round of chemotherapy in Kiev. His mother knew that she needed to act fast she said the decision to come to Poland was sudden we knew that the child's treatment had to be continued. And we had no idea where to go. They fled the country she said amid huge traffic jams it was almost impossible to drive we were afraid someone would drop a bomb. Our children managed to fall asleep and I sat and prayed all the way. Now they do. They are receiving cancer treatment at the Krakow Children's Hospital, but they're worried about their relatives back in Ukraine and they do like a daily roll call to see that everyone is still okay. And she said the Polish are so kind and help us a lot local people are so compassionate we're grateful for this help for the opportunity to treat our child and live here. What we do want is to return to Ukraine because there is our home, our family, our parents are roots. And I share that quote with you because I've met refugees in many countries in many places and I've said this before for people who've heard me talk before but I've never once heard someone say I really want to go to America and drink Coke and get in the where Nike's this weird myth we have the people they they who they are all want to come to our countries right, but refugees want us to go home. Universally, and that's tends to be the best support we can provide not that resettlement isn't great and it is really important as well but I've never met someone who said I'm so glad I fled my country in this war, so that I could come to America. That's not been in it that's not been an experience that I've had anyway. I spent some time in the, in the cancer ward with the kids that's are getting their chemo treatments which was really sweet and there were a lot of fun. And this little girl was showing me a picture of what her last birthday party in back in Ukraine before before the treatments began and I heard a lot of stories from these folks which were great. I happened to just walk by this take some photos of this one little thing that was happening. This exchange of sutures the team was working super hard to get this logistics supply going into into Ukraine and there was this, for some reason this, this box of sutures was really important I had no idea why at the time but they'll come back into the story. Another day I spent at the train station in crack out my team was off doing some logistics and at this point they kind of trust me enough to just say James go do whatever. Which is great and terrifying because I don't have the language and again I just feel like a culture like I walk into the train station in crack out which has been become this sort of transit center right people are sleeping everywhere. There are just people pouring in from all over into into this sort of central holding station really, and then looking for places to go and I spent the first hour. Just walking around nervously trying to take pictures and it's really important one thing that I try to do, especially working for NGOs is not to photograph people's faces because the images when I'm working for a nonprofit organization is a poster for the news images could be used for promotion and fundraising and even though it's a nonprofit. They're still image licensing and they want to be really sensitive around not using people's faces and giving people dignity and giving people the right to be to decline the right to be photographed to be photographed to be used in a campaign you wouldn't want your photo taken. You know when you're at a bus station and then see it in a big billboard somewhere, you know saying feed these hungry, you know, Vermonters look at this poor guy sitting on the, you know, cherry street bus station you know. It's really important to try not to show faces as much as I can without unless they get permission which I often do, but that makes my job so hard, because I have to. First of all faces are how we connect to other humans right, we know that even like when we do experiments with young children or other primates like facial expression is such a big deal and how we feel and express and care about each other but also it's just really hard and I had to spend a lot of time standing there waiting for someone's leg to go into the way into the frame or some way to get around depicting the face but still hopefully capture some of some of the sentiment. So, spending a bunch of time in the train station and crack out trying to figure out what's happening I think after the first hour or so I just went outside and cried for a long time, which is usually really good thing that's usually a turning point for me I kind of need to do that. And I said okay I've got to start talking to people how am I going to talk to people I don't speak the language I don't have a translator I don't have anybody with me it's just me. And what I noticed was that people were posting on this message board, you can see again it's like. You know two people for this town or I can host people in this city or what have you and I guess the place of the day was Vienna and so a lot of people were trying to find people to meet up with in Vienna I guess the EU government maybe was running extra trains and there was a train coming to Vienna that day so people were running all around this message board trying to find places to go. And this I started noticing these volunteers in this again trying to crop people's faces which is really, but get the interaction which is hard. I noticed these volunteers in these yellow jackets and I was. I realized this one actually says staff in English but this one I've read in Cyrillic I was like wall might volunteer volunteer okay I get it I get it but I guess you can kind of tell by the yellow jackets they're doing some kind of volunteer work they're handing stuff out and I figure out some people who maybe I can connect with you can help me to talk to this population, and at this train station I guess it was the local scouting organization. You can see by the patches on the person's jersey there is a scouting organization that organize this sort of resource gathering and drop, and there were some Americans there they were Polish people there were just people all from all over, they were hanging out together and just handing out whatever resources they were available food hygiene kids etc I started hanging out with this one guy because he I could hear that he was speaking Ukrainian, I could kind of tell he had this Ukraine scar fond that he was Polish. And I saw these Polish kids come in and just they were they were bringing in like bagged sandwiches he just was walking around with this box, handing out whatever people would give him so people these kids these teenagers came in you can see this lunch container full of sandwiches, I was like at this point in time anyway people were bringing in like sandwiches from home, or from a deli and giving them to volunteers who were there. And the volunteers were just going around and distributing them to people that's the kind of the level of help that was happening at that time. I asked him basically if he would come and help me translate. And because he seemed to speak Ukrainian and he did he found me a Ukrainian refugee a young woman who didn't want to be photographed. He was a young woman who was the only person supporting her family because she worked remotely so while her family was fleeing she could keep her job, and she translated to interviews for me, which was great, and horrific, because I was using this traumatized person to tell these stories from these other traumatized people and after she translated two stories for me she kind of was like, I kind of had it I gotta. I gotta stop, and that was that's okay. But I really appreciated that she did that. I met some, I met more families people who live close to the nuclear reactor and really feared like terrorist activity or bar that the war with someone was going to hit the reactor these people said they lived about seven kilometers from a nuclear facility and they were worried that there was going to be an attack at the nuclear facility and so they fled together and I started realizing at this point. The reason I'm seeing all women and children and I started asking you about it is that Ukraine has a mandatory military conscription and men aren't allowed to leave the country and men of a certain age aren't allowed to leave the country because of that mandatory military service so women and children are tending to leave on their own. And people started telling me stories about having left behind their father, their brother. It was really sad. So I spent the day in this train station in Krakow and I saw these folks wait for train after train coming in and my Polish is no better than the Ukrainian refugees Polish so none of us knew which of the train to Vienna was. Eventually, we figured it out. After many hours of waiting, and they, the train to Vienna came, the people I had been helping with their bags for a few hours and talking to boarded up for Vienna, and I never saw them again. I do I do do always though give them my, my number and tell them to get in touch if they need something sometimes people do later. The first story I'm going to share with you is about the sutures. So, you can sort of see my colleagues up in the top right corner there. A couple of days later, I find out that we're going to get into Levy. We're going to get across the border into Ukraine and I don't even know what we're bringing with us because I'm worried about cameras getting cameras across any border let me tell you the one thing you do not want to bring across the border is cameras. It's just, nobody likes journalists. I really don't like depending on the situation. When you come in and you look like you're about to tell some kind of visual story it just makes governments uncomfortable like doesn't, they don't like it so it's not always true but it's often true and I've had a lot of trouble with this I was nervous by getting into Ukraine with my cameras and my drone and I'm thinking like I'm going to get arrested at the border and you know this often happens to me. So I'm paying no attention to what my colleagues are bringing in but they get there and we're get to this hospital in the middle of the night after we hitchhiked with a Ukrainian woman who got us across the border because she was friends with the border guards. And there's this, this box, this box that they're carrying around and they're so excited that they brought this box in. And we meet Dr Igor on the right who's just beaming from ear to ear because we brought this box of this box in and they start unboxing these sutures. It turns out what they are is a special thin filament cardiac sutures that are used for heart transplants. And we have just brought them across the border to Ukraine's premier transplant facility the first hospital in the country to successfully perform a lung transplant, which they were so proud of which is a really big deal for a country like Ukraine. And a lot of their medical supplies had been pilfered and sent east to the war to the front. And so they told us they were within a day of running out of like morphine and pain medicines and made in gauze and major supplies that they needed, but they didn't have these specialized sutures that they needed to use the very next morning for a transplant patient who was waiting because they had to donor. So we overnighted in the hospital. This is my bed at whatever time in the morning we lights out and 430. We get woken up air raid. And my job of course is to take pictures while shit goes down if you will. So I'm trying to photograph everybody running into the basement of this hospital for this during this air raid alarm. And my colleagues kind of trying to figure out where the safest place is to go. And I, frankly, I'm just like, Oh my God, I want to sleep like they had a hard time getting me out of bed I guess. But once we were down there, we're trying to assess the situation and figure out how realistic this is what the attack it you know how likely this is. Obviously NGOs have to be careful about this kind of stuff. So we're wandering around the basement trying to figure out what's going on, trying to see how safe it is what the structure looks like eventually. We figure out that everybody else is basically upstairs asleep the doctors have just slept through these enough that they're sort of like whatever. And they're not paying a ton of attention to them at this point maybe they poke their heads out but they're not coming running down to the basement with us. So, for 30 so we got in it like one Dr Igor the man I told you about who met us with cake and Coca Cola and coffee at one o'clock in the morning he has a heart transplant the next morning but he insists upon being hospitable and then at four we're up with the air raid alarm. And the next morning this this is now 7am so I'm actually playing my little audio clip now, if I can. So this is the second one. Meet myself again. So that's the second one and they're about, I don't know, three four hours apart at that time. And I mean boohoo for us no big deal would you know it's night asleep but the people the doctors who are staying there who have to do these surgeries it's really like incredible that they're in these hospitals waking up for these air raid alarms I learned later that the reason I showed this photo that I learned later that this water is actually a reservoir that they've got sitting there in case of attack that they can use it to put out fires. And you know we're the reason I'm out there filming is I'm scanning the horizon and to see if there's smoke anywhere right. So I get to scrub in and go into a surgery is. I don't like to, you know, a little behind the scenes for you so I get to scrub in which is really cool and I won't show you there's going to be one for none of these photos are going to be bloody but I'll tell you the one the one there's one that might be a little bit. And I got to photograph a heart transplant which was one of the, the most amazing things I've ever seen in my life, I can't even describe it. This is the donor whose family had given permission to, you know, harvest the organs from this person who's brain dead, you know, from an accident. And so these doctors who've been awake and all night have been on and off, you know, who don't have supplies who are trying to do this medicine without, you know, without what they need are now trying to transplant a human heart. And Dr Igor, fresh from his late night hosting us and dodging arrayed alarms is leading the team harvesting the heart and very kindly, I actually told him that I had had a cardiac procedure I had had an ablation, which is a procedure for a rapid heartbeat I told them I'd had this, this procedure to fix a rapid heartbeat and first thing, this is in surgery. I told him this, he puts his fingers on my wrist and he goes checks my policies. Oh it's fixed like this is his level of concern. And so I'm photographing this heart transplant and I'm watching out in the distance behind the city of Lviv and this is sort of the setting for this. And Dr Igor when he gets a break is going to the window and watching you can maybe see just a little bit right here there's some smoke in the distance. And he's wondering if it's an attack. He's trying to finish the surgery and, and make sure that there isn't a bombing in the meantime. So this is one of the cool this is probably one of the coolest photos I've ever taken in my life, even though it's not that interesting visually. I couldn't believe it. Apparently when you take a heart out of a body. This is what you do. You put it in a cooler. Pick up your cell phone. No text messages and race across the hospital to the other wing where the recipient is waiting. So I got to race down the hallway with the heart and the transplant team and go watch them prepare the heart to be put into the recipient. And remember those little sutures I was telling you about I finally got to see apparently these very special piece of medical equipment that got we got to bring across the border and the reason that that's important. That story is important is because one of the things we don't think about in these situations I think we think a lot about what's happening on the front and we see images from what's being bombed but what happens to the entire medical system the amount of strain. I think it's passed along the chain because of lack of supply because of the fatigue and healthcare workers and it's not just medicine it's every other aspect of civil society but the, the total shutdown of civil society affects people at every level it's not just the number of okay maybe X number of people were killed today and a bombing and that number sounds high to me or that number sounds low to me, but the ripple effect throughout really persist and the strain always on healthcare systems is really really high in these situations. So these guys managed to get their cardiac sutures. This is this incredible machine that basically keeps a person alive without a heart in them and moves the blood around the body the way that the heart would. And Dr Igor is finishing up his, his work here where he put the heart into the new person and to the recipient and so them up and this is a warning slide if you want to close your eyes the next slide does depict a human heart, but it's not bloody. And this is where we end our story. It's, it's really it's just the gift of life. It's, it's, it's the little thing that that we can do. It's not it maybe isn't very much. In this case it was a suitcase that got across a border. But this person now has that heart inside them. And I heard that he was taken off of breathing apparatus the next day and what's more apparently there were two kidneys harvested also that went to two kids. So that's, that's the piece that I got to see and contribute in this, this trip. So I'll just end with a little bit of behind the scenes as we're getting out of the country. Getting out of Ukraine was interesting because we took the same path that the fleeing refugees took. So, as we're fleeing the country. It's no easier for us to get out than it is for them and I got to actually see for the first time firsthand what it's like to try to get out of a country that I often photograph people on the other side of. We had to walk down a very long there's a sort of like a demilitarized zone kind of a no man's land between Poland and Ukraine that it's a long about 700 meter place and of course not allowed to photograph but my job is to photograph. So a lot of my, a lot of my life looks like this, you know, there's a lot of this, there's a lot of this kind of action with the phone. Because it's so important to get these images, am I being a vulture, and I'm breaking the law. I'm, you know, I'm certainly putting myself at risk, I'm often putting other people at risk, am I being a vulture is this worth it is this image worth it. I took a few very short clips that are terrible but these are just inside the, the, the, this is just from the chest filming like this but this is just what it looks like and the refugees are leaving Ukraine as we're crossing the border with them to get back to Poland. And we're spending hours with people trying to get across the border and we eventually of course got across as as did all the people that we were with which was great. And in the end I get to fall asleep in the car with my colleague and the sad part is that they're still there and when I come back it's great. And it's really important I get to talk about it but it's heartbreaking to leave the people behind that I met and not to know what they're doing and to leave my team behind and luckily I'm going to see these guys again pretty soon I think but that was the breaks. So, thank you so much for your time. Oh, and the really important piece at the end was of course when I got back to Krakow I had to get a tattoo to commemorate my experiences is something that's important to me and I ended up getting a tattoo and Krakow was from Lviv. And so we had this he his family was back there, and he had this. He was, he was happy to get to give me the tattoo from Lviv, but he didn't know how his family was doing. Unfortunately, which is sad so I'll stop there I'll be happy to take questions that people have them thanks. Thank you so much James and it's just a quick segue here before we get to questions. Thank you for the powerful stories that you shared with us with these images tonight. And to let you all know that if you're interested we do have a sheet here in the back of the room and also for zoom attendees, we will send tomorrow about resources if you want to do more for Ukraine different organizations that are available to help support the people there. And a reminder if you're joining late that we are recording this hybrid event in person as well as on zoom. And so I'm going to turn it back over to James and really encourage people to ask a few questions. And James is going to be kind enough to kind of repeat those questions back for our particular format tonight. So, happy to answer any questions. Please. Yeah. That's exactly what you're doing. And so that's why it's so funny that you are doing this. In this case, it's literally a window into literally. Thanks so much. To repeat that back. The comment was that I sort of started out by saying it's the sort of I felt strange sort of showing something here and like this in Burlington and Burlington City Arts but another artist was saying that it's important to sort of see this window into another world and I hope right it's it's so hard to walk that line between showing people something inviting people into another world and then there's a lot and then there's then there's kind of gawking and then there's the point at which we're sort of like objectifying something or sort of looking at it if this it can be it's hard you know what is that window into the other world what does it depict and how how are we looking through it we have our nose pressed up against the glass. Are we opening the window and trying to communicate with the people are we listening to what they're saying to us. That's, it's a really good way of framing it I think and I am curious and I mean I'm totally open to what people think about that because I think that you can see these images I think that especially now at one point right at one point in history images from war were really shocking and in the Vietnam war right we know that we didn't have a lot of images at one point we started to see certain images and it started to make public opinion about the war and other points in history like Chinaman Square the tank man image really sort of showed people something that was important but at this point in history when we have so much social you have such saturation images is this type of photography so important is there a place for it or am I just sort of like rubbing people's noses and something you know I it's it's difficult. Oh, that's a great question so the question is. After seeing so much is there anything at night that sort of flashes before my eyes from my many assignments, and you know, you know I feel guilty answering that question because I feel like there ought to be a right answer to that you know I ought to say maybe this one situation really haunts me or this one person. I wish I could go back to and I think the thing that I try to do. I feel guilty sometimes because I do put it away. I don't always successfully put it away I often don't put it away my partner knows I don't put it away I come home and it's all around me and the images are in my head a lot but when I am able to put it away I can feel guilty. And sometimes I keep in, I do keep in touch with people it's really important to me actually when I meet people and interview them and go through these sort of life events with them that I give people my number and stay in contact over WhatsApp and some of the languages that I do speak I can keep in touch with people a lot more and but sometimes after time that communication will fall off and that's the thing that really haunts me. I'll give you a better answer to that also but one of the things that haunts me really I guess what I'm saying is that I can't do more it haunts me that I that I have a limit. I wish that I every single person that I ever met and saw and because in that moment when I'm interacting with somebody and I'm telling they're telling me their story. They're pouring out everything that they've got for me and I'm writing it all down or I'm recording it I'm taking it all in, but it's just a moment. It's two people sort of passing and then that moment's gone and it's haunting to know how many times that's happened and I don't know what's happened to all those people and I wish somehow that I could keep track of them all and look them all up and I do that to the best of my ability but sometimes I don't and sometimes those connections do slip and it does haunt me but a more tangible answer I'll be brief is I think Haiti it was is one of the most difficult places I've ever been I was there. For this most recent earthquake and that's a that haunts me that I didn't that haunts me that I couldn't do more there. There was a real lack of humanitarian aid there is a lack of coordination there I could talk about that a lot. And when I was in Haiti walking down the street people would just yell at me like in and unfortunately unfortunately I speak in a French to understand them and they would be saying essentially like hey foreigner what how are you going to help me my house fell down my house is broken come over here I'm hungry I'm hungry I'm hungry and I'm on my Instagram is actually a post from one day I had gone through so many days of just hearing the words I'm hungry I'm hungry I'm hungry that I just posted those words like not even a photo because I was so overwhelmed by hearing that all the time. And yeah, those are sort of the breaking points that happen I think, well I appreciate that thanks so much. The comment was just that seeing the seeing the sort of photos in a longer format as opposed to just maybe a short blurb in the news makes it more real and I'm glad. I'm glad. I think that it is hard to sit down and consume an hours worth of any kind of content at this point for anybody for any of us for me it's hard. And I think, you know, I give the credit back to you actually because by coming by watching by spending whatever time we all spend thinking about other people's lives reading about other people's lives having a window into them whatever energy we can give them even if it's just psychic energy it's so hard to get out of our own lives we all have so much suffering no one's life is truly easier than another person's or free from suffering any case. And I think the amount of time and energy we devote to witnessing one another's lives is really magnificent however we can do it so really the credit goes to the viewer who makes the time for for someone else's story so thank you. Yeah. So what's next for these photos and stories from me, you know, it's a good question. This is great being at Burlington City Arts is great. I don't tend to promote myself or my work much. I don't think about it. I, but it's actually really goes back to that first question what sort of haunts me and I think it's, frankly, I have to get I have to get past the idea that promoting the images are talking about then is sort of self serving because really it's I mean it may be but what happens too often is that I go to these places I photograph these things I hear these stories and that kind of ends I come back home and I'm like, I, it's a dead end for me it's really difficult emotionally it's difficult for me because I can't connect to people around me because I'm trying to have got these stories in my head that like and we all know this is true of people who go in who deal with conflict and other kinds of situations and PTSD is really common that's an issue that I've dealt with also. So for me it's kind of like this wall where I come home and I just have all these emotions and experiences and I can't do anything with them and I feel frustrated I can't connect to people. So that's a good psych up speech for myself to try to do more of this type of work because it always just feels like sort of self serving for me and I come back and I'm like, who wants to see my photos in this place I just went like, Oh God, it's not about you James but I'm hearing more that it's useful. So I don't know what's next but maybe you guys have some ideas. Yeah. So the question is about refugees wanting to go home and whether they're wanting more weapons poured into Ukraine and that kind of support or settlement in peace. And I was sort of hoping to avoid those kinds of questions because I, I'll tell you this, this is a cheat for me but I indulge often when I'm working a humanitarian assignment and not following the, the politics of it super closely because I don't know why I don't know but for me I try to when I try to keep those two missions very separate when I'm really politically engaged with an issue. It makes it harder to do the human I get what happened for me is like I really polarized around how my feel about it and that will, that those emotions will will come into the situation, how I'm photographing people I'll get more it's usually I'll probably be more upset with the authority figures or whoever I think is the bully or the bad guy in this situation. And I can be more reactive and less compassionate so I try as much as I can to avoid thinking about that stuff, which I realize is indulgent and it is a little bit. It is indulgent. I don't know that people told, but I'll try to answer though. I don't know that people gave me a lot of. It's not funny one because I'm thinking about it now it actually there was sort of an absence of this a lot of times people will very talk very heatedly about the politics and, you know, I mean obviously, I think the politics and this one are pretty clear. I'm sorry that I wish I had better answer this question. People didn't tell me a lot about that kind of stuff people said they want to go home and they want. They want. They want the fighting to stop. I think that's the best case scenario how exactly that comes about I don't know. But the people our time I was I mean there were other people in the other way I'll tell you very briefly I met one American who was, and I know of many more who were going over there trying to fight because there are people wanting to sign up for the Ukrainian military and to fight and to do that thing but the people I saw are coming the other way. They're going away from the fighting and they're trying to find somewhere safe. And I don't know what they want as an end to this. I don't know. I'm sorry. Yeah. Sure, the question is when I'm deployed for an assignment like this what is project hopes expectation of me. And in this case, I've worked with project hope for a number of years now so we kind of they kind of we kind of know we sort of know me and they sort of know what I can do. It's the expectation is sort of like, like photography is kind of this magical thing, you know, I think people you see we see photos we consume photos but like we'll take photos but think about how hard it is to get your, you know, two year old, you know, nephew to pose for one minute or, you know, when you maybe see a police officer doing something or just, you know, the difficult photography I think there's sort of this this beautiful magic of seeing images that we like and so project hope. The expectation is I'll go there and make it happen. Which I sort of know how to do at this point but it's this a lot of logistics, but generally I think more specifically it's it's that I typically in this case. Humanitarian organizations are on the ground in places where news organizations aren't so I'm able to deploy with them and get access to footage that they can send to news outlets in this case. Yeah. So they use it for fundraising and stuff like that direct relief but also in this case it's really important so when there's a global emergency it's really important because news outlets aren't there yet. And so I'm able to go where they can't because I'm with emergency responders and so my footage got sent out to CNN CBS whatever because so I'm able to kind of help contribute to the story I think MSNBC now is going back to follow my trail. I'm back through this reporting that I did for project hope and reported out for MSNBC so hopefully I can kind of like create some little pathways for for journalists to follow. Hmm, does that help. Yeah, well that's good. Yeah, no, does that help this way to my my feeling of the being a vulture so yes maybe hopefully I guess that's that's I hope so I hope so that's that's always the hope yeah. Well that kind of colleagues so the question is do I share photos with my colleagues it seems like it would help them feel the human impact of their work and by colleagues I assume do you meant the people at the humanitarian organization because you maybe mean photojournalist but photographers are sort of lone creatures you know you might see a bunch of us together where there's a big event of some kind but typically we're sort of off on our own and it's a bit difficult actually because I don't have colleagues like I mean they envy people that work in an office sometimes because you got people to talk to and bounce ideas off of it I'm the only one doing what I do on my team most of the time. So, I wish that I shared more with photojournalist and you know I would love that I don't know why I put a journalist don't get together and share images maybe I'll do it without me I don't know, but I wish we would talk about this stuff more. But the people I do share it with other colleagues that do the humanitarian work and I'm really it's been really important for me to encourage them by showing them images of the work they're doing and the good that they're creating because it keeping their morale up showing them I will reflect to them often. Like, I will message them specifically this is this person I met so and so in the field this person received the aid that you sent from DC that you routed that here's the story and I'll send it home to DC, so that people can feel connected and want to keep doing their work yeah. Sure. Yes, with with those people absolutely I try to I think that's one of the great things I get to do is I'm sort of like a ground truth or you know, a lot of times people who at an NGO emergency response team get to go out in the field, but most people at an NGO work at an office and they never meet any of the beneficiaries that they are helping and they spend their whole lives trying to help these people they don't make great salaries you know. And I get to go to these places where they're they've sent these whatever they've sent and I get to tell these stories and I'll message people back in DC or wherever they are in the world and say this is this person you helped and I hope that it encourages them to keep going. Yeah. So this is a great question and I share this is a really good place to sort of and I was actually hoping to talk about this just a little bit the question is how apparently I'm displaying a lot of angst and guilt about my photography. I was it was was remarked upon. Good to know. And how do I cope with all this stuff and it, this is actually the most important piece of the work. I used to think the most important piece of the work was sort of this heroic self righteous. I'm going to mess up the bad guys and take images of all the bad things in the world and fight the power kind of thing and that's how I got arrested in Egypt and it did very little good for anybody. What I've come to realize is that actually as in many helping field self care is actually the most important thing. And while that sounds really hokey. I'm in recovery and I have been for about two years which is really important to me and that's been a real turning point in my career when I got past the point where my work was sort of overwhelming me and I was like knocked back by it all the time and I was struggling to keep going and working in recovery and in the different ways I address PTSD and work with my mental health challenges, I'm able to kind of keep going and I have a really strong network of people in recovery and some of the other vultures that I now have in my phone a network of people I can call my sponsor different people any time and partners of great help. That's what I try to do I have to remind myself you have you can't pour from an empty vessel you have to keep you have to keep filling yourself up so some of the things I did at the end of my trip. We're go to a church service in. I could think it was Catholic I have no idea I have no religion in my life of particular, but going to a church service in Polish was really helpful for me. And getting just the songs the sort of emotion the feeling of it because this is this is a, this is where I am at the end of the trip. I am. It's not a good place. And what helps me also is getting videos from home. My partner sends me videos of like, look, there's birds in the tree and I have to remember things like beyond war, beyond refugees beyond there are birds like that it's okay to be happy some of the time. It is okay to be happy some of the time it's okay to put the burden down some of the time, and to go get a tattoo or whatever it is you need to do. And on that note, I came home with a respiratory infection and scabies. So, this is a big, but this is a big, but I do I get to deal with those things within a medical system where I have access to care in a home that has a roof in a place where I'm able to wash my bedding every day and the people that are. And that's a big deal when you have scabies if you don't know. And people who are migrants populations that I work with often don't have those access to those guys which make your scabies go away so self care physical mental and emotional is really, really important for anybody doing this kind of work. So, thanks for asking. Well I'm getting a lot of support from this group tonight I'm really glad I came here. The comment was that that another way for thinking about being a witness is being a messenger and that if I'm going to invest all this time and effort into sort of going and collecting this message that it's important to get it out just why the audience is possible is a really good point so I appreciate that we voted tonight in favor of that it's okay for me to show this work and that I'm not, you know, essentially, just a culture but I appreciate that from, I'll put those in my plus one column so thank you all. Yeah, please, please. Mm hmm. That's a good that's a good point so the me advise that my stealthy mess to the filming with the camera, the blue case is a bad. Yeah, so maybe I'll try to like, I'll try to find a better method for next time, but, and if I get arrested I expect you guys will, you know, retweet my please for help from wherever I am so thank you all very much.