Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dupont de Nemours, April 24, 1816

I started this post with the intention of stating how impressed I was with the intensity that the Brits read their newspapers. Papers and their readers are every where, especially on the underground. Free papers in the morning and evening are passed out at the Tube stations, news vendors are ever present akin to the new-stands that one time graced the corners of Chicago. Newspapers seem to thrive here. Even despite recent scandals relating to hacking and electronic eves-dropping.

In light with the recent attacks on the French Satirical Magazine Charlie Hebdon, by cowards, killing in the name of a religion. My focus had changed to the reactions and the swelling roar in defense of a free press and a free society.

I am one of the lucky ones. I have been a working photojournalist/photo editor my entire career, graduating with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Journalism, from Northern Illinois University in the late 70's.

I say lucky because then, the economy was in free fall then too. Jobs were scarce, gas was scarce and people were fearful of committing resources to an uneasy unknown fut ure. Not many of my fellow graduates were able to secure employment in their chosen profession and sought gainful employment elsewhere. And because of that once you were in you stayed in. You didn't dare leave for fear of never getting back in. You started where you could. Small dailies in small towns, weekly community publications. Always with the intent of honing your skills and moving on, moving up to a bigger better paper with greater circulation greater exposure.

Despite the uncertainty  it was the golden age of activist journalism. Watergate had just finished, a corrupt government had been exposed and that spirit of watchdog/junkyard dog approach to corrupt politicians was trickling down to the local levels as well.

We considered ourselves lucky to be witness to the best and worst society had to offer. To me, it was and still is akin to a religious vocation. Despite some days that stretched into the wee hours, long days of battling weather, police, crowds, it was never a job. That cliche saying was indeed true. If you love what you do...........you know the rest.

We have seen some dark days of late, especially in the States. Staff firings, poor public image. What was once a esteemed profession had somehow sunk to the level of a congressman or used car salesman. I even think timeshare telemarketers are held in high esteem. People settling for the mediocrity as witnessed by the rise of iphone photos that are given away for free. The blurring of lines between real news media outlets and pseudo entertainment info sources or single issue unbalanced media outlets like Fox have driven those of us with integrity and honor from the business.

This blog is my escape from the past and road map to the future. So when the swelling of support in defense of a free press in France and here in the U.K. I had to go, like the old fire horse charging out of the firehouse when the fire alarm goes off, to Trafalgar Square and participate in that groundswell.

With the National Gallery as a backdrop the French Flag was projected onto the building at dusk. The fountains were lit with the same colors rotating and flooding the square with the intense primary colors. And they sang and chanted and clapped and reveled in the exercise of that most basic of freedoms. To express without fear of reproach their opinion.

Thousands flooded into the square Sunday evening, as millions marched in Paris, proclaiming we will not be deterred from exercising one of man's basic freedoms.  I am at best a cynical, irreverent person. Irascible, bearish curmudgeonly even, I do not take myself nor many things seriously. With one exception. I take the re sponsibility and integrity of the job of providing a fair and balance visual record and the publics trust of that record with an intensity of a thousand suns.

The state of photography and photojournalism is at best a Dickens novel. ' It is the best of times, it is the worst of times.' So many outlets for a young photographer to display their work, their vision. The internet is that blessing and curse. With the burgeoning of so many outlets, the market is flooded more and more traditional media outlets are disappearing making it almost impossible to make an honest living from our craft. This is a subject for a later blog.

But this day, today, as I look over my images from earlier this afternoon, reveling in a  sense of solidarity, I  can truly and proudly proclaim.

Je Suis Charlie.