Postville raid

A stressful two-hour drive delivered me to Postville yesterday, where ICE was carrying out a raid on a meatpacking plant (specifically, the world's largest kosher meatpacking plant, and the largest immigration raid in the US). The Gazette has a series of articles up, but start here for the basics.. They went in with warrants or complaints for 697 people, and arrested 390. Just heard on the news that the equivalent of 1/6 of Postville's population was taken; local business owners fear that this will cripple the town's economy. All of my photos came from outside the plant; the church where everyone had gathered was off-limits to cameras, leaving me somewhat limited in what I could cover. I spent some time at the plant before filing from the Sweet Spot ice cream shop, which became the Gazette's Postville bureau as reporters Adam and Tina used my computer to file their stories while I went back and forth from the plant and the church.

This is pretty much what we saw for most of the day.. state troopers and ICE officers standing outside the plant. A lot of waiting.


A group of boys from the Yeshiva came to check out the scene on their extended lunch break. Because of the plant, there's a large Jewish population in Postville.. for such a small town, it has incredible diversity.. but walking downtown later, you wouldn't know it. It was a ghost town.



Workers began trickling out -- presumably those who were documented, or those with young children with no one to care for them.


This Homeland Security bus was the third bus of the day to leave the plant, but the first I saw since it took me awhile to get there from Cedar Rapids. They loaded the buses away from where we could see them (although some TV stations got aerials from their helicopters).


Violeta Aleman is a quality assurance auditor at the plant and US citizen since 2003. She brought her drivers' license with her to work Monday, and her husband brought her passport to the plant so she could be released. She was waiting outside the plant to see if any of the women she worked with would be released. I caught up with her a couple more times later in the day, and a few of the women had been let go.


Based on the interactions I observed and conversations I overheard, the girl in the middle is probably underage. She left with her father awhile later after they talked with ICE officers. The caption we used in the paper just referred to her and the other boy as plant workers, since I wasn't able to confirm that she was underage and undocumented.


After filing the photos above, I went back to the plant and found this woman, Osi M., crying and talking to friends. She wouldn't give her last name, but through a translator, I was told that her husband, Moshe M., was a legal resident from Israel, but was being held until his passport could be verified. Without a last name, we wouldn't run the photo (credibility issues), and we don't have a way of knowing one way or another what the story is. I think she understood why I wanted to use her photo -- to put a face on the loved ones left worrying about their spouses, parents, children -- but was adamant in not giving her last name. I'm still learning how to work in situations like these -- when it's okay to not have names, when we need them, how to respect their privacy while trying to do my job and tell the story of the day.


Another bus was leaving during the live 6:00 broadcasts..


I went back one more time after filing what I expected were my final images. The woman at the left was being consoled by a plant coworker or supervisor, and with a few steps in another direction, I saw the second woman crying as well. I sent the photo in from my car (the ice cream shop bureau was closed), and when I got back to the office, saw they'd placed it as the lede photo for Tuesday's paper.


There was white mesh over the windows of the buses, so those inside could see us, but we couldn't see them. My last stop at the plant was close to sunset, and the people inside were silhouetted by the sun shining through the mesh.. the only look we have at those being detained.

< /windy > < sunny >

Took a little adventure to Chicago last week with Courtney and Erika.. it was a badly needed break full of sunshine, shopping and sipping margaritas. A few more pics here and here.

hula! hoop!

Just an outtake from a shoot yesterday. I was never really able to master the hula hoop..

spring is (finally) here!

I spent my spare between-assignment time for the past month seeking out signs of spring. After the harsh winter we had, I can't get enough of sitting on my front porch, attempting to grill, soaking up the sun, and afternoon naps with the breeze blowing through my window. I don't even mind when birds start up chirping at 6:30 outside my window (and, while I was awake, I recorded some audio). Check out the slideshow here... it's been called soothing and meditative by a certain photo intern.

spring is (almost) sprung

I have some "real" posts coming soon, but for now, here's a quick little something from a project I'm working on about the sights and sounds of spring. If only we'd have more than one day of sun in a row, maybe I could make some progress..

illumination

I just got back from a prep wrestling dual, where every corner had a photographer with a flash. (An unusual situation, since usually we're all on the same side of the mat.) This can occasionally be a good thing, when their flash fires at the same time as my shutter and I end up with interesting light. No such luck tonight..

cropping woes and a long day

After a long Saturday at the funeral last week, last Sunday felt nearly manic, with four assignments. I was disappointed to see the softball photo below was cropped into an awkward vertical-ish square in the paper, so here I present it as it was intended. It was one of four photos cropped in a two-day span. Fortunately, they left the fire photo below alone.

'We help you cry'

Saturday, I joined photographers Brian Ray and Jonathan Woods in covering the funeral for the Sueppel family. Reporter Scott Dochterman wrote in his lede, " In forgiveness and reconciliation, the Sueppel and Kesterson families stood as one Saturday in the face of pain, suffering and questions that can never be answered." Read Scott's story here. Brian was selected as the pool photographer for the funeral and the burial, which meant he was the sole photographer inside the church and close to the family at the burial. I waited at a coffee shop around the corner to transmit Jon's photos from outside the church, making the Gazette the first paper to have photos online. I shot a few photos as the funeral ended, before heading to a location I had scouted the day before along the procession route to photograph the six hearses on the way to the cemetery.

The light outside the church was gorgeous, and gave the white caskets of the children an almost ethereal glow. This boy's angelic innocence was amplified by the adults that surrounded him.





While Brian photographed the burial from closer in, I stayed back with the other photographers at a respectful distance to capture a wider view.



The mass of people surrounded the caskets, so making photos was nearly impossible from my distance (even with a 400 mm lens and a 1.4x converter), until people started to leave.

It's easy to let yourself focus on your work when covering something like this, and forget about the meaning behind it. But when I saw this boy leaving the burial with (I assume) his father, it became more real for me. The nature of the situation made the presence of children more poignant, and I can't imagine what this boy had been through while he tried to understand the events of the week prior. Once they were out of my range, I finally took the camera away from my eye for a moment and let the meaning and sadness of the day sink in. The strength and faith of these two families in the face of such a tragedy was so moving to witness.






After we all finished editing our hundreds upon hundreds of photos from the funeral and burial services, Jon and I got to work digging through two hours of audio from the funeral (where we had plugged his Merentz in to the soundboard) and building a slideshow. We went three or four hours past the deadline we had originally aimed for (9 p.m. against a 5 p.m. deadline), but the extra hours were worth it; the audio makes the photos all the more meaningful, and really presents what we hope is a powerful, moving tribute to the family as those left behind struggle to comprehend and forgive. Jon's posted our new and improved version of the project here.

'With a wave and a tear, we say goodbye.'

Last Monday, Steven Sueppel killed his wife and four children in their Iowa City home before killing himself. Photographers Jim Slosiarek and Cliff Jette covered the first day of the story outside the house as the pieces came together. On Friday, I went to their church to photograph people going to the wake. Read Gazette reporter Jennifer Hemmingsen's story about the vigil and visitation here.




These girls went to school with the Sueppel kids; the woman was a stranger to them until Friday, when she helped keep them warm as they stood in a nearly two-hour line.

food+friends

A day off together is reason enough for a great meal, but throw in the Easter holiday, and we're ready to glut ourselves on delicious homemade treats (except for the hot crossed buns, which Panera did a fantastic job of preparing for us). Courtney worked quite hard on her from-scratch apple pie, which I think I'm going to help myself to right now (a benefit of playing hostess -- leftovers!)...
See more photos here.

thaw

Warmer temperatures (above freezing, which to me feels warm) have finally come to Iowa, and the frozen river started to thaw. Now, I'm new to this whole frozen bodies of water thing (in Texas, swimming pools are used year-round), but I think the way this works is, a huge chuck of ice upstream broke loose, then got stuck downstream, causing flooding. I was there when it broke free again, and it was pretty impressive to watch. Soon enough spring will be here, and I'll be able to feel my toes again for the first time in four months.

After a too-short vacation to Colorado, I headed to Des Moines to cover the girls' and boys' state basketball tournaments. We have lights set up in the catwalks, which gives us much better photos when the timing is right, but some frustration when I'm just a bit too quick..(and a lot of frustration for me and the photog here before me when they decide to not fire, a problem that we fixed by eliminating the hardwire connection between all the lights, and just hooking them each up to their own pocketwizard.) (at the end of this week, I'll post my favorites of the tournament.)