Monday, March 13, 2006

Coda for Crisis Pictures?

Last year, I tried to rouse support for Crisis Pictures when it was struggling. Alerted more widely read blogs. Sent some money. Some of you did, too.

Crisis Pictures looked substantial, but it was just one guy, giving the world his all.

Today I went looking for some pictures from Iraq. I found this, posted just a week ago:

Crisis Pictures started by accident in November of 2004.
It was during the election. By the time the results rolled in, I was sick of "sides", sick of Fox News and Air America. Sick of red and blue.
When I found that the chaos in Fallujah was so much worse than the tough guy with the cigarette on the cover of Time, I was sickened, truly. I posted the pictures on a blogspot blog, and left a note to the effect of "This is What You're Paying For".
I posted a bunch of pictures from Fallujah on a blog. That's it. I didn't expect a few million people to show up. I didn't seek the attention for myself, or for anything. It was outrage, a yelp of shock and outrage at a world that could produce such a horror.

...[snip]...

I had no idea what I was getting into. I had never done any programming or design in my life, and I tried, really, tried to rise to the occasion. I made the site you see now, and I have spent the last six months programming this elaborate content manager to manage thousands of pictures to tell stories in a way that goes beyond "another bad day in the third world."
I learned PHP, MySQL, XML, XSLT, Javascript. I learned about IPTC and XMP and EXIF. I incorporated a 501c3 nonprofit.
I tried, I swear, I really tried.
I have to be honest now, I don't think I can do this anymore without some significant help. No one asked me to do this, but I still truly believe it can do something important. I hate to let it die, but it's at the point where it's Crisis Pictures or me. I am out of money and out of energy.
Please understand, I really did my best. If I can find a way to keep going, I will. Otherwise, I'm sorry. Truly.

Trevor Davis
trevorhughdavis@gmail.com


Trevor, you rose. Be proud.

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