Perry Santanachote Multimedia Portfolio and Blog
ILO aids child soldier but many others march on
Young Thu Zin Oo made his daily trip to the Sinmalite dock in Rangoon on December 15 last year. He and his family sold pork rinds for a living and needed to replenish their supply. He never arrived at Sinmalite and failed to make the trip home that day either. Instead, he ended up in the Burmese army at the age of 17. Thu Zin Oo’s story is all too common in Burma, which the UN has repeatedly cited as one of the world’s worst perpetrators of child recruitment to its army.
Farmer Bootcamp in the Hudson Valley
Caroline Smialek dreams of cheese. That is, she dreams of one day running her own dairy farm where she and her husband would make and sell cheese. So last year, Smialek signed up for Farm Beginnings, a new business course in sustainable farming. Every other week for six months she and 14 students gathered at Hawthorne Valley Farm in Ghent, New York to piece together their business plans.
Children March to City Hall for Rally
Fifty children in yellow t-shirts from the Originals of Jamaica Day Care Center trekked across the Brooklyn Bridge toward City Hall this morning. They clutched colorful balloons from District Council 1707, a union for social services employees, and around their necks hung signs that read, “Parents and Children Need Daycare.”
Stop and Decode the Flowers
Most people know what a red rose signifies, but beyond that, few understand the meaning behind the flowers that we give and receive. However, this wasn’t always the case. During the Victorian era, flowers were a popular means of expression. The secret language of flowers, also known as floriography, was a practice in which bouquets conveyed nuanced messages.
Baked With(out) Love
Dustin Wayne Harris likes cakes. And he likes women to bake them for him. This is evident in his new exhibition, Cake Mixx, at Heist Gallery. Nine large photographs lined up around a tiny room on the Lower East Side, each one a different cake, each cake a different woman.
Offal Opposites
The offal trend may be new and exciting for many Americans who grew up in the homogenized grocery store culture, but a lot of people in ethnic communities simply consider it every day fare.
The Corset Maker
Angela Friedman manipulates flesh. That is her business. In a cramped Manhattan studio on the west side, she cheerfully toils away at a dying art – one that requires a mastery of intricate and technical elements, like what Friedman coins, “The Squish Factor.”
Gotham City n’Sync
In a sport that’s usually considered child’s play, a group of 15 middle-aged women meet at 6:00 a.m. every Thursday to practice their routine in Long Island City, Queens. Formed in 2004, Gotham City Synchro is New York City’s only adult synchronized ice skating team.
Artful Compromise on Graffiti Battle
The city’s graffiti removal crews came and went several times, painting over the scrawls on the side of Manolo’s Mexican Restaurant on Greenpoint Avenue with an even coat of beige. Once, Mayor Michael Bloomberg even came to the Sunnyside restaurant to tout the city’s new graffiti removal program. Nevertheless, time and time again, the black scribble crawled back across the brick, like spiders immune to pesticide.