I don't like photojournalism; the photograph is cheap and voyeuristic. But to articulate is to estheticise; that's one of the aporias we live with. Art communicates: it sharpens and it softens. How do you communicate and respect the otherness of others and of events?

There's a difference between caring for someone, in the sense of emotional attachment, and being attentive to them, to their wishes or their pain. Pain itself is lonely and expressions of sympathy are often theater used to hide incomprehension and fear. I'm watching the old watch their friend die. They have become professionals at this. They are honest actors: the most aware both of the distances between people, and the similarity of their experience.

I wrote that watching my mother's friends watch her die. It's the most profound Fuck You I can think of to the celebrants of American liberalism.