Portrait of Mississauga

Portrait of M Banner
Mississauga, Ontario
Photo By [KPA]

Portrait of M (2018)

Portrait of M is a public art project that highlights the cultural and demographic diversity of Mississauga and seeks to communicate the stories of its residents. Over 110 portraits were shot by Dan Bergeron, a selection of which are printed and displayed on the city’s downtown banners.

[...]

No one is ordinary. Everyone is ordinary. Everyone is under-represented. No one, especially in the age of social media, is under-represented. For this series of portraits, I want to convey the idea that people are multi-faceted and that there is no one way we should look at each other or ourselves. We have feelings that conflict, thoughts that contradict and multiple visual identities (on-line, IRL and in our own heads) that we present. Working with the shape and layout of the banners, the portraits of the subjects attempt to reveal this complexity. Eighty-two subjects were documented as part of this portrait project commissioned by the City of Mississauga. Source: Dan Bergeron: Photographer

I counted 25 whites of the posted 81 photos. That is 30% of the total. Although I would say it is a lower 25% now in Mississauga.

I clicked on the Facebook images of the participants. There is NOTHING about them. Who is this young man? Where does he go to school? What are his hobbies? Just three questions would have added more humanity to the project rather than the grandiose portrait project that purports "to reveal this complexity" but doesn't. Instead we have giant faces blowing in the haphazard summer wind claiming to represent "multicultural" Canada and does a disservice to those very multiculturals by making them into anonymous faces on a city-subsidized banner project.

Whites may be used to this anonymity by now, but what about the browns and blacks?

Churchill: Protecting England

Churchill, aged 7
In Dublin, Ireland
Ministry of Information
WWII Misc. Collection
Cat. No. ZZZ 7555D

On April 5th, PBS showed a documentary on Churchill titled "Great Romances of the 20th Century: Clementine & Winston Churchill." I cannot find any video (even promotional video) on it, but this is how the program describes the documentary:

The story of an enduring love match between two intelligent and forceful personalities. Clementine gave great strength to Britain's great war leader and helped him to weather the storms of his changeable political career.

There is a lot we already know about Churchill, including his persistence in fighting Hitler, which the documentary outlined. But I didn't know that he introduced the term "The Iron Curtain" to the world. He did so in a speech in 1946 at Westminster College, in Fulton, Missouri where he came to receive an honorary degree. Here is part of his speech:

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in some cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow. Athens alone -- Greece with its immortal glories -- is free to decide its future at an election under British, American and French observation. The Russian-dominated Polish Government has been encouraged to make enormous and wrongful inroads upon Germany, and mass expulsions of millions of Germans on a scale grievous and undreamed-of are now taking place. The Communist parties, which were very small in all these Eastern States of Europe, have been raised to pre-eminence and power far beyond their numbers and are seeking everywhere to obtain totalitarian control. Police governments are prevailing in nearly every case, and so far, except in Czechoslovakia, there is no true democracy.

A good part of the video showed Churchill's home, the beautiful Chartwell House. It was his paradisaical sanctuary, where he could work out his thoughts and ideas. "A day away from Chartwell is a day wasted," he said.


Winston Churchill
Arthur Pan (1894–1983)
Date Painted: 1943
Oil on canvas
40" x 50"


Chartwell grounds


A View of Chartwell
Winston Churchill
Date painted: c. 1938
Oil on canvas
23 3/4 x 36 in
Collection: National Trust


The Drawing room


The Library


The Study


Churchill's desk in his study


Close-up of Churchill's desk in the study, with busts of Napoleon,
and family photographs


The Studio, with oil and watercolor paintings by Churchill


Churchill painting


Lady Randolph Churchill (1854-1921)
(Churchill's mother)
Ernest Rinzi (British, 1836-1909)
Oval Miniature
81 in. high


Lord Randolph Churchill (1849-1895)
(Churchill's father)
Edwin Longsden Long (1829-1891)
Oil on canvas
Exhibited 1888
50 1/8 in. x 40 in.


Winston Churchill and his wife Clementine (who resembles his mother)


The Beach at Walmer
Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Oil on canvas
25 x 30 in.
Date painted: c. 1938

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat