The following collection has fought its way into the world. It represents this issue’s theme –ENDANGERED– far more than we could have expected when first curating its essays, journalism, historical narrative, book excerpts, photography, visual essay, and documentary portraits. In our fourth year, our small, but mighty quarterly collections almost vanished into the space where cloud storage buries itself and the internet’s past evaporates. We were reminded of just how easy it would be to disappear.

But, here we are.

As summer in the northern hemisphere ends, we bring you a stunning collection of true stories that explores endangered in the most unique ways. The nine contributors (and pieces) in this issue speak to permutations of vulnerability and peril, forfeiture and restoration.

In “Stolen Land, Stolen Future,” Photographer Michael Santiago travels to a farm in Bakersfield, California, to reflect upon the history that led to the rise of African American farmers in the United States and, now, their dwindling numbers.

Braiding narratives of environmental and physical peril, Heidi Hutner’s “Rocky Flats” brings us inside an historically vulnerable Colorado community and one mother’s story.

In “Snow Monkeys,” Clinton Crockett Peters explores an unexpected emigration from Kyoto, Japan, to Loredo, Texas.

In “Milky Blue,” Paige Towers uses lyric flash to burrow inside a single moment of loss, bound together by blue milk caps and a chainlink-fenced-backyard.

Larry Handy’s essay “What To Do When Grandma Has Dementia” explores caregiving, race in America, and the undiscussed dangers when you’re custodian of a mind in decline.

In “Blonde,” Ginny McReynolds explores gender and age, the expectations we have of our mothers, and the things we do to be visible.

Outsider artist Jeff Zenick documents this unique moment in time within the American criminal justice system in“Mugshots of the Modern South”

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Kristina Gaddy’s “Labors” takes us back in time to 1908 and introduces us to Fannie Witten, a midwife in Baltimore.

And, visual essayist Sarah Minor gifts us with a set of flash cards. “Handing the Beast,” an historical narrative of human art-makers, documenting history and instructing survival, can be read as presented or printed out, shuffled, and consumed at random.

We encourage you to slowly pore over this collection and share it with others–in conversation, over social, and maybe even on the printed page.


 
 
 
 
Proximity‘s Editorial Team