Nick Merlock Jackson

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Enver’s story

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3 pages from soon to be printed mini-book “TUNNEL”. The text is taken from an oral history that I recorded with Grigoriy, a homeless man I met in an underground thoroughfare of Kyiv, Ukraine. 

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Sex, death, and decay in the woods of western Michigan, by Platte Bay.

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Nick & Lucie Go West.

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A couple weeks’ delay, but here’s some photos I took at Kyiv’s animal rights rally- lots of spirited marchers and confused dogs.

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Photos from Saturday’s ‘Defender of Ukraine Day’, a holiday that’s only 3 years old, but gives people a chance to show off their ornate folk embroideries or their camo jackets. It’s an adaptation of an Orthodox holiday devoted to the protection offered by the Virgin Mary- apparently the Cossacks were pretty jazzed about this day so President Poroshenko thought it’d be as good a time as any to drum up patriotic feelings. The celebration downtown wasn’t heavily attended, probably on account of the grey day- but I still heard enough “Glory to Ukraine” to last me a while.

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St. Antonin Part III-  A Baby, A House, A Sausage: Humans and the Things They Make

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St. Antonin Part II : Bugs, Fungus, and a Dead Fish (Nature)

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In the woods of St. Antonin, a charming medieval town of southern France, there are traces of an invader: the ‘pyrale de buis’ or box tree moth. Native to eastern Asia, our host says tells us that the insect first hitched to south France along with a shipment of Chinese flowers for Christmas. Since then they’ve left a distinctive trail of destruction, devoured leaves along with the glistening hanging fibers that the larva use to climb, ninja-like, between their meals. The dried remains hang in this net, almost levitating.

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Shevchenko Park.

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I was led through the Kyiv district of Troieshchyna by an engineer named Vadym, who shared a wealth of historical knowledge of which I understood almost nothing. But I did take photos of a patriotic mastiff guarding concrete slabs and a small dog getting on with a walk despite an injured paw.

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A fire broke out in a partially unused building on Khreshchatyk, Kyiv’s main drag. By the time I got there, the flames had mostly been subdued- there was just a lot of smoke, thirsty firefighters, staring crowds, and a giant, tattered flag that can’t help but get a symbolic interpretation in a country with issues.

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In Kyiv’s Nyvky neighborhood, there’s an older man with a military background who decorates some of the public spaces with stuffed animals. On a warm day they have the look of shipwreck survivors who have formed a tribe- weathered by the elements but, by dint of cooperation, still alive.

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Photos from my friend Maksym’s birthday shashlyk, the cultural equivalent of a barbeque in the US.