#max colson

[slack-wise]

Barbican Conservatory

[troutzu]

“Having discovered the landscape design programme ‘Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design’ (‘CPTED’), Walker-Smith realised that high security public spaces in London, which present themselves as being free and open, actually covertly guide behaviour through security design and monitor human activities through extensive surveillance infrastructure. The reason these things are not often observed is because they are carefully hidden and softened by the strategic deployment of vegetation.

This illuminating finding led to what could only be described as Walker-Smith’s intense paranoia as to the ‘innocence’ of all plant life in these spaces. His resulting photographs dramatically expose what he sees as the ‘suspect’ plants of securitised urban spaces (these plants are so-called for posing as ‘innocent’ decoration whilst actually being hidden parts of the security apparatus).” - Max Colson

[ambient-temperature-blog]

max colson | from the series hide and seek http://www.maxcolson.com/

[proto-blog]

[thetruecolourofthings]

'Hide & Seek: The dubious nature of plant life in high security spaces’ is the photographic project created by Max Colson’s alter-ego Adam Walker-Smith

[newstfionline]

Movies with Max

BreakPoint, April 23, 2014

As many BreakPoint listeners know, Chuck Colson’s twenty-three-year-old grandson Max is autistic. A few months ago Max’s mother, Emily, and Patty Colson took Max to see “Muppets Most Wanted” at a Boston-area theater. After settling themselves into their seats, the previews began. And that’s when things went south.

Normally, Max gets a bit excited at the beginning of a film, and then he calms down. But life with autism is unpredictable, as Emily wrote on a special needs parenting site. When the first preview exploded loudly onto the screen, Max covered his ears and shrieked, “I want to go home!” Emily tried to calm him, but as soon as Kermit the Frog appeared on the screen, Max shouted “The Muppet movie!”

When the volume spiked again, Max shouted once more “I want to go home!” That’s when other movie-goers let Emily know in painful and no-uncertain terms that Max was not welcome.

As Emily and Patty escorted Max out, the audience began to applaud. “It was the sound of an angry mob chasing us away with their jeers and taunts,” Emily writes.

It’s hard to recover from experiences like that. But God used it to offer a mighty blessing, not only to Max and Emily, but to hundreds of other special needs children.

Not long after Emily wrote about unexpectedly becoming the entertainment at the theater, a woman named Renee came up to Emily after church. “Do you think Max would like it if we rented a theater?” she asked.

The following Sunday, Pastor Paul told the congregation what had happened to Max, and announced Renee’s great idea: “She rented out an entire theater so that friends of Max can watch the Muppet movie with Max.” Pastor Paul declared, “If you’re a friend of Max, you’re going to the movies, whether you like Muppets or not!”

“Everyone laughed. And everyone bought tickets,” Emily writes.

A local newspaper picked up the story. Hearing of the event, called “Love to the Max,” a limousine company owner offered to take Max and his friends to the theater in style in a 37-foot limousine. The employees fought over who was going to have the honor of driving Max. The winner? A man whose own grandson was autistic.

The CEO of a local Friendly’s Restaurant offered gift certificates for ice cream or meals. People volunteered to help out at the theater, doing everything from taking kids to the bathroom to bringing them popcorn.

So many people bought tickets that the Regal Cinema had to expand the event to two theaters. In the end, 500 children, with their families and friends, went to see “Muppets Most Wanted.”

This time, when the Muppets began singing their first number, “the music catapulted Max right out of his seat,” Emily recalls. He began dancing in the aisle. The audience began to applaud as Max danced his way down the aisle, “grabbing hands and pulling others into his dance.”

The children enjoyed the film, and as it ended with a final Muppet song, nobody wanted to leave. “Suddenly, people flooded into the aisles [and] began to dance. Everyone free. No armor. No barriers between us,” Emily writes. “I looked around and wondered if this is what Jesus envisioned when he said, “Love one another . . . The joy was contagious.”

As Chuck would have said, this was the Church being the Church. People came to love on these kids, “the least of these” and their families. And they were living out 1 Cor. 12, which reminds us that all parts of the body of Christ should be valued and honored.

As Max danced for joy that day, I imagine Chuck was probably smiling down from Heaven on him and on this marvelous scene.

[darwinmagazine-blog]

    Editors Pick : Max Colson

  Hide and Seek :The Dubious Nature of Plant life in High Security Place. 

  "‘Hide and Seek: The Dubious Nature of Plant Life in High Security Spaces’ is an extraordinary documentary photography research project undertaken by my alter-ego, the photojournalist Adam Walker-Smith. Instigated by his discovery of the landscape design programme ‘Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design’ (‘CPTED’), Walker-Smith’s photographs expose what he sees as the ‘suspect’ plants of London’s high security spaces (these plants are so called because of their ability to pose as ‘innocent’ decoration whilst actually being hidden parts of the security apparatus).

Undeniably dramatic, Walker-Smith’s photographs unearth the creep of today’s urban security environment, desperately trying to pinpoint what its dubious nature might be concealing from us."- Max Colson

  See more of Colson' work here