Photo by Christina Hansen
Christina Hansen is a New York carriage driver and a brilliant photographer, for several years now she has been speaking for the carriage drivers in their long fight to keep their work and way of life in New York City. She has been taking these photos with her Iphone and I am working with some of her friends in New York to help her to buy a full frame Nikon D750.
The camera and necessary accessories will cost about $3,000, and the donations have just begin to come in. I know this will be tougher than some of the other fund-raising projects, I have already gotten support from my readers and am hoping for support from the carriage drivers and Teamsters Union members in the city.
Christina came to New York in 2012 to help organize the carriage trade’s responses to the many accusations of cruelty and neglect that have been lodged against them, in almost every case falsely as it turns out. She began taking beautiful photos of life in the stables as well as Central Park.
Her touching photographs of the horses and the drivers and their world, and her natural eye helped humanize the carriage trade and show a sign of them that the media had neglected to cover. She made a big difference, I am determined to help her get this camera and take her great artistic skills to the next level.
More than any other source, Christina’s photographs have captured a distinct and rich culture in the rapidly gentrifying world of New York. They have shown us what a terrible loss the banning of the horses and their drivers would be. They ought to give a Pulitzer Prize for that.
We can’t all help everybody all the time.
I thank those of you have so graciously stepped outside of yourselves to contribute, and I completely understand if others can’t or choose not to participate. I will hang in there with this until we get there, the artist in Christina needs to come out.
Two ways to contribute to this very worthy project, I am raising money only on the blog, not via a crowdsourcing site. One is to send a contribution to me at P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816. Checks should be made out to Christina Hansen. The other is to send her a contribution through me via Paypal, my ID is [email protected]. Please mention that the money is for Christina, so I can keep clear records.
And thank you for reading this. The New York Carriage Horse story has triggered a new social awakening among people who love animals and wish to keep them in our world. We are becoming increasingly concerned that the people who say they are fighting for the rights of animals are not. They are, increasingly, misunderstanding them, making it ever more difficult to own them, harassing farmers and animal lovers and driving animals out of our world.
Christina is a warrior in this cause, she has been at the center of this painful but important controversy.
I hope you can help her get her camera.