Assignment: Campaign Photography for Joel Corcoran, 3rd District, Portland City Council
Location: Speedboat Coffee, Foster Blvd., SE Portland
Highlights: it’s late March, and Portland’s persistent Spring rains are pausing, along with the morning traffic on Foster Blvd. Outside, winter temperatures stubbornly persist in the mid- forties. Inside Speedboat Coffee, caffeine and conversation help warm the morning, where attorney Joel Corcoran is in a staff planning session to announce his candidacy for 3rd District, Portland City Council.
Joel is the fourth Oregon office seeker I’ve photographed in the past twelve years. Looking at these campaign photographs as a single body of work, it’s better described as a collection of grass roots moments, rather than campaign drama… a break, I’d like to think, from measuring current politics on the Richter scale.
It begins with Portland Mayor Sam Adams touring one of the first solar manufacturing plants in the state. It includes Senator Jeff Merkley up to his knees in muddy water during a volunteer Johnson Creek watershed cleanup. State Representative Jeff Reardon follows with a talk about water quality delivered to an audience in Lents. And it continues with attorney Joel Corcoran, first time candidate for a Portland council seat, quietly talking to his staff – Emily and Adam- about his vision for Portland, and practical ways of achieving it.
As a group, the photographs are about as far removed from the political limelight as you can get, avoiding the sharp edges of partisan combat, instead encouraging us to connect with the place we live, to remember Oregon’s leadership role in environmental stewardship, our common denominators and our shared watersheds- the real ones and the visionary ones. The more photos I add to the series, the more the images become a chorus, and less a polemic.
Over coffee in the Speedboat café, Joel Corcoran and his staff are starting the process all over again. It’s early days on the road to Oregon midterms.
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For more about Joel Corcoran, see https://www.corcoranforportland.org/
