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David duChemin is best
known as The Rubber Chicken Guy, his comedic persona (pictured right). The
other images on this page reflect his work as a photographer for various
relief agencies. Following is the B.C. artist’s account of what led
to his change of career.
MY CAREER change was a change of calling, which
intertwined several different threads in my life.
The first was simply a feeling of tiredness after
performing for more than a dozen years. The second was a resumption of my
love for photography. The third was a re-reading of the gospels , which led
me to pray that God would enlarge my heart for the poor and the excluded.
In 1995, I found myself in Haiti as both a performer
and a photographer. I met one of the children my wife Sharon and I sponsor
through New Missions. God so broke my heart over her that I came back a
deeply changed man.
Once I stopped performing, I began shooting
photographs for World Vision and other groups which serve the poor.
But what is more important than where I’ve been shooting, and what
I’ve been doing, is why.
After preaching for 12 years, I began to feel that,
while the gospel is about being saved ‘from’ something, it is
equally about being saved ‘to’ something – doing more
than just praying that ‘his kingdom come,’ but also
participating in it.
Bringing Christ to the poor is more than just
preaching; it’s about being with them, serving them. Our poverty is
that we often don’t even know the poor.
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There is one thing I feel called to do in my
photography, above all others: to show the hope and the dignity, even the
beauty, of people within the struggle of poverty. It’s true there is
‘dirt and hurt’ in poverty – and to not show that,
to romanticize it, is to betray the poor and the reality they live in.
But only showing their tragedy tends to dehumanize
them; it results in our pity, but not our love. The poor do not need pity;
they need justice and mercy. We won’t render those things until we
see the poor with the same eyes with which we look at ourselves.
I am particularly drawn to the human search for the
sacred – whether that’s Buddhist practice, Muslim prayer or
Hindu puja.
The sooner Christians see in others that we all hunger
for love, forgiveness and redemption, the sooner our efforts to share
what we have in Christ will address that hunger – and not
merely lead to debate. There might be a role for apologetics; but there is
a greater need for us to love and understand first.
PixelatedImage.com
Summer/Fall 2008
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