Pratt Professor Draws “Je Suis Charlie”

The massacre of eight journalists and cartoonists, two police officers, a maintenance worker and a bystander at the Paris offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo by three self-proclaimed radical Islamists on Wednesday morning, January 7, triggered a wave of solidarity that spread across the globe.

One of the most striking responses has come in picture form, with image after image of heartbreak, outrage, solidarity, indignation and everything in between. It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words and that is definitely true.

One of those pictures has come from the pencil of Richard Borge, a professor at Fort Greene/Clinton Hill’s own Pratt Institute: a pen, just having written “Je Suis Charlie” — “I am Charlie” — standing upright, tip down, it’s top extending upwards into a tangled ball. Drawn in black-and-white, the image is stark, sobering, and, at first glance, reminiscent of a tree.

“It seems like a tangled mess — that’s where the tangle came from — but out of it, people are coming together,” explained Borge of his inspiration. “I think it’s kind of open to interpretation, but that was my thinking behind it.”

As a teacher, Borge has seen his students use their art and themselves to express solidarity with protestors in Hong Kong and New York City of late, and he recognizes that need “to make a difference.”

“I grew up with free speech [and] a lot of magazines, when they have bite to it, I really appreciate those articles because maybe we’ll raise awareness,” he said. “We live in a society where we have free speech and don’t have to think about it that much, but not everyone is that fortunate.

“I guess i just feel a kinship to these people who have been killed. They were just writers and artists doing not much different from what i do on a daily basis and they get killed for it, so I felt a need to say something — to just put one more picture out there in the flood of images that i’m seeing all over online, which are very powerful.”

Ultimately, Borge said, “I think the writing and ideas will prevail. I don’t want to see people be silenced. [We can] send a message to the world that we are united.”