Philippe Velez McIntyre , is a freelance photographer and social entrepreneur. Born in Paris, he grew up in Colombia and the United States. In the beginning of the eighties he moved back to Europe, first in Madrid and then in Paris. Since the early nineties he lives and works in Amsterdam.

In his work McIntyre combines an esthetical and ethical perspective while crossing artistic, social and political disciplines. He has been especially active in fields where nature and culture meet, like ecological architecture, sustainable food and agriculture, and urban city planning. Other fields of interest are public health and social wellbeing. His approach is at the same time educational and spiritual.

Philippe McIntyre can be reached at:
philippevelez@gmail.com

All Publications, photographs, books and objects on website are available via Boekie Woekie Books by Artists, Amsterdam, except when otherwise mentioned.

All Photographs and Publications © Philippe Velez McIntyre, © Philippe McIntyre, except when otherwise mentioned.

014
Fanatics

and village Idiots:

Chance should be allowed to play a pivotal role in public gardens made by local residents. That can happen if you respect the individual who is not an expert , precisely for his lack of expertise. Only people like this are in a position to give free rein a chance.The expert can’t do that anymore, because he’s already learned how things ought to be done.Everything that is inept , wayward , intuitive , instinctive, and emotional – that is the expertise of the non-expert.Only the great army of “non-specialists” can give us a proper revolution. Once the individual can go his own way , free of all rules and regulations, diversity occurs, because new solutions are constantly being found.Fanatics and village idiots accompany every patented culture like descendants of archaic demons.
According to Latour,modernism with its antimodern and postmodern consequences is nothing other than the provisional result of a selection made by a few people in the name of everyone.
F. Schumacher is of the opinion that if we want to genuinely open the way for a “commencer a vivre”, this will only be possible with the generosity of disorder, the delight of letting things go their own way, the entrepreneurial approach that dares, despite the risk and the gamble, to take on the unknown and the unpredictable, the creative imagination.

Production and consumption form a closed circuit. The consumer however is not a victim but an accomplice. According to F. Schumacher “the economy has a tendency to swallow up the whole of morality and take precedence over all other human considerations”.
Western man apparently takes account of the fact that human life is dependant on an ecosystem consistent of different forms of life. What is most needed now is a revision of the goals. And this implies, above all, the development of a lifestyle that will restore material things to their rightfull place- a secondary one, that is.
All genuinely important innovations begin with small minorities who deploy their creative freedom. To this end part of the total responsibility could also again be entrusted to these potentially gifted groups. It is clear that people who are organized in small units will be able to look after their piece of land or other natural resources better than anonymous companies or governments who suffer from megalomania and delude themselves that the entire universe is their lawfull prey.

It is better for a thousand individuals , each to build a small-scale system so that faults can be tested against each other, than for one individual to build a”well planned” habitat like a “great sign”on behalf of a thousand non experts.Since the composition than occurs in a way by which each participant interweaves his own contribution as it were into the whole structure, the isolated position of the expert as programmer of the “Societe du Spectacle” can be avoided.

Louis G. LeRoy