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"The iPhone is the snapshot camera of today... it is a pencil, a pen, a notebook. It is so accessible." —Annie Leibovitz

The Rebekah Jacob Gallery in Charleston, SC, is organizing a summer exhibition of photographs taken by the evermore ubiquitous smartphone cameras. At least half of the 500 photographs for the exhibition will be pre-selected, but submissions for the rest of the exhibition are open to the public. Submission guidelines can be found here.

From the website:

"Photography is arguably the most democratic medium of the visual arts. Easily transportable in a pocket, smartphones have pushed the medium into new directions as millions—both pros and amateurs—have the capability to record an image with immediacy and intuition. Further, that image can circulate widely and immediately through social media outlets. Ways of Seeing: Phoneography explores the possibilities of smart phone photography, its future as a fine art form, and affects on modern society."

Zwelethu Mthethwa
SUGAR CANE (2003-2007)
Curated by Diego Cortez
John Hope Franklin Center, 2204 Erwin Road, Durham, NC 27708
January 17 - extended to Easter Sunday, April 8, 2012

Link to John Hope Franklin Center information on the exhibit:
http://jhfc.duke.edu/gallery/current.php

This small but powerful exhibition of seven chromogenic photographs of sugar cane workers in South Africa by Zwelethu Mthethwa is a must see. The show has been extended to Easter Sunday, April 8.

There is an abundant blinding light that illuminates these workers, their clothes and tools, the ravaged sugar cane fields that almost appear to have been collaged into this lush landscape of golden green rolling hills. The cut sugar cane lies in stratified stacks like pick-up-sticks and it seems to grow as thickly as bamboo. The workers' hands are like oiled wood, they match their soiled work shirts. The workers gaze at Mthethwa. They stare at us. We are in those background hills of leisure and beauty, in another pastoral place. The workers are firmly there, with their machetes, their heads and wrists wrapped in cloth, their bodies layered in loose clothing to protect their skin from the sugar cane leaves as sharp as blades.

This is a world of extreme light, extreme work, extreme contrasts. A black man is transformed into a shining silvery being because his skin is so slick with sweat it reflects the intense light - his skin suddenly metallic, alchemical. These men are tired and proud.

Curator Diego Cortez links Mthethwa's work to South African photographer Pieter Hugo and to the Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado, in terms of social narrative. I respect Mthethwa's deliberate decision to utilize color photography rather than black and white in order to "disarm the issue. We know South Africa through Apartheid. The history of photography is full of black and white images of poverty. I do not want to perpetuate this status quo." Cortez rightly claims that Mthethwa's work address the critical question of "how to provide greater dignity and realism to his subjects than that afforded by black and white documentary reportage as was prevalent during South Africa's historical transformation from apartheid to a free and open society." Mthethwa wants to make beautiful photographs, photographs that the sitters will love. Mthethwa quotes one of the sugar cane workers, "I want my kid to see me at work, but I want the photograph to stimulate her to get her education."

As Roland Barthes writes in Camera Lucida, it is not the photograph that we see. I have come to realize that this is only true when we look at great photographs. What we see is what was once there before the lens, illuminated and temporary. While Mthethwa's large color photographs are gorgeous, I cannot remember how they were framed. What I remember is one man's blue-black hands folded in his lap as he sits on top of a pile of cut sugar cane. I remember looking down on a man standing in the shallow foreground of cut straw-like sugar cane, his machete held horizontally at his waist, his fingers shining, his soft blue hat punched through with holes that I imagine are for ventilation. I remember their weary and honest eyes. These moments provide moments of rest for the workers and articulate the entangled and divided realm of spatial politics in reality and in representation itself.

 

Lots of amazing documentary projects are happening in Durham about veterans! From the Center for Documentary Studies website:

"Laura Browder will visit CDS to sign copies of her and photographer Sascha Pflaeging’s book, When Janey Comes Marching Home: Portraits of Women Combat Veterans (University of North Carolina Press, 2010), and to discuss her work with Sharon Raynor, a Humanities Writ Large Faculty Fellow at Duke, and Beth Ann Koelsch, curator of the Betty H. Carter Women Veterans Historical Project (WVHP) at the UNC-Greensboro University Libraries. Longtime CDS instructor Michelle Lanier will moderate the discussion.

Tuesday, March 20, 6–9 p.m.
Center for Documentary Studies
1317 W. Pettigrew St., Durham, North Carolina

The recent launch of the Veterans Oral History Project in North Carolina brought an accompanying exhibit of the same name to CDS this month. When Janey Comes Marching Home includes forty large-scale color photographic portraits and accompanying oral histories of female soldiers who served in combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. The exhibit will run through April 21, 2012, in the Lyndhurst, Porch, and University Galleries at CDS.

Laura Browder is the Tyler and Alice Haynes Professor in American Studies at the University of Richmond. Previous books include Her Best Shot: Women and Guns in America (UNC Press, 2008). Sharon Raynor is the Mott University Distinguished Professor at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina. The director of two veterans oral history projects, she is working closely with CDS this semester to explore and document community experiences, spoken memory, oral history, and the literacy and culture of silence. Beth Ann Koelsch has been curator of the WVHP since 2008. The project documents the female experience in the U.S. military from WWII to the present through letters, papers, photographs, published materials, uniforms, artifacts, and oral histories. Michelle Lanier is teaching the Documentary Studies class Ethnographic Writing: The Veterans Oral History Project in North Carolina.

Read an article from the News and Observer on Sharon Raynor and a visit from Vietnam veterans who visited CDS."

 2007, David Pace has been working on an extensive body of work on the small West African country of Burkina Faso. Pace now leads a study abroad program for photography in Burkina Faso. He is the 2011 recipient of Daylight's Work-in-Process prize for his work on weekly Friday night dance parties in the village of Bereba. To enter the 2012 Photo Awards, visit

http://www.daylightmagazine.org/content/daylight-photo-awards

Kate Levy: Can you give the readers some information on the of country Burkina Faso--politics, demographics, geography, specifically the Bereba region, on which most of your work focuses? What about Bereba and Burkina Faso compelled you to engage the region as a photographic subject?

David Pace: Burkina Faso is a small, landlocked country about the size of Colorado. It is located north of Ghana and south of Mali in sub-Saharan West Africa. Formerly known as “Upper Volta,” the French colony gained independence in 1960. French is the official language although the population of approximately 17 million is divided into 63 distinct ethnic groups, each with its own local language. Burkina Faso has been a relatively stable and peaceful republic for many years.
With an annual per capita income of $580, Burkina Faso is one of the world’s poorest countries. Life expectancy is 54 years. Adult literacy is only 26% - one of the lowest in the world. Subsistence agriculture is the primary occupation and cotton is the main cash crop. There are basically two seasons – the “wet season” and the “dry season.” It is always hot. Infrastructure is limited so there is very little tourism.

Bereba, the village where I spend most of my time as a photographer, is located in the southwest of the country about five hours drive from the capitol city of Ouagadougou. There is no electricity or running water. Roads are unpaved dirt. Most of the villagers are cotton farmers. They also grow corn, rice, millet and peanuts and raise chickens and goats. There are several different ethnic groups, including Mossi, Bwa, Fulani and Bobo. Villagers are Muslim, Catholic or animist.

KL: Tell us about how you first came to Burkina Faso.

DP: My first trip to Burkina Faso was in February 2007. I had never been to Africa and it was not a place I had thought about visiting. I had been working on a photographic project in El Salvador during the previous four years and was planning to continue exploring Central America. Two of my colleagues at Santa Clara University, where I have been teaching photography since 1998, saw my El Salvador photographs. They thought I might be interested in seeing the West African village where they had been doing research for more than ten years. They suggested that I visit them in Burkina Faso during their sabbatical year in 2007.

My colleagues had formed an NGO called Friends of African Village Libraries (FAVL), devoted to building libraries in rural villages to promote literacy in Burkina Faso. The first library was built in the village of Bereba in 2001. FAVL now operates ten libraries. I was asked to photograph the libraries and the villages in order to create promotional material and documentation for FAVL. I spent four weeks in West Africa during my first trip. I knew I would return. I now spend part of each fall in Burkina Faso.

KL: What are some of the challenges you have faced while making this body of work?

DP: I have faced many challenges in making this body of work. Each challenge opened up into a significant opportunity.

One preliminary challenge involved photography itself. The people of Burkina Faso are not accustomed to being photographed, especially by westerners. There is little tourism, and very few Burkinabe have cameras. I always asked permission before taking a photograph but, at least in the city, almost no one consented to having a picture taken. It was very frustrating to see so many interesting subjects and not be allowed to make photographs. Villagers, on the other hand, were a bit more willing to be photographed, but each portrait required a lengthy explanation, with the assistance of a translator, about why I was in the village. I offered to send a print to each subject, and my request to take a photograph was, somewhat reluctantly, accepted. I returned to the village in 2008 with several hundred prints. Since then I have been enthusiastically welcomed into village homes and activities with my camera. I continue this practice: after each trip I send or bring 600 – 700 prints back to the village. For many villagers, this is the only photograph they own.
A second challenge was language. French is the official language in Burkna Faso, along with local languages such as Dioula and Mossi. When I first traveled to Burkina Faso in 2007 I did not speak French. This proved to be a tremendous challenge since almost no one speaks English. Although I worked with a translator from the village who had learned English (by listening to Bob Marley tapes!), I struggled to make myself understood. After my first trip I was determined to return but knew I would have to learn French. It took nearly a year but when I returned for a month in January 2008, my French, although rudimentary, was good enough to get me by. My French improved with each visit. As my connection with the community deepened, I began to feel that the villagers and I were able to communicate in ways that included language but also transcended it.

A third challenge involved film, cameras, and equipment. On my first trip I was shooting B/W film for the work I considered “serious,” and using a digital camera to take notes. It was only after I returned home that I began to really see the photographic possibilities in Bereba and to understand the opportunity I had been given. The “notes” were more vibrant and compelling than the “serious” work. By 2009 I was photographing in color, solely with a digital SLR, and, for the first time in my life, left my film cameras at home. Then came the challenge of re-charging batteries and downloading digital files in village with no electricity.

But that’s another story…

Yet another challenge involved working with Santa Clara University, where I teach photography, to develop a study abroad program. After my third trip, one of my colleagues at the University suggested that we propose a study abroad program in Burkina Faso. Our proposal was accepted. We became co-directors of “Reading West Africa” and we began to learn about the challenges (and joys) of bringing a group of college students to a developing nation for a semester. We took our first cohort of students in the fall of 2009 and the second in the fall of 2010. This allowed me to spend three months in Burkina Faso each year. I had already become a familiar sight in the village, but by 2009 Bereba began to feel like home.

It was during this period that I began to attend the weekly Friday night dances at Le Cotonnier with my friends from the village. We drank warm beer and danced all night under the stars. Other than the generator that powers the music, there’s no electricity and no light – a challenge for any photographer! I began to experiment with flash, dancing while I was shooting, and rarely looking through the viewfinder. This was not a “project”: it was my life in the village. Boundaries collapsed: I made photographs as a participant rather than an observer. The element of chance became an integral part of the process since I never knew what images I was going to get.

Image Copyright David Pace.

KL: Are there any issues you address in this work that speak to the human condition on a more global level, or would you call this work strictly site specific?

DP: My work in Burkina Faso began as a site-specific project. My first photographs documented the contrasts between West African village life and western culture, focusing on the uniqueness of the village. Life in the village was completely different from anything I had ever experienced. It seemed at first to be timeless and unchanging. But after spending more time in Bereba I realized that even this remote village is closely connected with the rest of the world. Once I knew what to look for I could see continuous, and often rapid, changes. The Friday Night series portrays the villagers as part of contemporary global life. The dance, music, and styles of clothing are different every year. The dance series, which started as a site-specific project, became a project that emphasizes the fact that we all share the same humanity and experience the same joy of being alive, no matter where we live.

I hope that my photographs convey something more broadly about Africa. In the western media, Africa is often portrayed either as a place of catastrophes – famine, genocide, poverty, corruption, etc. - or as an exotic place for safaris and tribal rituals. While those things certainly exist, Africa is a huge continent of tremendous diversity. While poverty is a reality, most people live meaningful and fulfilling lives. The simple, beautiful aspects of everyday life seldom get portrayed. My goal is to present Africa in a positive and realistic light, to show that even in a very traditional village like Bereba, the villagers are very much connected with and part of modernity. My work challenges both Afro-pessimism and the tendency to exoticize African culture.

KL: In the Burkina Faso series, you chronicle the Karaba Brick Quarry. Can you please describe the cultural significance of this site, as well as its importance in your representation of the village of Bereba?

DP: The Karaba Quarry is located beside a cornfield outside the village of Karaba about 20 km from Bereba. The house I live in is built from Karaba bricks. I was curious about where the bricks came from and how they were made. When I was taken to the quarry in 2008 I was amazed by this incredible, colorful, sculpted landscape, and fascinated by the men who work there. The work is so basic – cutting bricks out of solid rock using only a pick and shovel. It also has a timeless, almost primordial quality. One of my African friends in the city remarked that he could imagine the pyramids being built when he saw my quarry photographs. For me, the quarry is like a colossal earth art installation that is constantly changing. It also provides a wonderful backdrop for portraits of the workers who enjoy being photographed.

Image Copyright David Pace.

I stop by the quarry at least once a week when I am in Burkina. I have learned a great deal about the history of the place and the circumstances of the workers. They work together in informal associations but each man works for himself, receiving all the money for the bricks he makes and sells. A quarryman makes about $4/day, which is more than 2 ½ times the national average. Although it is a strenuous occupation, the quarrymen earn a good income by village standards.

KL: Over the past year, how has The Friday Night series and the larger body of work evolved since you won the Works-In-Process prize? Are you working on any other projects?

DP: Receiving the work-in-process prize was very affirming. It encouraged me to continue working on the Friday Night project. The series continues to evolve. After receiving the award in the fall, I spent the month of December 2011 in Bereba photographing every dance I could, including the New Year’s Eve party at Le Cotonnier. I had been told that the New Year’s Eve dance is the biggest dance of the year, and I was not disappointed. All my neighbors attended, and others from neighboring villages joined in. The music was transporting, the skill of the dancers was unprecedented, and the photographs are stronger.

I continue photographing the Karaba Quarry and the weekly market. I also started a new project this year. I began photographing the villagers as they return from their fields at the end of the day. They pass by on the dirt path in front of my house on foot, riding bicycles or motorcycles, or driving wooden carts drawn by mules or oxen. They carry firewood for cooking, cotton or millet that that they have harvested, or prey that they have hunted. The light is spectacular for about 30 minutes just before and after sunset. Every evening I stand on the path and make portraits from about 5:30 until 6:15 when night falls.  

Image Copyright David Pace.

To see more of David's work, visit http://www.davidpacephotography.com

With improvements and accessibility of camera technology, it is rather easy for anyone to buy a camera and start taking pictures. We photograph random as well as common moments in our lives and garner a large body of work with no central meaning or end in sight. While there is still value in this methodology of shooting, the Palms Springs Photo Festival has conceived a workshop, led by Lisa Kereszi, that will show image makers the importance of working in a series.

Calling emerging and professional photographers alike, this 4 day workshop will consist of shooting, reviews, and crtiques to help the participant determine the next step in their photographic careers. While exploring the three dimensions of Kereszi's work, Interiors, Landscape, and Portraits, she will discuss the importance of judicious editing, the production/sale of a print, and how to find your own unique voice as a fine art photographer. You will learn how to focus and shape your ideas/concepts so that the process of making work and presenting work to potential galleries, institutions and publishers will be refined. And when all is said and done, how to maintain your fine art image making career.

The days of this workshop will be April 2nd - April 5th and the tuition is $925.

Information:

http://2012.palmspringsphotofestival.com/connect-2012/workshops/lisa-kereszi/