Past Exhibits

PHOTOGRAPHY AND TEXT BY WILL DURBIN

This past summer I spent working on microfinance in Mancherial, Andhra Pradesh, India. Mancherial is a “small” town of about 60,000, yet little about Mancherial felt like a small town to me. It is basically a mini-Hyderabad (the major regional capital about five hours away): like every Indian city that I visited, Mancherial has the pervading aura of chai tea and jasmine flowers, of curry powder and roasting chillies, of human urine and burning plastic and prayer incense; the cacophony of honking auto-rickshaws and bellowing trucks and yelling hawkers – in short, the wonders and chaos of urban India. Mancherial has all this (and much more) – just on a smaller scale than Hyderabad, Delhi and Mumbai.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY HOLLY HARRISON, ANDREW GALLO, JANE LEWIS, NICOLE BRUNDA, ASHER HILDEBRAND, KEIKO NAMBA, TINA WAHLA AND SUE AZAIEZ.

During the intersession break 2009, WWS graduate students in this spring’s WWS 556f: U.S., The Gulf, and Its Neighbors, travelled to Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen along with WWS Diplomat-in-Residence Ambassador Barbara Bodine and Associate Dean Karen McGuiness. During the 10-day visit to the region, the group met with host government officials, US ambassadors and embassy staff, senior US military leaders, and representatives of local and international NGOs to discuss domestic political dynamics, the impact of the global economic crisis, regional security, and their combined impact on and significance for US foreign policy in the region. This photo exhibit is a compilation of photos from the students as well as a brief description of the major lessons learned in each of the countries visited.

PHOTOGRAPHY AND TEXT BY MORGAN COURTNEY

In 2006, I spent six months working for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in the town of Gisenyi, in the northwest of Rwanda, along the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). My work was centered both on collaborating with the refugee youth to provide programming and monitoring the return of Rwandan Hutu, including former combatants, to their homes. Through this, I had access to a unique view of the Great Lakes crisis; I both witnessed the hope of Rwandans returning to their towns and villages, and saw the suffering and dignity of the uprooted Congolese who wanted so desperately to return home.

PHOTOGRAPHY AND TEXT BY MIKE MCCAFFREY

Indigenous people in Bolivia only won the right to vote in the revolution of 1952. Since then they have continued to advocate for equality in a sharply divided society. Evo Morales, an indigenous farmer turned political organizer, emerged to lead the movement, and in late 2005 was elected president of Bolivia. Three years later, on January 25th, 2009, President Morales has passed a new constitution by popular vote. This constitution, while controversial in other respects, represents a clear victory for Indigenous rights. This exhibit honors the diversity and tenacity of Bolivian culture.

PHOTOGRAPHY AND TEXT BY ASHER D. HILDEBRAND

I have chosen the theme of "walls" both because of the ubiquity of physical barriers (both holy and mundane) throughout Israel and Palestine and because of the profound sense of separateness that pervades the two societies after more than sixty years of conflict. My intent is not to make a political statement about the legitimacy of "security barriers" or any other matter; opinions on these questions are best expressed in open debate. My purpose here is simply to offer a glimpse of everyday life as it is lived on both sides of this tragic conflict, unvarnished by prior beliefs or political agendas.

ZAKIRA PHOTOGRAPHY

These photos were taken by children in Lebanon's twelve Palestinian refugee camps through a project of the Lebanese NGO Zakira ("memory"). Zakira's members are all volunteers with an interest in photography and in the condition of Palestinian refugee children in Lebanon. Through this project, Zakira members conducted workshops teaching 500 children in Lebanon's twelve refugee camps basic photography skills. Michael Balz, a masters candidate in the Woodrow Wilson School, was a Zakira member while living in the Middle East. He spent two years in the Arab world, teaching in Egypt, studying in Syria and working in political development in Lebanon.

PHOTOGRAPHY AND TEXT BY LACHLYN SOPER

In February 2008, I had the opportunity to visit Iran as part of a year-long dispatch in the Middle East. With the attention given to Iran’s nuclear ambitions and often fiery rhetoric, I thought it would be illuminating to see the nation for myself. What I saw was a vibrant and modern Persia that cherishes its heritage. Any strike on Iran, no matter what the political or military reasoning employed, would put those ancient and modern treasures at risk.

PHOTOGRAPHY AND TEXT BY RACHEL STEINBERG

This essay tells the story of an outsider looking in on the daily lives of Burmese refugees. These refugees risked their lives to cross from Burma to Thailand to live in Mae Lah and Tham Hin UN refugee camps (run by the International Organization of Migration). I have met adolescents who crossed the jungles alone; families who fled while their village was burning; and wives still waiting for their husbands. The camps are getting more crowded and there are fewer and fewer areas of refuge for the Burmese.

PHOTOGRAPHY AND TEXT BY SIAN MIRANDA SINGH OFAOLAIN

Imizamo Yethu means “through struggle we achieve” in Xhosa, the main language spoken by the township’s residents. The township of Imizamo Yethu was established in 1991 in Cape Town’s wealthy suburb Hout Bay, which was deemed a White area under the 1953 Group Areas Act during Apartheid. Black South Africans who lived in squatter camps in Hout Bay were given public land where the township was to be built. Currently the township is home to an estimated 20,000 people, including many young children, the vast of majority of whom live in informal shacks. The location of the township among privately owned residential estates in Hout Bay hinders access to land and the physical expansion of the township. As a result, the current conditions there put residents at high risk of disease and fire.

PHOTOGRAPHY AND TEXT BY NADEZHDA DIMITROVA SAVOVA

Home is where your heart is, I was once told. For five years, I have traveled diverse places where these words pulsate in hearts connected through music and dance, and the more I explored movement, the more I understood people have a need for an immovable, home-like place to meet and create. This photographic narrative weaves a net(work) of human lives in cultural spaces across five countries: Mexico, Chile, Bulgaria, Brazil, and India, in the chronological order of my work.

Collected since 2001, these images are a few of my favorites. In selecting them, my desire was to simply present some of the photographs that have been especially meaningful to me. They serve in part as a travelogue but also as records of intimate experiences with ecosystems and their wildlife. Privately, I use photography as a tool to combat the distortions that time inflicts on memory, particularly to those ephemeral encounters with an animal or the momentary intersection of sunlight, wind, and weather on a landscape. Publicly, I hope the images convey a sense of the wonderful character of their subjects.

PHOTOGRAPHY AND TEXT BY VANEKA CHAGWEDERA

Within the past ten years, China has experienced a surge of economic growth, ushering in a new era of Sino power. Politically, China has transitioned socialism towards economic liberalism. Economically, she has grown from an agrarian based society to an industrialized powerhouse of production. Socially, she has shifted from a legacy of collectivism towards a new culture of individualism. In essence, China has become a complicated amalgam of oriental tradition and global modernity.

PHOTOGRAPHY AND TEXT BY LEANNE SMITH

I started taking these photographs of children in Afghanistan when I was working as a human rights officer in a field office of the UN Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA) in 2005. Working in a field office meant regular trips out into the villages and districts of the provinces I worked in, to investigate human rights complaints or to monitor and report on the human rights situations there. The road trips were a real chance to get to experience the people, culture and countryside that make up Afghanistan. As a female officer, I also had the privileged opportunity to see the largely invisible lives of Afghan women and girls – these experiences were certainly the most rewarding for me.

PHOTOGRAPHY AND TEXT BY BRITT LAKE

Decades of underdevelopment and a brutal 11-year civil war have left Sierra Leone one of the poorest countries in the world. Ranked second to last in the UN’s human development index, Sierra Leone has the highest infant, under-five, and maternal mortality rates in the world. Infrastructure remains poor, as does the country’s public heath and education systems.

PHOTOGRAPHY AND TEXT BY ROB WEISS

Whither China? The rise of the “Middle Kingdom”(zhongguo)has scholars seeking to discover what path lays ahead for China’s society and politics. The rapid changes China has undergone in the last half century—from a centrally-planned economy to barely-checked free market capitalism—have eliminated much of the ideological certainty that characterized the Mao era. As complex social and political forces unfold, such as the decentralization of power, development of a middle class, an ethnically diverse population, will China move towards liberalization?

PHOTOGRAPHY AND TEXT BY SHANNON M. BRINK

Some three billion people in the developing world rely on wood and other organic fuels for their cooking and heating needs. For those who cook indoors—often on three-stone fires or rustic stoves—soot-blackened walls stand as testaments to long hours spent cooking. The smoke from these stoves contains pollutants that can cause serious health effects including headaches, nausea, vision problems, respiratory ailments, and cancer. The World Health Organization reports that indoor air pollution causes 1.5 million deaths annually; the majority of that burden is borne by women and small children.

PHOTOGRAPHY AND TEXT BY LEDIO CAKAJ

Burundi has been slowly emerging from many years of instability and civil war. In 2000, 13 belligerent parties signed the Arusha Accords to usher in a plan for democracy and elections. A transitional government took over and democratic elections were planned. However, two Hutu rebels groups refused at attend the talks and remained actively engaged in war. In 2003, the largest rebel group, the CNDD-FDD signed the Pretoria Protocols and agreed to a ceasefire and government participation. A smaller Hutu extremist group, the FNL, remained in the bush. In 2005, for the first time since 1993, Burundi held democratic elections and CNDD-FDD leader, Pierre Nkurunziza was elected president.

PHOTOGRAPHY AND TEXT BY NEALIN PARKER

Perched on the western coast of Africa, a few degrees north of the Equator, Liberia is a country of approximately three million people. It was founded by former American slaves and is one of only two countries in Africa never to have been colonized by a European power. Liberia did not escape undemocratic governance, however. From 1822-1847, the country was run by whites under the aegis of the American Colonization Society. With independence came 133 years of rule by the descendents of the former slaves, called “Americo-Liberians,” who represented only a small fraction of the country’s total population. In 1980, Samuel K. Doe, a young indigenous military man, overthrew the government in a bloody coup that set the stage for Liberia’s first civil war (1989-1996). This conflict ended with the election of Charles Taylor, the leader of the largest rebel faction. While the international community judged the election free and fair, such slogans as “He killed my ma. He killed my pa. I’ll vote Charles Taylor!” indicated that intimidation, rather than free choice, largely determined the outcome.