Past Exhibits

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.