Wendy Ewald is an American photographer whose work delves into themes of identity and community through visual storytelling. She has dedicated her career to teaching photography to children and young people internationally, empowering them with a potent tool for self-expression. Ewald's collaborative approach amplifies voices that might otherwise go unheard, resulting in poignant and insightful imagery that reveals profound human experiences.
Set in the ancient village of Vichya, Gujarat, this book combines striking photographs with insightful text. It chronicles Wendy Ewald's experience living and teaching photography to a group of children aged ten to fourteen. Through their lenses, the children capture the essence of their desert community, offering a unique perspective on their lives and culture. The work highlights the intersection of art and education, showcasing the transformative power of photography in a traditional setting.
The transformation of this world depends on you explores the early missionary vision of Amherst College and its contemporary legacy. Founded in 1820 in Massachusetts, Amherst aimed to educate "pious indigent young men of promising talents" for the Christian ministry. For over a century, graduates traveled to distant places like China, Persia, and Hawaii, driven by a mission to convert non-Christians. The book juxtaposes their religious zeal with the efforts of local charitable organizations in Amherst today.
In the first part, historian Martha Saxton and photographer Wendy Ewald recount the stories of nine early missionaries, drawing from Amherst's archives and utilizing photographs, etchings, and documents to depict their challenging lives. The second part features photographer Fazal Sheikh, who engaged with community members facing economic and social hardships. He listened to their immigration stories, created portraits of ten subjects, and collected their family photographs.
The introduction by Thomas Keenan, Director of the Human Rights Project at Bard College, reflects on the missionaries' work and attitudes through the lens of modern human rights discourse and practice, providing a critical context for understanding the historical and current implications of their missions.
For more than 30 years, Wendy Ewald has put cameras in the hands of children all over the world and helped them record their dreams and realities in images and words. Towards a Promised Land documents her work with 22 children new to the British seaside town of Margate. Some arrived fleeing countries afflicted by war, poverty or political strife, others by following their families from one town to the next. Over 18 months, Ewald photographed her subject-artists and interviewed them about their past and present lives, while teaching them how to make their own photographs. The resulting case studies capture the children at critical turning points in their lives. (Ewald's photographic portraits of the children have appeared as huge, iconic banners around Margate; the children's own projects formed an exhibition at a local gallery.) Through these displaced human beings, Towards a Promised Land touches some of the most salient issues confronting contemporary society. This "book of fragments" brings together Ewald's and the children's work with a host of interviews, writings and commentaries on the contemporary search for a sense of place in a world of constant and turbulent change.
A powerful exploration of identity emerges as 18 immigrant teens collaborate with photographer Ewald to create a visual and verbal alphabet that encapsulates their experiences. Through thoughtfully designed photographs and personal interviews, the book reveals their unique journeys and perspectives, highlighting the richness of their stories. The vibrant full-color presentation enhances the emotional impact, making it a compelling testament to the immigrant experience.
"When Wendy Ewald arrived in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains in 1975, she began a project that aimed to reveal the lives, intimate dreams and fears of local schoolchildren. Tasked with finding authentic ways of representing the lives of these children, she gave each of them a camera and interviewed them about their childhood in the mountains. Through these intriguing transcripts and photographs, we discover the lives of families as seen through the eyes of their children: where domestic, rural life is understood with startling openness and depth. In Portraits and Dreams, life's most mysterious realities -- love, loss, violence, death, new life -- are given voice through an altogether novel discovery: the camera. We learn the eloquence and originality with which children see the world and we see a generous new way of engaging children in the possibilities of the photographic medium. This revised and expanded edition of Ewald's now-rare book, first published in 1985, and called 'An American masterpiece,' offers access to a different and broadened view of the rural south over the span of 35 years, and includes contemporary pictures and stories by eight of the students from the original publication." -- Publisher's description
Our perceptions of children are only too often distorted by our inclination to project grown-up fantasies of innocence and naivete onto them. Working with children, American photographer Wendy Ewald reveals the lucidity and precision of their powers of observation, gently but assuredly overturning cherished notions of childhood as a paradise lost. In Secret Games Ewald leads you into a world that is as eerie, haunting and threatening as it is joyous and mischievous-life as children really experience it. In 1969, when Wendy Ewald taught photography to children for the first time on a Native American reservation in Nova Scotia, she was stunned by how astute and beautiful their photographs of the environment they were growing up in were. Moving on to the Kentucky Appalachians, she continued working with children, combining her own photographs with the children's photographs and writings. For the past thirty years she has worked with children and women all over the world. Secret Games offers a comprehensive overview of Ewald's collaborative works, with in-depth texts by Ewald tracing the evolution of her work and the ideas guiding it
