Showing posts with label photo essay. Show all posts
Showing posts with label photo essay. Show all posts

13 January 2009

The need for longer days

So it is now 13 January and I haven't done anything with my dissertation in two weeks. Do I feel guilty? Absolutely and I can only foresee things getting more difficult. My Mew Year's resolution was to work more efficiently so that I could accomplish what I needed to. I'm am getting more work done, but now I have more work.

In addition to my dissertation write up and teaching introductory anthropology, I'm putting together a photo exhibition for May. My friends Natalina and Ventris, professors at Santa Monica College in California, wrote a grant for a symposium on global citizenship at their university. I met Natalina and Ventris in Mozambique where Natalina and I were both Fulbrighters. The symposium is a series of events over the course of a week that will "focus the college's attention to the multitude of perspectives pertaining to food security, environmental changes (both climate and markets) and HIV/AIDS in Mozambique." There will be panel discussions, ethnic dance performances, the photo essay exhibition, and a food crisis banquet organized by OxFam International.

Natalina and I are both contributing to the photography exhibition - our photos and the photos our informants took of their lives. 500 pictures. 500. Most of them will be coming from my end. Epa! That is way lots of work choosing the topics and the photos to fit these topics, then writing up a blurb. I plan to do some photo groupings to reduce some of the blurbs. :)

The exhibit is titled, From the Bush to the Market: Buffering Food Security and Environmental Changes. When it is finished we hope to have it exhibited elsewhere and perhaps post at least some of the exhibition online. At any rate, I need more time in the day to get everything done.

10 January 2009

Extraordinary Lives

31 March 1979

An online friend recently posted a link about a man who took a picture of himself or some part of his life everyday for 18 years. The photos begin March 31, 1979 and end on October 25, 1997 - a total of 6,697 polaroids dated in sequence.

Jamie Livingston's Life


In the series, we see a man at picnics and parties, work and Met's games. He goes through chemotherapy, gets married, hangs out with friends, lives, loves and, yes, eventually that cancer comes back and he dies. He also chronicles how New York City changed.
19 July 1981

28 August 1990

I haven't had a chance to look through all the photos, but I think it is a wonderful commentary on being a human. His friends Hugh Crawford and Betsy Reid put together a public photography exhibit and website (which I linked to above). The exhibition was held at Bard College where Livingston was a student and started his photo project originally. I really encourage anyone reading this to check out the online exhibit.
9 October 1996

8 October 1997

We always wonder what our legacy will be and this gentleman made his own. Or as another community member wrote, "That is indeed a cool thing and it is a constant reminder that each of us, famous or not famous, normal or not normal, do live extraordinary lives."
22 October 1997