-__ David Wright __-

David Wright (b. 1983) is a photographer based between Vinalhaven and Camden, Maine. He has always learned about the world and himself through photography.
In 2009 David photographed in northern Uganda, focusing on A River Blue, a school providing psychosocial counseling and vocational training to vulnerable youth. His series, Uganda: A River Blue, was selected for the 2009 Conscientious Portfolio Competition Prize, exhibited at Anastasia Photo Gallery in New York in 2010, selected for the 2011 Hearst 8×10 Photography Biennial, and exhibited at the Hearst Towers in 2011.
During the fall of 2010 David made his way to Vinalhaven, a island off the coast of Maine, to work as a sternman on a commercial lobster fishing vessel. His series, Sky Above / Sea Below, was made while lobstering and exhibited at Asymmetrick Arts in Maine in 2011. He is the volunteer director for the non-profit A River Blue based in Uganda and is a board member of the non-profit Media Action based in Alaska.
David’s editorial work is represented by Redux Pictures, his Uganda work is represented by Anastasia Photo Gallery, and his Sky Above / Sea Below work is represented by Asymmetrick Arts.

david wright

+** LEE GRANT **+

I started working on this project about the Sudanese diaspora in Australia after photographing a family for another project set in the suburbs. According to figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Sudanese community is currently one of the fastest growing groups in Australia. In the last few years many Sudanese migrants have moved into the area where I live and I’ve watched their integration into our (largely Anglo) community with interest.

After making my first portrait of a family who’d been in Australia for 4 years, I suddenly had many other families asking me to make portraits of them too. Throughout the process of photographing, I heard many stories as to how and why they’d arrived here. As a mother with my own family, I find it impossible not to be moved. Stories of immense courage and sacrifice but also of hope, for a brighter future in Australia.

Australia is a country that maintains a controversial record for embracing migrants; government policies are parochial at best and there remains an underlying racist tension which is deeply rooted in a traumatic and unacknowledged indigenous history. And so, I wonder how this community will settle and maintain a sense of their own identity? How will they integrate and contribute to the cultural future of Australia?

As I negotiate my engagement with the community, my aim with this project is to continue working on the series of portraits but to also evolve it into a larger body about identity, displacement and belonging as well as the process of integration and citizenship in the context of the Australian suburbs. In making this portrait of my new neighbours, I hope to find some measure of understanding that transcends culture and language and that I can share with my fellow Australians for the present and into the future.

 _

Lee is a documentary photographer who lives and works in  Canberra. She holds a degree in Anthropology and in 2010 completed a Master of Philosophy (Visual Arts) at the ANU School of Art.

Lee has exhibited at the Australian Centre for Photography (Sydney), the Monash Gallery of Art (Melbourne) and the National Portrait Gallery (Canberra) amongst others.  She has been a finalist in the National Photographic Portrait Prize, the Head On Alternative Portrait Prize, the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Prize, the Olive Cotton Award, Critical Mass 09 and Sony/ACMP’s The Projections 09 (which she won). Lee was also the winner of the prestigious Bowness Photography Prize in 2010.

A selection of her work was recently published in the Big City Press monograph Hijacked Volume 2: Australia and Germany.

Lee’s work is held in the National Library, the Canberra Museum and Art Gallery as well as numerous private collections and she has received grants from ArtsACT, CAPO/Singapore Airlines and the Australia Council.

lee grant

:::: Mal d'Afrique AND Peter Beard::::

SORRY FOR NOT POSTING IN THE PAST THREE WEEKS BUT I WAS IN TANZANIA WHERE SOMETHING DEEPLY TOUCHED ME AND LEAVE ME IN A SORT OF LIMBO. SOMEONE CALL THIS  " Mal d'Afrique".

Imagine a space where sky does not dominate you, it runs through you
where you don't breathe air, you taste it
a place where time doesn't run, it simply rolls by
where your nerves no longer get nervous.
A place where people stop to say hello to you,
not just a quick glance
a place where everything, even when unpleasing, is real, as everything is life.
Suffering from mal d'Afrique is something coming from the depth of your soul,
before being a state of mind.
It's something you feel beating in your stomach,
it is there, it lives there, no matter of the heaviness of the old continent so hard to digest, no matter of a young and fresh coconut.
...mal d'Afrique is learning to lose time observing an orange head lizard while bending its legs.
...mal d'Afrique means using your eyes like a pencil and make a drawing of a baobab tree standing out against the sky, low and turquoise.
...mal d'Afrique is looking at a mechanic with no idea where to start repairing the engine of your car.
...mal d’Afrique means getting excited in front of a flying sunset, being aware that tomorrow, in any case, you will see a new one, apparently identical but with new shades.
...learning that it's not true that if you don't wish for anything, you won't get anything, being content with less is not always a defeat and living from day to day is a good way to update your life.
...understanding your own differences and accepting the other people diversity in a place where, maybe, neither Jesus could have stated that men and women are all the same.
...mal d’Afrique means living in harmony with the moon phases, with the local time zone, in peace with the life cycle and without losing your balance on a chinese (bi)cycle.
...mal d’Afrique is understanding you will be misunderstood and resign yourself, is boring boredom, is making lazy laziness, is knocking out intelligence subjecting it to your own rhythms, is putting your way of thinking in prison and releasing it against a bail your heart will pay, eternally, by easy seasonal instalments.
...mal d'Afrique is a heathen silence, a religious roaring, a mood.
...mal d'Afrique, the true one, is an incurable well-being.
 via http://freddiedelcuratolo

 Born in 1938 in New York City, raised in New York City, Alabama, and Bayberry Point, Islip, Long Island, Peter Beard kept diaries at an early age. He took his first pictures at twelve and photography quickly evolved into an extension of his diaries, as a way to preserve and remember vacations and favorite things. In 1957 he entered Yale University as a pre-medical student, but perceiving humans as the main disease soon switched to art history, studying under Vincent Scully, Joseph Albers, and Richard Lindner.

Trips to Africa in 1955 and 1960 piqued his interests and after graduating from Yale, he returned to Kenya via Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) in Rungstedlund, Denmark. She was the author of Out of Africa, Shadows In the Grass, Gothic Tales and Mottos In My Life. Beard met Blixen through his cousin Jerome Hill. In the early 60s he worked at Kenya’s Tsavo National Park, during which time he photographed and documented the demise of over 35,000 elephants and 5000 Black Rhinos and published two The End of the Game books (1965 & 1977). During this same time period, he acquired Hog Ranch, the property adjacent to Karen Blixen’s near the Ngong Hills and made it his home base in East Africa. Beard has written further works on his African experience: Eyelids of the Morning: The Mingeled Destines of Crocodiles and Men(1973), Longing for Darkness (1975), and his most recent books Zara’s Tales: Perilous Escapades in Equatorial Africa (2004) written for his daughter and his latest book Peter Beard, published by Taschen in November 2006.

His first exhibit was at the Blum Helman Gallery In New York in 1975 and was followed in 1977 by the landmark installation of his photographs, elephant carcasses, burned diaries, taxidermy, African artifacts, books and personal memorabilia at the International Center of Photography (his first one man show) in New York City.

In addition to creating original artwork, Beard has befriended and collaborated on projects with many artists including Andy Warhol, Andrew Wyeth, Richard Lindner, Terry Southern, Truman Capote, and Francis Bacon. In 1996, shortly after he was skewered and trampled by an elephant, his first major retrospective opened at the Centre National de la Photographie in Paris, followed by other exhibits in Berlin, London, Toronto, Madrid, Milan, Tokyo and Vienna. He now lives in New York City, Montauk Point, and Kenya with his wife Nejma and daughter Zara.

peter beard 

=== yosigo ===

Spanish photographer Yosigo Naiz from San Sebastián shoots people, places and spaces in a very documenting and observing way, one senses that the people within the photographs never knew Naiz was there capturing them. Here is a selection of lovely photos from the beach as well as some Aqua theme park.

yosigo