photography
Lebanon | Rania Matar: The Forgotten
August 12, 2010 · Leave a Comment
“Girl in the Light,” Rania Matar, 2005
By Grace Aneiza Ali
“This is not a political project,” says Beirut-born photographer Rania Matar (www.raniamatar.com) about her work to document the aftermath of Lebanon’s civil war and the conditions in the country’s Palestinian refugee camps. “It does not try to promote any solution to a complicated and sensitive issue, but is a photographic portrait of a forgotten people in search of a home.” Matar’s work, captured in her stunning debut monograph, Ordinary Lives, (Quantuck Lane Press, 2009) may not be intended as a political project, but at its core, it is a compassion project.
Ghana | Chester Higgins: Girl From Tamale
August 10, 2010 · Leave a Comment
Tamale, Ghana. 1973
of note continues its FOCUS series with photographer Chester Higgins, Jr.
of note: Can you take us through this image? What was the story behind capturing it?
Chester Higgins: It was early one morning in the northern town of Tamale in Ghana. I took a walk to the local bus station. I lingered, leaning against the wall and watching the rush as people jumped into and off open busses. Using the camera lens, I scanned and waited, and then among the throng, this little young girl appeared. Using body language, I asked her to stop so that I could photograph her. She complied. Because of her age and spirit, she reminded me of my young daughter, Nataki, left behind in Brooklyn. When I noticed her plucked eyebrows, I suddenly imagined her at the center of a big loving family.
They Won’t Budge: Africans in Europe
August 17, 2009 · Leave a Comment
By Tanya Watts
“They Won’t Budge: Africans in Europe,” Courtesy of the Department of Social & Cultural Analysis, New York University
They Won’t Budge: Africans in Europe, currently on view at the Harlem-based Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, is a welcomed wake up call to the myopia of a very American view of the black experience.
Dissonant and peaceful, vivacious and lifeless, spiritual and whimsical, the portraits on display both speak across cultures and pinpoint a specificity of migratory moments. Traipsing through local migrant neighborhoods that are affected by global policies; tracing migratory patterns with imperial and colonial undertones; and translating stories of hope for a better life despite harsh current realities are the huge undertakings of They Won’t Budge.
