I did a short interview with Jonathan Cherry from MULL IT OVER. I enjoyed his thoughtful and poignant questions.
JC: What is it that has drawn you to Uganda?
DW: I wanted to leave the United States and experience how much of the world lives each day. I wanted to learn about myself and the world through photography.
In February I went down to Clarksdale, Mississippi to take a documentary film making workshop presented by Barefoot Workshops. We had 4 very talented instructors and one of them was Julie Winokur. Julie recently launched a website for her documentary FIRESTORM, a film focused on the Los Angles Fire Department indirectly forced to handle the immense amount of medical-related emergencies due to inadequate facilities in LA.
“Every minute in the United States, an ambulance gets turned away from an emergency room because hospitals are simply too full. In Los Angeles, where the wait time in some ERs is as long as 48 hours, the entire 911 system is being challenged in ways that are alarming.
FIRESTORM follows Los Angeles Fire Department Station 65, located in South Los Angeles, a neighborhood with a largely uninsured and undereducated population. The LAFD handles all emergency medical services for the city of Los Angeles, and currently 82% of the department’s work is medical, rather than fire-related. Eleven hospitals have closed in just five years in LA, and the challenge of delivering more than 500 patients per day to a shrinking number of hospitals is overwhelming to the LAFD. With resources strained, and 911 being used for everything from heart attacks to stomach aches, LAFD paramedics have become virtual ‘doctors in a box’.”
In 2009 I spent 2 months in northern Uganda photographing and teaching photography workshops for A River Blue, a school providing psychosocial counseling and intense vocational training in topics like tailoring, agriculture, and arts to vulnerable youth. Upon returning, I spent about 3 months on and off editing the work. When I was at a place where I was relatively satisfied, I applied for the 2009 Conscientios Competition and was selected as 1 of 3 winners.
Shortly thereafter I was approached by my gallery about exhibiting the work for the spring of 2010. We set a date for the exhibition and I began printing. One day I was talking to my friend and photographer Alan Winslow about raising funds and he suggested applying for the Strategic Opportunity Stipends (SOS) offered by the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA).
From NYFA’s website, The SOS are “designed to help individual artists of all disciplines take advantage of unique opportunities that will significantly benefit their work or career development. Literary, media, visual, music and performing artists may request support ranging from $100 to $600 for specific, forthcoming opportunities that are distinct from work in progress.” Note: SOS is only available to New York State artists excluding residents of the five boroughs of New York City.
Each county in New York State is associated with a specific art council, and I received my SOS through the Upper Catskill Community Council of the Arts (UCCCA). With these funds I was able to lessen the cost of printing the exhibition and traveling to New York for the opening reception. Thank you NYFA for supporting this opportunity.
Upper Catskill Community Council of the Arts website.
New York Foundation for the Arts website.
Also, the exhibition has been extended to April 14th so please stop in, see the work, and learn about A River Blue.
David Wright (photographs) and George Ongom (writing)
AnastasiaPhoto exhibition catalogue
28 pages
5.5 x 8 (in.), 139.7 x 203.2 (mm)
Edition of 200
Digital Xerox; staple bound
Design by Josh Gomby; printed by Booksmart Studio
$15 US
$17 Canada & Mexico
$20 All other countries
“This exhibition catalogue showcases photographs by David Wright with writing by George Ongom made in 2009 when the photographer spent 2 months in northern Uganda photographing for A River Blue, a school providing psychosocial counseling and intense vocational training in topics like tailoring, agriculture, and arts to vulnerable youth. The catalogue accompanies the photographer’s first solo exhibition, Uganda: A River Blue, at AnastasiaPhoto February 5 – April 7, 2010. All proceeds from the catalogue go directly to A River Blue.”
As a photographer, I am interested with my relationship to time, memory, and psychology. Sometimes when I need a break while working on the computer, I get up, stretch, take a walk, or ride through my photographic archive of memories.
Writing about this topic, my father comes in the room to tell me about a funeral he attended last week for a friend he served with in the Army. “Although it was 56 years ago, it still feels like yesterday,” he said and walked away.
I made this photograph shortly after I began working with the 4×5; 3 years ago.
Dad, Syracuse, New York, 2007
“Joe Dwyer, who had died so lonely and miserably, was an American hero. In March 2003, the front pages of newspapers across America featured a photo of Dwyer carrying a small Iraqi boy to safety shortly after a firefight. “It was the image of war that everyone wanted to see,” says Warren Zinn, the photographer who took the picture. It was also the image that America wanted the rest of the world to see: a brave, compassionate US soldier doing something helpful and acting with the best of intentions in the Middle East. It just might be, however, that Joe Dwyer didn’t outlive the war in Iraq precisely because he actually was the way America wanted to be seen.”
As Joerg said, if you only have time to read one article today, this is the one.
photo credit: AP / Warren Zinn, The Army Times
Academy A is a publication that explores the worlds of art, print and photography. It’s edited by Jeffrey Michael Smith, a student of Journalism at Rowan University in New Jersey.
An excerpt from an interview I recently did with Academy A:
“It’s important to focus and acknowledge both the positive and negative. As a culture we seem to focus on negativity so much these days. Is this because of the American media or because of ourselves? I’m not sure there is one definitive answer. All we can do is continue to express the atrocities occurring in Africa while always presenting the fact that positive events happen each waking moment of every day.”
Read the rest of my interview with Academy A here. Thanks again, Jeff.
Moon and Grass, Alebtong, Uganda, 2009
I want to thank everyone for attending the lecture Chandler Griffin and I presented this past Tuesday at AnastasiaPhoto in New York. We were slated for 1 hour, we went for 2, and almost everyone stayed the entire time. It was wonderful.
Thanks, award-winning photographer David Turnley, for taking this photograph at the talk.
There’s less than two weeks left to see Uganda: A River Blue at AnastasiaPhoto. Stop by and pick up an exhibition catalogue for $10.
Chandler Griffin and I will present a conversation about A River Blue and my experiences in Uganda on Tuesday, March 16th, 6:30pm at AnastasiaPhoto, 166 Orchard Street, New York. Join us.
Also, stop by the gallery and pick up an exhibition catalogue ($10 donation at the gallery) if you have not already.
Unable to stop by? Make a donation here ($10 + $5 s&h), send me the receipt (david@davidwrightphoto.com), and I’ll send you a copy.
Don’t wait! The exhibition catalogue is an edition of 200 and we’re almost sold out. A few spreads:
