Documentary Matters: March 13, 2019

DOCUMENTARY MATTERS

Wednesday, March 13, 2019

6:30 - 9:00 pm
Digital Silver Imaging
9 Brighton Street
Belmont, MA
Free!

Presented by Social Documentary Network and Digital Silver Imaging

Featured presenters:

Ellen Feldman
John Sevigny
Frank Ward


Ellen Feldman

We Who March cover

We Who March cover. Design by Angela Nannini, photos: Karen Davis (top) and Denise Saldaña (bottom) © 2017

Ellen Feldman, author of We Who March, is a fine art photographer, Photography Editor of The Women’s Review of Books (Wellesley College), and an activist since the ’60s, still marching and working on election campaigns. Her photography work, which includes street photography and long-term personal projects, has appeared in several solo and many juried exhibits. In addition to We Who March, Feldman has published two books of street photographs and a photo/comic book. She holds a Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from New York University. Visit: www.ellenfeldman.net and www.WeWhoMarch.org

We Who March: Photographs and Reflections on the Women’s March, January 21, 2017

We Who March is a documentary photography project and book in which photographs bear witness to the diversity of the January 2017 marchers from around the U.S.—people of all ages, genders, races, ethnicities, sexual orientations, and religions. Thirty photographers were invited to participate; twenty of the subjects in these photographs offer personal comments. The project creates a powerful yet intimate sense of what it was like to be present. The talk will cover the life cycle of the book, including concept, inviting photographers and subjects to participate, the day of the shoot, photo editing and sequencing, book development, and marketing and sales.

Click here to view We Who March on SDN.

 

John Sevigny

Cojutepeque Prison, El Salvador, 2013.

John Sevigny will be showing documentary work from the past 12 years in Latin America, with a focus on Mexico.

Sevigny, a Miami native, has spent more than 15 years documenting the lives of marginalized people in Latin America struggling to survive. He has worked for the Associated Press, EFE News in Miami, and contributed photographs and writing to the Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, Latin America News Dispatch, Guernica Magazine and Socialdocumentary.net.

He also teaches photography classes in Mexico and Guatemala, and at Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) in El Salvador.

The nature of his work and personality has brought him into close, long-term relationships with people he photographs. He has known many for over a decade.

That intimacy allows him to take insightful photos, but also to share stories about the people he knows, from immigrants and prostitutes to prison inmates and victims of structural violence.

His work has also exposed him to great risks. In 2013 he was targeted for death by members of a Salvadoran gang, and in January 2019 he was kidnapped by a drug cartel in Veracruz, Mexico. Click here to read about his experiences.

Sevigny studied investigative reporting at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in Florida.  

Click here to view all of John's SDN exhibits.

  

Frank Ward

Photo by Frank Ward
Photo by Frank Ward. Esna, Egypt, 2019.


Frank Ward is the Visual Art Department Photography Professor at Holyoke Community College (HCC) in Holyoke, Massachusetts. In 2017, Ward received a sabbatical grant from HCC, along with a National Endowment for the Humanities grant and a Mass Humanities grant, for photography in Holyoke. Beginning in 2001, Ward has photographed extensively throughout the Former Soviet Union (FSU). In 2012, Ward presented workshops in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan as a United States Cultural Envoy in Photography for the Department of State. In 2011 he was awarded an Artist Fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council for his pictures of the FSU. He blogs at www.fmward.com.

Egypt is the Mother of the World: A Photographic Exploration

Egypt is crowded, empty, noisy, meditative, angry, serene, and overflowing with beauty and squalor. For me, Egypt generates a total visual immersion that continually spills over with these contrasting dualities. Five thousand years of human antiquity lie under its deserts and along the Nile. Carvings cover every square centimeter of temples and tombs. Sculptures and hieroglyphs provide Egyptologists with a detailed history of a remarkably organized society. As a new arrival to this modern and ancient country, I consider myself an Egyptographer. I photograph the clutter of urban life and the vastness of desert sands. Along the Nile, traditional agrarian life continues interrupted only by the Moslem call to prayer, the ringing of smart phones, and me with my camera chasing triangles of light in the spinning sand.

Click here to view all of Frank's exhibits on SDN.

Documentary Matters 

Documentary Matters is an initiative of the Social Documentary Network and Digital Silver Imaging to provide a place for photographers to meet with others involved with or interested in documentary photography and discuss ongoing or completed project. This is a free and open meeting for anyone interested in presenting, viewing, or discussing documentary photography.

You don't need to be a professional, expert, or established--you just need to be committed to the documentary form and committed to learning from feedback from others. And you don't need to be a photographer or presenting your work to attend. Everyone is invited to join us, look, listen, and comment. Still photography, multimedia, and video encouraged. Documentary required.  
 

Documentary Matters Registration

Click here to sign up to attend.    
 
 
 

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