Wendy Ewald: Works, Projects, Collaborations 1975 - 1996
April 19 – June 2, 2018
For over forty years Wendy Ewald has collaborated on photography projects with children, families, women, workers and teachers. She's worked in the United States, Labrador, Colombia, India, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Holland, Mexico and Tanzania. Her projects start as documentary investigations and move on to probe questions of identity and cultural differences.
In her work with children and women she encourages them to use cameras to look at their own lives, their families and their communities, and to make images of their fantasies and dreams. While making her own photographs in the communities, she asks her collaborators to alter her images by drawing or writing on them, challenging the concept of who actually makes the image – who is the photographer, who is the subject, who is the observer and who is the observed. Ewald's work questions the conventional definition of individual authorship and casts into doubt an artist’s intentions, power and identity.
Wendy has also created many projects with students from elementary school through college. The projects are designed as interventions as well as artistic projects. Among them are American Alphabets, a series of photo installations made with Arabic, Spanish and English speakers; On Reading, a video installation with learning disabled students, and Who Am I in This Picture, a public art installation with faculty, staff and students at Amherst College.
With each situation, shes uses different processes and materials to shift my point of view and engage with my subjects. Her work may be understood as a kind of conceptual art focused on expanding the role of esthetic discourse in pedagogy and creating a new concept of imagery that challenges the viewer to see beneath the surface of relationships.
