A Sunderland perspective on news, sport, what’s on, lifestyle and more, from South Tyneside, East Durham and the north east’s newspaper, the Sunderland Echo.
Page not found
The art of seeing: A tale of photographers and their arts
Photo by
Emarie Majors
Photo by
Emarie Majors
Growing up with family members who are artists, said three BYUH students, influenced them to become photographers sharing with the world their artistic and unique perspectives.
“We all artists in our own way,” shared Emarie Majors, a senior from Montana who is majoring in political science. “Photography is my way of being an artist in my family,” of which many of them do creative work for a living.
The beginning and inspiration
Learning to be a photographer starts with having a mother who is an artist, said Majors, whose her mother taught her to be creative and see the world through an artist perspective. Majors explained both of her parents, including her other family members, are artists and musicians. Since her dad was also a photographer, Majors said she would always go through and play with her dad’s old films and photographs when she was young.
In middle school, Majors said she liked to do photoshoots with her friends and her sister using a digital camera until she became more serious about doing photography when she was 20 years old. She said, “When I came home from my mission, I saved up all the tips I got at a café I was working at, and I brought a camera.”
After she got her own camera, Majors continued, she began to learn, practice and took photography classes. She said she also learned about photography from reading books and doing online research.
Aiyarat Buachaiya, a junior from Thailand studying communication, said his journey as a photographer also started with his mother who studied photography in college. “She took the class. She had photobooks. One day, I just went through her photobooks, and I [thought] this is really cool,” Buachaiya explained.
During middle school, Buachaiya said he got his first digital camera and began to use it by taking pictures for school events and sport activities. He said his mother gave him a film camera and encouraged him to take pictures using the camera.
“[My mom] had been taking a lot of photos. She is really good,” he added. His mother has been a great supporter, he continued, and she taught him techniques of how to use and adjust the camera.
Family can be a huge source of support as well as, said BYUH student Zane Saenz, whose mother who is a photographer. He said she has influenced and supported him and his interest in photography. “[My mom] is always a photographer, and we always have a camera to take picture. So, she is definitely a big influence,” said Saenz, a junior from Hawaii majoring in interdisciplinary studies in art and film.
Saenz said he began his journey as a photographer by doing water photography and using the water camera his mother gave to him as a birthday gift when he was 14 years old.
“I always try to support all my kids in anything they are interested in. I feel that [Zane] has a great eye for photography, he has talent, and he is good at learning new things… he grew up around cameras his entire life,” said Monique Saenz, a BYUH alumni who works as the BYUH university photographer and an art instructor.
By seeing her son’s creativity and love for the ocean, Monique Saenz shared, “I gave him a water camera when he was very young, and he would be shooting pictures of the waves in the water for hours. He would get so excited when he captured a good shot. I knew then he would become a great photographer.”
She said she has been taking pictures since she was in high school. “I was in art technical high school and started learning photography on black and white manual film cameras. We had to learn how to develop our own film and make our photo prints in the dark room, so I got hooked with photography and was always taking photos around of people, buildings and scenic,” she explained.
Photo by
Aiyarat Buachaiya
Photo by
Aiyarat Buachaiya
Discovering of their photography styles
“I have my own style, and I feel like my style is just shooting random things. It can be an object, plant, building, architecture, a person [or] nature. Mainly, it’s just street photography,” said Bauchaiya. He explained photography is his comfort zone and the way he can expose and convey himself to others.
Buachaiya said, “I love to take a walk and just taking photos. I want people to see what I see when I take a walk.” He said, “You just need to spend time with [your camera], and you will find out what type or style [of photography] you will be fit.”
He added his photography style also falls into travel and documentary photography. He said, “[I want to] travel around the world and take pictures of life, animals and everything.”
Majors shared, “Fine art photography is my favorite. So, when I’m thinking about that and creating it, it definitely comes from a very deep emotional and religious place. I think it’s just inspired by spiritual experiences [and] interpretation of scriptures.” She said fine art photography is more about creating an art piece than just taking a picture.
According to adobe.com, “Fine art photography is the intentional use of photography as your artistic medium of choice, used to further your conceptual idea.”
Beside doing the fine art photography, Majors said she also likes to do the fine art still life photography. “It’s the way I can express different emotions I feel that I don’t have words for,” she added.
According to pixpa.com, “Still life is a type of fine art photography, more akin to a painting than to what most people think of as taking a photograph.”
Along with doing fine art photography, Majors said food and travel are other forms of photography she is passionate about.
Starting from shooting ocean waves with a GoPro camera, Zane Saenz shared his favorite type of photography began with water photography. For now, as he grows up and starts working as a photographer, he said his photography style has changed to taking pictures of the moment people interact with nature and cultural events. He added he can feel the energy and powerful moment through capturing people performing their cultural dancing or events.
“I like capturing action and real moments. Shooting in the studio is fun. I like it, but I feel like it’s not my favorite as much as shooting actual [and] real moments,” Zane Saenz explained.
Monique Saenz also shared her passion for photography style. “After high school, I started working for an airline and traveling the world and experiencing different cultures, photographing portraiture as I travelled to these new places became my passion,” she said.
Then as a student at BYUH, she said she started doing photoshoots and taking pictures everywhere on campus.
Photo by
Yui Leung
Photo by
Yui Leung
Tips and techniques
“My main thing is being at the right place and at the right time and then all the camera setting stuff is after that,” said Zane Saenz. He explained he makes sure he waits and is ready to capture the objects he finds interesting.
To capture the ocean waves and action shots, Zane Saenz shared while everyone runs away from the wave hitting them, he will stand and stay there until the wave comes so he can capture the good shot. “You will always have to just watch because you never know what’s going to happen….Be ready to be at the right place if something crazy happen that you don’t expect, you have to be ready for it,” he explained.
Buachaiya said one of the techniques to create good photographs is to keep practicing. “I will suggest that just keep shooting. Keep taking photos.” He said he started by not thinking too much about being right or wrong, but he just keeping taking pictures wherever he goes until he learns good techniques and found his styles.
Besides learning photography skills through using digital camera, Bauchaiya shared he developed his photography skills and techniques through using a film camera and asking for suggestions from his mother.
“Every time you want to shoot or snap, you really need to pay attention to what you see through the view finder and think about every detail and also the technical things too. If anyone have interest in photography, you can start with [learning from doing] film photography. It’s a good start,” Buachaiya said.
For those who want to do general photography or fine art photography, Majors shared the techniques she uses to produce a great photo. She said, “You need a tripod, and you need a remote clicker so that you can hit the shutter.” Majors added she also relies on a wire to connect her computer screen to the camera to see the camera screen in bigger size.
She said to develop a person’s own unique photography styles, it’s good to begin by finding inspiration from the internet or an artist to mimic their works, learn their techniques and compositions.
She added the term taking a photo was translated as making or creating a photo in the Dutch language, which inspired her to realize the true meaning of taking pictures. Majors served a mission for the Church in Holland and learned the language then. “As a photographer, you’re not just like taking shots. It’s like you’re making like a crystallization of a moment. It’s like you were part of making [the photo],” Majors said.
Sculptures, artifacts returned to Peru in LA ceremony
The United States has returned several Peruvian antiquities, including the intricate…
Jacques Revon – The Eye of Photography Magazine
The connection to others
A marauding with volunteers from a local unit of the French Red Cross in Dijon Métropole.
Is it still necessary to present some of the voluntary actions of the French Red Cross? I think so!, it seems necessary, especially at a time when we see a certain withdrawal into oneself and a form of individualism that continues to progress. Example of one of these volunteer missions: “La maraude”.
This is one of the cornerstones of this humanitarian association, a journey of support for the most vulnerable people in great precariousness. A field action that this association, like others, organizes daily throughout our territory.
Indeed, the long period linked to the Covid 19 health crisis has generated more support for isolated and fragile people.
One evening, I therefore asked to follow a team of these volunteers from the French Red Cross into the field, to be with those who do not count their time to serve as a link and help others.
At the local unit of the French Red Cross based in Quétigny, there are a hundred of all ages to carry out every evening, from November 1 to March 31, 7 days a week, the course of a marauding, from 6:15 p.m. to midnight. In spring, summer and autumn, the maraudes are more spaced out, depending on the month, from 2 to 3 per week.
Among all these volunteers we find retirees together with students. They take turns, for example, 25 first-year BSB students from the Dijon Business School, as part of a 40-hour partnership for these humanitarian missions.
At the Dijon Métropole local unit, everything starts at 6:15 p.m. with the preparation of snacks, sandwiches, soup and hot drinks. Then, departure from the two distribution sites located in the city center of Dijon. There, at times set by the association, people in need meet.
Everyone can, by sharing a snack, discuss, exchange, learn. This is also an opportunity to get emergency clothing, such as socks, gloves, a hat, underwear, a blanket and a hygiene kit.
But the work of volunteers never stops there. After a short break and until midnight, they have to, if possible, look for or find the lonely and isolated people, some they already know or, on the contrary, those they will discover by chance in order, they say, to get in touch to inquire about their needs, if these people wish.
That evening, the leader of a team of 6 volunteers in two vehicles of the French Red Cross, is in direct contact by telephone with 115 for reasons and urgent needs, to take care of victims of spousal violence or a single person in potential danger, looking for an anchor point to spend the night in shelter. In this case, the team made up of three volunteers per vehicle, accompanies the person in suffering to a safe place of accommodation, provided of course that there is a free space that evening. It is clear that places for unplanned sleeping arrangements are often sold out and that accommodation places are not legion either. But there are also those who prefer to remain alone, who have found a place to sleep under a bridge or under a makeshift shelter. For the volunteer, it is therefore here out of respect for this choice of the person met, a short moment of exchange of words and support. Finally, the team goes to the station for the arrival of the last train, the one before the closing of this public place. It is still the opportunity to meet here, the one who could be in need, but the mission is never simple, when the station is about to close. During all these different meetings in the night, the volunteers also find the regulars of the place, each one is called by his first name, Pierre, Catherine, Manu, Cyril, Karim, Christophe, Noëlle, Mohamed… The next day, the volunteers of the French Red Cross will be there again. Thus, the beneficiaries will be able, if they wish, to find emergency food or clothing aid, support and enjoy these little moments of social bonding. With a hot drink, they can talk and discuss their lives…
Jacques Revon
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Revon
André Bogaert – The Eye of Photography Magazine
London Moments
OK it’s my home town so I admit bias but as a people photographer I find it hard to find a city better for subjects, locations and situations to capture the moment.
I never get tired of walking the streets of this city watching, trying to anticipate a special moment or facial expression and capturing it, a moment which will probably never happen just the same way ever again.
I see the stories I capture in black and white. Nowadays I photograph almost exclusively with a digital camera so yes the images are in colour both in front of me as I take them and also when I first look at them as RAW files on my computer back home but in my head I see my work as very contrasty black and white moments frozen in time and that’s how I like to present my work.
All these photos were taken in Central London.
André Bogaert
Contact: https://www.bogaert.uk & [email protected]
Cook: Exclusive: Apple CEO Tim Cook on the impact of the iPhone camera and how it has “democratised” photography
It has been 16 years since the iPhone was first launched. The iPhone changed the mobile phone industry forever but it wasn’t till 2010 that its effect really started to shake things in other industries. 2010 was the year when the iPhone 4 was launched and it was the same year an app called Instagram came out and started catching the fancy on social media. It was also reported that in 2010, an estimated 121 million digital cameras were sold across the world. That was perhaps the all-time recent high for digital cameras as the iPhone over the years has become the go to device for casual, amateur, and even professional photographers. 13 years have ensued and the iPhone has evolved dramatically and perhaps has one of the most consistent and versatile camera a smartphone user can buy.
Apple CEO Tim Cook is aware of the power of the iPhone camera and says that for a lot of people “the best camera is right in their pocket.”
In an exclusive chat with The Times of India, Apple CEO spoke about the impact of the iPhone camera has had on people’s lives. “Apple has always been about democratising everything,” Cook told The Times of India on a recent visit to New Delhi. Case in point:
We meet at an upscale hotel in the capital where Karishma — a rangoli artist from Chandigarh — is here to show Cook her designs. Cook admires the rangoli and kola designs made of flower petsls, rice and coloured sand. He would later tweet and called the “amazing designs vibrant and beautiful.”
He shared the images of these designs, which were clicked by two photographers — Joshua Kartik and Apeksha Maker. Cook takes out the time to chat with them. Kartik says that in his brief interaction with Cook he spoke about the impact of iPhone on videography. “What the iPhone and Apple have done is dramatically reduce the processing time. We have gone from spending hours after shooting something on processing the images or footage to instantly upload and share,” says the Mumbai-based photographer, whose #shotoniPhone images have been shared by Cook earlier as well.
Maker also echoes the sentiment. “The most important thing the iPhone has done is give people the confidence to shoot pro-level images and footage with relative ease.” She told Cook that how her love for photography kickstarted because of a product that isn’t renowned for the camera. It was an iPod touch which was gifted to her and the first photo she clicked was from the music player. Since then, there has been no looking back for the photographer, whose images Cook shared with the world from his Twitter account earlier this year on Holi as well.
Giving people the power
In the last couple of years, Apple has really upped the ante when it comes to video shooting capabilities of the iPhone — an aspect Cook spoke about as well. “It’s not just photography but videography and movie making are also now done on the iPhone,” he says.
The iPhone’s Cinematic Mode has caught the attention of movie makers as well. Earlier this year, renowned director Vishal Bhardwaj — in association with Apple — released a short 30-minute film titled “Fursat”, which was shot entirely on the iPhone. “It is incredible that now, with the cinematic mode, full-length movies are being shot on the iPhone as well,” says the Apple CEO.
What Cook calls “democratising” is eminently visible on social media and how people have started looking at photography and videography. Millions of images are clicked on the iPhone daily and people have the freedom to just take a device out of their pocket and get down to work. The iPhone has over the years given users the power to shoot what they like without carrying additional gear. Not just that but what Apple puts inside the iPhone — a processor capable of computing tasks at extremely fast speeds — has made a tremendous impact in making lives easier of those who edit, process their images and footage. “At the end of the day, it is about democratising,” says the Apple CEO.
Barbara Sabaté Montoriol – The Eye of Photography Magazine
Fragments of them / images, dreamy women and silent animal presences…
A Collection of images, which associate without hierarchy paintings and photographs of artists of all periods, is the source of my work of collages. This digital collection is as much a palette of shapes and colored shades as a support allowing thought to bounce back through associations of ideas and images.
I am part of a current of iconographic artists whose colors are the images of other artists.
The representation of women is my subject. I seek to take a different look at the iconography of women as subject and object of art and to offer another reading of inherited models.
I question the meeting point between different realities, in particular the animal reality, because the presence of an animal is a graceful emergence of difference, of someone who is obviously other (1).
My ambition is, that by leaving the original painting to enter another aesthetic field, “my” women are seen differently, that they acquire a life of their own or perhaps find it again (in the sense of finding their freedom), that ‘they go on a journey and free the viewer’s imagination as one opens a window on another world and they become the heroines of a story to be written.
(1)Jean-Christophe Bailly, Le Versant animal, Bayard
Barbara Sabaté Montoriol
Artist-author, lives and works in Paris and Île-aux-Moines.
‘He’s here because of them’: Family presents St. Vincent Healthcare with statue honoring exceptional care
On Friday, the Robertson family traveled from California to Billings to honor St. Vincent Healthcare workers for exceptional care provided to their son following a motorcycle accident last year.
Earth Day and the ‘new Big 5’: 11 moving photos of vanishing wildlife
A violent practice rooted in colonialism is being subverted, with the release of a new book that flips the idea of the “Big 5”. Marking Earth Day, 11 striking images reveal the animals that are disappearing from our planet.
“From the towering giraffe to the bright orange and blue rock agama to the deep-sea anglerfish that produces its own light, we live alongside creatures that are a match for anything science fiction writers have imagined to populate alien worlds,” writes Graeme Green in his book The New Big 5, published this month. In April 2020, the wildlife photographer launched a project to flip the idea of the “Big 5” of trophy hunting on its head, inviting people around the world to vote online for their five favourite animals to photograph and see in photos; the New Big 5 of wildlife photography, as decided by the public vote, are the elephant, polar bear, lion, gorilla, and tiger.
Spotted torrent frog, Santa Barbara Park, Ecuador, Lucas Bustamante; International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) status: Critically Endangered (Credit: Lucas Bustamante)
The original term referred to five African animals that were considered the most desirable trophies, and the most dangerous animals to hunt: elephant, rhino, buffalo, lion and leopard. But, as Green writes, “it was interesting to realise how many people had heard and used the original Big 5 term without knowing what it meant. Many had assumed it stood for Africa’s biggest animals, forgetting animals such as giraffes and hippos, both of which are larger than leopards or lions. Others thought it meant the most dangerous or lethal, forgetting animals like hippos (which kill more than double the number of people each year than are killed by lions), crocodiles, snakes, scorpions, or mosquitos.”
More like this:
– The photographers changing the way we see animals
– Can photography save the Amazon?
– Striking images that show how climate change is affecting oceans
Golden snub-nosed monkey, Foping National Nature Reserve, China by Qiang Zhang; IUCN status: Endangered (Credit: Qiang Zhang)
“The Big 5 isn’t the only term connected to Africa’s violent past,” continues Green. “Safari is a Swahili word, meaning ‘journey’, from the Arabic safar. Used by Arab traders in Africa, the word safari was adopted in the 1800s by white hunters, mainly from Britain and other parts of Europe, to describe their hunting expeditions, or hunting safaris, where they’d shoot animals, such as lions and elephants, for trophies. That creates a strange state of affairs today, with many wildlife lovers paying to take safaris (a word rooted in the hunting that wiped out millions of wild animals across Africa) to see the Big 5 (the list of animals most prized by trophy hunters).”
Chimpanzee, Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania by Thomas D Mangelsen; IUCN status: Endangered (Credit: Thomas D Mangelsen)
The new book brings together 146 of the world’s greatest wildlife photographers, conservationists, and advocates – including Dr Jane Goodall, the British primatologist who has spent more than 60 years studying chimpanzees. Her afterword is called Hope in Dark Times.
“People often ask me if I really do have hope for the future,” she writes. “I believe we have a window of time during which we can start to heal some of the harm we have inflicted and slow down the heating of the planet. But only if we get together and take action now.”
African lion, Tswalu Kalahari Reserve, South Africa by Marcus Westberg; IUCN status: Vulnerable (Credit: Marcus Westberg)
Photos have the power to create connections between humans and animals they might never have encountered otherwise, writes Dr Goodall. “I’ve never seen a polar bear or a tiger in the wild, but I’ve seen so many images, such as a mother relaxing as her cubs play around her, or two young play-wrestling males standing upright, or a tiger moving silently through the forest. This is why photographs are so important. For many people, it’s only through such images that they can develop a deep respect and love for animals in the wild, as they haven’t had the opportunity to spend time with them.”
Polar bear, Wapusk National Park, Manitoba, Canada by Hao Jiang; IUCN status: Vulnerable (Credit: Hao Jiang)
Polar bear
“A polar bear’s life is tied to the sea ice,” writes Krista Wright, the executive director of Polar Bear International, in The New Big 5. “Sea ice is to the ocean what soil is to a forest. It forms the base of the Arctic food chain. Tiny channels in the ice filter light, creating an environment where algae grows, which feeds what some of our friends in the science community like to call the ‘little squiggly creatures’. These in turn feed the fish, which feed the blubber-rich seals and whales, which feed the polar bears… Trying to picture an Arctic that is ice-free is like trying to picture a rain forest without trees or an ocean without water.”
African Elephant, Kruger National Park, South Africa by Berndt Weissenbacher; IUCN status: Endangered (Credit: Berndt Weissenbacher)
Elephant
“With around 40,000 muscles (more than there are in the human body), their trunks are powerful enough to tear branches from trees, but dexterous enough to pick a seed up from the ground… The elephants we see today are the result of minute changes that occurred over the equivalent of 750,000 human lifetimes,” writes Green. The evolutionary biologist Professor Richard Dawkins told him: “Elephants are the product of about 60 million years of evolution. It’s incredible. Their trunk is an astonishingly clever, sensitive instrument. Early elephants would’ve been smaller, with no trunk or a small trunk, like a tapir. The trunk would’ve lengthened gradually over time. The tusks are also remarkable. Tusks started out as incisor teeth and grew out gradually.”
African elephant, Lower Zambezi National Park, Zambia, by Marsel van Oosten; IUCN status, Endangered (Credit: Marsel van Oosten)
The number of African elephants once reached upward of 30 million. Today, only around 400,000 remain. According to Professor Dawkins: “Every time a species goes extinct, especially something like an elephant, you’re wiping out tens of millions of years of evolutionary research and development in the blink of an eye.”
African lions, Naboisho Conservancy, Kenya by Graeme Green; IUCN status: Vulnerable (Credit: Graeme Green)
Lion
“There are fewer than 20,000 lions remaining in the wild,” writes Dr Moreangels Mbizah, the founder and executive director of Wildlife Conservation Action, in The New Big 5. “In Africa, they currently inhabit less than 8% of their former range. Although lions also previously existed in many other countries, outside of Africa, lions can only be found today in the wild in one location: Gir National Park in India.”
Threats include shrinking habitats, a decline in prey because of illegal bushmeat poaching and an increase in human-wildlife conflict – but there are solutions, writes Dr Mbizah: “The communities that live with the lions are the ones best positioned to help lions the most.” Local people should be at the forefront of tackling the problem, she argues. “In the past, conservation has just been about protecting wildlife species and habitats, and very little concern was given to the people that live around these areas. Conservation should be about both nature and people and should aim to reduce the costs local communities face from living with and protecting wildlife, as well as increasing the benefits. If local communities don’t have a direct connection or benefit from protecting lions, they have no reason to want to do so.”
Mountain Gorilla, Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda by Mark Edward Harris; IUCN status: Endangered (Credit: Mark Edward Harris)
Gorilla
“Gorillas have long fascinated us because we see ourselves in them,” writes Dr Tara Stoinski, president, CEO, and chief scientific officer of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, in The New Big 5. “When you spend time with them, you can’t help but see so much of our behaviour reflected back. Like us, they have friends and enemies. They form relationships that last for decades and risk their lives defending their families… When a silverback called Titus died in 2009 in Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park, his family stayed beside his body, grieving, trying to rouse him for three full days. I mourned along with them, as I do every time we lose a gorilla.”
Despite their at-risk status, there is some hope – Dr Stoinski highlights how, due to the work of Dian Fossey and other campaigners, Rwanda’s mountain gorilla population has increased from a low of 250 in the 1980s to an estimated 600 individuals today.
Bengal tiger, Bandhavgarh National Park, India by Thomas Vijayan; IUCN status: Endangered (Credit: Thomas Vijayan)
Tiger
“I’ve had countless fascinating interactions with tigers in Indian jungles over the last 30 years,” writes Dr Anish Andheria, president and CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Trust, in The New Big 5. “Each incident is vividly etched in my mind.” Dr Andheria points to the success of the Indian conservation programme Project Tiger, which in the early 1970s “achieved the impossible: aligning the government and local communities in a battle to bring a large carnivore back from the brink”. Between 2006 and 2018, the tiger population in India doubled from just over 1,400 to nearly 3,000.
Sadly, the story in other nations with tiger populations hasn’t been as positive – of the 13 countries where tigers were once present, three now have none, while two others have few left. In the remaining countries, tigers often number fewer than 1000.
Florida Manatees, Florida, United States by Gabby Salazar; IUCN status: Vulnerable (Credit: Gabby Salazar)
Despite the urgency of the crisis, there are reasons for hope. Green recalls how in recent decades, two communities whose stories he covered as a journalist – in the Peruvian Amazon and in Chile’s Aysén region – successfully fought off plans by energy companies to construct dams that would have flooded hundreds of square miles of land, displacing people and wildlife.
As Green writes in The New Big 5, “Commercial whaling wiped out 2 million whales in the 19th and 20th Centuries, but, since whaling was banned in 1986, humpback whale populations have recovered in the South Atlantic ocean from just 440 in the 1950s to 25,000 today. West African giraffes plummeted to near-extinction, just 49 left, before Niger’s government and communities rallied. They’re now standing tall at around 600. Siberian tigers, Jamaican rock iguanas, Checkered skipper butterflies, Nassau groupers, sea otters, and Hula painted frogs are among the many other species saved from extinction by people taking action.”
The photos in the book help to reinforce the connection between humans and all wildlife. “Every creature deserves to exist,” writes Green. “From bees to blue whales, from tigers to termites, all wildlife is essential to the balance of nature, to healthy ecosystems, and to the future of life on our planet.”
The New Big 5: A Global Photography Project For Endangered Wildlife by Graeme Green is out now (Earth Aware Editions), with a foreword by Paula Kahumbu and an afterword by Jane Goodall.
If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Culture, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.
And if you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called The Essential List. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Worklife and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday.
Reclaiming Georgia’s Stone Mountain Through Haunting Landscape Images
It was a windy day when photographer Sheila Pree Bright brought her father’s Bible to the site of her latest project. Just east of Atlanta, and towering beside the city named for it, the lone, massive chunk of granite that is Georgia’s Stone Mountain looms large in the history of the American South, the Confederacy, and the legacy of racism. Bright went to the mountain to photograph it, and to tell its story in a new way. “I get emotional about it,” she says, remembering the moment, years later, when she feels her late father endorsed her effort.
According to Georgia law, Stone Mountain in its entirety is a designated memorial to the Confederacy. The north face of the mountain is home to the largest bas-relief sculpture in the world, depicting Confederate leaders Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson on horseback. The idea for the carving came from Helen Plane, a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, in 1914. After watching the infamous film The Birth of a Nation, Plane also expressed admiration for the Ku Klux Klan, going to great lengths to include them in the memorial. At the time, the mountain was owned by the Venable Brothers, who granted the Klan access to the mountain for their rituals. On November 25, 1915, Alabama preacher William J. Simmons held a ceremony at Stone Mountain announcing the second coming of the Ku Klux Klan.
The Carving, from the series Invisible Empire, 2019″ width=”auto” data-kind=”article-image” id=”article-image-94344″ data-src=”https://img.atlasobscura.com/iThcT0T9sr5sEApeGR-Oay8PaOccDDgj22fRC1Jgp0I/rt:fill/w:1200/el:1/q:81/sm:1/scp:1/ar:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9hdGxh/cy1kZXYuczMuYW1h/em9uYXdzLmNvbS91/cGxvYWRzL2Fzc2V0/cy9mYWI2NzQ2OTU2/YzBmMDEyNGRfX0lu/dmlzaWJsZSBFbXBp/cmVfVGhlIENhcnZp/bmcgKFdlYikuanBn.jpg”>The mountain’s history was raw for Bright when she began work on two series, “Behold the Land” and “Invisible Empire.” The photographs are meditations on the Georgia landscape, specifically Stone Mountain and its haunting history. Selections from both series are featured in an exhibition called The Rebirth of Us at Atlanta’s Jackson Fine Art Gallery.
It’s Bright’s latest chapter in a career that began with the desire to capture the lives and experiences of communities that have been historically overlooked. Now, from taking portraits of ’90s rappers in Houston, one of the birthplaces of Southern rap, to documenting the 2014 and 2015 Black Lives Matter protests, Bright uses photography to challenge dominant narratives and to put contemporary stories into social and historical context.
Atlas Obscura spoke to Bright about the exhibit, the choice of doing landscapes, finding inspiration in the essays of W.E.B. Du Bois, and what she hopes viewers will take away from her work.
You’ve mentioned you grew up in Germany, at the military base where your father was stationed, and weren’t really exposed to Black culture. What draws you to the subjects that you photograph now?
The people, especially African-American people. When I was photographing the portraits of the men who wanted to be rappers, they came out with guns and all for me to photograph and they said, “you’re like a white girl in a black body.” So for me, photographing African-American people was the experience of searching for home.
I look at what is going on in pop culture, too, and how it affects marginalized communities. For example, when you look at the #1960Now series [Bright’s 2018 portraits that connect the Civil Rights and Black Lives Matter Movements], I was very curious about the young people back during the Civil Rights Movement and I started thinking about it generationally. With all the stuff that was going on with Black bodies, I had to go to the ground and photograph. That’s what started that series.
Behold the Land, Untitled 3, 2021″ width=”auto” data-kind=”article-image” id=”article-image-94339″ data-src=”https://img.atlasobscura.com/zyRVd9q9ORvBKuCd3s71e3gM3QUytZSnc6mYJ9bu70I/rt:fill/w:1200/el:1/q:81/sm:1/scp:1/ar:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9hdGxh/cy1kZXYuczMuYW1h/em9uYXdzLmNvbS91/cGxvYWRzL2Fzc2V0/cy9mYWI2NzQ2OTU2/YzBmMDEyNGRfX0Jl/aG9sZCB0aGUgTGFu/ZF8zIChXZWIpLmpw/Zw.jpg”>How did your Stone Mountain project come about?
For seven years, I was photographing the project #1960Now, lecturing, and exhibiting all at the same time. I didn’t realize until after 2017 that I was actually traumatized and needed self-care from being on the ground, what I’ve seen, what I’ve experienced.
The photo editor of the Washington Post called and wanted to commission photographers to do a photo essay about racism. I said, “oh my God.” I was so exhausted but I knew I needed to talk about it in a different way. I live 10 minutes away from Stone Mountain and as an artist, I wanted to show different ways of seeing, to unpack instead of just photographing people.
We learn of each other through the media and it’s always negative, especially when it comes to us [Black people]. So I wanted to challenge myself to do landscape. I started reading a lot about the land by reading essays by W.E.B. Du Bois; one of them was called “Invisible Empire.” It’s about how Georgia is so beautiful but yet … there’s something strange and disturbing.
The Washington Post photo editor told me that I had to shoot people but I said no, I don’t. I wanted to make these landscape photographs beautiful because it [Stone Mountain] is beautiful but it has all this symbolism with it.
I think the idea of doing landscapes came before the essays, but what the essays informed me about is how to do them. In “Behold the Land,” Du Bois was talking to a group of Black and white young people about how to move forward. If you think about it, it’s all about the land. That’s what really inspired me even more to really challenge myself with the land.
Behold the Land, Untitled 5, 2021″ width=”auto” data-kind=”article-image” id=”article-image-94341″ data-src=”https://img.atlasobscura.com/m-IBZH-HOlJOJLf4hqYhEIumeCRCxGh-ocxXiF-zIbM/rt:fill/w:1200/el:1/q:81/sm:1/scp:1/ar:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9hdGxh/cy1kZXYuczMuYW1h/em9uYXdzLmNvbS91/cGxvYWRzL2Fzc2V0/cy9mYWI2NzQ2OTU2/YzBmMDEyNGRfX0Jl/aG9sZCB0aGUgTGFu/ZF81IChXZWIpLmpw/Zw.jpg”>Why did you choose to do black-and-white photos for the “Invisible Empire” and “Behold the Land” series?
I made them in black and white because if you think about the Confederacy and The Lost Cause, nothing has really changed. We have progressed, yes, but yet, we’re still in the same place. Why can’t we change?
We always talk about change. We talk about diversity. And when the George Floyd protests happened, everybody from PR was doing all this, “I’m with Black Lives Matter,” things but to me, that was just a front, to be honest.
The images in black and white are very haunting, beautiful, and magical. This was actually liberating for me to be on that mountain and to deal with all of that symbolism. How do we, as a society, move forward with all of this? Because if we do not unpack any of this, it’s constantly going to continue. As long as the silence is there, we’re not going to be able to move forward. This work, for me, is presenting a liberation and figuring out a way for us to move forward.
I Can’t Breathe, from the series Invisible Empire, 2021″ width=”auto” data-kind=”article-image” id=”article-image-94348″ data-src=”https://img.atlasobscura.com/QFXXBvCbBQwpl52uSnJd5NMKXxGNUWpQcjYvE4M4tdw/rt:fill/w:1200/el:1/q:81/sm:1/scp:1/ar:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9hdGxh/cy1kZXYuczMuYW1h/em9uYXdzLmNvbS91/cGxvYWRzL2Fzc2V0/cy9mMzc1ZGMyNGQ2/ZmMwMGJjZGRfSW52/aXNpYmxlIEVtcGly/ZV9JIGNhbid0IEJy/ZWF0aGUgKFdlYiku/anBn.jpg”>When you went to Stone Mountain to photograph the landscape, what was going through your mind?
My parents are from the Jim Crow era. They are both passed now. As a child, my parents did not talk to us about the Civil Rights Movement and when I started coming to the South, when I started working on #1960Now, I said to my mom, “why didn’t you ever talk to us about the Civil Rights Movement?” She said that she didn’t want us to hate white folks. When my parents passed, there was a lot of stuff that was going through my mind because we’re all born into a movement, whether we’re conscious of it or not.
I can’t talk to them right now but when I got to that mountain, I was feeling the ancestors, I was feeling my parents and asking them questions about their experiences and being so young and how they dealt with that trauma.
I did a lot of research on the Lost Cause and the Confederacy. I didn’t realize that white women were responsible for funding all of these monuments. They also had rituals and ceremonies in schools about the Lost Cause. Young people at the ages of four and five years old were writing essays about the institution of American slavery. One of the books that I was reading talked about how one boy won an award for talking about how the slaves were better off being slaves. This pulled me away.
The second coming of the Ku Klux Klan was created on that mountain and they read Romans 12. So I brought my father’s Bible up there and I laid it down. It was a windy day. It was in Romans but not in that chapter and I swear to you, when I started to photograph the page it was on, the page changed to Romans 12. I get emotional about it because I felt that my father was speaking to me with that.
Bible, from the series Invisible Empire, 2019″ width=”auto” data-kind=”article-image” id=”article-image-94340″ data-src=”https://img.atlasobscura.com/KLTqEAOqOq3JKR3UZxHOdesLBK0e__d1U6chyMai4-c/rt:fill/w:1200/el:1/q:81/sm:1/scp:1/ar:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9hdGxh/cy1kZXYuczMuYW1h/em9uYXdzLmNvbS91/cGxvYWRzL2Fzc2V0/cy9mYWI2NzQ2OTU2/YzBmMDEyNGRfX0lu/dmlzaWJsZSBFbXBp/cmVfQmlibGUgKFdl/YikuanBn.jpg”>How can we reconcile how we feel seeing Stone Mountain’s beauty while also being aware of its dark history? How are your photographs part of that reconciliation?
Even though we are still dealing with the trauma, we have to think about how we move in the future and how we heal, because I don’t believe racism is going anywhere. Another part of the reason I chose landscape is because the land is so important. Across the world, if you think about it, a lot of the people that are hurting because of the land are people of color.
I think it’s about reclaiming the mountain. Indigenous people were living on that land first. There was also a town in Stone Mountain where Black people lived that nobody talks about [Shermantown, a late 19th-century African-American shantytown named after the Union General William T. Sherman]. For me, it’s about reclaiming through the violence and darkness that was there because if we don’t do that, we’re going to be constantly internalizing that.
What do you want viewers to take away from your work?
When I think about Atlanta, I think about how violent the Antebellum South was. I spoke to an elder named Lonnie King who started the Atlanta Student Movement [in 1960]. One thing that he really instilled in me was that you’re never going to get the masses of the people. He said that even though you would think there were a lot of people on the ground, there really weren’t. But those who were, who fought for human rights and civil rights, helped the culture move forward. So for me, if I can inspire one person to go talk to their children or grandchildren to talk about our history, the violence that many faced, I would have done my job.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
