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| January 2007
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ALUMNI NEWS |
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| Smithsonian Photo Exhibit of Malian Youth Directed by Alum
Shawn Davis, SOC/BA ’96, was part of a team that gave 22 young Malians the opportunity to show that photographs don’t just capture a moment in time, they tell a story and traverse language barriers. The result was “Visual Griots,” a collection of photographs taken by youth from Mali, West Africa, that communicate life and culture through their eyes. “We hoped to build confidence and self-esteem in our students and to further develop their critical thinking skills,” says Davis. “We also expected to open the door to new opportunities, but in a way that would at the same time highlight and pay respect to village traditions.” Davis, the project director, and his five colleagues trained 22 sixth graders from the Malian villages of Damy and Kouara during two, four-day photography workshops sponsored by the Academy for Educational Development. The project was meant to be fun and exciting, but Davis soon wondered if he would ever see a student smile. Introducing students to the point-and-shoot cameras, foreign objects to the young Malians, was a difficult task at first. As instructions for what and how to photograph progressed, the students became more and more interested—and began smiling, he recalls. “By
the end of day two of each workshop, they would walk out of the school,
proudly holding their cameras, and lead us through their villages down
a string of paths, documenting their mothers and sisters in full shea-nut
butter production, grandparents resting on mats in the shade, beloved
animals scampering through the family compounds, the village church, and
girls at the well,” Davis says. During the course of the workshop, each young photographer took nearly 200 photographs. They were told to select the best pictures from their pile to be featured in the village exhibit. The unveiling of the photos was a day celebrated by everyone. Speeches were made and the village elders handed out certificates to the young Malians. “You could not mistake the scene for anything but a celebration,” Davis says. “They were celebrating images of themselves and their community, created by their own youth.” Fifty of these black and white images went on to be showcased at the sixth African Encounters of Photography biennial in Bamako, Mali. But the “Visual Griots” exhibit didn’t stop there. The U.S. State Department plans to add a number of photographs to the permanent art collection in the U.S. Embassy in Bamako. Equally impressive, these young Malians’ work is currently displayed in the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History until March 2007. After that, the photographs will be presented at schools across the United States. Davis recalls showing 60 Washington, D.C., seventh graders the photography collection in 2005 with Hernandez. "Can you tell me what images of Africa you have seen?" Davis asked the students. “The responses flew at us like bullets: sick people with AIDS, guns and war, children being vaccinated, wild animals. I told them that they were about to see other pictures of Africa—of Mali, specifically—that were taken by children their own age.” After projecting the images in front of the room and discussing them, Davis recalls one student saying: "Mr. Davis, it looks like Mali's not a very rich country. But all the people in the pictures look like they think it is." -Tara Shlimowitz ‘08 |
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