ANDY LEVIN: Catastrophe in the Gulf

Photograph (c) Andy Levin/All Rights Reserved

Photograph (c) Andy Levin/All Rights Reserved

Photograph (c) Andy Levin/All Rights Reserved

Photograph (c) Andy Levin/All Rights Reserved

Catastrophe in the Gulf: The Hot Zone
Photographs by Andy Levin

A former Contributing Photographer with Life Magazine, Andy Levin began his career as a staff photographer for the Black Star agency in 1985, where he completed contract assignments for magazines including National Geographic, Time, Newsweek, and Fortune. In 1983 Levin’s photo essay for Life won first place in the prestigious National Press Photographers Association Contest. His personal black and white work on Coney Island has been published in both Reportage and Graphis as well as both Life and Popular Photography. A participant in over fifteen Day in the Life book projects, A Day in the Life of America brought him to New Orleans where he photographed the Charity Hospital Emergency Room. In 2004 Levin moved to Big Easy to document and participate its rich culture.

Just a year later the city was decimated by Hurricane Katrina which Levin photographed while helping his neighbors to safety. Levin’s post Katrina work has been published in the New York Times, Newsweek, US News, GQ, Rolling Stone, USN&WR and People Magazines and Time Magazine. In 2007 he was a finalist for the Eugene Smith Grant for a project entitled “World By the Water” documenting areas of the world that are on the front-lines of global climactic change. – Lightstalkers

WILLIAM R WILSON: Auto Immune Response

CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE!

Auto Immune Response
Photograph (c) William R Wilson /All Rights Reserved

Auto Immune Response #2
Photograph (c) William R Wilson /All Rights Reserved

Auto Immune Response #4
Photograph (c) William R Wilson /All Rights Reserved

Auto Immune Response #5
Photograph (c) William R Wilson /All Rights Reserved

Auto Immune Response #6
Photograph (c) William R Wilson /All Rights Reserved

Auto Immune Response #10
Photograph (c) William R Wilson /All Rights Reserved

"Throughout my work I have focused on photographing Navajo People and our relationship to the land. While portraying this relationship I have always been aware of how our representation has never been without consequence."

The Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, N.M., announced William R Wilson (Navajo) has been selected to oversee the Vision Project, a Ford Foundation grant initiative. Wilson's first undertaking will be to oversee the history of the Contemporary Native American Art Movement in a book featuring Native artists from the U.S. 15 scholars will write up to four essays each on living artists who have made considerable contributions who vary in age and media.

+ + +

WILLIAM WILSON, Dine’ (Navajo), born in San Francisco, CA, moved permanently to the Navajo Reservation when he was 10. He earned a MFA in Photography, with a focus on the History of Photography, at the University of New Mexico and a BA in art history and studio art from Oberlin College, OH.

In Wilson's Auto-Immune Response Series (above), he set out to photograph the Navajo people in relationship to the land, including figures to represent his people and himself. In the photographs, a luminal figure or pair of figures wearing gas masks appear in different dramatic natural places; in the area of the Grand Canyon and in upstate New York near the Finger Lakes. This post-apocalyptic man survey’s what appears to be a pristine and expansive landscape and wonders what has gone wrong. For the Auto-Immune Response Series Wilson received the prestigious Eiteljorg Fellowship for Native American Fine Art. The Series was a solo exhibition at the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institute, New York, NY and the Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ. His work is in the Collections of the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C., the Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ, the University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque, NM, the Juane Quick To See Smith Private Collection, Corrales, NM among others.

Wilson, an artist, photographer, and arts educator, has taught sculpture at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, N.M., photography at Oberlin College and the University of Arizona and served two years as a photojournalist in Central America for the Associated Press. From 2000-2005, Wilson was the co-director of the Barrio Anita Community Mural Project, the largest public art commission in Tucson, Arizona's history. BAMP features a 12,000-square-foot mural alongside the Interstate 10 sound barrier wall. The project involved the creation of a multi-media Arts Center for the community. The Arts Center features digital photography, Venetian glass tile photo-mosaic, metal work and more.
View the BAMP Murals: North Contzen Street Mural and Ouray Park Mural
Will Wilson Creates Indianapolis Mural video

William R Wilson Website