PHOTO-EYE GALLERY: Raymond Meeks

Fallen Tree, 1996
Photograph (c) Raymond Meeks

"I was driving towards the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, the home of the Oglala Sioux nation and the birthplace of Leonard Peltier, who was convicted for aiding and abetting the execution style murder of two F.B.I agents during a 1975 shootout on the reservation. The indictment has been controversial (here), the subject of a film by Robert Redford and Michael Apted, Incident at Oglala, which portrays Peltier as a political prisoner.

I had just come from the U.S. penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas where I’d made a few portraits of Leonard Peltier for a magazine commission. The fallen tree, partially submerged in this dried, frozen river bed, seemed a fitting metaphor to accompany the story I was illustrating."–Raymond Meeks (from photo-eye Blog: 3.22.11)

Raymond Meeks

photo-eye Gallery Artists Exhibition
March 2011, Santa Fe

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Incident at Oglala: Robert Redford
Must Read: Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee
Trail of Tears Documentary, DVD

American Indian Movement
Statement From Leonard Peltier
Petition For Leonard Peltier

NEW ORLEANS: Ancestors and Descendants

Antelope Priests Shaking Rattles, 1901
Hand-colored glass lantern slide by Sumner W. Matteson
Middle American Research Institute/Tulane University

George Hubbard Pepper slide from around 1899
Middle American Research Institute/Tulane University

Portrait of Hopi Maiden with Hair Whorls, 1901
Hand-colored glass lantern slide by Sumner W. Matteson
Middle American Research Institute/Tulane University

Leisure Time at George Pepper's Tent
Hand-colored glass lantern slide
Middle American Research Institute/Tulane University

"Ancestors and Descendants: Ancient Southwestern America at the Dawn of the 20th Century." Photography, Artifacts, and Archival Research from the George Hubbard Pepper Native American Archive.

The New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) unveiled a little-known Native American archive this past week. Ancestors and Descendants presents a rare opportunity to see a collection that was put together over one hundred years ago by George H. Pepper, a museum ethnologist and early collector and scholar of Native American art. The exhibition, curated by Paul J. Tarver NOMA’s Curator of Pre-Columbian and Native American Art and co-curated by Cristin J. Nunez, includes 140 photographs and 150 objects from Pepper's personal collection. Pepper used textiles, pottery, baskets and other Pueblo and Navajo objects in his lectures. Many of these objects have never been seen by the general public since 1924. "Even in his lifetime, Pepper could only display a handful of objects with a few dozen images he projected through a magic lantern," said Tarver, "This is the first time the breadth of the archive has been researched and displayed."

"In the New Orleans show, An entire gallery is devoted to his relics of snake dances, the Hopis’ prayers for rain. The museum catalog ($24.95) quotes his unpublished eyewitness accounts, which turned up in the Tulane paperwork. Hopi tribesmen would collect a hundred snakes at a time, and then priests would emit a “weird droning” over the “writhing twisting forms of the reptiles,” Pepper wrote. Priests used their teeth to carry the snakes and waved around feathers to distract them. “Snake maidens” showered cornmeal on the reptiles, which were then released “in the sacred earth-mouths in the rock,” Pepper reported." (from NY Times, July 22, 2010)

The New Orleans Museum of Art
July 24-October 24, 2010

CARLAN TAPP: Question Of Power

"Four Corners Power Plant, Shiprock, New Mexico. Over 15 million tons of chemical toxins are released into the air each year in the Four Corners Area. Living in the shadow of the nation’s dirtiest power plants the Dine´ People suffer from respiratory disease and cancer from the pollution laden air, soil, and water. A new proposed coal burning power plant, Desert Rock, will seriously add to local and global problems." Photograph © Carlan Tapp/ All rights reserved

"Alice Gilmore stops to rest at her young sister’s grave site. She has been told by the Dine´ Power Authority that her father long ago signed over all their grazing permits to the strip mine. The DPA refuses to show her written records. Her family burial areas, home, and grazing lands will all be destroyed by the new strip mine." Photograph © Carlan Tapp/ All rights reserved

"Many Navajos must drive, on average, 50 miles round trip three to four times a week for their personal water and for their livestock supply since much of existing livestock water has been contaminated by mining activities." Photograph © Carlan Tapp/ All rights reserved

"Bonnie Gilmore listens intently as her mother Alice shares family history and information regarding family ceremonial and burial sites being destroyed by BHP Mining." Photograph © Carlan Tapp/ All rights reserved

"Alice and Bonnie Gilmore approach contractors hired by BHP Mining who were discovered sifting through family burial sites." Photograph © Carlan Tapp/ All rights reserved

"Children intently watch Lucille Willie skillfully hand-shear a sheep, a craft passed down to each generation." Photograph © Carlan Tapp/ All rights reserved

"Asthma in children is doubling every ten years."

Photograph © Carlan Tapp/ All rights reserved

Question of Power
Coal: The social cost of Electricity in America

Carlan Tapp began his photo essay Question of Power in 2005. His project uses traditional photographic documentary techniques of reportage, portraiture, and landscapes, with the addition of recorded audio interviews. Question of Power are stories and voices of individuals, families, and communities affected by the mining, processing, burning, and storage of waste materials created by coal for this generation of electricity in America. Carlan Tapp: Portrait U.S.A.

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Spicy Gumbo Photo Workshop MAY 20-24th

All 2010 Workshops

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.

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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