Committee meetings. Cspan gives you a front row seat issues are debated and decided with no commentary, no interaction completely unfiltered. Cspan, your unfiltered view of government. Healthy democracy doesnt just look like this. It looks like this were americans can see democracy at work. Get informed straight from the source on cspan. Unfiltered, unbiased, word for word from the Nations Capital to whoever you are. It is the opinion that matters the most this is what will like. Looking at my work not simply exhibit. I think of it as a project. The project that deals with patterns of black people, what happens to their traditional culture when they leave the rural area and come to urban areas, how traditions change, new ones come about, what happens to the quality of life for people and so i hope through my work i can help People Better look at themselves gain a better understanding of their traditional past. One of my biggest concerns is the use of documentation for historical presentation in the study of culture. Of the camera is a study in culture can be invaluable when it comes to preserving what is Still Available for future generations. The fact that a photograph is still worth a thousand words, when we start explaining about the times in which we are living, they have many questions. If you had a photograph, it gives you enough information about that. Then your chances of explaining her greater. Right now in america its popular for a lot of scholars and people in art to try to make a comparison between what is happening in culture and in africa. Its a given when black people are uprooted and brought to the country, they brought traditions and blacksmithing and wood carving, but they have been done in centuries. One thing with black people when they came to america of course they had to adapt whatever skills they had to materials available here so manmade baskets in nigeria of some sort of weed in mississippi people make baskets out of needles because there are trying trees. People make baskets. Its all dependent on how one uses the basket. The race rapidly into the 21st century. Many of the additional practices are vanishing. People are no longer practicing them but if you look hard and go to the backwards, confined people who are practitioners of traditional class. Many people are still quote building. Generally people over 50. It is a lot simpler for a young woman today to buy a blanket from the store and take the time it takes to sit down and peace of the top and roll it up and the needle through it. You find Senior Citizens in older black people who still have tremendous love of this tradition. You find them doing it but you dont find a lot of young people doing it. There are some people who are young but for the most part its old people do this. When that generation has passed on, there just wont be anymore. I am fond of old people and i listen a lot to what they have to say because theyve spent all these years stirring up y knowledge and many young people dont go to them enough and draw on this reservoir of wisdom knowledge. Ive learned a lot by listening and it has helped me tremendously in my work. In mississippi mothers elated by the name of annie mason is in her 80s. One day we were sitting in her room and she went to a drawer and pulled out an old bible. Traditionally most people blackandwhite in america before people could get this would record someone so she brought out this old book and began to show me how the history of the family had been recorded in the bible. She told me a story that one of her uncles used to sleep with this bible under his head for years. He did this because his father told him to always keep the bible close so it was passed on tour. Her sense of Family History to make her the keeper of this bible. Shes one of the few people who i met who have a tremendous sense of Historical Preservation of her family roots. Her family has unique pride that i felt so in most communities i visited. They have struggled together over the years and work together, they left and take care of one another. When i was last visiting her, shed just come out of the hospital and a lot of the family was around and i saw a as a wonderful opportunity to document and make photograph for the family of four generations of women. Because of my patterns of black people, sometimes it is difficult to find that many generations living that close together. They love the land, live close to the land and it was a wonderful experience to know them, meet them and photograph them. I dont think of these people like folklore for the people they are working with, i dont think of these people as my subjects for informants. These are folks who are friends of mine. I come from a poor background so my early photos on black life reflect the background from which i come because it was what i was most familiar with and concerned with. I photographed people with dignity. Ty too many photographers go for the cheap sensational way of doing thisec because popular mea has always wanted it. I believe a person can be poor but they are still somebody. All these people you see are working and that is important. America would not the strong country it is now had it not been for the fact that in its early years stages of development they were black slave labor so i maintain these people are just as important as anyone else and will always focus on them. Theres a young person, my fascination of street life, my fascination with men and women work on megan is just tremendous. What do i mean . Most eastern United States cities were people and many other things, it was carried like today trucks to everything. This tradition of applying city dwellers and produce goes back to in the history of the city began. You traveled through marketplaces of the world especially africa, he will find this still going on. Every young kid, they were very popular so they can out of the theater and uc horse and wagon. I became a helper to these men. There is tradition in my family where my great grandfather, people did this in our family. Its like a lot of young men will tell papers, something to do growing up. Hi i did this. My fascination for this is one thing that kept me on the street. I consider myself truly blessed as a result of having this experience because what i learned through that process has deeply enrich and meet as a person and broadened and enabled me to deal with people everywhere i go in the world so as a photographer, this is proven to be invaluable. When i worked in mississippi, not once lived on a farm and understood farming, i would not have been able to relate as well to people when i went to africa, one thing that enabled me to work well in the countryside was my basic understanding of army and rural people. It doesnt differ much anywhere i went, the same type of people exist, either world or tradition. I think of my work not only as ayan essay on exhibit or book bt i think of it as ongoing documentary project, evolutionary project. Id be doing this until i die. The photograph i devoted most of my time to until this time in my life have been of poor masses of people. Photographing what is commonly known as the upper middle class and the rich. The images people have black americans are just images of downtrodden, the poor, dope addicts and pictures are seldom shown of people who are prosperous and making and sharing parts of the american dream. I objected in america to be educated and move into streams of america. Our objective was to get an education and get the jobs and we are not doing the. Black people in americare p are probably making more headway as far as equipping themselves to deal with the times in which we are living. Its only because we have access to so much. We live lavishly here compared to how people live in other parts of the world. A poor person in america may well have television, hot and cold Running Water and even a car and be considered poor. In africa if someone is considered poor or the caribbean, they literally may not even have a house to live in so i am concerned about these things and how the black middle class look that the lower social economic ladder, how the rich use theen riches when it comes o helping less fortunate brothers. I see a lot of similarities in the problems black people in america are confronted with in the problems black people in africa confronted with. From the city to urban centers, a department all over the world finding work to sustain themselves. Most of the industries are located near urban centers and one of the same things happening in america and people are losing athe land and tradition. Im very interested in starting a project with brothers in africa and caribbean to document whatever part of our traditional culture that exists before it vanishes. That is of utmost importance to me. Working and living in nigeria because i am interested in traditional culture and what happens to traditional culture. Different people working in the area of communications. You try to get an understanding of how they look at their own traditional culture and changing culture, some of the photographers let me know certain ways they were unhappy with the way images of africa in general and nigeria and specifically projected in the popular media in the west. America but throughout the world. So question then was to them what, are you doing about changing this as a result of this what is beginning to what has already been happening but is beginning to get wider exposure is more exposure is more young people are focusing on documenting and writing about their own culture, as more and more african countries gain independence and also gain more control over the popular media, magazines, newspapers, televisions, radios in their own countries, it will be interesting to see how they project their own images. There seems to be one segment of middleclass b black folk who respond very positive to my work. And theres another group of black people look at my photographs who are bothered by the photograph. I didnt have to ask myself why are they bothered . One of the reasons people are bothered is in their endeavors to socalled o overcome, there e many things that they want to forget, and this is because of the way that the dominant culture has forced different folk to look at themselves. For instance, there may be things that i would consider to be of significance as far as Historical Preservation is concerned. Other people may say i want to forget them. The question then becomes, what is important . What is important is that people in any ethnic group regardless of their background look at what has gone before and learn from that period because the products of our heritage often serve to authenticate our presence from culture change, culture continuity and cultural awareness. Thus, the photo document becomes extremely significant as a communicating process or tool to help you better understand yourself and your own roots and help you better move from that point forward. 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