February 1 – 24, 1990
For over fifty years Wendy Ewald has collaborated in art projects with children, families, women, and teachers around the world in Saudi Arabia, Holland, Morocco, Tanzania Colombia, Mexico and in the United States.
Starting as documentary investigations of places and communities, Ewald’s projects probe questions of identity and cultural differences. In her work with children she encourages them to use cameras to record themselves, their families, and their communities, and to articulate their fantasies and dreams. Ewald herself often makes photographs within the communities she works with and has the children mark or write on her negatives, thereby challenging the concept of who actually makes an image, who is the photographer, who the subject, who is the observer and who the observed. In blurring the distinction of individual authorship and throwing into doubt the artist’s intentions, power, and identity, Ewald creates opportunities to look at the meaning and use of photographic images in our lives with fresh perceptions.
She has published fourteen books including Secret Games, a midcareer retrospective. Her latest books include This Is Where I Live, MACK, which maps Palestine/Israel and a young adult book, America Border Culture Dreamer, Little, Brown and Co., an updated and expanded version of Portraits and Dreams: Stories and Photographs of Appalachian Children MACK 2020, and The Devil Is Leaving His Cave, MACK 2022.
Wendy Ewald has received many honors, including a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship and grants from the National Endowment for the Art. She has had solo exhibitions at the Corcoran Gallery, International Center of Photography, the Queens Museum, the Fotomuseum in Switzerland, Center for Creative Photography in Melbourne among many others. Her work was included in the 1997 Whitney Biennial and collected by museums across the United States.