100 Eyes Magazine Our Children

Children. We all were children once, yet as adults we know so little about them, and the world inner world that they inhabit. What is it like to look at the world through a child’s eyes? My earliest recollection of visual reality is looking down at cars on the Grand Central Parkway from a grassy hill, and thinking they were toys, like the cars that one might see in a David Burnett image. In Amanda Lucier’s iconic image of the child weeping, one feels the pain of growing up in an imperfect world, where often those closest to us harm us the most, and where politics and history conspire to create living conditions that are almost unimaginable. In the rubble of Gaza or Lebanon, in the killing fields of Bosnia or Ruwanda, we nuture adults of the future in almost unimaginable circumstances. Have we progressed much from the Death Camps of World War II? Or is misery now just spread further, and less concentrated? Or was it always this way, and only now, with so many eyes, are we able to see?

In the work of Stephen Shames I see someone who has tirelessly addressed the plight of children throughout his career, from Uganda to New York, Shames has been all about the kids, and he has backed his concern up with action, starting a non-profit in Uganda and spending much of his time there. Timothy Archibald has contributed a collaboration with his son Elijah, a cooperative project that helped them to understand each other’s world. The images are combined with scans, creating a unique picture of a special child and his talented father. Yoon S. Byun is showing work from a college project. I say that with amazement, because its the best work that I have seen this side of Larry Towell–hopefully the book is yet to come. Rebecca Drobis is another young photographer who is headed for good things. She has a great pedigree, having worked for Lauren Greenfield as an assistant, and is working on similar turf here in Montana on the Blackfeet Reservation. On the other end of the content spectrum is the beautiful work of Stefan Rohner, whose photographs of his daughter are a testimony to the love that all children should experience. My own father expressed his love through his Nikon SP, and in Stefan’s pictures I feel a kindred spirit with my own father’s vision. Nicholas Axelrod’s portrayal of Cambodian children is poignant, filled with hard but very human images, showing tht even in the hardest of lives, there is often a smile. Last, but far from least, Newsha Tavakolian brings us inside an Iranian ceremony marking the transition from child to woman, at least in the eyes of the Ayatollah’s who glare down from the framed images on the wall. These children are now required to wear veils, are forbidden from shaking hands with men, must pray, and a relegated to a second-class status…..under the guise of faith. I call that pitiful.