FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
Anna Van Lenten
anna@cpw.org
347-243-0009
Kingston, NY, September 5, 2024 – The Center for Photography at Woodstock is excited to announce that it has been awarded a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to support a public arts project run by noted artist Wendy Ewald. The innovative program, titled Sanctuary City: Stories of Immigration and Community, will engage students who are attending Kingston High School’s English as a New Language (ENL) classes in a transformative photography and writing curriculum.
Sanctuary City: Stories of Immigration and Community seeks to nurture a sense of self-worth and belonging among these students as they navigate their new lives in Kingston. Students enrolled in ENL classes at Kingston High School come primarily from Guatemala, Ecuador, El Salvador, and Honduras. Among the hurdles they face are language barriers, economic pressures, and a lack of representation in their new community.
Wendy Ewald, renowned artist, educator, MacArthur Fellow, Tivoli resident–and 2024 CPW Vision Awards recipient–will lead twenty students in a year-long after-school photography program to develop their visual and written language skills. Students will delve into the histories of their native countries and their adopted home, weaving these narratives together. Out of this process, they will create collaborative public art installations and a book. Each installation will include student photographs, symbols of their culture and renderings of the English and their native languages. The final presentation will be displayed in public spaces throughout Kingston, including CPW’s Dederick Street gallery.
The students will be involved in all steps of the process from research and concept creation to picture-making, designing, site scouting, and design of the book. The final book will include student photographs, Ewald’s and the students’ collaborative portraits, and their histories.
Kingston has been a sanctuary city since 2017; in that context, this program also aims to spark a broader civic dialogue within Kingston’s rapidly evolving community and to foster understanding and empathy among its residents and beyond.
About Wendy Ewald
For over fifty years, Wendy Ewald has collaborated with children, families, women, and teachers in Saudi Arabia, Holland, Morocco, Tanzania, Colombia, Mexico and the United States. In her work with communities, she encourages her collaborators to use cameras to record themselves, their families, and their communities, and to articulate their fantasies and dreams. Ewald often has the children mark or write on her negatives, thereby challenging the concept of who makes an image, who is the photographer, subject, the observer and who is the observed. She has published fourteen books, most recently, Collaboration: A Potential History of Photography edited by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, Wendy Ewald, Susan Meiselas, Leigh Raiford, and Laura Wexler (Thames & Hudson, 2024). Collaboration won CPW’s 2024 Vision Award for Photobook of the Year. Ewald has had solo exhibitions at the Corcoran Gallery, International Center of Photography, and Center for Creative Photography in Melbourne among many other places.
Press Images and Interview Requests
For high resolution images for press reproduction and interviews, please contact CPW by clicking here.
About the Center for Photography at Woodstock
Founded in 1977, the Center for Photography at Woodstock (CPW) is a not-for-profit arts organization with a two-fold mission: to support artists working in photography and related media; and to engage audiences through creation, discovery, and learning. At the heart of CPW’s mission is programming that is community-based, artist-centered, and collaborative. To foster conversation around critical issues in photography, CPW provides exhibitions, workshops, artists’ residencies, and public programming. In 2022, CPW relocated from Woodstock to 474 Broadway in Kingston. In 2023, the non-profit acquired a 40,000-square-foot factory building at 25 Dederick Street, which is now in Phase One renovations. The reopening will take place on January 18, 2025, with multiple exhibitions and the establishment of CPW’s Digital Media Lab. The full rehabilitation of the building as a photography museum, digital media lab, and educational and community center is slated for 2027, in conjunction with CPW’s 50th anniversary.