Pictures of the Day: India and Elsewhere

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

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Photos from India, Syria, Russia and the Philippines.

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Pictures of the Day: India and Elsewhere

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

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Photos from India, Syria, Russia and the Philippines.

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Trading Tradition for Contemporary Comfort

By MATT MCCANN

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Sometimes, it seems as though the story of modernity will be told as a series of unsettling trade-offs between longstanding values and contemporary comforts.

In his project “Sleeping With the Devil,” Aaron Vincent Elkaim shows a profound ambivalence about what is lost, and what is gained, as traditional cultures embrace modern materialism. A Toronto-based photographer and founding member of the Boreal Collective, Mr. Elkaim spent four months last year in northeastern Alberta, photographing the rewards and the consequences of living on lands rich with natural resources. He lived among the Fort McKay First Nation, amid indigenous people whose fate has become intricately tied to the Athabasca oil sands on which their reserve stands.

The vast fields of bitumen and heavy crude oil provide significant development opportunities that enrich some First Nation populations. The economy in Fort McKay relies almost exclusively on the extraction of that oil. But for some of its citizens - mostly Cree and Dené First Nations  - this symbiotic relationship means surrendering traditions that have lasted centuries.

This transition, from subsisting on the land and fur-trading for profit, to a more modernized economy occurred abruptly.

“A lot of the elders in the community grew up in the bush, grew up on the land,” said Mr. Elkaim, 31. “And then you've got the younger generation, and their reality is one of affluence - having all the modern things. But it's a completely different life.”

The Fort McKay citizens whom Mr. Elkaim met and lived with are fully aware of, and sensitive to, that change. “But at the same time,” he said, “they're making really good money.”

Mr. Elkaim saw other manifestations of an uneasy pact with dubious forces: illness. Although there is not yet a widely accepted body of evidence, he described an increased incidence of cancer at Fort McKay, as well as respiratory and skin afflictions.

Nevertheless, some were nourished by a sense of pride in their hard work for the companies that had altered their lands. At other times, they expressed a sense of loss and powerlessness.

What emerges, then, is a sort of collective sigh, Mr. Elkaim said.

His most recent major project, “Jewish Morocco,” touches on similar themes, as Mr. Elkaim seeks to understand how and which cultures survive - which realities remain and which fade. For the residents of Fort McKay, finding a reasonable way through the bludgeoning effects of economic expansion is the reality at hand.

“They're saying, ‘Let's make the most of this, because we can't stop this. It's just too big,' ” he said. “How does that settle in t heir souls? That's a question that's hard to me for to answer. It's their history and their future, but it's also a reality that they feel they don't have the power to change.”

Pictures of the Day: Syria and Elsewhere

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

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Photos from Syria, Egypt, Philippines and Poland.

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Pictures of the Day: Iran and Elsewhere

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

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Photos from Iran, Iraq, Jordan and Israel.

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Fighting HIV Stigma, Photo by Photo

By CHRIS GREGORY and PETER MOSKOWITZ

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The South African photojournalist Gideon Mendel spent more than a decade documenting HIV/AIDS in Africa. But despite his commitment and passion for the subject, he found he could not continue.

“The time has come to hand over the camera,” Mr. Mendel said. “Me photographing HIV positive people is just not appropriate anymore.”

So Mr. Mendel, along with David Gere, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, created a participatory photography project that encourages people who are HIV positive to tell their stories. Over the last four years, they have put cameras in the hands of 72 people living with HIV in six cities across the globe. The project, called Through Positive Ey es and largely funded by the Herb Ritts Foundation and the Ford Foundation, operates in conjunction with the UCLA Art and Global Health Center, which Mr. Gere leads. It aims to dismantle stigma associated with HIV using an unconventional form of photojournalism.

“There is a lot of work being done by outside eyes looking in, but this is about the eye looking back,” Mr. Mendel said. “The holy grail of documentary photography is access, and their access to their own lives is just so superior to any access we can get as photographers.”

The project consists of a series of 10-day workshops, in different cities, where participants are guided through the photographic process, starting with how to operate a camera. They then create a personal body of work about living with HIV. Ultimately, their photographs are arranged with audio interviews, producing a collective video.

Although this participatory format is not new - PhotoVoice and the documentary “Born Into Brothels” come to mind - Mr. Mendel's approach includes a rigorous educational component and group critiques to help develop the participants' vision and form cohesive bodies of work.

What's essential in the workshops is not the photography but the participants personal experience while producing and displaying their work.

“There's a healing process for me personally, as far as stigma within myself,” said Mary Bowman, a 23-year-old Washington-based poet and activist who participated in the last workshop held there. “It's for others who are going through the same thing, and for people who aren't living with the virus to see what it's like living with HIV.”

Ms. Bowman was nervous about the film showing at the conference. She said it is never easy to expose her HIV status to a new group of people. Sometimes she wishes she could crawl back in the HIV-status closet, and ignore the responsibility that comes with sharing something so personal.

But Ms. Bowman said she saw the whole process as necessary, both for herself and her audience.

“You never know what people are going to think, you never know what people are going to say,” Ms. Bowman said. “It's just a level of vulnerability - once you put yourself out there there's nothing you can do.”

She said she never imagined herself being an outspoken HIV advocate, but after disclosing her HIV status in a poem that she read publicly, there was no turning back.

Ms. Bowman still thinks about the days before she had to constantly talk about - and represent - HIV. But she said it's worth the emotional support and gratitude she gets in return through exhibits like these.

“When people come up to me in tears, telling me that my story touched them… it's just like, ‘wow,' ” she said. “I'm just glad that I was able to be outspoken for people who aren't able to be outspoken.”

Last Saturday, Ms. Bowman's project, with the 12 other participants from Washington, was shown as part of the opening of the International AIDS Conference, which closes Friday.

The images in “Through Positive Eyes” do not necessarily depict sickness, but more often, show ordinary moments in the participants' lives.

When Jerry Kyle, a former competitive swimmer and participant in the Washington workshop saw his self-portrait in a Speedo with his swimming medals (Slide 3) come up on the screen during a critique, he quickly dismissed it. “It was a practice shot,” he said. But the group quickly convinced him that the image showed a vulnerable side of him that merited being included in his final edit.

Mr. Kyle, a Department of Education employee and former Air Force officer, sent the video made during the last workshop to his co-workers, and the response surprised him. “People came out saying, ‘I've never told anybody I'm positive,'” he said.

So when he asked his co-workers to take a portrait wi th him, the resulting image is a display of solidarity where Mr. Kyle iconically (below) sits in the center, and his co-workers each place a hand on him.

Mr. Gere says the project has become a living organism of sorts. Participants continue their photography in side projects.

Mr. Mendel has helped Mr. Kyle and others living with HIV represent themselves, and because of the workshops, change their lives. “I think I have done everything I can about AIDS personally,” Mr. Mendel told Mr. Kyle at the Washington workshop.

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Uncovering the Past of a Mystery Photo Album

By MATT MCCANN

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If your computer permits you to view these photographs in full-screen mode, we recommend it.

At some point on Dec. 25, 1915, in Waco, Tex., a 55-year-old unmarried art teacher held a small photo album in her hands. Eleanor T. Wragg was her name, and we need help knowing more. Does the name ring any bells?

It did for Xanthe Ellis, membership and database manager of the Art Students League of New York. After searching her memory (consulting the card catalog - disorderly, of dubious alphabetization and up a flight of stairs - was out of the question), she was able to tell me that Ms. Wragg had been an instructor there from 1904 to 1906.

But I wasn't looking for Ms. Wragg.

I wanted to know who gave Ms. Wragg the gift: a bound, palm-size set of 25 photographs with handwritten captions.

It announces itself as a “random” compilation, yet this modest memento is a quiet miracle.

“I came across this small little album in this plastic bag,” said Michele Penhall, curator of prints and photographs at the University of New Mexico Art Museum, where the album is on display through July 28. “Nothing on the cover - I opened it up and even seeing the typed page, I was immediately taken by it. When you look at the pictures, you realize it's something really spectacular and very different from the many things you've encountered when you look at photographic albums.”

“These aren't random shots,” she added. “It feels like there's a story behind many of these pictures individually but there's a larger story about the whole album.”

Its deliberateness, and its mystery, set me on a miniature investigation to find what I could about the curious piece.

Before long, I had some information about Ms. Wragg and her career in art - a student at Cooper Union, Art Students League, a teacher and painter. She stayed in Waco a relatively short while - teaching at Baylor University from 1906 to 1911. She returned to the East at some point thereafter, to Charleston, S.C., spending her summers in Branford, Conn. But it seems as though her time in Texas ended when she left Baylor.

I presumed that the photographer was a Waco resident - “The house in which we live,” one caption reads. Could the photographer have been a former student? The nature of the photographer's visual interests - “William of the Baylor Museum” (Slide 15), for example - hint at someone with an artistically inclined eye (and also somebody fascinated by things being airborne).

Ms. Penhall and James Estrin, who conducted the interview, agreed that they thought the photos were taken by a woman. The album is personal, thoughtful and the fruit of a hobby; Ms. Penhall said it spoke to her as a woman. “I'm sure the handwriting had something to do with this,” she said.

“I thought this was something a woman would have made for another woman, and she could have maybe traveled with it.”

And I agreed until I took a longer look at the frame with the skeleton.

The caption, in the delicate cursive, reads “A quiet game with my friend ‘William' of the Baylor Museum.” It is the only picture with a first-person pronoun, possessive - either that skeleton or that man was the photographer's friend.

It struck me that this might be a self-portrait, that the photographer humorously named the skeleton “William.” That, included in an album with two photos that name Dorothy (Slides 4 and 5) and “The Lady of the House” (Slide 3), suggested to me that he was a husband and father. If so, then “The Lady of the House” might be his wife and Dorothy's mother. The photos on the lake (Slide 18) and the two bathing pictures (at bottom), showed what looked to me like a young girl - possibly Dorothy, and possibly her mother.

All of a sudden, this album seemed to me assembled by the head of a small family (broadly speaking, the inclusion of acrobatics, airplanes, a skeleton and the governor suggest more conventionally male fascinations). Then I sought an address or a name, from which I could get federal census data.

A second look at the photo with two girls, Georgia and Dorothy (Slide 5), was helpful. The “Irwin” was almost illegible, but a colleague's suggestion and a comparison with other capital I's (“In the boat”) confirmed: Georgia Irwin. Soon, with the help of archivists at Baylor University and a collector and professor I found online, I had her high school yearbook photo, a lovely picture of her in costume (inset) and recollections from her grand-niece, Martha Cottingham, 59, of her as “fun-loving and flamboyant” and a talented artist.

Ms. Irwin, “Sissie” to her grand-niece and “Susie” in her yearbook, graduated from Baylor in 1925 and was identified in 1927 by The Baylor Lariat, the school's newspaper, as a junior high geography teacher in Waco. She died in 1987.

But I wasn't looking for Ms. Irwin.

I'm looking for her chum Dorothy, on an inverted quest down a yellow brick road. And once Dorothy is identified, I want to know about Dorothy's relationship to the photographer. Daughter? Niece? Cousin? Friend? And if I knew how Dorothy knew the photographer, what were the two of them to Ms. Wragg? What if my guesses were misconceived, and Ms. Wragg had made this album, as Ms. Penhall guessed, for her own edification?

“When you look at the pictures, you realize it's something really spectacular and very different from many things you've encountered when you look at photographic albums,” Ms. Penhall said. “You really have to slow down and start to think about what it means, what good pictures mean and what constitutes as a good picture.”

Unfortunately, the gaps between census years, the years Ms. Wragg taught in the area, and the single pinpoint of 1915 leaves a lot of room for life changes, small and large. After all, 1915 to 1920 saw prohibition, women's suffrage, a world war and a worldwide flu pandemic, and Ms. Irwin went from being a child to a senior in high school. We have a few recorded facts, but more than that, we have a lot of gauzy stuff - clues, educated guesses, not-so-educated guesses - from which to conjecture.

So we put it to you, the readers, kin, archivists, historians, researchers and collectors: can you identify Dorothy? Can you establish her relationship to the photographer? Who is this mysterious photographer, and what inspired him or her to give this on Christmas 1915, to Eleanor T. Wragg?

If you have knowledge of Miss Wragg's photo album, you are invited to send an email to lensnytimes@gmail.com.

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