April 26th was the opening of my exhibit, Essential Elements, at the National Museum (or Musée National as we call it in the business) in Nouakchott. Photography is not yet viewed here with the same acceptance it enjoys in Europe and America. One of the staff told me I was the first to do a show there entirely in black and white. “We’ve had black and white before, but never an entire exhibit.” Similarly, the most common question from Mauritanian nationals was, “Why did you photograph in black and white?” It reminded me of a time in Australia once when a man looked at my photos and said, “Gee, mate, couldn’t you afford color?” The most common comment from French nationals assured me “J’adore le noir et blanc!”
Without any history of photographers like Ansel Adams or Henri Cartier-Bresson, in a place where visual art is scarce and narrowly defined, they were honest attempts at understanding a very esoteric choice by their culture. With one in particular, I felt his real question was, “Why did you strip the little bit of beauty we have from your photos?” A poor, desert country, there is a sensitivity to how they are seen. As I explained the graphic qualities and palette of black and white, his face softened. My own photography is primarily a response to moments of significance in my daily life and in the end, the show seemed to receive a positive response as Mauritanians saw their country portrayed favorably through foreign eyes.
Photo by Elizabeth Jones
Below is an excerpt from the Artist’s Statement.
Photography is, for me, a discipline; a meditation of existence. I delight in moments of recognition; the discovery of form, beauty, and balance in the artifacts of our daily experience. All we value in this world, we have rescued out of a process of decay or state of chaos. Inherent in what is imperfect, is the remnant of what was intended. I work from the premise that man intrinsically needs the intangible qualities of truth and beauty and these are found, not in the markets where they are sold, or the schools where they are taught but in the peaceful awareness of qualities that are necessary and intended for us by design. My photographs are my moments of recognition; my response to the gifts of a good and beautiful Creator.
Photo by Christopher Clark, 2002
As a confirmed silver printer, the show itself was a first for me in that all but one of the prints were digital prints. The images were shot on all kinds of equipment, from 8×10, to digital point-n-shoots, from a Leica O designed in 1923 to a digital SLR. Virtually all were digitized one way or another and printed on Hahnemühle Photo Rag.
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