Critics Pick

ARTIST'S BIOGRAPHY - BRIAN SHUMWAY

Brian's intense and emotionally focused work blurs the lines between portrait, documentary and fine art photography - a distinctive output of journalistic responsibility and artistic perception. Through a mixture of portraiture and photojournalism, Brian captures his subjects, from children in Idaho Falls to street dancers in Kingston, with gravity and obvious warmth and curiosity.

Brian's clients include Newsweek, Time, and the New York Times, among others. His work has appeared in American Photography (2008), Communication Arts, Shots Magazine and the Photo Review as well as exhibited throughout the United States.

The Magenta Foundation named Brian one of their “Emerging Photographers” for 2006 and again for 2008. “La Chureca” was recently named a finalist for the (Santa Fe) Center's 2008 Project Competition.

ARTIST'S STATEMENT: LA CHURECA

La Chureca (“the scavenger”) is home to one of the largest inhabited dump communities in the world. With a population of 1700 housed within its walls, over fifty percent of them are children under 18.  It is a permanent, living community where babies are born, children are raised and educated, and people work as recyclers, exposed to illness and environmental dangers.

On the surface, the people of La Chureca appear imprisoned within a trash dump, suffering extreme poverty, addiction, and health problems. However, in getting to know the youth, I witnessed something else: a richer, deeper life beyond the trash that is often ignored by visitors, such as myself, for the more shocking aspects of their lives. They have a childhood, develop meaningful relationships, and experience boredom and loneliness, like anyone else.

These children, enduring brutal, dehumanizing living conditions, are still playful, curious, and passionate. Such simplicities can be forgotten when seeing people who literally live amid trash. It’s unimaginable, yet also a reality taken for granted by those who live there.

This series is intended to offer a fresh perspective on the lives of those whom we unthinkingly assume endure a ceaselessly miserable existence. There are no images of hordes of people picking through trash, shack homes on the verge of collapse, or naked children dangerously perched on mounds of filth. Rather, I tease out the mundane, everyday moments that draw us together as people and offer a deeper understanding of our common humanity.

- Brian Shumway

CRITIC'S BIOGRAPHY

Katherine Ware is Curator of Photographs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Alfred Stieglitz Center for Photography in the Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs. Recent exhibitions include Elemental Landscapes: Photographs by Harry Callahan and The Discerning Eye of Julien Levy: Selections from a New Acquisition.

She previously served as Assistant Curator in the Department of Photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum where she organized the traveling exhibition A Practical Dreamer: The Photographs of Man Ray and Vision in Motion: The Photographs of László Moholy-Nagy, both with accompanying books.

Ware is the author of the book Elemental Landscapes: Photographs by Harry Callahan (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2001) and essays including “Chemist of Mysteries: The Life and Work of Man Ray” (in Man Ray, Taschen, 2000) and “Photography at the Bauhaus” (in Bauhaus, Könemann, 1999).