Here is a capture of the official Edmonton "Exposure Photography Festival" invitation Joanna, Larry's wife sent me it today (she did one for me and one for Larry I think). It was a surprise to me she was making these up, Joanna did a great job as usual.
Just learned we will be doing artists talks at the opening. We are doing one talk for the NAIT fine art students two days before the opening and one talk at the opening. I hope we can do more, I want to spread the word, tell the stories of the lives of my subjects (Mae Sot Project "Families of the Dump"). It is so important to get their information out.
I wrote a blog story about the woman in photo back in May 2013 when I made the picture. Here it is:
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2013/05/hairpins.html
Just learned we will be doing artists talks at the opening. We are doing one talk for the NAIT fine art students two days before the opening and one talk at the opening. I hope we can do more, I want to spread the word, tell the stories of the lives of my subjects (Mae Sot Project "Families of the Dump"). It is so important to get their information out.
I wrote a blog story about the woman in photo back in May 2013 when I made the picture. Here it is:
http://gerryyaum.blogspot.ca/2013/05/hairpins.html
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Hairpins
Saw something sweet and beautiful in the garbage dump today. There is
one woman average looking with short hair and maybe 35 years old who I
have seen 5 or 6 times, who never makes eye contact with me, she always
looks away when I am near. This morning when I saw her with a group of
children (hers I think) and said "Minga La Ba" to her she sort of just grunted a hello with distant eyes.
Later in the day I was photographing a group of workers digging through freshly dumped garbage (garbage trucks bring fresh garbage all day). This woman (got to learn her name) was working in the group of about 8 workers. She was looking away from me and not making eye contact as usual as I photographed away, one of the men, the father of the bride from yesterday found something in the garbage and tossed it to this woman. I went closer to see what it was, it was 2 hair pins with pretty plastic beads inside a small bag. The women excitedly opened the bag, she had big eyes as she did this, you could see she was happy. She then put the 2 hairpins directly into her dirty, sweaty hair and she looked quite nice, the hairpins made her a bit more feminine, a bit special in this dirty smelly place. I smiled and said something, she looked up at me and I gave here a thumbs up signal with my hand and a smile, and she smiled back shyly! It was the first time I ever saw her smile, it was a very sweet moment. Later on maybe 20 minutes later I was on top of some garbage shooting down on the group and this woman looked directly up at me, directly into my eyes and smiled, she had become a pretty woman.
There are beautiful moments here, you just have to look a bit harder to find them.
Later in the day I was photographing a group of workers digging through freshly dumped garbage (garbage trucks bring fresh garbage all day). This woman (got to learn her name) was working in the group of about 8 workers. She was looking away from me and not making eye contact as usual as I photographed away, one of the men, the father of the bride from yesterday found something in the garbage and tossed it to this woman. I went closer to see what it was, it was 2 hair pins with pretty plastic beads inside a small bag. The women excitedly opened the bag, she had big eyes as she did this, you could see she was happy. She then put the 2 hairpins directly into her dirty, sweaty hair and she looked quite nice, the hairpins made her a bit more feminine, a bit special in this dirty smelly place. I smiled and said something, she looked up at me and I gave here a thumbs up signal with my hand and a smile, and she smiled back shyly! It was the first time I ever saw her smile, it was a very sweet moment. Later on maybe 20 minutes later I was on top of some garbage shooting down on the group and this woman looked directly up at me, directly into my eyes and smiled, she had become a pretty woman.
There are beautiful moments here, you just have to look a bit harder to find them.
