WENDY EWALD

Working as a photographer and teacher, Wendy Ewald’s projects emphasize a method of collaboration that challenges the distinctions between photographer and subject. Adopting a variety of approaches, she creates projects based on a reciprocal vs. hierarchical approach. Her goal is to provide the vision of her subjects rather than merely make images of them. Through her documentary investigations of places and communities, Ewald probes questions of identity and cultural differences. In her work with children and women, she encourages them to use cameras to record themselves, their families, and their communities, and to articulate their fantasies and dreams.

Wendy Ewald was born in Detroit, Michigan, and holds a BA in art from Antioch College. She also studied photography with Minor White at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Originally begun as an outgrowth of her teaching, Ewald’s work explores the visual imaginations of children and adults around the world, focusing on questions of identity and cultural differences. Both Ewald and her subjects take photos, and she sometimes gives her negatives to her collaborators to mark up and write on. This mixing makes it challenging to know who actually “created” a given image. With authorship and the photographer’s identity blurred, Ewald crosses the line that separates the photographer from the subject and creates something new.

Ewald’s works are held in a variety of collections including the Detroit Art Institute; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and the Library of Congress. She was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship in 1992 and is a senior research associate at the Duke University Center for International Studies.