Wendy Ewald is an artist and educator. She earned a BA in art from Antioch College and studied photography with Minor White at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For over 40 years, Ewald has collaborated in art projects with children, families, women, and teachers in Canada, Colombia, India, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Holland, Mexico, and the United States. Starting as documentary investigations of places and communities, Ewald's projects probe questions of identity and cultural differences. In addition to being named a MacArthur "Genius" Fellow (1992), her honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship and grants from The Andy Warhol Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rauschenberg Foundation, and the Fulbright Commission. She has published 17 books, including two for teachers and families, I Wanna Take Me a Picture and Literacy and Justice through Photography.
In conjunction with the exhibition Dorothea Lange: Seeing People, join us for a conversation moderated by National Gallery curator Philip Brookman with artist educators Wendy Ewald and RaMell Ross about the work of American photographer Dorothea Lange. During her long, prolific, and groundbreaking career, Lange made some of the most iconic portraits of the 20th century. Portraiture was a central and guiding aspect of Lange’s documentary work and her determination to photograph people with compassion is the inspiration for the exhibition. Like Lange, Ewald and Ross have made significant contributions to the field of documentary photography, exploring the relationships between photographers and their subjects.
This program is made possible by the James D. and Kathryn K. Steele Fund for Photography.
About the Presenters
RaMell Ross is an artist, filmmaker, writer, and liberated documentarian. His work has appeared in Aperture, the Hammer Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, the Museum of Modern Art, the Georgia Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Walker Art Center. His feature experimental documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening won a Special Jury Award for Creative Vision at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and a 2020 Peabody Award. It was nominated for an Oscar and an Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Film. Ross holds degrees in Sociology and English from Georgetown University and is an associate professor in Brown University’s visual arts department.