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Special Exhibition 2
BLACKS AND WHITES
What I Want
What I Am
What You Force Me To Be
Is What You Are
For I am you staring back from a mirror of poverty and despair, of revolt and freedom.
Look at me and know that to destroy me is to destroy yourself.
You are weary of the long hot summers. I am tired of the long hungered winters. W
e are not so far apart as it might seem. There is something about both of us that goes
deeper than blood or black and white. It is our common search for a better life, a better
world. - Gordon Parks, 1968
Artist Statement
The premise of this exhibit is a simple one, to connect, visually and conceptually, two disparate cultures and peoples, one predominantly black, another mostly white, both recovering from decades of government-sanctioned oppression.
Is it possible to see the proud wisdom of 70+ years of struggle, the reckless laughter of youth, the confused age of puberty, the sense of weight in weathered, work-worn limbs in both light and dark complexions? Is it possible to see ourselves in the other?
It is an imperative for my camera to see beyond the sensational, the starving or disfigured, the violent or bloodied. I am more interested in the quiet and hopeful moments, the contemplative and the subtle, the stories which faces tell, and the potential energy we all possess. -Ian Edelstein
Blacks and Whites is an exhibit completed in Fall of 2002. The work is compiled from projects in
Belarus and Ukraine in 1999 and South Africa and Namibia in 2001.
The title is an intentional double-entendre...
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