Wendy Ewald (born 1951) is an American photographer and educator.
Wendy Ewald
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Wendy Ewald and classmates in 1969
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| Born | 1951 (age 72–73) |
| Education | Antioch College Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Occupation(s) | photographer, professoratDuke University |
| Spouse | Tom McDonough |
Wendy Ewald was born in Detroit, Michigan, graduated from Abbot Academy in 1969 and attended Antioch College between 1969 and 1974, as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she studied photography with Minor White.
She embarked on a career teaching photography to children and young people internationally. In 1969/1970, she taught photography to Innu and Mi'kmaq Native-American children in Canada. Between 1976 and 1980 she taught photography and film-making to students in Whitesburg, Kentucky, in association with Appalshop, a media co-op. In 1982, she traveled to Ráquira, Colombia, on a Fulbright fellowship working with children and community groups; spending a further two years in Gujarat, India.[1]
Her work is directed toward "helping children to see" and using the "camera as a tool for expression".[2] In recent years, Ewald has produced a number of conceptual installations—for example, in Margate, England, and in Amherst, Massachusetts—making use of large-scale photographic banners. Ewald was one of the founders of the Half Moon Photography Workshop in the East End of London; and in 1989 she created the "Literacy through Photography" programmes in Houston, Texas, and Durham, North Carolina.[1]
She was senior research associate at the Center for International Studies at Duke University, visiting artist at Amherst College and director of the Literacy through Photography International program and artist in residence at the Duke University Center for International Studies.[1][3]
In 2012, Ewald, along with Elizabeth Barret, was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts - Photography.[4] For the Fellowship, they collaborated on a multimedia project called Portraits and Dreams: A Revisitation. The project is a sequel to Ewald's previous book, Portraits and Dreams. Published in 1985, this book is a collection of photographs and writings that focused on students Ewald taught in the Appalachian Mountains. Ewald re-engaged with the former students, now in their forties, to curate photographs, objects, and audiovisual material related to those years, as well as create new materials for their installation.
Ewald was invited to participate in the photography collective This Place, centered around Israel and the West Bank. For her project she distributed cameras to 14 different groups of people, gathered thousands of images, and selected 500.[5] She gave cameras to owners of stalls and stores at the Mahane Yehuda marketplace in Jerusalem, Arab women and Romanis in Jerusalem's Old City, schoolchildren in Nazareth, residents of Hebron, Negev Bedouin and high-tech employees in Tel Aviv. This was Ewald's first attempt to document an entire country, and the first use of digital cameras and color photography in her international projects.[6]
Throughout Ewald's career, she has had individual exhibitions at multiple galleries, including the International Center of Photography in New York City, the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the Whitney Biennial in 1997.[7]
Ewald is a visiting artist of photography at Bard College.[8]
Ewald is married to Tom McDonough, a writer and cinematographer. They live in the Hudson Valley of New York with their son, Michael.[9]