Wendy Ewald is a well-known and
much-praised conceptual artist who works in photography.  She won a
MacArthur Fellowship in 1992, and she has published several books of photography,
some of them coauthored with others.  Much of her work is done in collaboration
with children, and she has worked in many different countries and with people
of varied cultures.  Her work is also distinctive because she often writes or
draws over her photographs; in this alphabet series she adds letters of the
alphabet and illustrative words.

There are four
"alphabets" in the book, with each of them illustrating a different
letter.  They are Arabic, African American, Spanish, and White Girls.  At the bottom
of each page is the word illustrating the letter, a short definition of the
word, and a sentence illustrating the use of the word.  Most of the photographs
show young people in an image somehow related to the word, although a few just have everyday
objects.  The Spanish Alphabet is in black and white, and the others are mostly
in color.  The colors in the Arabic and African American Alphabets are bright
and eye-catching, while those in the White Girls Alphabet are more muted. 

In the White Girls Alphabet, it is
easy to see how the words chosen reflect the preoccupations of the girls.  In
this series, N is for "Normal," and we see a girl standing in jeans,
sneakers, and a white top, with "NORMAL" handwritten in large letters
diagonally across the image.  At the bottom of the page are the sentences:

Often people prefer to think of
themselves and be thought of as normal.  However, how does one know what is
normal?  Something is only normal when it has conformed to its surroundings and
does not stand out.  However, if moves to a different surrounding, the
previously normal thing would become strange or different.  Nothing is ever
truly normal. 

P is for PMS, and we see a box of Tampax and a plastic
bottle of Advil against a purple background.  The quotation at the bottom says,
"When I have PMS, I am crabby, bloated, major cramping (Advil please) and
cry about anything the least bit emotional, or occasionally for no apparent
reason."  Clearly, the girls with whom Ewald worked are articulate and
thoughtful.  They are from Phillips Academy,
Andover, in Massachusetts, which defines itself as an independent
coeducational boarding high school. 

The Arabic Alphabet was created
with students from IS 220, in Queens, New York.  The letters and words will be
much less familiar to most American readers.  The words are more ordinary: the
first pages include "bortogal" (an orange), "tuffahat" (an
apple), "thaub" (bathrobe), "jar" (neighbor), and ""habl"
(rope).  The sentences illustrating the words are simple too: "My father
bought oranges," "I love big juicy apples," "I wear my
bathrobe after the shower," and "My neighbors are nice."  Both
more foreign and more elementary than the White Girls Alphabet, these images
look more like pictures that might appear in an elementary classroom.  They
introduce us to another culture, humanizing it in unfamiliar ways.  There’s the
obvious message that these Arabic children are like other American children,
but we can take other ideas from these pictures too.  One thought these images
provokes is that we are like small children, hardly knowing the first thing
about this foreign demonized culture, and we could learn more about it by understanding
the basic parts of the language.

There is inevitably a political angle
to a series of images focusing on Arabic children from Queens, but the
political dimension comes not just from the subject matter..  Ewald’s pictures
are very distinctive, largely because of the childlike theme and the inclusion
of handwritten letters on the photographs.  Compared to most contemporary
photography, these images are technically crude, and the lack of sophistication
is an aesthetic challenge to other photographers, as if to say that photography
should be accessible and democratic, rather than obscure and elitist. 

The African-American Alphabet came
from a stay at the Central Intermediate Elementary School in Cleveland, Ohio.  Here a few of the words used are mostly distinctively urban, associated with black
culture — such as "brother," "durag," "ill," and
"nappy" — while others are simple and neutral — such as
"eat," "football," "jersey," and
"lemons."  Many of the sentences explaining the words use distinctive
African American grammar: for example, "Without money you cannot have no
car, no ice, no house, no bed and no food.", "Sister, it is quiet
when my little brother ain’t around.", and "I be listening to the
radio everyday.  My mother Cristina Virola be using the radio all the time
too."  There’s mention of poverty, difficult lives, and white people
trying to put black people down.  The children shown in the pictures don’t show
their faces much, and when they do, they generally look serious.  It’s not so
clear what this series is trying to achieve.  These photographs lack visual
interest and the language is already familiar, so they lack a sense of
educational value.  It’s almost as if the aim of the series was to provide a
portrait of the grim inarticulacy of these young people.  At the end of the
series is Y for yoyo, with the sentence "I always play with yo-yos."
A hand lies inert, palm up, on a red surface, with a stationary beaten-up yo-yo
attached to the forefinger by the string.  Following this is Z for zigzag, with
the sentence "The line is zigzag."  In the picture, in pink and light
blue chalk, are some rather random lines drawn on the ground.  These images
completely lack energy, humor or thought.  Ewald conveys lifelessness and
banality with these photographs. 

The Spanish Alphabet is similarly
elusive in its intention.  It too features a Y for yo-yo, with the sentence
"I know what a yo-yo is."  The black and white photograph shows a
wooden yo-yo hanging from a short piece of string, with the string held down by
a child’s hand.  Few of the images in this series have much that is visually
interesting — for example, they show a hand holding out a telephone, a set of
keys on a piece of white cloth, a hand raised in greeting, and a hand holding
an orange.  Most of the accompanying sentences are mundane.  This is not to
blame the students at Bethesda Elementary School in Durham, North Carolina for
the dull alphabet, but it leaves the viewer wondering what Ewald is trying to
do.  These images do illustrate Spanish words, and a few elements of Spanish
culture and language, but the lack of sophistication doesn’t seem to have much
of a point.  The series might be interesting as a collaboration, but it’s not
very interesting to look at. 

This raises the question why has
Wendy Ewald won so many awards and received such praise.  The answer seems to
lie in the multicultural and democratic nature of her working process. 
However, it is hard to escape the suspicion that, especially with the younger
children she worked with, she could have found far more interesting aspects of
their lives for them to talk about, and they could have been more creative in
making their photographs.  Aesthetically, the White Girls series stands out as
being easily the most thoughtful and attractive in the book, and the Arabic
Alphabet is also quite powerful.  The other two series fall flat. 
Nevertheless, Ewald’s enterprise is notable, and her work is worth exploring. 

© 2006 Christian Perring. All
rights reserved.

Links:

• Berkeley Art
  Museum: Wendy Ewald Alphabet Series
• Online
  NewsHour website about Wendy Ewald
• Yossi Milo
  Gallery pages on Wendy Ewald

Christian
Perring, Ph.D., is Academic Chair of the Arts & Humanities
Division and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Dowling College, Long Island. He is also editor of Metapsychology Online Reviews.  His main
research is on philosophical issues in medicine, psychiatry and psychology.

Categories: ArtAndPhotography