Witness 1 Imigration and Migration
About This Exhibition: Images by Dana Popa, Andrei Pungovschi, Calin Ilea
About Witness
This is the first exhibit of a two-year series entitled “Witness”. The project will present the work of photographers and filmmakers who employ the lens as a vehicle for social commentary, what traditionally is referred to as documentary or reportage. In no way does the series assume the camera to be free of the contextual framework of the mind behind it. The camera that records to chip or film is not separated from the mind that points it. The photographer is not removed from the camera she uses, the lens directing the light, the edges of the frame, or her history, and the history of images and image making in our culture(s). The decision to stand where one does is not by chance but by one’s history. We live in a social, political, and economic world, gaining its meaning from an historical context. The resulting image of the metaphorical click signifies an intelligence that is shaped by history, intention, and human interest. Witness is not intended to be an empirical report on the world, but a story.
Photographs and films (video) are made as the result of decisive acts, not decisive moments. The decision to point the camera or stand in a place at a particular time, are not made by a neutral observer or machine, but by an intelligence, acting on the world from a point of interest. There never was or will be disinterested or non-contextualized images. Each image (or set of images) is the result of an intention and an understanding of what an image looks like and what the intended function is or will be.
For the readers of “Witness” (all viewers read the image(s) as a text produced for consumption. A film, as is a photograph, a poem, or painting, is created to be experienced.), significance is constructed through their own historical placement, one that is biased as is the image and the image-maker. In this sense the reader of the text is also a witness, a witness to the biases of the medium of photography and film/video, the image-maker, the curator, and VASA Exhibitions. If one views an image(s) or a film, and does not reflect upon the experience from both sides of its frame, one’s relationship to the image; then the point is lost. Of course it can be argued that in the act of “meaning making”, the viewer is reflecting and constructing the experience herself. No experience exists outside the viewer.
“Witness” will engage various curators who bring their own perceptions and understandings to the selection and display of the work. “Witness” has its own bias, giving light to images emerging from Eastern Europe and developing countries. Working within the VASA Exhibition framework each exhibition will host, in the case of photographs, the images in two different formats: individual and multi-image. This format provides the viewer with different experiences of the work. Each exhibition will be accompanied with an e-catalog containing various short essays, image-maker statements and bios, interviews, and other supportive resources. The intent of the e-catalog is to provide the viewer with a dynamic lens to construct or filter a fuller understanding of the work and its placement within a personal social-historical context. As with all VASA exhibitions, each exhibition will be archived and available for complete viewing at any time.
Witness I
Curators: Sabina Baciu and Roberto Muffoletto
Witness I presents the work of three Romanian photographers: Dana Popa, Calin Ilea, and Andrei Pungovschi. The exhibition is constructed within the conceptual frames of immigration and migration.
The West has and is benefiting from past and current immigration, providing a cheaper labor force, exotic flavors brought to the Western market, and a multicultural environment. This has not been without its challenges to national identity and the social fabric.
The fall of the Soviet Union in 1999, together with the EU integration of ex-communist countries, opened new opportunities for East-European workers. This political shift and the elimination of borders within the European Union allowed for easier immigration to the West. Soon massive waves of workers, as well as students, emigrated with hopes for a better life in the neighboring and much richer countries of Western Europe.
The Polish plumber and the Romanian strawberry picker were stereotypes enforced in the collective imaginary of Western Europe and the United States. Theories such as Kim’s “acculturation” model or Fred Casmir’s concept of a “third culture” are used to explain what happens when an individual decides to live and work outside their own culture. (Casmir (1993) rejects the domination model and characterizes the third culture building process as the natural outgrowth of non-threatening cooperation. Dominance is not intended and should not result from the acculturation process. Consistent with Kim's characterization of acculturation, where the individual becomes comfortable with the new society as the new society becomes comfortable with the individual as acculturation is accomplished; the third culture is built only when "the participants engage in an active, coordinated, mutually beneficial process of building a relationship" (Casmir, 1993). This mirrors Kim's theory of acculturation, and her theory of development of an intercultural identity. Wichert, 1996)
Similar to the large Polish migration to northern Chicago (USA) Romanian communities developed in the Chicago area. The photographic work of Calin Ilea documents a Romanian community in Chicago. His photographs address, in a direct fashion, the efforts of Romanians to assimilate as well as maintain their cultural roots and associations. Through images of family, religion, work, and community, we are given a brief look into their lives.
The opening of borders in Europe also facilitated a different form of emigration: illegal human sex trafficking. Young girls were lured into the dark side of immigration with the promise of a better life with good paying jobs. Natasha – the name given to the “typical” Eastern European prostitute became a common face in the bad districts of Western European cities. Dana Popa addresses this condition through her work (and book) entitled “Not Natasha”. Here she photographs and interviews the woman after their return to their homes. It is a story, through text and image referencing the individual, whose meaning is universal.
Lastly, the waves of immigrants from the East to the West led both to a workforce crisis in Eastern Europe, as well as a saturation of emigrants in the richer western countries. The current rise of extreme right movements in countries such as the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and France are connected with the feeling that immigration can no longer be controlled, challenging national identity and economic stability.
On the other hand, countries such as Romania were faced with a completely new phenomenon: as its citizens left for better jobs or study programs in the west, people from other continents looking for a better life, came (or were brought to Romania) to fill in those places vacated by Romanians who have moved to the west. Hard working Chinese and Congolese immigrant workers accepted low-paying jobs in Romania, placing them at the mercy of their employer and government policies. The work of Andrei Pungovschi goes beyond straight documentation to a metaphorical or interpretive statement that is repeated through out modern times. The Chinese workers, struggling here for respectable treatment by their employer, are demonstrating for back pay and fair treatment. Pungovschi’s images cross not only political borders but historical ones as well.
Taken as a whole, the exhibition presents different approaches to witnessing, giving voice to the photographer and those depicted. We, as discerning consumers situate this exhibition within our own borders of recognition and assimilation. For most of us are “where we are” as a result of immigration and migration, forced or by choice.
Reference:
Wichert, R. (1996) Acculturation and Intercultural Identity in the Post-Modern World. http://www.wichert.org/icid.html
© Sabina Baciu, Roberto Muffoletto, VASA 2011