CULTURE and TRADITION

A Conversation with the World

Family, community, communication and spirituality have long been the themes of photographer and installation artist Lonnie Graham. This current series of portraits,A Conversation with the World, supplemented by interviews, extends Grahamís focus to how family and community are connected by memory, over distance, and through differences. These photographs of Africans, New Guineans, Indians and Americans also reflect Grahamís history of creating work and commissions concerning social and political issues. Addressing the needs of blighted urban community through the arts, cultural activities and entrepreneurial ventures is a recurring concern in his work. The series includes, for example, the Maisin tribe of Papua, New Guinea, who produce tapa cloth from the Woowoosi tree. The Maisin have successfully thwarted foreign logging company attempts to weaken their property rights, continuing to maintain traditional values rooted in an ancient lifestyle. An earlier work, The African/American Garden Project, fostered interaction between disadvantaged urban single mothers, an elderly African American community and farmers from the Kenyan village of Muguga.

A Conversation with the World seeks to identify and reinforce the universality of humanity. Individuals were arbitrarily chosen and asked a set of questions basic to human existence. While the subjects may have been randomly chosen, the universal values that emerge in their answers, and the face they show the camera, demonstrate a clear and moving commonality. Graham questions why our interdependence as a species does not more productively drive our interactions with each other on earth. He states that we must first understand ourselves before we can begin to extend understanding and respect toward each other. This is how he begins his Conversation with the World.  

Lonnie Graham

Graham is presently a Professor of Fine Arts at Pennsylvania State University, an instructor of special programs at the Barnes Foundation in Marion, Pennsylvania, and a visiting instructor of Graduate Studies at San Francisco Art Institute. Previously, Mr. Graham was director of Photography at Manchester Craftsmenís Guild, an arts organization dedicated to the educational development of disadvantaged urban youth, where he developed a project-driven after school photography program using innovative ways of merging arts and academics.

Graham attended Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and has a MA from the San Francisco Art Institute.

He has been awarded NEA/Pew Charitable Trust Travel Grants, Pennsylvania Council for the Arts Fellowships and a Pittsburgh Cultural Creative Achievement award. His photo credits include co-authorship of the book "Thaddeus Mosley, African American Sculptor." Graham contributed to the Community Development Corporation/Arts Resource Initiative, funded by the Ford Foundation. His work is in the Museum of African American History in Detroit, Michigan; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Delaware Museum of Art and the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Massachusetts. The Smithsonian Institution has featured his installation work and included it in traveling exhibitions. Charleston, South Carolinaís Spoleto Festival commissioned Graham to produce Enlightenment, Acknowledgement and Memorialization, which addressed the arts and education.  

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