Eyes Wide Open
Lots of people have been paying attention to Uganda lately. Forest Whitaker won an Oscar playing Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland, which depicts the atrocities Amin committed there. A 20-year-old civil war in the north has left the country shattered. Rebels have displaced nearly 2 million people, leaving the country with parentless children; AIDS has done similar damage, leaving 2 million children orphaned or with single parents unable to care for them. Gloria Baker Feinstein‘s photographic examination of HIV and AIDS orphans suggests that Uganda has a long way to go to heal from its painful history and its present circumstances.
Formally, Feinstein’s photographs are gorgeous black-and-white studies with warm, velvety tones of gray. Although she prefers film, she is equally adept with a digital camera at creating striking color contrasts within a black-and-white framework. She has received plenty of press about the humanitarian aspect of the exhibition (she has created a foundation to help school the children in an orphanage), but the work remains, at its heart, a photographic disquisition of beauty, in all its painful iterations.
“Three Girls, Kajjansi” suggests the children’s physical grace in the delicate curve of the middle girl’s neck. Photographed from behind, the girls’ shorn heads allow us to see the formal elegance of their skulls and Feinstein’s balance in the photograph. These girls’ shaved heads stand in for the orphans of many other countries: In a dehumanizing yet practical gesture, orphanage workers typically shave children’s heads to lighten their own task loads.
One of the exhibition’s largest and most engaging images is “Children in Front of a Chalkboard, Magada.” It’s an extreme close-up of five children’s faces, their expressions suggesting a range of emotions. One can imagine that these children have seen things no child should see; juxtaposed with this horrific knowledge is the banality of the chalkboard and its messages: “Math test end of Oct.”; “Fill in the missing letters: Our te_cher is kind.” It seems absurd, yet focusing on homework’s ordinariness helps heal these children, at least a little.
If Feinstein were to photograph her young subjects in another format, with different light and a less velvety texture, the photographs might telegraph something different. They might be too painful, too journalistic to look at in so large a format in a gallery. Even though these children smile and are engaged with the photographer, they are victims of horrendous circumstances and abuses from which they will not emerge unharmed. All of this is embedded in the beauty of Feinstein’s images.
“Girl Running, Buyingi,” displays not only technical finesse but also a poignant lyricism. As a girl runs away from the camera, the entire world around her, including her body, blurs into soft edges and filmy light. Dreamlike and poetic, the metaphor of running — away from or toward — is clearly apt.
Certain kinds of beauty are rarely uncomplicated or benign.
