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Artist: James Whitlow Delano – United States

Artist: Jowhara Alsaud – Saudi Arabia -Morocco

My latest body of work began as a comment on censorship in Saudi Arabia and its effects on visual communication.

Figurative work is still considered by many to be sinful.

In an attempt to comment on this censorship, I tried to apply the language of the Censors to my personal photographs. I began by making line drawings from the photographs to the level of abstraction and only kept the essentials.

It became a game of How much can you tell with how little. When reduced to line drawings or sketches, the images

achieved enough distance from the original photographs that neither subjects nor censors could find them objectionable.

For me, they became autonomous, and I became interested in the minimal narratives they created.

I’ve always felt that a photograph functions more like a

memory, in that it’s a singular perspective of a split second in time, entirely subjective and hence impressionable.

What also interests me is that the information omitted

(scratched away emulsion) creates an image of its own, as do the censors to our cultural landscape.

Living Stone: A community losing Its Life

Artist: Khaled Hasan – Bangladesh

The Piyain River is the main feature and natural beauty of Jaflong which flows from India through Bangladesh. During the monsoon, the river currents wash down precious rocks and pebbles from India into Jaflong area. At dawn every day, more than a hundred little boats with laborers enter the Piyain River, buckets and spades in hand. This is one trade which has a geological limit. The stones that tumble down the riverbed from India are decreasing in volume and the laborers are already taking the risk of invading the no-man’s land along the Indo-Bangla border which is a contradictory political issue between Bangladesh and India.

More than 5,000 men, women and child stone-laborers are engaged here. Uncontrolled and unstoppable stone extracting and crushing at Jaflong has been posing a serious threat to public health, and to the environment and agriculture in the area. There is no legal protection and no human rights in this Stone Industry. Many children there have been suffering from hearing problems due to the high-pitched sounds of the stone crushing machines.

The Bangladeshi government has failed to take any initiative to prevent the stone-crushing industry at Jaflong and the resulting high rate of erosion which is threatening to destroy the adjacent villages within the next 5 years.

Artist: Kim Wendt – Denmark

We, as men, are fantastic- powerful, wise, strong. . . .

canny about emotions and vulnerable tellings,

silent about personal problems, We need not reach out for the help of others, as we can handle it on our own – this gives us control.

everyday life, the air, a head full of changes,

renewal, denial, innovation, growth, standstill,

globalization, increase, decrease, idleness, emptiness

insufficiency

loneliness.

we feel banished, we seek exile – the exile within

Kim Wendt