In a collection of photography that sheds light on the current political climate the country is facing, Candela Books and Gallery’s exhibition, “STUMP,” looks at central political conversations from a more rare perspective usually not available to the average American.
In a collection of photography that sheds light on the current political climate the country is facing, Candela Books and Gallery’s exhibition, “STUMP,” looks at central political conversations from a more rare perspective usually not available to the average American.
Gordon Stettinius, owner and head curator of Candela, rounded up a collection of eight national artists whose work connects to a topic in American politics.
“Like many people, I’m pretty tied up in the national election and I wanted to do something,” he said. “I’m just kind of a political junkie and I wanted to kind of use this as an excuse to kind of contribute to the dialogue. All of us are talking about this stuff all the time. I didn’t want this moment to slip by.”
Walking into the gallery, a collection from the work of Brooklyn-based photographer Debi Cornwall, is displayed at the front of the room. Cornwall, a former civil rights lawyer, was granted access to Guantánamo Bay, resulting in a collection of vibrantly colored photos of the facility, subject matter usually not seen by Americans.
“My goal was to find a different way to look at this place that we haven’t already seen,” Cornwall said. “What does daily life look like in a place where no one has chosen to live?”
Cornwall’s inspiration for the project came from her 12-year career as a partner in a civil rights law firm, which she quit in 2013 to pursue a photography career.
“The clients I represented in the United States were convicted of crimes domestically that they had not committed,” she said. “So I was really interested in looking at men accused of being terrorists who were held offshore without charge or trial.”
Once granted access for three separate media trips to Guantánamo, Cornwall was required to sign 10 pages of rules to abide by while taking pictures, during which time military personnel constantly escorted her throughout the facility. These rules included not photographing locking and surveillance mechanisms along with anyone’s face.
The result of the trips to Guantánamo were striking images that dispel the common thought of an orange jumpsuit and steel bars when thinking of the offshore prison.
Cornwall’s larger collection of images at Guantánamo will be included in a book to be published in the spring, Welcome to Camp America. The book includes portrait images of 14 men once held in Guantánamo Bay, after they have been cleared and freed, as well as a guard who used to work at the facility.
The name of the exhibit, “STUMP,” comes from the concept of ‘stump speeches.”
“People used to hop up on a stump,” Stettinius said. “Abe Lincoln would hop up on a stump and start speechifying and doing his political screed about what needed fixing and so on. So it’s an old kind of political turn of phrase.”
The idea of a stump speech is translated in the different dialogues going on around the gallery. One collection on display, by photographer Tom Kiefer, includes photos of items he collected during his time as a janitor of a border control station in Arizona.
While tasked with discarding the personal items of those detained while trying to enter the country illegally, Kiefer was connected to the humanity behind these people who usually lack a personal identity in the national conversation. Stettinius calls Kiefer’s work “an unusual take on immigration and our borders.” The collection includes photographs of piles of personal objects left behind at the border, including wallets, pocket-sized Bibles, shoelaces and condoms.
“It sort of does something to humanize the people who are trying to get here as opposed to just calling them ‘illegal immigrants’ or ‘undocumented workers’,” he said. “It’s more about who they are; the fact that they’re little kids scrambling across boulders wearing princess gloves is not really part of that understanding. I think that his work is pretty special.”
Stettinius’ work with photography goes back 25 years, during which time he established a network of other artists that allow him to pull off a gallery on the scale of importance as “STUMP.”
One of the other main collections when walking into the gallery is the work of Sheila Bright. Her black and white photographs follow the Black Lives Matter movement in an initiative that is ongoing as the movement evolves.
The photographs on display are a part of a larger body of work titled, “1960Now,” which compares her photos to the old photos from the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Her photographs have taken her from protests in Ferguson, Missouri, to the more recent ones in Atlanta, Georgia, documenting the crowds of people who would come out for the cause.
Other political topics are incorporated in the collection, including a take on environmental issues from artist D.M. Whitman. Selections from her project “Melt” are meant to illuminate the conversations being had on what is going on with the environment, particularly in the realm of climate change.
“There’s people who are talking about either climate change, or brackish intrusion in some sort of estuary, or the plight of the small farm, or industrial agriculture,” Stettinius said. “Whatever it is, there’s lots of people talking about the environment and how we’re kind of on a rollercoaster to a bad place.”
Whitman’s photographs reflect the altering state of the Earth and the subsequent melting of the ice caps as a result of global warming. Satellite images were printed in the 19th century photographic salted paper process, giving off the sense of the fading nature of the state of the environment.
Other collections within the exhibit include highly dramatized photographs from the current election cycle by editorial photographer Mark Peterson and wallpaper printed out of images of different forms of contraceptives created by Lindsey Beal.
To Stettinius, the gallery has elicited strong responses from the public, drawing in people of different interests. Gallery attendees are usually drawn to one element over the others depending on the political topic that resonates the most with them. “People know when they’re standing in front of something that they haven’t seen before.”
“STUMP” is on display at Candela Books and Gallery in Jackson Ward until the end of the week, so check out the exhibit and the political commentary it houses before it ends on Oct. 22.
