unknown: Okay.
SPEAKER_06: I wanted to speak in the sanctuary because I consider my project a spiritual project.
SPEAKER_06: And so I wanted that energy here.
SPEAKER_06: So as I talk about it, and you go back and visit the images that you carry with you your heart as you look at the images.
SPEAKER_06: And as an artist, I am so delighted to be here.
SPEAKER_06: And my photography and human rights project for women, our sister's keeper, is here for three months.
SPEAKER_06: And thank you to Reverend Stone for having me here and for the volunteers who helped.
SPEAKER_06: Sean was one of them.
SPEAKER_06: It really made putting the exhibit up very easy, and we got done in record time.
SPEAKER_06: I've been photographing women in underdeveloped regions about 10 years.
SPEAKER_06: And I was initially drawn to these women as a textile artist.
SPEAKER_06: I've been doing textiles for about 30 years and weaving and stitching, and I wanted to go see the cultures in which women were still doing these handmade garments and beads and all of the adornment for their bodies because I felt that over time that was going to disappear.
SPEAKER_06: So the more time I spent with these women in various countries, I've been to 62 countries for this project and other photography over the last 10 years.
SPEAKER_06: The more time I spent with them, the more I saw their lives.
SPEAKER_06: And I'm amazed at the beauty and the resilience and the strength that women have all over the world.
SPEAKER_06: They care for their families, they do all of the work that brings the family together.
SPEAKER_06: And in Africa, in the Maasai, the women build their houses, and the men are out tending the cattle, but the women do all the work.
SPEAKER_06: So, and they make these amazing beaded necklaces, and they wear them every day.
SPEAKER_06: It's not just for tourists because you can go into a Maasai village anytime and see these beautiful garments that they wear as well as their big necklaces that they've made.
SPEAKER_06: And I did a lot of research on human rights abuses for women, and found out that for so many, human rights do not exist.
SPEAKER_06: They don't have access to education for the most part, very little health care, physical abuse, early marriages, sex trafficking.
SPEAKER_06: The list goes on and on.
SPEAKER_06: And I have a few statistics that I want to share with you.
SPEAKER_06: And it's staggering about being born a female.
SPEAKER_06: They want boys.
SPEAKER_06: That's a huge amount of human life, of creativity that just will never be here.
SPEAKER_06: Three million girls a year, mostly in Africa, are being genitally mutilated.
SPEAKER_06: Three out of four war fatalities are women and children.
SPEAKER_06: So you think about Syria today, you think about Yemen and its children and women who are suffering the most.
SPEAKER_06: 77 million girls worldwide do not go to school, and one out of three women in the U.S.
SPEAKER_06: will experience violence at the hands of an intimate partner.
SPEAKER_06: That just floored me.
SPEAKER_06: But it exists, it's with us, it's in our families, and uh I know bringing awareness is so critical.
SPEAKER_06: Sixteen million women and girls are victims of human trafficking.
SPEAKER_06: With these statistics, how could I ignore and turn away from the issue of human rights for women and girls?
SPEAKER_06: I just couldn't.
SPEAKER_06: So that brought my project to my heart, and I went to develop a special project called Our Sisters Keeper and photograph the women in their daily activities.
SPEAKER_06: I don't do setup photography, and I put a book together that's called Adornment.
SPEAKER_06: That was my first book.
SPEAKER_06: And it was the beginning of showing the beauty and strength of women and writing about their life challenges.
SPEAKER_06: I began searching for pathways where I could display my project in images and educate those that were willing to listen.
SPEAKER_06: I found out that President Jimmy Carter had just published a book called A Call to Action, and he also was putting together a forum for women, and he's done such marvelous work throughout the world.
SPEAKER_06: I said, I've got to get my work to Jimmy Carter and see if I can be in his museum as an exhibit.
SPEAKER_06: And it was amazing that he sent me a copy of his book back, signed it, and had invited me to show my project for three months at the Carter Museum, which when I found out it just kind of panicked me.
SPEAKER_06: I thought, oh my gosh, this is so big and such a wonderful place, but it was my first start with the exhibit.
SPEAKER_06: So it was just such a special time.
SPEAKER_06: I'd like to read a quote from President Carter.
SPEAKER_06: He says, there's a system of discrimination extending far beyond any small geographical region to the entire globe.
SPEAKER_06: It touches every nation, perpetuating and expanding the trafficking in human slaves, body mutilation, and even legitimized murder on a massive scale.
SPEAKER_06: This system is based on the presumption that men and boys are superior to women and girls.
SPEAKER_06: He goes on to talk about the misuse of power.
SPEAKER_06: I just want to think about that.
SPEAKER_06: The misuse of power.
SPEAKER_06: And think about our world today.
SPEAKER_06: And I have a book that was supposed to be here but didn't arrive.
SPEAKER_06: So it will be here next week.
SPEAKER_06: And all the proceeds, 100%, go to the project for girls.
SPEAKER_02: Days for girls, yeah.
SPEAKER_06: Days for girls.
SPEAKER_06: And so I will sign books in and put them in the mail, and so hopefully you all can raise funds for that project.
SPEAKER_06: So I want to share a little story about the Gambaga witch camp in uh Ghana, West Africa.
SPEAKER_06: Because I think some of you have asked me about the witch camp.
SPEAKER_06: A little background before I share the travel story.
SPEAKER_06: In many parts of Africa, voodoo is the religion, and it's very much based on ancient superstitions, ancestral worship, so forth, and many primitive ways of dealing with life in particularly the northern part of Ghana in small villages.
SPEAKER_06: So one such problem is witchcraft.
SPEAKER_06: And when you think about the economy in a small village in a dried area in the middle of nowhere, when people are no longer productive, then some way the village feels that they're a burden.
SPEAKER_06: And in many cases, women are accused of being a witch, particularly older women and those that might be mentally ill.
SPEAKER_06: And so what happens is if Jo Smith comes to the chief of the village and says, I saw Mary on the broomstick last night, and she bothers me every night, and she is in my dreams, and I think she's a witch.
SPEAKER_06: So then the woman has to come before the chief and the priest of the village, and they do ceremony.
SPEAKER_06: And in the ceremony, they bring in a chicken, they cut the throat of the chicken, and depending on how that chicken dies, head up, head down, the woman is determined to be a witch or not.
SPEAKER_06: And so that's a very primitive way to put somebody in jail or ostracized from the community, which is a type of jailing.
SPEAKER_06: The women used to be murdered 75 to 100 years ago, taken out and murdered, so they were no longer in the village.
SPEAKER_06: But six camps came into existence, and so the large camp in Gambaga is over 200 women who have been placed there for the rest of their lives.
SPEAKER_06: And we were going to visit the village, and it would, this is on my second trip to uh the village.
SPEAKER_06: There were six women photographers, and so the first time that we went, we had taken some money and a few gifts, and uh we tried to give it to the women as we were visiting with them, but the chief's son followed us all around, and we figured the women never got the money or the gifts that we brought.
SPEAKER_06: So this time we were gonna be really sneaky.
SPEAKER_06: This was two years after that, and so we drove right to the witch camp, which is part of a larger village, and we thought we're just gonna bypass the chief.
SPEAKER_06: So we're there about 10 or 15 minutes later.
SPEAKER_06: Three men come and they say, What are you doing here?
SPEAKER_06: through an interpreter.
SPEAKER_06: And we said, Well, we're here to visit the women in the witch camps.
SPEAKER_06: He said, You cannot be here without the chief's permission.
SPEAKER_06: So you have to get out and uh we'll see if the chief is willing to speak to you.
SPEAKER_06: So uh we through the interpreter begged and said, Yes, we really want to see the women.
SPEAKER_06: We've been here, uh we bring information and money uh to the village, so uh ask your chief if we can visit.
SPEAKER_06: So the interpreter had this long conversation with the chief, and finally, with money, we could come back in two days and visit the women.
SPEAKER_06: So uh that's how our second visit came about.
SPEAKER_06: So we thought we would be really clever and um asked the chief's son if he would honor us with giving the money to the women, and that way uh we were sure what was going to happen.
SPEAKER_06: So he was the one who got to distribute the money and the gifts to the women when we came back, and so we had quite a good time photographing, and um we had several hours there to visit with them.
SPEAKER_06: But it's uh interesting how harsh their life is, and when you see the photographs, you'll see the little mud huts that they live in.
SPEAKER_06: They are fed by they work in the fields, and it's mostly dried corn, and so they're given some portion of that as they uh work in the fields.
SPEAKER_06: So that's kind of their life, and very seldom would they ever leave the village because they would be ostracized in their community and wouldn't be wanted back.
SPEAKER_06: So I hope in viewing the exhibit you'll look at these women and feel the heart.
SPEAKER_06: Um that's what I felt when I visited with them, and uh I was very careful about picking out those images that really spoke to me, and I hope they speak to you.
SPEAKER_06: So I'm willing to take any questions you might have, and I'll be here wandering around and open to talking with you.
SPEAKER_05: Do these women know how much about another song of life do they know?
SPEAKER_05: So do they really know that there's another way away?
SPEAKER_06: They would know their village that they came from and the fact that they had a family and they were part of life in that village, but they would not know the greater world like Accra, which is the capital, is quite a ways from the northern part.
SPEAKER_06: So they live pretty isolated lives.
SPEAKER_03: So the witch camp is for its services or takes care of women from many villages.
SPEAKER_03: Correct.
SPEAKER_03: Okay, in that area.
SPEAKER_03: In that area.
SPEAKER_03: What kind of gifts did you take?
SPEAKER_03: What would they give?
SPEAKER_06: Shampoo, soaps, uh things that we figured they they wouldn't have, um, mostly money, because they are able to do a little shopping and buy a little jewelry or something that makes their life uh a little more joyous.
SPEAKER_06: Um what else did we take?
SPEAKER_06: Oh, um some medical supplies, um, simple things like maybe uh skin cream, um aspirin, things like that.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, thank you.
SPEAKER_04: So whether it's what they should have said so that they can go back to their village that they've been so much back.
SPEAKER_06: They can go back to their village, uh and but that is expensive.
SPEAKER_06: They have to their family has to pay for the time they've been there, which could be 50, 60 US dollars, which is very unlikely they'd have that money, plus the fact they would have the stigma of having been in the witch camp, and can you trust a woman who has been, quote, a witch?
SPEAKER_06: So it's it's almost impossible.
SPEAKER_05: But if they have children, and their children are witchcraft with them, or are they separated from their children?
SPEAKER_06: There there's two things.
SPEAKER_06: They have children they can bring with them, or they have visitation.
SPEAKER_06: And it was hard to tell um in which cases they were visitation.
SPEAKER_06: I think with the older women it that would be grandmothers, uh the children that were there were uh visitations, and also from the larger um community of Gumbaga, there's children in that community, so they they do come over into the camp once in a while.
SPEAKER_03: What is their perception of you, photography, cameras, and the people living outside?
SPEAKER_06: How did you make that i I I think it was mixed.
SPEAKER_06: Uh for the most part they were really happy because we brought things for them and um we were smiling and you know we uh had them um do what they normally do.
SPEAKER_06: I mean we didn't set them up, but the interpreter said that we wanted to show their um strength and so forth to our friends back in the United States, which they probably had no idea what that was.
SPEAKER_06: But um they were happy.
SPEAKER_06: There were a few that seemed to be very within themselves and kind of didn't have eye contact, so uh for the most part they were happy.
SPEAKER_06: And we did notice that a couple of English uh NGOs, non-governmental organizations uh did some uh work with them.
SPEAKER_06: They built chicken coops and a few other things, so there are some resources uh that come in from England into there.
SPEAKER_06: And that's very observant, thank you.
SPEAKER_06: Um how friendly India was all over.
SPEAKER_06: I've probably been all over India, but most of these are from Gujarat area, northern India.
SPEAKER_06: They were very open because normally I'll ask, can I can we take your photograph and just spend some time with them?
SPEAKER_06: And I never had any woman say no, go away.
SPEAKER_06: But on the Gold Coast of Ghana, it was very cold.
SPEAKER_06: There was still the feeling of slavery from 200 years ago, that memory there, so it was it was guarded, it was um not receptive in a sense.
SPEAKER_06: Uh when you got back to the uh northern part of Ghana, away from the coast, it was fine.
SPEAKER_06: They didn't mind having their photographs taken.
SPEAKER_06: So it was a definite cultural thing.
SPEAKER_06: Being uh Caucasian women was not a real popular thing.
SPEAKER_05: So I think that's um hopefully for India.
SPEAKER_06: Uh we had scheduled um a trip this year, and then my husband got ill, but he's fine now, so hopefully we'll go back.
SPEAKER_06: Um but not probably to Ghana.
SPEAKER_06: So um do you travel with the same usually I I don't travel alone, that's one thing I won't do.
SPEAKER_06: Um mostly my husband is with me, although he did not go to the West Africa countries that I've been to.
SPEAKER_06: Uh and there's a group of uh six women photographers that uh I would go with uh several times to those areas.
SPEAKER_06: So um I try and find um a place.
SPEAKER_06: Where I feel I want to photograph and then see if there's some photographers who are willing to go.
SPEAKER_06: So it's a group activity.
SPEAKER_06: It feels safer that way.
SPEAKER_04: So when you think of landslide, did you know about the virtual camp of the morning or did you stumble upon it?
SPEAKER_06: There's a book called Spellbound that one of my friends came across, and it's about the witch camps in Ghana.
SPEAKER_06: So that's where we first learned about it.
SPEAKER_06: And very few photographers or people have been there.
SPEAKER_06: So we made an effort to get there.
SPEAKER_06: It's difficult because it's the roads are, I mean, potholes like this, and you know, after the rains, it's all dirt roads.
SPEAKER_06: So it it took quite a while to get out to the village where the witch camp was, so it's off the beaten track.
SPEAKER_06: But we found out about it through the book.
SPEAKER_06: And I believe the woman who wrote the book was there on a trip with the church group and spent some time really uh investigating the village and and then wrote about it.
SPEAKER_06: She's from Canada.
SPEAKER_00: Well all of your work really accentuates color and um you know the human connection in some ways, beauty, uh, instead of really um instead of you know instead of showing how awful living conditions are, which is another way of doing photojournalism.
SPEAKER_00: So would you say more about your perspective and and you know sort of why you you're angry with this?
SPEAKER_06: Well, behind it all, um I feel like I'm a joyous person and I feel that there's dignity in all humans, no matter what their circumstance in life is.
SPEAKER_06: So I bring that personal orientation with me.
SPEAKER_06: And I'm also a textile artist, so I do a lot of work with color.
SPEAKER_06: And um I started, I think I'm probably mentioned it, I I started by wanting to see the work that the women did.
SPEAKER_06: So the beauty of what they produce and just seeing the smiles on their face, or if they're intense, at least a feeling that their life is challenging, and um I honor that.
SPEAKER_06: So I I really don't want to show the ugliness because we all know that it's there, we need to know about what happens, but I'm trying to uplift these women, and so I pray for them, I um give them honor by the photography that I do.
SPEAKER_02: You've done that because some of those faces are the most known faces I've seen in a long time.
SPEAKER_06: Oh, thank you.
SPEAKER_06: I uh do a special treatment of the images.
SPEAKER_06: They aren't just straight out of the camera.
SPEAKER_06: I I do this probably doesn't make sense to a lot of you, but I do layering, so I'll do a black and white and then a full color, and I'll merge them and then come out with the uh right feeling for that image so that it mutes the color because somehow just bright colors doesn't quite get across the point of uh the human rights.
SPEAKER_06: So um it's interpretive.
SPEAKER_05: Is there an opportunity for the understanding of similar to it to develop any kind of bad college industry that they can exploit their artistic connection?
SPEAKER_06: Not in Ghana.
SPEAKER_06: Um, they're they're pretty much just there and do the field work.
SPEAKER_06: The women, Maya women in Chiapas, Mexico, and Guatemala make their money, they're spending money for their children to educate their children for the most part, from their textiles.
SPEAKER_06: So Mayan culture has a whole many thousand-year tradition of weaving, and it's passed down through the matriarchal side of the family, and unless a daughter has no mother because the daughter, the mother has died, she learns from age eight or nine how to weave, and then she can make weavings and either sell in a co-op, or many of them sell on the street or in a shop, and they make enough money to put their children through through school, even though it's pinching pennies.
SPEAKER_06: But yes, in that case they can.
SPEAKER_06: And the Maasai women, which aren't in this exhibit, but I've spent a lot of time with them, do the bead work not only for themselves, but for the tourist industry.
SPEAKER_06: So that helps make money there.
SPEAKER_06: So, yes.
SPEAKER_04: It struck me in looking at your photographs that even in their living condition, which we would consider poverty, they must have a certain amount of dignity.
SPEAKER_04: There was not a piece of litter on any street in any one of those photographs.
SPEAKER_04: Everything was clean.
SPEAKER_06: That isn't always the case.
SPEAKER_06: Um there's there's a lot of of litter.
SPEAKER_06: I try and not take pictures with the litter in it, but you know.
SPEAKER_06: Um the streets, how do I say this?
SPEAKER_06: Like in um Chiapas, Mexico, in the village area, for the most part they're fairly clean because there's a lot of pride there.
SPEAKER_06: Uh in Ghana, in the coast, no, it was pretty littered, particularly in the fish market and some of the markets that and in India also.
SPEAKER_06: Um but it it just really depends, I think, on the village.
SPEAKER_06: And and the Maasai women are good at keeping their camp clean.
SPEAKER_06: Most of the paper goes on their house.
SPEAKER_06: So they it plastic and whatever they can find, a cardboard to make their hut.
unknown: Yes.
SPEAKER_04: Are we still doing textile art?
SPEAKER_04: And what impact is this trial and you sort of have that?
SPEAKER_06: Yes, I am still doing textile art.
SPEAKER_06: And um what impact?
SPEAKER_06: I don't really know other than um a visual sense of color and sometimes in pattern.
SPEAKER_06: Um I'll pick up something and and do it in my textile work.
SPEAKER_06: But um I find that it's it's hard when I'm really intense into a project like the women's project.
SPEAKER_06: I don't do a lot of textiles because my I have to shift my whole uh uh I guess world of thinking from um photographs into um textiles.
SPEAKER_06: So um at this point I would say there's not a lot of crossover.
SPEAKER_02: I disagree with that because if you layer like you're talking about the photographs and look like that, that's like leading a little bit at a time.
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
SPEAKER_06: Well, I love to do the artistic part of Photoshop and working with the images, so that's I I I still continue doing the artistic part, but putting my hands on uh dyes and uh yarns and threads, I I haven't done any big projects.
SPEAKER_06: I oh I did some Japanese dyeing project, yeah.
SPEAKER_06: But I I just dabble in that when I'm really heavily into my photography.
SPEAKER_06: So I I kind of switch back and forth.
SPEAKER_06: And I'm going to be doing a lot of textiles this summer.
SPEAKER_06: So it's kind of a shift that way.
SPEAKER_06: Sorry.
SPEAKER_06: Any other questions?
unknown: Yes.
SPEAKER_06: No, and I don't think I want to go.
SPEAKER_06: Um to try and and photograph women in covered circas, and no, it's not safe and um it's very much frowned upon.
SPEAKER_06: Um I would not feel safe doing photography of women.
SPEAKER_06: I was in uh United Arab Emirates, and that of course is like a Beverly Hills of the Arab world.
SPEAKER_06: Um and Dubai was fascinating, and we went to all the seven Emirates uh in UAE.
SPEAKER_06: But I I probably had four or five images of women, uh Muslim women, and that was done on the key team.
SPEAKER_06: So I found that it was not something that really could be done in the fashion that I I like to photograph.
SPEAKER_06: There was no uh interchange between the women and myself, so no feeling, I guess, in that.
SPEAKER_00: What about China?
SPEAKER_06: China, I've been several places in China, and I do have a lot of photographs from China.
SPEAKER_06: So putting together the exhibit I had to eliminate and just to focus.
SPEAKER_06: So um I found in the villages in uh China that the women were very open to be photographed, especially the old grandmas.
SPEAKER_06: But you know, the younger people are wearing jeans and western clothes, so finding the minorities where they're wearing their um traditional garb in China is the grandmas.
SPEAKER_06: And and so I have several photographs of the minority women and in their festivals, like the water festival to photograph.
SPEAKER_06: So yes.
SPEAKER_04: I'm sorry, I can you find your projects you just not get some master find.
SPEAKER_06: Oh, do I find my own project?
SPEAKER_06: Funding, funding.
SPEAKER_06: Funding.
SPEAKER_06: Oh no, I fund everything.
SPEAKER_06: I've been very fortunate in um having had a long career in education and um actually I retired as superintendent for schools, so I felt like I want to give back in some way because I've been blessed in my life, so I fund everything myself.
SPEAKER_06: It's it's not a money-making project for me.
SPEAKER_06: So I do sell, um, but that's not my primary focus.
SPEAKER_00: So it's maybe helpful to know that uh Marie flew here from Seattle on her own dime and uh has given this exhibition to the Diocese of Los Angeles, but she or they nailed it to us.
SPEAKER_00: So this is really about uh getting her artistic point of view across to help us build bridges uh with women across the world.
SPEAKER_00: That's sort of the point.
SPEAKER_00: Um it's it's a pretty amazing ministry that you give us.
SPEAKER_00: Um thank you.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, my pleasure.
SPEAKER_06: Feels good to do this.
SPEAKER_00: Please follow up with Marie with individual questions on any of the pieces or or other questions you have we didn't get.
SPEAKER_00: There's a guest book in the hall.
SPEAKER_00: I know she would appreciate if you would sign.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, you can find more information and more um images on our sisters keeper, the website.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you'll see that display.
SPEAKER_00: And um, if you have any other thoughts like, hey Marie, I'm spellbound by this one particular image, that's a great way to connect with Marie going forward about your thoughts.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, what I think all artists, I'm I'm gonna speak for you just for a second, really appreciate is not like, hey, I loved it, but um really thoughtful feedback about uh what you saw opened your eyes to something new or something different, even if that's a year from now, uh that kind of feedback is just tremendous to receive.
SPEAKER_00: So um thank you.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thank you.
SPEAKER_00: So thank you for being here and enjoy Marie and enjoy yourselves.
SPEAKER_00: And uh this will be uh in our halls until about the end of July.
SPEAKER_00: So uh friends can come anytime to view the exhibition.
SPEAKER_06: Great, wonderful.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
SPEAKER_06: Thank you for coming.