That is, the weekend of the LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph. It is kind of a big deal in the photography world…

I had the opportunity this past weekend to stop in on almost all of the photo galleries/exhibits that are set up in different venues around Downtown Charlottesville. For those of you who are thinking “oh darn! I missed the Festival!” fear not, because many of the images will be up until the end of June and into July. The Festival weekend is centered around workshops and talks given by the photographers. [One of these years, I will buy myself a full-access pass and attend everything!!]

Some of the photographers that I took note of are:

* David Doubilet – underwater photography (location: hanging banners on the mall)

* Lynsey Addario – photos of Aghani women suffering under cultural norms (McGuffey Art Center)

* Stanley Greene – war photography, used a Leica and film (Bank of America’s side room)

* Alex Webb – international street photographer (Second Street Gallery)

There are many compelling photographs on display. I am drawn more to photojournalistic work, but everyone has their own preferences. Addario’s portraits of disfigured and shunned Aghani women is probably the most heart-wrenching body of work. Many of the Festival’s exhibits cover war and disease, but to see suffering caused by cultural beliefs, by family members, is really hard to comprehend.

Above is an American male viewing one of Addario’s portraits. This one in particular is of a girl, who is about my age, that was brutalized by her husband when she tried to escape for help after beatings. He and several other men held her down in a remote spot while her husband cut off her ears, nose, and hair. She was married at 12 years old to a Taliban fighter. She has since been in a women’s shelter and come to the US for reconstructive surgery.

I wonder what the man seen above thought of Addario’s portraits.

Above you can see one of David Doubilet’s banners hanging above street vendors.

The two photos above feature work by Bruce Gilden. The top photo is looking into a window at the reflection of the wall behind me. And the bottom, of course, is his exhibit. You may find his work on the wall that flanks the movie theater downtown.

Above is a photo outside of the National Geographic exhibit located in an available space below the Water Street parking garage.

Central Virginia has a rich history in photography. I want to say that this is the fourth year that the LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph has been held in Charlotesville. (I missed it last year when I was in Costa Rica for my internship! I was pretty sad to be missing out.)

About the same time the Festival was getting into gear for its first debut, I experienced a radical personal life moment. These two events being a bit coincidental and yet completely unrelated. For the first part of college, I was pursing the nursing major and had entered college dead set on becoming a nurse. I reached a point when I realized that my kinesthetic learning style did not, at all or in the least, go well with a major so heavily based in lecture and textbooks. It all came to a boiling point one day and I remember calling my mom, from the east campus ISAT balcony that overlooks main campus and the valley, in tears and telling her that I could not continue pursing that major. It just was not for me and so I switched to studio art/photography. Well, the rest is history…. I graduated with my BFA and now I am toting around a Canon AE-1 Program, a Canon 5D Mark II, a Canon EOS Rebeli XSi, and a Canon point-and-shoot somethingorother. I might be slightly obsessed with Canon, oh and photography…. 🙂 I have a street photography self-assigned project in the works!

Here are a few more photographs from the weekend:

Here is a doodle I did on my friend’s iPad:

Photos to come…