Wendy Ewald

The Transformation of This World Depends on You focuses on two related stories: the missionary vision of Amherst College in its early days and the legacy of that vision in the present. Founded in Massachusetts in 1820, Amherst's original charter was "to educate pious indigent young men of promising talents and hopeful piety … with a sole view to the Christian ministry." For more than a century, young Amherst graduates travelled-many with their wives and families-to far-flung destinations including China, Persia, India, the Middle East, Indonesia and Hawaii, on a mission to convert the "heathen" races to Protestant Christianity. This book compares their ambitions, fueled by religious zeal, with the approaches and policies of local charitable organizations working in Amherst and its surrounding area today.< br>In the first part of the book, historian Martha Saxton and photographer Wendy Ewald tell the stories of nine of these early missionaries, based on their research in the Amherst archives, employing photographs, etchings and documents that illustrate their difficult lives. In the second part, photographer Fazal Sheikh worked beyond the college with members of the Amherst and surrounding communities, many of whom had experienced economic and social hardship. Sheikh listened to the stories of immigration and struggle they were eager to tell, made portraits of each of his ten subjects and collected their family photographs. Thomas Keenan, Director of the Human Rights Project at Bard College, provides the book's introduction, in which he examines the work and attitudes of the early Amherst missionaries in the light of current human rights discourse and practice.

Kentucky, South Africa, the Columbian Andes--photographer Wendy Ewald has collaborated with children all over the world, but she has not always been able to display her work where the members of those childrens' communities were bound to see it. In Peace and Harmony documents Ewald's first public art installation, one on which she worked with a group of second, third, fourth and fifth graders at George Washington Carver Elementary School in Richmond, Virginia. The project culminated in the display of 29 billboard-sized photographic portrait banners hanging in 12 outdoor locations throughout the Carver neighborhood, each one marked with the students' own words in their own hand. Illustrations document the process and the installation, offering what amounts to a visual tour of its outdoor sites, and two essays are augmented by an extensive interview with the artist and responses from in and outside the neighborhood.