Daylight Magazine
February 27, 2009
Photography is an amazing means that can be used in the most diverse fields. The power of its visual communication can be incredibly useful from a social point of view, and projects like Daylight Magazine are a perfect example.
Founded in 2003, Daylight Magazine is the biannual printed publication of Daylight Community Arts Foundation (DCAF), a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the use of photography as a tool for effecting social change. It gives new meaning to documentary photography, collaborating with established and emerging artists, scholars, journalists and non-professionals, and has become one of the premier showcases for contemporary photography. You might be asking yourself which sort of collaborations they establish with non-professionals. Well that's the most exciting parts of their work, in our opinion.
In addition to publishing Daylight Magazine, DCAF's mission is to help underrepresented communities share their stories. There are so many unknown realities in the world we just don't know of, because nobody tells us anything about them. DCAF gives these communities the tools to document their reality through photography and communicate it to the world. It gives them cameras, dark rooms and digital imaging facilities in order for them to participate in global visual dialogue by producing images that tell the story of who they are, how they live and where they live. It's obvious that you can't give tools to people and not explain how to use them. And it's useless to have unknown communities shoot pictures and not have them displayed for everyone to see. That's why DCAF also organises photographic workshops and curates local and travelling exhibitions. We'd like to tell you about one of their projects. An example is often clearer than an explanation.
There is a small town outside Cartagena in Colombia, a fishing village, called La Boquilla. The community there used to be a slave colony that flourished for over 150 years. Now it faces drastic economic decline due to a variety of political and environmental issues. Photographers Roger Triana and Lorena Turner went there in the winter of 2005, and developed a camera distribution project to help shed light on the community's situation as well as illustrate its dynamic and vibrant cultural life. The camera distribution project involved ten residents. Their pictures as well as their portraits were displayed in an exhibit entitled "La Boquilla", which opened a window onto this small, virtually invisible Afro-Colombian community struggling to keep its heritage and independence against growing tourism and economic expansion. The exhibition has travelled to Cartagena, Bogotá, Los Angeles, New York, Portland, Oregon and Panama City.
Daylight Magazine has become one of the premier showcases for contemporary photography. The Foundation recently launched "Fundacion Imaginer" (www.fundacionimaginer.org) based in Panama City and is dedicated to the promotion of Latin American contemporary art and photography.
Daylight Magazine is always interested in any social initiative and project that matches its mission and are keen to collaborate with any individual or organisation willing to initiate and manage self-representative photography projects, using DCAF as an umbrella to apply for funding. Working with so many diverse photographers from all over the world, it has built a network of successful satellite projects.
The great thing about them isn't that they're successful. The great thing is that they are useful.
