Professional Competition Focus #2

Each image is a layered digital photograph. It represents a larger body of work entitled,‘The Draftswoman’s Portal’. Each image is comprised of multiple photographic images initially interpreted from the Alexander Calder sculpture ‘Two Discs’. The initial interpretation had no particular relevance to the subsequent images. It was a series of visual cues that led me to create the narrative that ultimately describes the entire portfolio. The series is an ongoing project.

The series was a commission by Down Coruña, an association that works with young people with Down’s Syndrome. They wanted me to take photos of the boys and girls in relation to the building where they were developing their capacities, an award-winning building by a Galician architect: the architecture as the witness of their gradual progress. they asked me to take pictures that could tell another story about Down’s Syndrome. We are used to thinking about people with Down’s Syndrome as limited by the condition , but we don’t consider that there is much that they can do, particularly the things that everyone likes to do. The young people in the Association told me that they are always listening to music and dancing. The series shows a group of young people having fun and dancing, like other teenagers.

For nearly ten months, members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and their allies have been camped in opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline crossing their land and water. The estimated $3.78 bill project is nearly complete, crossing almost 1,172 miles. But the resistance has stalled development at the Missouri River. Although on it's face, the issue is the pipeline, the conflict runs much deeper and is steeped in generations of violent history. These are the people of the Battle of Little Big Horn and of Wounded Knee, who were driven to starvation by the loss of the buffalo and away from their sacred Black Hills. Police treatment of water protectors hasn't been out of step with this history. In military vehicles and body armour, police have indiscriminately used tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, percussion grenades and water canons in sub-zero temperature. Despite all of this, the pipeline is still unresolved and water protectors are still on the land. But wether the pipeline is completed or not, the groundswell created for this resistance will certainly have reverberations for industry and indigenous people alike. I spent a month and a half, over three trips with the people in the camps.

A country doctor and her calling "Good day, doctor! Good evening, doctor, voices of people of all ages greet her kindly as Floarea Ciupitu walks around the village. At 61 she has been a family doctor serving Gangiova, a village in south-west Romania for the past three decades. Ciupitu oversees roughly 1700 registered patients. On week days she sleeps above her practice in a tiny room, on an old hospital bed. At night, a tiny flashlight guides her way one store up to her modest accommodation, no electricity on the staircase. Romania has a population of almost 20 million. Doctors in rural areas are outnumbered by peers in cities two to one, while half of the population lives in the countryside. The healthcare sector is overrun with crises and never ending problems. In 27 years since the anticommunist revolution of 1989 the country has had at least 25 health ministers take office. Doctors, especially younger ones, are fleeing the country in search of better work conditions and career opportunities. The Romanian Health Ministry states there is a severe doctors shortage. While things may look a little better in the city, Romania's villages are plagued with a lack of access to healthcare. Family doctors are often overworked having to care for a larger number of patients than the recommended average. Ciupitu is living proof that, despite all the difficulties and the problems in a flawed system, there still are doctors who commit to their patients. She stands to help remember that being a doctor is a calling."