Outerfocus turns 60.
I hope that you are all well during what is becoming a very troubled time, on a global scale. I believe that there is a different future on the other side and this ‘down time’ can help us to focus on what that will mean.
This week I’m afforded the opportunity to talk with the very wonderful, Jane Baldwin about her long term project about women, culture, human rights and the environmental issues that threaten the communities of Ethiopia’s Omo River Valley and Kenya’s Lake Turkana watershed.
I’d rather not get into it here but this conversation has made me think. Especially about what else I could be doing moving forward. I very much hope that you enjoy this conversation and the stories and insight herein.
“They think that we’re not educated, but we know that whenever they open their mouths they say nothing but lies”
Jane Baldwin, an American artist and educator, uses black and white film and audio recordings to document her photographic work. Baldwin’s most recent project Kara Women Speak is a multi-sensory, immersive body of work about women, culture, human rights and the environmental issues that threaten the communities of Ethiopia’s Omo River Valley and Kenya’s Lake Turkana watershed. Her advocacy for the human rights and environmental concerns of the Omo River Valley and Kenya’s Lake Turkana watershed is based on her lived experiences in the field and represents over ten years of fieldwork—2005-2014.
Initially, Baldwin traveled to Ethiopia’s Omo River Valley as a photographer. Her advocacy for the human rights and environmental concerns of Ethiopia’s Omo River Valley and Kenya’s Lake Turkana watershed developed slowly and are based on her 10 years of annual travel to the region. These experiences became an entry into the issues and fate of the communities of the Omo River Valley and Lake Turkana watershed. The project has become an overlay of women’s stories told through photography, video, ambient sounds, and recorded interviews. Her goal has been to give voice to the vulnerable and reveal the humanity of the women and their communities whose stories might otherwise disappear.
Baldwin has been able to provide additional opportunities for the women’s stories to be heard—stories of fear and concern about their future. Since 2014, she had continued to work on behalf of the indigenous people of the Omo River through museum exhibitions and collaborations with international NGOs.
Baldwin is a founding board member of PhotoAlliance San Francisco, California;
2012 - 2018, a member of the board of directors of International Rivers, Oakland, California; BA English Literature, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington; photography, UC Berkeley, San Francisco campus. Baldwin resides in Sonoma, California.
© Jane Baldwin. Young Kwegu mother, Omo River, Ethiopia, 2005
Omo River, Southwestern Ethiopia, 2010
Aerial of the Omo River, Ethiopia, 2009