Sample from exhibition audio tour

The Sonoma Valley Museum hosted a solo show of portrait photography and film by photographer Jane Baldwin. The main gallery featured life-sized photographs of Kara, Hamar, Nyangatom, Dassanech, and Kwegu women, accompanied by stories printed on scrolls in their own words. The display captured the strength and vulnerability of each woman, holder of her ancestral wisdom. The exhibition gave voice to the women of the Omo River Valley of southwestern Ethiopia and northern Kenya.

Eye contact with the portraits and the stories told through oral traditions reveal their dignity. In addition to the portraits and landscape photographs, the exhibition featured cultural artifacts and the museum’s first offering of a smartphone-based audio tour linked to a QR code that offered guests the sounds of short interviews with each woman in her own voice. A Kara woman shared her concerns for the survival of her people in a film entitled Kara Women Speak. 

The life-sized images and stories led visitors to establish a profound human connection with the women featured in the exhibition. This connection, in turn, increased interest in programming on topics related to their humanitarian and environmental struggles. Audiences dove deep into the issues at a panel discussion with non-profit leaders from Survival International, International Rivers, the Oakland Institute and XX.

An artist talk with Baldwin and the exhibition’s guest curator Anne Veh also drew sold out audiences. An additional event featuring Baldwin along with photographers Lonnie Graham and Laura Sackett explored the power of portrait photography. Educational partnerships with Sonoma Academy and local elementary schools explored dispelled prejudices around indigenous cultures by reframing how different communities beliefs around nature as it relates to technology and development.

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