robinfarquharson
robinfarquharson
| Forum role | Member since | Last activity | Topics created | Replies created |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Member | Nov 17, 2012 (13 years) |
3 years | 3 | 0 |
- Forum role
- Member
- Member since
Nov 17, 2012 (13 years)
- Last activity
- 3 years
- Topics created
- 3
- Replies created
- 0
Bio
>1944 Born Black River, St. Elizabeth, November 2nd, to a long-established (c.1745) Scottish-Jamaican family.
>1954-57 educated at DeCarteret School, Mandeville, followed by public school in England.
>1963 joined British VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas/ ‘Peace Corps’). >Assigned to Nigeria.
>Began photography while working at the Museum of Antiquities, Ife, Nigeria.
>1964 entered McGill University; won prizes in annual student photo competition.
>Traded Portraiture First Prize for a Leica IIIF camera.
>Decided then on a career in the arts.
>1965 transferred to Rhode Island School of Design, class of ‘69.
>Dean’s List student, winning prizes in painting and filmmaking (“MM” 4-minute animated film on Marilyn Monroe won Best Film Under Three Minutes at 1967 Ann Arbor & Rhode Island International Film Festival).
>1968 signed with UNICEF to photograph (for final year school credits) the UN Relief Action in the Nigeria/ Biafra civil war.
>Photos from conflict relief published worldwide.
>1970 January, traveled the Sahara: seven weeks overland from Nigeria to Europe. Pictures published later in Popular Photography Italiana.
>1970 December, returned to Jamaica.
>1972 began photographing across the island for Jamaica Tourist Board.
>1974 became a freelancer and continued photography of Jamaica with emphasis on country life.
>1976 began long series of audio recordings (100 hours plus) with a former sugar estate worker, later transcribed to 400 pages of gross text.
>1994 twenty-four exhibition prints from THE OLD JAMAICA SERIES gifted to the National Gallery of Art.
>1999 sand-painting “Running Man” hung at NG Annual Exhibition.
* * * *
>Continues documentary-style photography of the island.
>Recently, since 2008, expanded scope of work to include social commentary: ‘statement photographs’ intended to portray contemporary Jamaica.
>Participated in several group shows.
>2011 interview, photographs & artwork featured in second issue New York University online publication AfroBeat Journal.
>http://afrobeatjournal.org
THE ‘OLD JAMAICA’ SERIES
“These photographs have their roots from a childhood in rural Westmoreland. My father Frederick had been a photographer with his own black & white darkroom in the 1920s and recorded many classic images of sugar estate life from the period. He first interested me in picture taking. In due course I took up painting but in the end considered photography a ‘more practical’ and equally satisfying means of picture making.
The project to photograph ‘Old Jamaica’ had its origin in studies of the history of art & photography at Rhode Island School of Design in the late sixties. The Stone Breakers, 1849, by Gustave Courbet, the paintings of Jean-Francois Millet and Vincent van Gogh became iconic images that I was able to revisit while traveling in Jamaica in the 1970s, as I came upon scenes that surprisingly were familiar as illustrations from my art history books.
The opportunity to ‘turn back the clock’ and make photographs of an earlier Jamaica proved irresistible. There was a sense of urgency too: Seaside mansions in Black River were already crumbling, Tinsmiths were giving way to plastic; boiled wet-sugar, mule-powered cane hoists and the hammering of roadside Stonebreakers, all were to disappear—while cotton tree canoes, donkey carts and Jackass Rope (tobacco) remain.
To try to capture on film these passing aspects of Jamaican culture, to record ‘history’ from present-day life, to make photographs that belie their age, this has been my pleasure with the camera.”
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