Fotograf Magazine

Wendy Ewald and the Children of Margate

The Toward A Promised Land project, realized over a period of 18 months by Wendy Ewald, the American artist, imparts a set of features characteristic of her specific conceptual work that is founded on collaborating with children, on experimental pedagogical methods and on using photography as a primary creative and pedagogical tool. The town of Margate in East Kent on Great Britain’s easternmost extremity, washed by the waters of the North Sea, provided the setting for the project. Its protagonists – four groups of children – would subsequently compare their experiences gained in the process. Thus, the project’s effect cannot be examined only in terms of its material results (for example through the presentation of large format portraits in Margate’s public areas, or the publication of the Toward A Promised Land book that includes photographs and original texts by the participants), nor only in terms of the “immeasurable” psychological impact it had on each participant’s consciousness. That is to say that, in the case of Wendy Ewald’s work, participants are both co-authors and addressees.