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| May 05, 2024 |
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General News: Photographer Brings World's Poor to Light
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| A Moroccan widow photographed by Neuman |
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| Mary Ann G. Neuman |
June 28, 2007
When Cornwall photographer Mary Ann G. Neuman travels the world she carries her camera equipment and an eye that is drawn to the world’s disadvantaged people.
“I was always attracted to the poor,” she said recently while sitting at the current exhibit of her photos at Cornwall Town Hall. “I was just appalled by the poverty, seeing how people in this world can’t afford to live here. It’s just not right.”
Some 18 years ago, this former sociology professor decided to pursue a long time dream to become a photographer. The first place she went was the Masai country in Kenya, where she backpacked with a friend and took pictures of the people, who she said were “poor but not impoverished.’
Since then, her travels have taken her to Eastern and Western Europe, northern Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and even the North Pole.
In the exhibit you will find some of the people she met. A lone Jamaican boy in a light brown uniform is one of 180 school children who asked the roving photographer to take their photos. Mary Ann photographed each child, printed up photos and shipped them back to the school.
In Pamplona, Spain, Mary Ann caught a young man sleeping on a public bench. In Poland, she found a young girl playing an accordian for spare change. A Thai woman leans out the door of her house in another photograph in the exhibit.
While perhaps somber in their message, Neuman’s photographs are alive with the colors – and the love – of life. A widow begging on the street in Morocco sits in front of a brilliant blue wall that can’t help but lift the spirit.
Mary Ann sees the widow as a reflection of how Moroccan society treats women in general. “These women have no education, no resources other than begging,” she said. “On so many levels it is so, so wrong.”
Neuman says that people are attracted to her photos because they are exotic and she wonders if they would have the same response to poverty and hunger on their doorsteps.
“There are hungry people right here in Cornwall,” Mary Ann said, “and we just step over them. ”
Be sure to stop at Town Hall to see “Somebody’s Sister,” the title of Neuman’s show. It is open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, until July 13.
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