Towards a Promised Land

For more than thirty years, Wendy Ewald has put cameras in the hands of children, working alongside them to help record their dreams and realities in images and words. This life project has led Ewald all over the world -Colombia, India, South Africa. Holland, as well as numerous locations in the U.S. -- to work with children of diverse cultural backgrounds and situations. Towards a Promised Land is a commission by the London-based international arts organisation Artangel as the prologue to a promenade performance and film project entitled The Margate Exodus. Ewald has worked with twenty-two children who migrated to the British seaside town of Margate from near and far. Some of these children have fled countries afflicted by war, poverty or political strife; others have been affected by the simple facts of domestic upheaval from one town to another. With Ewald, they have learned to explore their imaginations and express their different experiences of displacement and relocation in the search for a better life. Over the past eighteen months Ewald has photographed the children and interviewed them about their past and present lives, as well as teaching them how to take their own photographs. The resulting case studies capture the children at critical turning points in their lives. Ewald's photographic portraits of the children have appeared as huge, iconic banners in various locations around Margate, including along the historic Sea Wall; the children's own projects and photographs formed an exhibition at a local Margate gallery. Towards a Promised Land touches some of the most salient issues confronting contemporary society today in the form of the displaced human being and his/her effect on the concept of nationhood. These issues are further explored in an innovatively conceived publication. Edited by Louise Neri, this "book of fragments" brings together Ewald's case studies, the children's own materials, and a host of interviews, writings and commentaries by prominent writers and artists on the contemporary search for a sense of place in a world of constant and turbulent change.