"The Face of Madagascar," a collection of more than 50 photographs taken by Janice Levy over a ten-year period on the island nation of Madagascar, is now on display for Black History Month at the Museum of Antigua and Barbuda. The show runs through March 12, 2006.
Levy, associate professor of photography in the Cinema and Photography Department in the Park School, has been in Madagascar six times between 1992 and 2001. Her work has been exhibited internationally and has been published widely in textbooks and magazines. She has taught photography at Ithaca College since 1987.
A regular visitor to Antigua, Levy also teaches photography courses there and has directed internships for Ithaca College students studying in the Caribbean nation.
The recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and a Light Work Grant, Levy is a 1992 recipient of the prestigious National Kellogg Fellowship Award. Under the auspices of the three-year Kellogg fellowship, Levy traveled extensively and developed a relationship with the island nation of Madagascar that resulted in six extended visits and two significant bodies of work.
"The Face of Madagascar" has been described as "a subtle blend of cultural insight and aesthetic beauty, a rare combination in social-documentary photography. The seamless integration of text and image reinforce each other. The truly unique power of Levy's photographs comes from her ability to avoid stereotypical images of the developing world, providing, instead, visual documents that emphasize our shared humanity - the hopes, struggles, joys, and frailties that are common to all human cultures."
