BY JOANNA MARSH
When Jennifer Trafton started thinking about her next children’s novel, she began picturing a young Don Quixote who saw the world a little differently from everyone else. And like Don Quixote, this character—an eight-year-old boy named Henry—would have a quest to fulfill: to share his vision and his artistic gifts for the benefit of the wider community.
TEXT AND PHOTOS BY MANUELA THAMES AND BECKY SCHAUER
The specifics of the controversy over the Dakota Access Pipeline dominated news cycles last fall, but now we bring you reflections from behind the scenes at Standing Rock where our contributors learned much from their Native American hosts. Regardless of your position toward the pipeline, we hope you’ll listen and learn universal lessons along with Becky and Manuela.
BY JONATHON GEELS
In recent decades, as churches have fallen into disrepair, their previously significant impact on community development has waned. While they certainly still serve as both social and spiritual centers, they do not dominate the landscape as they once did. The grid of city streets has reduced their hierarchical impact, and often, the Central Business District supports many buildings of much greater scale. Even the megachurches, with their thousands of members and sprawling complexes and campuses, are often sited away from urban centers, isolated on large swaths of land in suburbia.
Photograph by JC Johnson & Story by Kami L. Rice
A real life scene has been turned miniature through the magic of photography. This miniaturized scene inspired a tiny fictional tale that invites you to discover the other stories hiding in this image. We invite you to explore the world with us, letting your imagination play along as you do.
By Marina Gross-Hoy
The Detroit Institute of Arts is a gem. It has one of the largest art collections in the United States, with objects spanning from ancient Mesopotamia to contemporary America.
The reason for my visit on a blustery March afternoon was to test Lumin, the museum’s brand new augmented reality mobile experience.
Interview by Linda Swan. Photos by Bradley Leach.
A conversation with Weléla Mar Kindred is a dance of kindness, openness, fierce intellect, and subtle movement. It was an honor for me to spend an hour getting to know such a rare soul. Weléla was born in Southern California but identifies strongly as a member of the Muskogee (Creek) Nation as well as of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
By Amber Kidner
Just before Christmas I had an opportunity to visit a small school in Delhi. The school that my children attend had begun to work with this school in various ways. My assignment was to photograph the children both at work and at play, as they inhabited their school space on that particular morning.
Story and Photos by JC Johnson
My first photo class, my professor taught me that a good black and white photograph has a pure black, a pure white, and every grey in between—a mantra I now repeat to my students. Just like with a cause that rallies people to the streets, a photograph is exposed with different variations of light in order to become a successful image. A good photo needs contrast. Without contrast, the image is flat, boring, and unmemorable. But too much contrast sacrifices image quality with loss of details and information.
By JC Johnson & Kami L. Rice
A real life scene has been turned miniature through the magic of photography. This miniaturized scene inspired a tiny fictional tale that invites you to discover the other stories hiding in this image. We invite you to explore the world with us, letting your imagination play along as you do. The world can always use more play.
By Holly Wren Spaulding
Despite my inexperience, what I made is beautiful to me, in part because it accomplished something I’ve strived for in my poems for a while: radical simplicity, quiet, and room for the reader to think about a single image or idea at a time. I also enjoyed engaging with the visual elements of these spare essences of language, seeing them as art objects as much as I see them as poems.
By Capucine Fachot
Lomography emailed me with a few of my favorite words: monochrome, purple, film. I was to test one of the two films they had received from Vienna. I chose to hike, and bring the light of the island onto my violet emulsion. Near Istanbul, the escape and I refused to make purple human.
By Kami L. Rice
We entered Bosnia by road as night fell. A full moon rose and threw a spotlight down on houses scattered like carcasses through the countryside.
So very many carcasses.
Empty inside, roofless, with charred stone walls marking a former existence.
Silent, somber, haunting, poetic testimony to tragedy.
What exactly had happened here?
Suddenly it all mattered.
