The Person in Front of You: Photographs from West Africa

Featuring the photographs of David Pace, SCU art and art history professor and Bay Area-based photographer, and Kathy Knowles, founder of Osu Children's Library Fund and creator of several African children's picture books, this exhibit will promote awareness of life in rural Africa. The vibrant images will captivate the eyes and the mind and invite you to contemplate the lives of those so distant from ours. The faces of men, women, and children stare out at you from their vibrant village settings connecting them to you while you stand in the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in downtown San Jose.

Photographers

David Pace
He has traveled around the world taking photographs of people in their natural setting trying to “really see individual lives in all their richness and beauty.”  Thanks to several different departments and institutes at Santa Clara University where he is an art and art history professor, Pace has been able to visit El Salvador, Cuba, and Africa and explore the unique balances between global and local cultures that these communities need to manage.  His art in this exhibit tries to tell the life stories of the people he met in Bereba, Africa.  “Each portrait is . . . a tacit agreement built upon honesty and respect,” Pace says.  “The camera is my intermediary and my witness.”  Pace has been a photographer for over 25 years, and his work was featured in many San Francisco and Bay Area museums..

Kathy Knowles
Kathy Knowles founded the Osu Library Fund and the Osu Children’s Library Fund, registered charities in Ghana and Canada. While living in Accra, Ghana with her family, Knowles read to her own children as well as children living in the area. She found and responded to this new public interest in reading by establishing several libraries and literacy programs. Thanks to her efforts there are now over 100 libraries in Ghana. She has also published children’s books translated in Dioula, a local language. The books, that come in a Red, Yellow, Blue, and Green series, showcase vivid color photographs of village life. What began as reading to her children and soon other local children, grew into a real desire for libraries and literacy programs throughout Ghana.
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Where and When is the exhibit?

Preview of the Art at the Exhibit
This is a sneak peek to what you will see at the photo exhibit. Each image has been cropped and resized. Please click on each of the photos for the high-resolution full version..