griot (gree-oh) n. - a storyteller and keeper of the oral traditions of family and village

Visual Griots of Mali combines the importance of storytelling with the power of the camera, engaging Malian youth to use images instead of words in a revealing process of self-exploration and expression. Forty-nine black and white photographs tell stories of life in Mali, West Africa, from the perspective of a new generation of visual griots.

The Visual Griots of Mali images are all by young amateur West African photographers, none of whom ever before held a camera. In 2005, a team of Malian and U.S. photographers, organized by the Academy for Educational Development, invited Malian students (aged 10-16) to tell their own stories, the way they saw them. Each received a point-and-shoot camera and was reminded to turn it off at night...there was no electricity in the village and the batteries weren’t rechargeable. The youth depict the day-to-day delights and duties of village life — a boy in an oversized Dallas Cowboys T-shirt smiles, one arm slung over a donkey’s neck; amid a crowd of children, a girl grasps a long wooden pestle and grinds shea nuts into shea butter; in the shade of a tree, a man naps outside on a woven mat, his radio blaring beside him.

The workshop was at once an exercise in photography, creative thinking, and leadership development. Taking ownership of the project and documenting their lives, the children have created a body of work that demystifies the myth of “the African Village” and engages our creative desires to understand the human experience. The villages captured in the photographs are Damy and Kouara in Mali’s Bwa country, near the Burkina Faso border. An agriculture-based society and minority ethnic group, the Bwa only number about one hundred and twenty-five thousand in Mali. These images now cut across language barriers and tell the students’ stories to the outside world.

Presented from September 7-November 25, 2007 at the World Financial Center Courtyard Gallery, New York, NY.

Co-presented with arts > World Financial Center.

Organized by the Academy for Educational Development, learn more at www.aed.org/visualgriots

Sponsored by Merrill Lynch. With additional support provided with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.