Creative Visions Foundation/ Tribes in Transition Fund
5/2011
TRIBES IN TRANSITION EDUCATION FUND (TTEF), a nonprofit organization, was established in 2008 to educate and raise awareness in support of Indigenous Peoples. The current focus of TTEF is the international traveling photography exhibition, DIGNITY: TRIBES IN TRANSITION, which includes 60 black and white photographs by acclaimed artist Dana Gluckstein from her recently published book, DIGNITY, In Honor of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The focus of the exhibition is the newly adopted United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. TTEF is a 501 c3 project of Creative Visions Foundation and both organizations are based in Los Angeles.
The exhibition opened in Berlin at the Willy-Brandt-Haus Museum in February, 2011, and has had record attendance including numerous classes of children. Facebook messages arrive weekly from these students who have been moved by the exhibition which includes inspirational text by Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Native American Faithkeeper Oren R. Lyons.
www.tribesintransition.org
The United Nations has invited the exhibition to present in Geneva at the Palais des Nations from July 11 - August 31, 2011. The opening night will be hosted by the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights and coordinates with the annual UN session of the Expert Mechanism of Indigenous Leaders. The exhibition will then continue touring in Europe before beginning a U.S. tour in 2013. The exhibition is intended to educate the public and to urge governments to implement the UN declaration by inspiring hearts and minds.
Robert S. Sobieszek, the late renowned Curator of Photography at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, who collected Gluckstein's work for the museum, explained: "the portraits taken by Dana Gluckstein evidence a clear attempt to reinvest portraiture with that something that was lost some time ago. And that something is nothing less than the desire, or the requirement, to express the character and moral quality of the sitter in such a way that far more than likeness is suggested if not exactly revealed... Gluckstein bestows upon her sitters a sense of stilled dignity... The dispassionate remove common to most modern portraits is all but absent in these images; in its stead is a passionate complicity between artist and sitter that allows each subject to be memorialized with both beauty and grace."