Jeff Curto's Camera Position

Camera Position 117: Photographer's Bookshelf

ASTRA International Film Festival, Sibiu

I will be having an exhibtion and giving a lecture on Oct. 16th in Sibiu, Transylvania, Romania. Here's the write up: 

The story of Kathleen’s relationship with the Romanian peasant life begins in 1995, when she was introduced to Romanian and Balkan folk dancing. The beauty of the rhythm and context of the dance must have made a deep impression on her, since she decided to dedicate many years of her (and her family’s) life to the research of the traditional life of the Maramures region in northern Romania. 

In her MFA in Photography thesis entitled A Contactful Life: Peasants Of Maramures, Romania, Kathleen Laraia McLaughlin portrays the rural peasant life in Maramures.  Her thesis seeks to capture the Old European peasant traditions before they become further compromised by contact with the West. Using an approach similar to visual anthropology, the photographs explore many facets of the lives of these Eastern European peasants including folk costumes, customs, religious ceremonies, crafts, funeral practices, wedding practices and subsistence farming techniques. Individuals’ portraits add a personal dimension. A narrative of the artist’s experience is included to deepen appreciation of how the four seasons affect life in the Cosau  valley where the town of Sighetu Marmatiei rests in the shadow of the Carpathian mountains. In an interview, Kathleen  declared that she fell in love with Romania. Even if she had not made this statement, her love is obvious to anyone who sees her photographic work.

ASTRA FILM  is pleased to present her photographs for the whole period of the festival, and to invite you to Kathleen Laraia McLauglin’s open lecture on Documentary Photography on On Tuesday, October  16th.

iPL in San Francisco

Indie Photobook Library at Gallery Carte Blanche

It was a terrific opening and weekend for those interested in photography books. My book, The Color of Hay: The Peasants of  M​aramures, was showcased, along with 70 other books. I participated in a panel discussion with Eric W Carroll and Todd Hido.

Enclosure

A Year of Days

Here's an article that was featured in Her Circle Ezine in 2006.

Upcoming portfolio in On the Afternoon

"After receiving a huge amount of submissions over the last couple of weeks we have finally found our winner; Kathleen Laraia Mclaughlin. As soon as we visited her website we knew we found the perfect work which we can feature in the upcoming publication. We don’t want to say much more about her work; that will be saved for issue number 1, coming out sometime in September/October."