Towards a Promised Land

For more than 30 years, Wendy Ewald has put cameras in the hands of children all over the world and helped them record their dreams and realities in images and words. "Towards a Promised Land" documents her work with 22 children new to the British seaside town of Margate. Some arrived fleeing countries afflicted by war, poverty or political strife, others by following their families from one town to the next. Over 18 months, Ewald photographed her subject-artists and interviewed them about their past and present lives, while teaching them how to make their own photographs. The resulting case studies capture the children at critical turning points in their lives. (Ewald's photographic portraits of the children have appeared as huge, iconic banners around Margate; the children's own projects formed an exhibition at a local gallery.) Through these displaced human beings, "Towards a Promised Land" touches some of the most salient issues confronting contemporary society. This "book of fragments" brings together Ewald's and the children's work with a host of interviews, writings and commentaries on the contemporary search for a sense of place in a world of constant and turbulent change.