Betty Press

Africa in Images and Proverbs

Sept. 4 - Nov. 5, 2009

A proverb is the horse that can carry one swiftly to the discovery of ideas.” - Nigerian proverb

This proverb indicates how important proverbs are in African society to express the wisdom and philosophy of the African people. They were used, and are still being used to instruct members of the society how to think, how to behave and how to have a better life. They are the key to the understanding of African ways of life in the past and in the present.

I have been taking photographs in Africa since 1987. While living in Kenya for eight years I traveled all over East and West Africa recording, in black and white, special and unique moments in African daily life showing metaphor, wisdom, happiness, misery, humor, instruction, disappointment, praise, affection, ethics, and human interaction. These are the same qualities found and described in African proverbial language: thus the idea of coupling the images with proverbs. Proverbs are rhythmic, poetic, instructive, easy to remember and pleasing to hear. When connected with photographs the visual and tactile senses are also engaged. Together they can be a powerful expression of African life and the universality of human emotions, ideas, and behavior.

“One person is thin porridge; two or three people together are a handful of cornmeal” (Kuria, Tanzania).

ABOUT THE ARTIST: Betty Press recently returned from photographing in Sierra Leone where she was with her husband, a Fulbright Scholar and Lecturer at Fourah Bay College. In the USA she is an adjunct Professor of Photography at University of Southern Mississippi. She is best known for her photographs taken in Africa where she lived and worked as a freelance photojournalist from 1987 to 1995. Now living in Hattiesburg, Mississippi she photographs in the South as well as travels to Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, Cuba and Africa. She has had numerous exhibitions including one of African photographs in 2001 at the nationally recognized Southeast Museum of Photography in Daytona Beach, Florida. Her most recent shows have been at the Baldwin Photographic Gallery, Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro; the Art League, Daytona Beach, Florida; and Lycoming College, Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Her latest project, "Africa in Images and Proverbs," has been exhibited at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, Denver, Colorado and at the University of Miami, Florida and University of La Verne, California.

Her work has been selected in many juried competitions. Recent awards were received from Women in Photography, the Photographic Center Northwest, Seattle and the Art of Photography in San Diego. She had the honor to photograph Audrey Hepburn on her visit to Somalia as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in 1992. In 1999 her photographs were featured in a book titled The New Africa: Dispatches from a Changing Continent, published by the University Press of Florida.

Betty Press is a graduate of Nebraska Wesleyan University and studied photography at the University Of Michigan School Of Art, Ann Arbor. Her work is in several public art collections, including the Harry Ransom Center for the Humanities, Austin, Texas, Southeast Museum of Photography, Daytona Beach, Florida, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, and Stetson University, Deland, Florida. She is represented by Panos Pictures, London; Woodfin Camp & Associates, New York; Photographic Image Gallery, Portland, Oregon; International Visions Gallery, Washington, DC; Rahimatulla African Museum of Modern Art, Nairobi, Kenya; and A Gallery in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. https://www.bettypress.com/