Museum showcases UNC grads' work

CHAPEL HILL -- As a family searched through trash for recyclables in a Mexican dump, Janet Jarman was taken by a distant look in the brown eyes of 8-year-old Marisol.

Jarman's camera captured the girl with her face glowing in the setting sun, smudges of dirt at the corner of her mouth and on the bridge of her nose. The photojournalist scrapped her other plans and went home with the family for the rest of the week.

That was 1996. For more than a decade, Jarman has followed Marisol and her family as they moved first to Florida and then to Texas in search of the American dream.

Jarman, a 1989 graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill's School of Journalism and Mass Communication, is among 31 former students featured in a special exhibit at the Ackland Art Museum that opens Friday.

The exhibit represents some of the group's best work over 30 years. Images from six highly accomplished photojournalists, including Jarman, are on display, along with mostly single photographs from 25 graduates and two student multimedia presentations created in Chile.

Jamie Francis, class of 1985 and now with The Portland Oregonian, captures a disappearing life on a historically black street in St. Petersburg, Fla.

Charles "Stretch" Ledford, class of 1986, takes viewers to Kenya, Mongolia and Zaire. Ami Vitale, class of 1993, brings the military tension in Kashmir to life along with the region's natural beauty. Andrea Bruce, class of 1995 and now of The Washington Post, shares moving images of U.S. soldiers and civilians in Iraq. Susie Post Rust, class of 1984 and a frequent contributor to National Geographic, captures life in isolated communities in Ireland and Pennsylvania, and shares the amazing story of nine children orphaned by AIDS in Uganda who lived together as a parentless family.

'A human face'

For Jarman, photographing Marisol's family has been an opportunity to share the emotions of a large issue: immigration.

"I always want to put a human face on the issue," she said by phone from her home in Mexico. "For immigration in particular, I've always felt that it's so easily viewed in a statistical manner. It's very easy, ... if it's not your everyday experience to deal with immigration, ... not to feel it."

She hoped at first to show the family's contributions in the United States and the struggles and anxieties they experienced that are common to all humans. Now, as Marisol and several of her siblings have families of their own, Jarman is following their struggle to escape from the cycle of poverty.

The Ackland exhibit is the first major joint project of the university's museum and journalism school. Barbara Matilsky, curator of exhibits at the Ackland, said she hopes the exhibit will highlight both the journalism school and the Ackland as a venue for showing photography, and generate discussions about the value of photography.

The exhibit is co-curated by Rich Beckman who has taught at the journalism school for 30 years.

"I think it's important for people to understand how photojournalists work and what the value of photojournalism is in a democratic society," he said.

Beckman said he has emphasized passion for the work and compassion for the subjects to the photojournalists who have studied with him.

"I think the students are very much deserving of this type of exhibit," he said. "You're looking at some of the best photographers in the world."