SPANISH FORT, Ala. — A picture might say a thousand words, but when the image is paired with the subject’s own account of what it is and means to be hungry, the result is more likely to leave you speechless.
San Antonio artist Michael Nye’s “About Hunger and Resilience” opened Thursday at the Eastern Shore Art Center in Fairhope, putting faces with personal stories of hunger.
The photography and audio exhibit is only the first step in a five-week awareness campaign, however, intended to help Baldwin County residents look past stereotypes of hunger and see clearly the people and lives it affects.
The Fairhope museum will host “It’s About Hunger… Physical, Emotional and Spiritual” from 10 a.m. until 1 p.m. Oct. 14.
The series of lectures delivered by local professionals on the various types, causes and impacts of hunger will feature the following speakers, expected to deliver 20-minute messages:
“We put this program together to help the community at large better understand how the system works, and who understands better than the very agencies that work together to address hunger in our area every day,” said Deann Servos, executive director of Prodisee Pantry.
The Spanish Fort-based emergency food and assistance organization developed the five-week series of events in tandem with the exhibit to boost community awareness about hunger and its local impact.
Future events include a chef’s challenge as well as a 5K and fun run designed to help the pantry continue providing some 175 families in crisis across Baldwin County — or about 10,000 people annually — with roughly $120 worth of nutritious fresh, frozen and staple groceries each week.
“If you have people in the community who deal with the different avenues of hunger on a daily basis, we’re hopeful that bringing them together in one place at one time to have this discussion will really bring Michael’s exhibit home and help people realize we’re not talking about people in remote parts of the world.
We’re talking about your neighbors, the people you sit next to in church on Sunday, and the people you nod at in line at the grocery store,” Servos said.
Each three- to five-minute story featured in “About Hunger and Resilience” is the result of as many as 10 hours of interviews Nye conducted over three days in which he asked each participant to share his personal struggles.
He then took their portraits with a Civil War-era camera, and visitors to the exhibit can wear headphones and hear first-hand accounts of the underlying reasons for and personal battles in overcoming hunger.
“This is not about homelessness or poverty. It’s about the human condition, and it’s as much about what brings us through the difficult times as the struggles themselves,” he said.
Nye’s interactive, traveling documentary debuted earlier this year at San Antonio’s Witte Museum, attracting an estimated 15,000 viewers. The show, which Nye said has been visited by no fewer than 50,000 people in eight cities to date, is booked solid for the next two years, but he wanted to bring the exhibit to Baldwin County because the four stories he found here during his four years of research are integral to its message.
“It’s about what we all share as human beings. It’s about being useful and contributing. It’s not about ‘them’ and ‘us.’ It’s about life being complicated and fragile,” Nye said.
The interactive photographic and audio exhibit concludes Nov. 12 at the Eastern Shore Art Center, 401 Oak St., in Fairhope.
For more information, call 928-2228 or visit www.esartcenter.com.
For more information about Prodisee Pantry, call 626-1720, or visit www.prodiseepantry.org.
Editor’s Note: This is the third in an ongoing series highlighting “About Hunger and Resilience,” a national traveling exhibit that opened Oct. 8 at the Eastern Shore Art Center in Fairhope.
Coming in Oct. 13's The Bulletin, Fairhope Courier and Spanish Fort Sun: A recap of the exhibit’s opening reception.
