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Friday, July 12, 2002

By Dave Gordon, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

For Kerry Stuart Coppin, the catalyst came while traveling in Dakar, Senegal, where he became fascinated by the notion of exposing contemporary images of urban Africa to Western eyes.

	'Fellowship 2002' WHERE: Silver Eye Center for Photography, South Side. WHEN: Coppin will lead a free discussion about his exhibition images at an Artist's Informal Gallery Talk, at 7 p.m. today. A screening will follow of more than 460 slides submitted from around the country for Fellowship 2002. The main exhibition, comprising more than 20 of Coppin's images and one photograph by each of the 16 honorable mention recipients, is open until Aug. 17. INFORMATION: 412-431-1810.

His photographs recently won the "Fellowship 2002" competition at the Silver Eye Center for Photography.

A resident of Bal Harbor, Fla., Coppin bested 88 other entrants, and received a $2,002 award as well as an exhibition in the main gallery of the South Side gallery.

His subject matter deals with the intersection of people of African origin with Western thought, culture and political structures. "If the West's view of Africa can be reconstructed through photography to contribute to the West changing its interaction with the continent ... that may prove a powerful catalyst for social change."

Coppin traveled to Senegal and Cuba, photographing their black communities in recognition of an estimated 150 million persons of African ancestry in Latin America.

"Right now there is so much chaos in the African communities -- in the Old World and the New -- and I am advocating that the visual arts may have a critical place in elevating our communities. It seems to me that this is a subject almost entirely ignored by international media," says Coppin.

The photographs offer a look at a diverse palette of local characters against a backdrop of urban Havana, Senegalese graffiti, desolate rural fields and narrow shantytown streets.

The 49-year-old African American, who began taking photographs when he was in the 10th grade, received his bachelor of fine arts degree from Rochester Institute of Technology in New York and completed a master's at Rhode Island School of Design. He's an assistant professor in the Art and Art History Department of the University of Miami, Coral Gables, where he teaches photography and digital imagery.

"I am really interested in the idea of Africans born in the western world, the notion that the lives of people in such disparate places as Africa and even Asia are the products of Western thought and culture."

Though Coppin works with standard photographic equipment, many contest entrants used digital photography, a medium welcomed by both Coppin and the Fellowship juror.

"The big story of this competition for me was that digital work has come of age," says William Earle Williams, juror of the Fellowship prize and professor of Fine Arts and curator of photography of Haverford College, in Haverford, Pa.

"Almost every 50 years during the history of photography there have been significant changes in the technology of photography. Digital represents the next change," says Coppin. "I welcome it because it provides significant enhancements in the level of control and versatility. It is more efficient than previous forms, and will be the state of photographic practice by the end of the decade."