African Portraiture

This week's Spotlight is from another member! Thanks to Chuck for putting this together. Have someone whose work you can't stop thinking about? Tell us why in an email — highlights@glass.photo.

I’m someone who has a lot of difficulty asking people if I can take their photograph. So when I look at the work of Lionel Egger, I am baffled by its brilliance, its humanity, its compassion, its connection. How does he do that? How does he make his way to these distant places in Africa and connect so quickly, so deeply, so beautifully, with the people who are in front of his camera?

To have a celebrity sit for you in your studio, chat with them to establish a rapport and then make their portrait, well, that’s one thing. But to arrive somewhere you’ve never been, where you don’t speak the language, and be able to create images such as these? Well, that’s a whole other magnitude of thing. That’s an artist at work.