Don't miss DignitySF!

Get more information (AND TICKETS!) to the event here.

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DIGNITYL.A. Auction Preview

Nuru Project is thrilled to partner with LA+acumen on the DIGNITYL.A. photo auction in support of Acumen Fund on February 21st. 

The DIGNITY exhibition has now shown more than 20 times around the world, helping to raise more than $250,000 for Acumen Fund. Our hats go off to the +acumen chapters that host each event!

You can purchase tickets for DIGNITYL.A. here. In addition to many other prints for sale, the following prints will be auctioned: 

print by Kevin Tachman

print by Kirk Mastin

print by Rodney Dekker

Nuru on Fab!

Check out Nuru's Fab sale benefiting Hurricane Sandy through tomorrow afternoon! 

Rising Back Up in Sandy's Wake

ALL PRINT SALES ON NURU'S SITE SUPPORT THE AMERICAN RED CROSS THROUGH 11/18

My wife and I live on the twentieth floor of a Manhattan high rise. As Sandy approached New York City last weekend, we stocked up on essentials and awaited what we expected would be another overhyped storm. Truth be told, we were unprepared for what came next.

After three nights, we finally packed up the dog and cat to go stay with a friend in Brooklyn who had power and water. Just before leaving, we came across an elderly neighbor from the 17th floor scaling the stairwell after walking her dog. I winced to see her in the dark, flashlight in hand, so short of breath. A fit and proud older woman, she declined assistance. But seeing her cope without elevators made me realize how reliant we are on elecriticity in vertically-built Manhattan.

As we rode past darkened buildings en route to Brooklyn, we asked our cabbie to turn on the radio. We hadn't had access to media since the storm. Our hearts sank as we heard about communities destroyed and lives lost across the region. One uplifting story came out of Bellevue Hospital. Caught unprepared for the storm, doctors and nurses formed a human chain (photo above) up a stairwell much like the one in our building, passing jerrycans of fuel up to a generator on the roof to keep power running to patients in need. 

Our hearts go out to all those suffering in Sandy's wake, from Cuba to the Jersey Shore. Joining the Sandy relief efforts, all print sales on Nuru Project's website through Sunday, November 18th will benefit the American Red Cross.

If you are considering giving a Nuru Project print as a holiday gift, this is a great opportunity to support an important cause in the process.

- JB

Art as a Promise for Always

Art as a Promise for Always

A post from the blog of education specialist and Nuru Project customer Emma Nelson

There are no rules, really, in buying gifts for a loved one. It isn’t always easy to think of what to give on birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays, but here at The Literary Man, we believe that gifts should come from a place of creativity, taking in all there is to know about that person and buying or creating something that is a keepsake, something that is special. Usually for us we tend toward buying a book, but sometimes for big occasions or special moments, we need to go beyond the carefully selected story. This year, for us, the next level meant the purchasing of art. There is something permanent, something slightly risky and terrifying in buying a piece of visual art as a gift. Even if you, the giver, feel connected and strangely moved by it, who is to say if the receiver will feel the same? It is this risk, this partial exposing of yourself, that makes the gift so valuable, so important, and so essential. In love as in art, we give part of ourselves, and in return, expose our inner selves. In this, we open our lives to the most wondrous of possibilities.

Over the years, The Literary Team has amassed quite a collection of art. Our walls are covered with photographs and paintings done by friends and family mixed with items we’ve collected at flea markets, galleries, and thrift shops. This year, to celebrate a certain milestone, we began and ended our search at the always inspiring Nuru Project, which “sells photojournalism prints to support compelling non-profits and storytellers.” JB Reed, Founder and CEO of Nuru Project writes, “I started Nuru Project to share my favorite form of human expression, photo storytelling, with as many people as possible.” In our search for the right print, we wanted something peaceful, something we could wake up looking toward, something that would make us smile.

At Nuru, each photograph comes with a hand written story by the photographer, sharing some insight into the process, the subjects, or the history behind the image. This simple act moves the photograph from straight documentation to story telling, and as story tellers, we couldn’t love this more. 

“Stilt fishing is difficult work. To begin with, the stilts are uncomfortable and fishermen must perch there for hours at dawn and dusk, requiring great patience. Add to that, the fishermen never know whether the tiny fish they stalk will come around their stilt. And then there was the 2004 tsunami, which destroyed the fishermen’s stilts as well as their homes. The stilts have been rebuilt though and the traditional skill that has passed from father to son lives on. Truth is, fishing usually bores me to death. But on this day, the lure was irresistible as the clouds mixed to a color I’d never seen before. So I offered some cigarettes to the fishermen as a thank you and waded out to get my shot.”

For us, the image of the fishermen and corresponding story conveyed hope, healing, and above all else, peace. We wake to this image and know that we can go on; we know that our daily struggles of finding agents, finding publishers, finishing that last line of the manuscript are small fish to fry next to the momentous process of rebuilding that the men in the photograph completed after the tsunami. We look to the photograph with hope, with joy even in the expression of happiness on the man’s face.

And so for us, this process of buying and finding art is part a search for beauty and part a burrowing into our place and putting down roots. We give art as an exposure of our deepest selves as if to say, “I give this to you as though I am giving a part of me, and with this gift I am giving you a promise of always.

The Individual is Shaped by the Collective

Women's Rights Advocate Judith Bruce on her Nuru Project print

JB:

What moves you about Espen Rasmussen’s print?

 

Judith:

I’ve lived a lot in Middle Eastern and Muslim countries and one of the things I’ve always appreciated about their religion is that it’s low-tech. Not a lot stands between you and your god. It’s one reason Islam spread so rapidly. You only need to know which direction Mecca is and you have a direct relationship and you can confirm it ritually five times a day. It’s available to everyone. You don’t need a pontiff  or a physical church. You just need a matt that sanctifies the space. I think it’s amazing that all over the world at a certain moment, people just stop and pray.

* Get $20 off Espen's print with code Espen_Launch through midnight EST Monday, October 8th *

 

JB:

Are you religious?

 

Judith:

I think people have to have ways, over and over again, to make the day their own. Otherwise, they lose home base. There is so much meaningless temptation. I’m not talking about morally. There are just meaningless ways to use your time. Time is often wasted. And time is precious and people are precious, so religion for many is an anchor. It helps them honor, shape and structure time.

 

JB:

How do you honor time?

 

Judith:

I have tea. I have a few prayers that I say. But it’s a real challenge. 

JB:

Do you feel this photograph relates to your work on women’s issues?

 

Judith:

The photograph speaks to the power of collective humanity. Each individual person has made a decision to be there, but they’re doing it with company. The fact that they’re praying with company has to be much more powerful for them. They’ve lost, but they can confirm what remains. There is unison.

 

I think a lot of what happens in western thinking is that people believe in the individual. I believe in the individual, but the individual is powerfully shaped by the collective. The Civil Rights movement and the core of the women’s and girl’s movement is to create a community among ourselves. What society does, when it wants to marginalize anyone, is it isolates them. 

These people have been physically attacked, by the earth, but they’re not physically isolated. They have bonds that are completely theoretical. They’re praying to something they can’t see for a future they can’t know. They have a common construct that creates community out of them, despite the fact that large pieces of land and their loved ones and their homes are crushed under the shifts in the earth.

 

Judith Bruce has worked on women’s issues for 35 years at Pop Council, which conducts research and disseminates evidence to improve lives around the world. Judith has great hair, and a lot of it.

Renowned photog James Whitlow Delano joins Nuru Project!

James Whitlow Delano launches a print from his travels in Burma

JB Reed is the CEO & Founder of Nuru Project.

Our Polka Magazine Feature!

We're thrilled to be featured, including Kirk Mastin and Marco Trovato's prints, in Polka Magazine's latest issue. Special thanks to writer Laurence Butet-Roch for the attention. We're assuming it's positive (we don't speak French). :)

Food. Song. Dance. Accents. Art. Ritual. Tools. Religion. Values. Wisdom.

* Get $20 off any of Taylor Weidman's prints before midnight EST Saturday September 15th! Use discount code Weidman_Launch during Step 2 of Checkout. *

Photographer Taylor Weidman preserves culture.

Photographer Taylor Weidman's gift is making sure really important things don’t vanish.

Beauty Amidst Ruin

To celebrate our launch of Bear Guerra's work, we've marked 20% off his print from Peru and his print from Haiti until midnight EST Friday, August 10th.

Pep Bonet documents Empowered Women

In a Blink of the Shutter's Eye

Nuru customer Mitchell Baker sent us the following note on why he bought Lana Slezic's print for his girlfriend as a gift for passing the bar exam:

JB - I liked what the photographer had to say about the history of the theater / school and the access to education for women. Having seen my girlfriend go through law school and foresee what most professional worlds offer in terms of a life for women, it seems no matter how high certain populations climb they don't seem to ever reach the top. Yet the girl doesn't seem deterred. The image freezes her scarf in a moment that should have been ephemeral and would have been unnoticed if not for the camera capturing it. Two-dimensional images don't represent reality, they just can't capture the sounds, or the space in the way that 'being there' really does. But because of the ability to see so many things in a photograph, to study it like a book, we can see so much in the split second that should have vanished, and that is remembered and more powerful than most in-the-flesh experiences. 

Peek Inside Aaron's Apartment

Today, entrepreneurship guru Aaron Sylvan takes us into his Upper West Side NYC apartment to peek at his 8" x 10" Kirk Mastin print. 

We recently shipped our 100th 8" x 10" Mastin, a milestone we're very proud of. At Nuru Project, we're trying to turn the art world status quo, that value is created through scarcity, on its head. By selling more prints, we can raise more money for causes. We believe VOLUME = IMPACT. 

*TO CELEBRATE THE OCCASSION, WE'VE DISCOUNTED KIRK MASTIN'S PRINT 20%THROUGH MIDNIGHT EST FRIDAY!* 

Don't miss your chance to join the growing community of folks who've supported a cause through bringing Kirk's work into their home...

Introduce Yourself.

My name is Aaron Sylvan. I help early stage companies to build out their technologies and present themselves in an investor friendly way. I'm currently writing a book about the entrepreneurship world called Lemonade Heroes.

How'd you come across Nuru Project and why'd you pick Kirk's print?

I first encountered Nuru Project at the 2012 TED Conference.

There were two Nuru prints that really stood out to me. Fortunately, my girlfriend (shown in the photo with Aaron on his shelf) got one and I got the other. She got Espen Rasmussen's print of hundreds of worshippers praying on the site of their former mosque after the earthquake in Balakot, Pakistan.  I got Kirk Mastin's print of a solitary figure with her back to the camera, wading in the ocean. 

We both agreed that we liked the emotional impact and meaning of the hundreds of individuals if you know what it's a picture of, whereas the woman in the waves, I liked a tiny bit more because you don't have to know what it is to be touched by it.

And you're a photographer yourself?

I've been taking pictures all my life, mainly travel, architecture, and portraits. As a photographer, I'm generally loathe to put another photographer's work in my home, but the Nuru pieces are so striking. I've got mine proudly displayed.

Wedding Season in Libya

* To celebrate the launch of Monika Bulaj's print, we've discounted her prints 20% through midnight EST Thursday. *

Nuru Project CEO JB Reed explores wedding culture at home and abroad

I have a confession to make... I shoot weddings.

I'm a photographer by trade and weddings have provided a steady income as I try and get Nuru Project off the ground. While I enjoy the work and appreciate how much it means to my clients, I have worried what the photojournalism  community wouldn't consider my shooting weddings to be 'serious' work. 

But in the course of considering Monika Bulaj's stunning print from a Libyan wedding, I realized that she and I are in the same line of work! 

What grabs me about Monika's print is the light emanating from Saba. A ray of sun peeks through the roof in the next room. Tiny mirrors in her headscarf shatter it, scattering hundreds of points of light about her alcove. She is, quite literally, radiant. It sounds trite, but wedding day radiance is something I've seen dozens of times in the course of shooting weddings. And it's not just brides. It's mothers, grandmothers, sisters, and girlfriends. And it's not just women. Grooms, fathers, sons, and brothers also often beam with anticipation.

To be sure, the institution has its flaws. Child marriage is a huge issue around the world. In the United States, not everyone who wants to get married can. Same sex couples are currently waging a passionate campaign for equal marriage rights. And for those who can get married in the U.S., many lose sight of what makes the day truly special.  As we all know, not all beautiful weddings lead to beautiful marriages, and American culture is too absorbed with the former. 

During a recent wedding I shot in Brooklyn, the officiant asked those in attendance to imagine the countless other weddings that were taking place that day in cities and villages around the globe. For all the cynicism surrounding the wedding industry and the institution of marriage in the United States, she was reminding us that finding a mate and partner with whom to share life remains among our most fundamental human desires. When we find that person, we radiate light. 

Monika's print reminds me that this is true all over the world. 

- JB

JB Reed is Co-Founder and CEO of Nuru Project. If you're looking for him on a weekend during the spring or fall, at least until Nuru Project becomes a much bigger deal, he's probably off shooting a wedding. 

The Kids Are Alright

How 21 Jump Street Forecasts Success for Nuru Project

I met with a guy on Friday who runs a website that facilitates charity auctions. I shared with him my frustrations about non-profit funding, specifically grants. Many grants have lower acceptance rates than Harvard's undergraduate program. Why should a scrappy start-up spend limited time and energy applying for funding at those odds? 

I told him that I want Nuru Project to be funded in the course of our regular business. That is, I want to sell prints for a price and at a revenue share that supports not only the important work of non-profits and photojournalists, but our own organization as well. I don't want to depend on getting funding in one lump sum from a fickle institution. I want to be funded by our customers, through a share of each print they buy. The gentleman insisted I would nevertheless have to apply for grants, because there isn't a real "commercial market" for Nuru Project's prints. In other words, he doesn't believe there are enough buyers out there who will want to hang Nuru prints in their home for print sales to be our only source of funding.

On the walk home, I remembered the recent movie, 21 Jump Street. In the film, Channing Tatum is a former jock and prom king and Jonah Hill is a former geek who got laughed at by Tatum in high school for asking "the hot girl" to prom. Both are now baby-faced cops who get sent back to high school undercover to bust up a high school drug ring. Posing as students, they expect to fall into their old high school roles. Tatum expects to once again be received by the cool crowd and Hill fears being re-relegated to the nerds. Only when they get back on campus, it quickly becomes apparent that the students' values have changed. When Tatum and Hill graduated high school, it was cool to pick on nerds and be apathetic. But in 2012, the cool kids are those who are pursuing intentionally un-mainstream lifestyles: vegans, environmentalists, drama nerds. 

The movie presents a half-truth: while high schools are no doubt still full of mainstream bullies, the ranks of the "weird" kids are indeed growing. As Seth Godin writes in We Are All Weird, "We're coming to the end of a century of industrialism, a century when manufacturing, marketing, politics, and social systems were all in alignment, all organized to push us toward the center. The way of the world is now more information, more choice, more freedom, and more interaction. And yes, more weird."

Once they're out of school, the kids portrayed in 21 Jump Street are not going to fill their first home with vapid decor. They are going to want meaningful objects that connect them to the rest of the world, that tell powerful stories, that support social causes, and that express how they see the world. It's a silly example, but we at Nuru Project are betting that connecting with this new, growing community will make us plenty viable in the long run.

Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth

Celebrating Aung San Suu Kyi with Christian Bobst's print from Burma

Today, to celebrate Burmese democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi traveling freely abroad, we are officially launching Christian Bobst's print from Burma by offering 20% off all prints purchased before midnight EST Friday. Just apply discount code Bobst_03_Launch during Step 2 of checkout. 

To explore Aung San Suu Kyi's story in more depth, see the bottom of this blog post. For a dose of inspiration about Bobst's print, we turn to Artsicle Curator Dan Teran. Dan has made several Nuru prints available for rent on Artsicle's website:

"It's been a long time since I thought about material security. I'm almost embarrassed to admit it, but it's true.  After graduating college, I worked first in political consulting, and then in environmental law before departing career normalcy to take a role in a start-up venture in the art world.  The words “start up” and “art world” when used in conjunction sound inherently like an insecure gig.  Even still, I wasn’t concerned.  I took a paycut, and in reality have almost no job security.  I am at the whim of my benevolent founders, and a venture capital market that some economists would say smacks of the first tech bubble. But I’m not worried.  I never have been.  I have parents that provided a comfortable upbringing and helped me afford an expensive education.  If worse comes to worst, I can swallow my pride and leech off my family like so many millennials before me.  I hope it will never come to that, but in reality, it could.

When I first glanced at the image captured by Christian Bobst, I saw a group of men, monks, shoeless, clad in deep crimson robes, walking timidly towards a misty horizon. They are on a well worn path, traveled by foot, maybe bike, but certainly nothing larger. One man trails behind, whether from fatigue, or blissful indifference, I could not pretend to know.  

After reading Bobst’s handwritten description, the image changes. If you haven’t read it yet, now would be the time: 

I am moved. Something stirs. Indignation maybe?  These monks, devoted to a life of peaceful spiritual worship, stand defiant in the face of a military state.  Bobst’s shutter opened wide and the light rushing into his camera captured them in an instant filled with more uncertainty then I have ever known.  In the events described by Bobst, these men, committed to a life of deliberate material insecurity, beholden to the kindness of a struggling people,  turned down even that semblance of material security to send a message to an oppressive military regime.  I don’t pretend to know much about Burmese politics, but I respect these men. 

I appreciate the mission of Nuru Project and the involvement of photographers like Christian Bobst. His print is so much more than an image.  It is a mission, a memory, a charge. For me, it is a reminder.  In a post 9/11 world, we separate ourselves from the reality of our times with tweets about #FirstWorldProblems, #WhiteGirlProblems, and #ShitNobodySays.  We make light of dark times, if only to forget.  I appreciate Nuru Project for the continued light they shed on global adversity, and their commitment to support the most effective nonprofits in the world.  

If nothing else, when I glance at the images collected by Nuru Project, I am for a moment aware of the world beyond my computer screen."

_____________________________

(an excerpt from NPR program On Point's coverage of the Aung San Suu Kyi story) 

Burmese democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi spent 15 years under house arrest in her home country before being elected to Burma's Parliament in a remarkable political turn this spring. She has been traveling outside Burma (Myanmar) for the first time in years. Yesterday, the 67-year old Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and opposition leader became the first non-head of state to address both houses of the British Parliament. She got a standing ovation on her arrival to Westminster Hall and was introduced as "the conscience of a country and a heroine for humanity." She concluded her remarks by saying:

"During our dark days in the 1990s, a friend sent me a poem by Arthur Hugh Clough.  It begins, 'Say not the struggle nought availeth'... we can work together, combining political wisdom from East and West, to bring the light of democratic values to all peoples, in Burma and beyond."

  

 

Photoville

Photoville = Exhibits + Shipping Containers + Brooklyn. Come see us there this Thu-Sun!

En Route!

A Perilous Ascent

Producer Cooper Miller and I met yesterday to flesh out a video he is creating for Nuru Project. We brainstormed single terms about each of his favorite Nuru images, including Lana Slezic's print, which has drawn comparisons to M.C. Escher drawings. 

Cooper suggested the terms ascent and peril. That Slezic's girl is walking up stairs whlie returning to school after the fall of the Taliban suggests both her ascendancy and the difficulty of what lies ahead. Cooper also noted that we have an unimpeded view of the girl because there are no guard rails. Her path is perilous. She could easily fall off. And yet she strides confidently upward through her bombed-out shell of a school. 

To celebrate the launch of Slezic's print, we're offering 20% off all purchases of her print before midnight EST tonight. Just enter the code Slezic_01_Launch during Step 2 of checkout.

To further celebrate the launch, we bring you a second dose of reflection on Slezic's print from friend of Nuru Project and former Deputy Editor of CFR.org, Jayshree Bajoria:

You won’t allow me to go to school. 
I won’t become a doctor. 
Remember this:
One day you will be sick.

En Route!

Prints en route to Germany, Canada, CO, CA, FL, TX, NY, Utah, TN! 

Prints pictured (counter clockwise from upper left):
Bob Miller
Ami Vitale
Jody Macdonald
Lana Slezic
Kathryn Obermaier