LETTERS

I enjoy reading American Visions very much. I learn so much just by reading your pages. Can you include more information on the Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr. Art Fund (June/July 1999)? How can artists be considered for working grants?

Barbara T. Davis Middletown, CT

Editor's note: Before an artist is considered for a grant, he or she must have achieved a distinguished record of professional activity and accomplishment as well as evidence that his or her work has maintained a high level of proficiency. For more information, contact the art fund at 99 Hudson St., Eighth Floor, New York, NY 10013, (212) 219-923 7.

WIDER EXPOSURE

I noticed your striking black-and-white photo-essay photographs in the April/May 1999 issue of American Visions while browsing at our local public library recently and thought you might well be the American contact that a black Brazilian photographer is looking for.

While in the state of Bahia, Brazil, this past February, working on my Ph.D. dissertation for the University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana), I met a serious black photographer named Lazaro Roberto Santos. He has taken on the task of documenting the lives of African-Brazilians in the Salvador metropolitan area. He is a product of this most African of Brazilian cities and knows it intimately. I purchased several of his color photographs of various annual festivals, many based on traditional feasts in the Yoruba-syncretized Catholic religion called candomble, for my own project. Santos' main interest, however, is in social photojournalism in black and white, which is why I was immediately struck by Adger W. Cowans' photographs in the AV article "Heroic Feelings."

One favor he asked of me before I left for the States was to put him in contact with African-American professional photographers (or serious amateurs) with similar interests, not something I in educational psychology could immediately come up with names for!

Paul Sundberg Urbana, IL

Editor's note: Many thanks for the reference. Three organizations of black photographers--the Exposure Group in Washington, D.C., Kamoinge in New York City and Sistagraphy in Atlanta--immediately come to mind, and we will facilitate the connections.