AUNG SAN SUU KYI | BURMA From the series Justice: Faces of the Human Rights Revolution © Mariana Cook
Bernstein Gallery / Princeton University Princeton University 609.497.2441 États-Unis
The Bernstein Gallery is pleased to present “Justice: Faces of the Human Rights Revolution,” a collection of fine-art, photographic portraits of human rights pioneers from around the world. Photographer Mariana Cook traveled the globe to answer one question: Why do some people have the courage to look injustice in the eye while others avert their gazes?
Each black and white photographic portrait is accompanied by first-person accounts of how each of these human rights activists found their way into the field and what compels them to make it their life’s work. The portraits were shot with natural light, with most subjects seated before a simple backdrop. The results are unadorned, elegant meditations on the men and women who have been crucial in securing basic rights and safety for their fellow man. An underlying current running through their stories is a wellspring of optimism—the belief that injustice can be repaired, and that what is right will prevail.
This exhibition celebrates the publication of Cook’s Justice: Faces of the Human Rights Revolution (Damiani, April 2013) with a forward by the late Anthony Lewis, a longtime columnist at The New York Times.
LUDMILLA ALEXEEVA | RUSSIA From the series Justice: Faces of the Human Rights Revolution © Mariana Cook
ABOUT MARIANA COOK
Photographer Mariana Cook, the last protégé of the famous American photographer Ansel Adams, is best known for her intimate character studies of people both in and out of the public eye. Her photographs are held in numerous institutional and private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the National Gallery of Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Bibliothèque Nationale and the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris, the J. Paul Getty Museum and Los Angeles County Museum in Los Angeles, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. Her previous publications include the monograph Manhattan Island to My Self, and much-acclaimed portrait books Fathers and Daughters, Mothers and Sons, Generations of Women, Couples, Faces of Science and Mathematicians. In 2007, she departed from her portrait work with Close at Hand, a collection of still lifes, landscapes,and light abstractions. She lives in New York City with her husband and daughter.