"Career Waitress" Exhibition

I get somewhere around 20 emails a week for a new exhibition somewhere in the world. I'll try my bvest to post as many as possible, and then ocassionally I'll find one that is of particular intertest. This one caught my eye... perhaps because it is a bit on the lighter side of things --- plus, I've always enjoyed a good diner! Here is a note from the photographer, Candacy Taylor:

My photo exhibition, Dishing It Out: Career Waitresses Across the USA will be at COPIA in Napa, CA from April 28 - September 11. There will be over 50 photographs from my project on career waitresses along with their oral histories. It's a
beautiful show that I'm very proud of. I hope you can make it.

In addition to my exhibition, COPIA is celebrating the culture of the American Diner with two additional exhibitions. Counter Culture: The American Diner curated by Richard Gutman, author of American Diner: Then and Now, will feature diner furniture, murals, paintings, sculpture, photography and oral histories. The third exhibition, Blue Plate Special, by glass artist John Miller, features beautiful large-scale
sculptures of diner food.

The Member's Preview opening reception for all three exhibitions will be held next month on Thursday, May 25th from 5:30 - 7:30pm. If you would like to come, please RSVP as soon as possible so I can put you on the guest list (Remember COPIA is in Napa, not San Francisco).

Shahidul Alam's cover of Time magazine

From one of the greats of our industry, a past winner of the International Fund for Documentary Photography, a fellow advisor of the National Geographic All Roads Photogrtaphy Awards – Shahidul Alam, Founder of Drik Agency in Bangladesh....

"Lisa Botos from Time Magazine in Hong Kong, had done most of the hard work. Permissions had been obtained and the protocol arrangements had been made. The shoot was on. Having gone through the security hoop at the prime minister’s secretariat, I had settled in at the waiting room along with my colleagues photographer Aminuzzaman from Drik and writer Alex Perry and editor William Green from Time. That was when the trouble started. Officials rushed to usher me out of my seat. I was wondering what other security alert I had triggered off. My faux pas was somewhat more embarrassing. I had been sitting on the prime minister’s chair.

I had only been allocated a few minutes for the cover shoot, which went well despite one of my lamps blowing on me, but luckily the prime minister had agreed to our suggestion that we follow her on her trip to Pabna. I scurried to change gear for the outdoor shoot. Emptying memory cards, handing over existing images to Amin to take to the library, a quick visit to the loo, were all things that needed to get done, except that I was told “hurry, she is on her way to the helicopter.” Dumping equipment into my camera bag, handing over my laptop to Amin, I stuck my digital wallet into the pile and made a dash for it. The loo would have to wait. That was when a strong arm jutted out in the corridor. The security guard had prevented me from running into the prime minister! Alex calmly asked me if I had run into other heads of state before. “Only once” I had said, as I had nearly bumped into Mahathir while running up the stairs at the Mandarin Oriental in Kuala Lumpur. But that was a long time ago.

It was a long and eventful day and one I must write about, but for the moment you’ll need to settle for the cover image of next week’s Time Magazine (due on the 10th April 2006) and Alex’s writeup."