ArtPrize September 19 - October 7, 2012 | Grand Rapids, MI
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Artist information
Ryan Spencer Reed
Ludington, MI
Education
BA
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Ryan Spencer Reed

Artist bio

Ryan Spencer Reed (b. 1979) is an American photographer whose journey documenting social issues began after graduating from college in 2002 following a move to central and east Africa. Working in that region and covering the Sudanese Diaspora for nearly 9 years, Ryan has entered Sudan a half dozen times in addition to covering the mass exodus of refugees to Eastern Chad and Kenya. This work was widely exhibited in the States and abroad in venues such as the Field Museum, and the Holocaust Memorial Museum in DC among many others.. The Open Society Institute & Soros Foundation awarded him with the Documentary Photography Project's Grant to help this work reach additional audiences. While exhibiting and speaking internationally on the subject of Sudan, he is nearing the completion a long-term project on the hubris of power and the twilight of the American industrial revolution. A chapter of this work on Detroit was exhibited in last year's Art Prize, and finished in the top 50.
About the work
Title: Sudan: The Cost of Silence

Art form: 2-D

Medium: Photography

Year created: 2009

Description of work: "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to stand by and do nothing.”

In the wake of nearly three decades of brutal civil war, the population of South Sudan lies shattered and strewn across the Central and East African landscape. More than two and half million people have been killed and another five million have been internally and externally displaced by the conflict. As of July of this year, South Sudan has achieved its independence, seceding from its oppressors and has become the newest nation on the planet. Since January of 2003, however, a new exodus flooded the western border region of Darfur in Sudan with displaced persons fleeing the same regime responsible for the southern tragedy. Despite the fact that the United States has formally labeled this diaspora genocide, the killing continues unchecked, threatening to shed blood on every grain of sand.

The cost of doing nothing is one humanity can never afford.

Height: 9 feet
Width: 60 feet
Depth: 1 feet
Ryan Spencer Reed is showing at:

DeVos Place Convention Center DeVos Place Convention Center
303 Monroe Avenue NW
Grand Rapids, MI 49503

Venue location

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Artist resume