Katelyn Curtis Blog Post

                                       

                                     Before Tomorrow: Yanik Willing

                                                            By:Katelyn Curtis




                           



                                   



                                   



        Yankee Willing chose a place that had just come out of a 30 year civil war and seeked to capture the people and lands that followed the post war. He singled out people that showed their current life situations or military personal surrounding the locations he visited. Also, he kept taking pictures of the future locations where companies wanted to build hotels and shops where mines once littered that area. Most of the photos ar singular with subject but feed the viewer with info with how they dress or what they carry. Even the backgrounds behind the subjects hold a lot of meaning as we see some some of the aftermath since the war ended. 


        The artist is choosing to show what once was left destroyed or effected from the civil war, but yet, the people are still forced to keep moving ahead and businesses planning on revamping the land to bring in tourist. Willing mentioned he realized how different the country was going to be economically, politically, and culturally after the end of the war. Sure enough, the reports had huge boom of tourist compared to the previous years and off Willing went for another two times, 8 weeks each, to recapture the after effect of him visiting the first time. After he had gotten all his photos he teamed up with a graphic designer to create a high quality newspaper to sell to people, symbolizing the contents on the inside are going to be apart of history. By getting 60 people to pay in advance he was able to self publish his own series that caught a lot of people attention.



         I think it was pretty a daring project that he took on and even went a further step to self publish the prints himself. The subject matter is compelling in the sense that I have never had to go through a point in my life were I have witnessed an civil war, or the aftermath, so to see these photos and how the people re doing after is very intense. These photos are probably scratching the surface and how the people are overcoming obstacles of the post war is still occurring and the country as a whole are going to have to come together to be one again. Willing mentioned that he will be returning.  Im very curious to see were his next adventure leads him.