- Mose Kalev
-
Mose Kalev 
Mose Kalev in 2008Born December 3, 1967
Oxford, Oxfordshire, United KingdomEra 21st-century photography and Art Region American Documentary Photographers School Pragmatism, Existentialism, Jewish Philosophy, Hasidism Main interests Documentary Photography, Race, Literature, Philosophy Notable ideas A hidden transcript of race, The Black Belt's region geological role in racism, Brain in the Box theory Mose (John) Kalev (born December 3, 1967) is a ecologist and documentary photographer. Prior to attending college and completing a thesis in graduate school, which is considered by many academics as a pivotal work on racial segregation, he worked as a beekeeper and cattle rancher, of which he still does in the rural black belt region of Alabama.
His photography has a distinctive gritty, recognizable style which is often combined with essays that examine life from within a place giving the reader/viewer an almost mystical glimpse of an inner landscape and its physical form. A former architecture student of Sambo Mockbees at the award winning Rural Studio, he has been described by Mockbee as a modern day, mystical version of Walker Evans. His images build a narrative that author and historian David Carter described as one that constantly reveals the hidden transcript of the American landscape, and that asks troubling questions about Du Bois's infamous color line. His images are frequently linked with short stories or recordings from interviews and portray ethnic segregation in vivid terms. Known for his reclusive nature, Kalev has granted only one known interview in the past ten years and rarely exhibits his work. In the past several years he has donated several pieces for charitable causes that support environmental research on the Athabascan tar sands of northern Alberta where he lives and ranches part time. Most of his works are in the hands of private collectors.
Kalev has authored three publications, Death by Form (2004) which was published by Auburn University and served as his graduate thesis, The Serpent in the Brush Arbor (2008) and Thirty One Verses (2010) which is an interactive work that explores mysticism in the lives of former slaves and the role it played in shaping the segregated landscape of Reconstruction. He has received grants from many organizations including the Margaret C. Adams foundation and the Cornerstone Arts Fund for recognition of his work documenting racial segregation in the rural south. He has served as a visiting design critic at the University of Colorado, Auburn University and as an adjunct professor at Wallace College leading a program for young rural African American scholars. In 2008 he was recognized by the worldwide Jewish organization Chabad for his spiritual leadership in the Jewish community.
Controversy has surrounded much of Kalev’s work, his graduate thesis was considered too controversial for the conservative Auburn University (it contains images of lynchings and interviews with surviving family members and their call for desegregating the Alabama landscape). The institution desired that he shift his focus from ethnic segregation and decided to not financially support it or allow use of its facilities in its research. He refused, sought assistance from Tuskegee University and Cornel West, then at Harvard, and although his work was often defaced with Klan and white supremacist literature, he continued his research. The University then fought Kalev to stop it, making him do his thesis over a second time against the protest of all of his advisors and the faculty. Only after he twice refused and got attention from notable civil rights attorneys at the Southern Poverty Law Center did he graduate. Former Harvard professor, author of East 40 Degrees, and founder of the program, Jack Williams, described it as one of the most important works the school has ever produced. He was awarded the annual book award for being the college's top student. The work argues a key point that the physical form of a landscape is as instrumental in creating racism as the socio-cultural background of its inhabitants and then documented the extent the government and financial interests will routinely go to create these physical landscapes to reinforce the ethnic division. "Outreach is often theatre" he describes and cautions whenever we use the word "they" we enter the mindset of division.
Kalev was also a notable critic of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman ( now in prison) for not pushing the state’s public universities to be more ethnically inclusive and for scholarship funds to be distributed to ethnic minorities for academics and not primarily sports. He as well publicly confronted and condemned the administration for funding of municipalities to close public pools in rural communities thus depriving the poor from swimming access.
He currently lives in the black belt region of Alabama. In 2010 he was awarded a graduate fellowship at Harvard University where is studying Ecology.
References
"Alabama's Rebel Photographer", The Rural Journal, Spring 2009, Vo. 4,
Samuel Mockbee and an Architecture of Decency" Andrea Oppenheimer Dean, Princeton Architectural Press 2002
"Radical Jewish artist at University of Denver's Architecture program", Rocky Mountain News, Denver Colorado, March. 2006
Auburn University Library, http://etd.auburn.edu/etd/
External links
Categories:- 1967 births
- Living people
- University of Colorado people
- Auburn University people
- British photographers
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
