by Stephanie Hornbeck

Seventeen of David Whitman’s color photographs, taken primarily in a Rio shantytown and a remote village in Bahia, Brazil are presently on view at The Musical Offering in Berkeley. The photographer has chosen these images—mostly portraits of one, two, or three youths—from among hundreds of photographs shot on three different trips to Brazil.

Whitman’s photographs evoke a gentle world. Beneath leafy trees in sunny, seemingly carefree settings by the sea, warm smiles and bright eyes engage the viewer directly. In one photo, a young boy wearing a straw hat and smiling broadly, leans against a Matisse-blue plaster. In another, a child crouches on a wooden dock with a circular fishing net outstretched over docile dark green water.

Whitman focuses on the inner warmth and outer beauty of his young subjects, separating them from their often sad circumstances. In one image, two bare-chested young men lie face up on white sand and wrestle while laughing naturally.

One striking composition illustrates two boys facing each other but with faces turned away, the forms of their dark, bare torsos partially in shadow against the bright white backgound. Another depicts a grinning boy, perhaps six years old, hands gripping the perimeter of a large rusted vessel, a subtle allusion to the poverty of his surroundings.

Whitman was recently notified that he is one of 30 award winners (out of 20,000 entries) in National Geographic’s annual photography contest. His photo, Barquinho, of a young boy on a little boat—among those on display at The Musical Offering—will be published in the January 1994 issue of National Geographic Traveler.

Cups, October 1993

Stephanie Hornbeck is now a conservator at the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC.