(HUDSON, N.Y.) – “Lives Not Numbers,” an exhibition by documentary photographers Atish Saha and Bryan MacCormack, opens in the Back Gallery at Basilica Hudson with a reception on Saturday, June 24, at 5pm.

In their first collaboration, documentary photographers Atish Saha and Bryan MacCormack present a series of photographs to reveal the lives behind numbers reported in mass tragedies.

In 2013, thousands perished during the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh. Every year, thousands more are lost while migrating across the Sonoran Desert of Mexico and Arizona. The exhibition presents a series of photographs measuring lives lost in these two tragedies in numbers, statistics, and data points that dominate mainstream discourse about public tragedies.

Those who die en masse, especially the subaltern, are reduced to numerical archives. By reporting deaths as numbers, we devalue the lives lost and the lives they leave behind. In the aftermath, families search for the physical remains of missing loved ones. For them, closure may come in the form of a casket or may never be found, where physical remains are lost in rubble or a desert landscape.

The exhibition is a co-presentation with Left in Focus. Founded in 2012 by photographer and organizer Bryan MacCormack, Left in Focus (LIF) uses photography, multimedia and organizing to document social movements, generate cultural resistance, and collaboratively increase the capacity of communities to tell their own stories in creative ways.

[Editor’s Note: Left in Focus seems to have an anti-Israel bias; its website refers to “the Occupied West Bank, Palestine” and “Palestinian Liberation,” raising questions about the sophistication of its political judgment. While The Rogovoy Report promotes the work in this particular exhibition at the Basilica, inclusion of this item should not imply support for the overall mission of Left in Focus.]

 

Through its Back Gallery Series, Basilica Hudson is committed to expanding its visual art programming and experimenting with multidisciplinary, alternative and collaborative formats in the newly renovated 2,000-square foot white cube — located in the back of the Kite’s Nest building, accessed from the North end of the Main Building.

Basilica Hudson is a nonprofit multidisciplinary arts center in Hudson, N.Y., supporting the creation, production and presentation of arts and culture while fostering sustainable community. Founded in 2010 by musician Melissa Auf der Maur and filmmaker Tony Stone, Basilica Hudson makes its home in a spectacular solar-powered reclaimed 1880s industrial factory on the waterfront of the historic City of Hudson.

Weekend destination events comprise the core of Basilica Hudson’s music, performance, film, food and literary programming, alongside regular film screenings series, art exhibitions, and other community gatherings.