>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. [ Pause ] >> Mary Jane Deeb: Welcome, welcome to the African and Middle Eastern Division. I'm Mary Jane Deeb. I'm the Chief of the Division, and I'm really delighted today to be able to welcome Betty Press with her fantastic book, "I Am Because We Are: African Wisdom in Image and Proverb." We're really delighted to have her. She's come all the way from Mississippi, and it really is in tune with the things that we're doing here at the Library of Congress. Our division, as many of you know, comprises, or is responsible for 78 countries, 77 before, but now we have southern Sudan, so we have 78 countries. And our mission is really fourfold, if one can say. We're a reference team here in the Division. We assist researchers who do their work on one of the many countries or more that we're responsible for. We recommend materials. We develop our collections, so we're responsible for the collections here at the Library. We recommend, we select, we choose the books and the publications and the serials and the films and the photographs that have to be included in our collection. We also preserve those materials. When we receive them, we make sure that they're taken care of, that that are preserved for future generations, that they're not here just for us now, but that they will be relevant, also, to researchers who are not yet born. And the fourth thing we're responsible for is outreach, and that is making our collections known to others, but also making those 78 countries known to others. And we do that by ourselves making programs, discussing the countries that we're responsible for, the resources that we have, but also by inviting guests, scholars, researchers, photographers, painters, artists, musicians, who can speak about those countries even better that we can, and who can shed light on different aspects of the societies. So that people see the books, not just as three-dimensional artifacts, but really live representations, if you want, of what the societies are about. And, of course, not only do we have those wonderful collections and we host them in this, in those reading rooms -- we have 21 reading rooms in the Library -- but also our staff is superbly trained and skilled to do the work they're expected to do. And I can say that every one of the members of the Africa and Middle East Division is highly skilled, multilingual, traveled, widely traveled, and this enriches our collections. It enriches our programs, because it is through our staff that researchers can better grasp the importance of the collections that we have. So today, we have one member of our staff, Eve Ferguson, who is the Senior Reference Librarian for East Africa, who has invited Professor Betty Press to come and discuss her latest book, which is just off the press. So Eve will let us know a bit more about our speaker today. Thank you. [ Pause ] >> Eve Ferguson: Good afternoon, and welcome to our program. It's really a pleasure to have this program here today, as it was kind of a happy confluence of events that brought Betty Press to us. Her husband, Professor Bob Press, has been contributing interviews from Kenya to the Library over the past two years, and it just so happened that kind of simultaneously I heard from him, and I also heard from a good friend of mine, Tim Davis, who has International Visions Gallery, that Betty Press would be in town. I said, perfect. And so here we are. And I wanted to call your attention to the postcards that are in the chairs, which talk about the exhibition of Betty Press' photographs, which, the opening is this coming Saturday. So without any further adieu, let me tell you a little bit about Betty Press. Betty Press is currently an adjunct professor of photography at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, and previous to that she taught at Stetson University in Deland, Florida. She's best known for her photographs taken in Africa when she lived and worked in Kenya as a freelance photojournalist from 1987 to 1995. At that time, she worked closely with her husband who was a correspondent with the Christian Science Monitor. Now living in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, she photographs the South, as well as continues to travel to Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, Cuba, and Africa. And in 2008 to 2009, she photographed in Sierra Leone while accompanying her husband, Dr. Bob Press, who is a Fulbright Scholar and Lecturer at Fourah Bay College there. Her photographs have been published in most major magazines and newspapers. I'm going to skip a little bit around to say that she had the honor to photograph Audrey Hepburn on her visit to Somalia as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in 1992, and Harry Belafonte in Rwanda in 1994. In 1999, her photographs were featured in a book titled, "The New Africa: Dispatches from a Changing Continent," published by the University Press of Florida. Betty Press has studied photography at the University of Michigan School of Art in Ann Arbor, and her work is in several public collections, including the Harry Ransom Center for the Humanities in Austin, Texas; Southeast Museum of Photography in Daytona Beach, Florida; National Museum of Women in the Arts here in Washington Global Collection of Photography; Jamestown Community College in Jamestown, New York, and she also has photographs in many private collections. She's represented by Panos Pictures in London, Photographic Image Group in Portland, Oregon, International Visions Gallery here in DC, and the One Off Contemporary Art Gallery in Nairobi, Kenya. There's many, many more things that could be said about Betty Press, but I think that, at this point, it's probably best to let her talk about them herself and discuss her new book, which is on sale in the back, "I Am Because We Are," a beautiful photographic book. I wanted to just make people aware of the fact that this program is being webcast, so when you ask your questions, please make sure that they're audible, and at this point, I'd like to bring Betty Press up to the podium to talk about, "I Am, Because We Are," and her other work in Africa. Thank you very much. [ Applause ] >> Betty Press: Thank you so much. It's such an honor to be here at the Library of Congress. I guess it's a bit of a dream, in a way, because I was in Washington, D.C. when I was in college. I was in the Washington semester program, and at American University. And we would come over to the Library of Congress and study in the Main Reading Room. And just to go in there today and see it again, and, of course, when I was there I thought, maybe some of this magic of this place is going to rub off on me and I'm going to be able to turn in these fabulous term papers, and so on. Well, as it turned out, I wasn't the greatest scholar. I was a good student, but not a great scholar, and I realized I was much more of a visual person. And so later on I turned to, decided I wanted to study photography, and I did that at the University of Michigan. Well, my husband was on this journalism fellowship at the Knight Wallace Journalism Fellowship program. So I started there, and then shortly after that, we were assigned to go to Africa, and I decided this would be a great place to continue my work in photography. So I became a photojournalist. I'm not totally trained as a photojournalist, but you can certainly learn on the job, and that's what I did. I always carry two cameras. The monitor at that time turned to color, but I didn't want to give up black and white, so I always did black and white and color at the same time. And fortunately I was doing some work with -- I was freelance, so I was working with UNICEF and UNHCR and a number of other NGOs, and all of them at that time still wanted black and white. It was very popular. And this is, of course, back in the early 90s, and it's before the digital age, so most of the work that you will see in the book is from actually negatives, and I just had them scanned and then printed in the book in that way. I really feel, though, that black and white was the best way depict Africa. It kind of simplifies the images in a way, you can understand them a little bit better. There's nothing to distract you in the image. But when I decided -- I've always had this idea in my mind that I wanted to put these together in a book, and I could have just done the images -- they are beautiful images, and some people advised me to do that, but I really wanted to give them something more. And I did have a good friend in Nairobi, Kenya. I've known her for a long time, Annetta Miller, and she's a collector of proverbs. She has a huge collection. And so I approached her and said, would you like to collaborate with me, and we'll have African proverbs to go with my images, and she thought that was a great idea. So we got together last year in Kenya at a friend's home and we sat together and we put all the images and proverbs together. And, you know, proverbs are so important in Africa. Africa has a very strong oral tradition. And they've always used proverbs so teach their children, to illustrate an idea, so that I would often hear these proverbs from my Kenyan friends. Whenever they wanted to say something, there might be a proverb there that they would use to illustrate it. And so I recognized that proverbs continue to be a very strong part of the African community. And I would like that tradition to keep going. And I think we are all -- we all, when you think of -- lots of us, on our refrigerators or wherever we put up some sayings or quotes, or proverbs, whatever they are, somehow those pithy sayings sometimes will just help us through some particular issue we're facing, or help us to understand something, or help us to look at something in a different way. So I am hoping that through this book I can help people, and certainly the general public, to see Africa in a different light. Because I think we all know that Africa is oftentimes portrayed rather negatively in the press, and even -- I'm still a great fan of the Christian Science Monitor because we've had, you know, my husband worked for them and we have many connections still with them. But there was just a new issue put out in their weekly magazine called "My Africa," and it's the Monitor correspondent, Scott Baldauf, who's just completed five years of reportage in Africa, and so he wrote this article about some long-held myths about a complex continent. And so I'm kind of going -- I'm going to include some of those ideas as I talk about my images, because I think this book can dispel some of those myths, and we can look at Africa in a different light. And, of course, those images seem to be the ones we all know: famine, poverty, and wars. And all of those elements are certainly there. We can't deny that, and certainly we still need to work on all of those problems. But we also need to remember that Africa is a great place of joy, of hope, courage, and all those things we'd want to celebrate. So for me, this book is really a book of celebration for the good that is in African society and what we, in our society, can learn from it. So with that, I'd like to kind of take you through the book. And first of all, this book is dedicated on the people of Africa who have taught us so much wisdom through their proverbs. One of the first pictures in the book, and the proverb, "life is a proverb of creation," is a picture taken on Goree Island in Senegal. And for those of you -- how many of you know Goree Island? It's a very, it was the center from which slaves were taken, and there is a museum there. This is not the museum, but I still think this doorway depicts, in a way, again symbolizes sort of what was happening in Africa during that time. And also that doorway can symbolize an opening through which we're going to take a little journey in Africa through our images, through the images and the proverbs. The title of this book comes from this proverb that we all know, "I am because we are, we are because I am." And it is attributed to South Africa, though, I think know we could almost say it's African in a more, in a greater sense. But it talks about the interconnectedness and responsibility that we have for each other, and this is the whole concept of Ubuntu, the African idea of living harmoniously in community. Most of the black and white photographs are really just moments in daily life. They're not, they're not very sophisticated in that way. They're just very simple images of life. And in that sense, I think they work really well with the proverbs to illustrate African wisdom. And they tell -- the book is laid out as a story of life, and I hope some of you will use kind of as a page-turner. I mean, you could go to the book and say, pull out one particular image and one proverb and it can be something you really want and need for that day. But it really is also a page-turner that you can really have the whole story of life moving through family, home, education, relationships, work and leisure, environment, conflict, peace, music and dance, religion, wisdom, old age, and death, which comes inevitability. But life goes on, and so you come full circle with hope and the descendants and the living community that go on after us. I was very fortunate to have a forward to be written by Joanne Veal Gabbin. She's a poet and professor of English at James Madison. And is this was what she wrote about the book: "In this collection, the message is significant and life affirming. I am because we are; we are because I am. We exist in community with a multiplicity of voices, and we thrive because we share the responsibility for that community with others. In it, is the wisdom of griots who have traced the lineage of their people, told the stories of their ancestors, and passed them on to their children. The power of this collection is that we are able to see the engaging images of the heirs of this wisdom and hear the voices of continuity, identity, and legacy that affirm their communal spirit." In the first page, then, to introduce the body of the book, is another proverb. "Proverbs are short sentences edited from long experiences." They're wonderful, these proverbs. I'm so grateful to Annetta Miller. I would just stop maybe at this point to also acknowledge her. She's written a book called "Sharing Boundaries: Learning the Wisdom of Africa." And what she's done, she has these little vignettes about her experiences, kind of the, you know, the outsider coming up and meeting Africa. And some of those things we have to work out when we're coming from different places. This is what she writes about proverbs. She says, "I called a Kenyan colleague in my office at Kenyatta University. I needed advice. After explaining the situation, I waited for her response. She waited for some time, then responded by means of a proverb. 'Proverbs are used throughout Africa as a way of saying something without spoon feeding. Proverbs are a way of encoding the philosophical, religious world view, which mirrors the community.'" "Is that all," I pleaded? She nodded, rose, and walked out the door. So, I'm going to try not to do too much spoon feeding. I'm going to let you look at these images and the proverbs that go with them. This is the first picture. "All who live under the sun are plaited together like one big mat." And you know how popular and useful mats are in Africa, and how beautiful they are. "Life is in community." This is the group of Maasai women at a fertility ceremony in Kenya. Three hundred women, and they came to talk about their problems, just discuss issues. It was just like having a women's conference here, you know, you come and you talk. You work things out, and it was very well organized and very -- you know, it takes a lot of planning to do these. It was really interesting to be part of it. "The world is a mirror. It looks at you the same way you look at it." "Life is a gift of nature, but beautiful living is a gift of wisdom." And here I might just mention the one concept that we have of Africa. Africa is poor, and yes, there is poverty in Africa, but more and more people are moving into the middle class, more and more people are setting up businesses, and more and more people are educating their children. So Africa is moving ahead in that sense. "Life is best lived at a walking pace and best understood at a sprint." "The lives of animals are parables of our lives." And this is in southern Sudan, the Dinka cattle herders who love their cattle. "The world is zigzag." I think we've all had life experiences where it's not been a straight line. And this is in Lagos, Nigeria. "Life is a walk on a dangerous bridge." "Life is not easy," we all know that. This is also in Lagos, Nigerian, the big transportation had you been where people come to catch a bus or a train, and, of course, all the vendors are there selling things, so you can buy everything for your meal and go home and cook it. Shopping is easy that way. "The poorest person in the world is not the one without money, but the one without vision." This is a proverb from Ghana, and the picture was taken in Mali of a young farmer. :"Life has two legs, male and female." And if I could just give you a little of my own interpretation of that. This world is a little bit like this right now. I think the leg of the woman is just not, you know, recognized and given its due here. "Every cackling hen was an egg at one time." This is the nurse who looks like she -- anyway, she's advising the pregnant women. "Children are the reward of life." The children are beautiful there, and the families are trying to do their best to take the best care that they can of their children. Education, in particular is so important, and they have a lot of fun. "Our children are living messages sent to a future we may never see." And, you know, in Africa, everybody has a great sense of humor and they enjoy life. And I think that's why I like being there. You just, they have a great sense of humor, and these were entertainers, and you can see by the way they're dressed that they could amuse a crowd. "To come out of one's home means learning." So true. I keep telling my students from Mississippi, get out into the world. "What you help a child to love is more important that what you help her to learn," Senegalese proverb. And this is a young girl from Liberia. And I'm, what I'm doing right now, is I picked out about 40 pictures and proverbs, and in the book there's actually 125 images and proverbs, and like I say, flow through this story of life. So I'm just trying to highlight a few and hopefully you will want to see the rest. "To dream means to look through the horizon." I don't know why I love that, I just could see myself on that river bank, and that's the Niger River and just dreaming. Of course, I always dreamed of going to Africa, so I got my dream. "To be without a friend is to be poor, indeed," Somali proverb. Cellphones are really a big hit in Africa and have made a big difference, and this is where I would also maybe talk about the other stereotype, that Africa is backward. Certainly not, and communication is so important there, and because they have the cellphone, it's really helped them in many ways in terms of their businesses, their life, what they can do. They do their banking with the use of cellphones. What they don't have yet is a really fast Internet, and when they get that, and that will come, they will really have access to information, and that makes a big difference. The other thing that's happening, and I'd like to maybe just mention that here, too, is that my book is published in partnership with Books for Africa, and there is a page in the back about what Books for Africa does, but they actually are an NGO that they collect donated books. They pack them in huge containers and then ship them to different African countries, and then they're distributed to libraries and schools and institutions. Because that has been a big hindrance for Africa, is that they don't have enough books in their libraries. Can you imagine going to school and not having a library. So that is, you know, helping, the Internet is helping. So this will be the way that Africa will certainly catch up. And the potential is there and the desire is there to learn and to work and to use that knowledge and do something with it, and they want to do it in their own country. They don't want to come here to do it. They want to be able to do it where they live, where their family is, where their community is, where they're based. "If you want to walk fast, walk alone. If you want to walk far, walk with others." I think here in the West a lot of us think, it's much easier to walk alone. Unfortunately, one does not live without working, but some of us are very fortunate to also love our work, which helps. This is from Tanzania, and the picture was taken in Ghana. "Work is good, provided you do not forget to live." And that's a Kenyan proverb, and the picture was taken in Liberia. "A calabash with holes cannot be filled," a Kenyan proverb. That's what I also like about proverbs, is that they're not, they also, they give you ideas for how to live your life, but then they just have these great visuals of the calabash, all this water coming out of the holes, because -- and you can take that, and you know, talk about or interpret that anyway you want to. But also, this is the calabash, it's such a utilitarian and useful container, and a beautiful container that's still being used. There's a little section in the book on the environment, and this is one picture from that, "Go softly in the world. If it is harmed, it cannot return." It's a Nigerian proverb, and the picture was taken near Djenne in Mali. And in these desert climates, they're the ones that are really going to be affected by global warming, and we have to be aware of that. "The earth is the mother of all." This is a harvest in Ethiopia, harvesting teff, the grain that they use to make their injera from. "Not everything with a crooked neck is a camel." Can you see he's milking the camel? After he milked the camel, we all got to take a sip of it, so it's very rich and a bit salty. Very nutritious. We can't avoid also the topic that there have been many wars in Africa and a lot of time suffering because of those. These are children from Rwanda. "War is a bad chisel with which to carve out tomorrow." A proverb from Sierra Leone, and Sierra Leone has also had its Civil War. I've been using this proverb a lot recently: "She who has not carried load herself does not know how heavy it is." I think we need to remember that and step into other people's shoes and try to understand what other people are going through. You need -- I think we need to do that more. "If you get peace, you get life," Somali proverb. This picture was taken in Liberia, and it was a group of women who, toward the latter part of their civil war around 2000, they really made a big effort for peace. And they made a difference, because they really were the ones to gather. This was like a little prayer meeting, and they would go around -- whenever there was any kind of peace talk, they were there, or if there was any way they could demonstrate. They just said, the war is enough, we cannot take anymore, our children cannot take anymore. And even though they weren't right at the peace table sitting there, they were right outside the door. And I think in Sierra Leone and in Liberia it's been documented that that helped to bring peace in those countries. Music and dance, of course, are something also that's so wonderful in Africa, and that they have really contributed to the world music, and our music is so much richer because of what's come out of Africa. "When the rhythm of the drum beat changes, the dancer must adapt." A proverb from Burkina Fasso, and the picture was taken in Gambia. In the book, I just have the proverb and the picture, but at the back of the book is an index of photographs, so you can all find out where every photograph was taken and a little bit of information about the photograph. Another interesting thing I heard this week on one of the public radio programs, James Gleick wrote this book called, "The Information." You've probably heard; he's giving his talks and so on. Well, one thing that he mentioned in terms of the history of communication is the Africans have the fastest, and this is particularly in the Congo. They had the fastest form of communication before anybody else with the use of the talking drum, and they would pass messages from village to village. We didn't have that until we had the telegraph. So this is just a little interesting, something about Africa and what also they've contributed. And perhaps they gave the idea about how could you communicate over a distance, and the telegraph was born. "If you can talk, you can sing, if you can walk, you can dance." These are Maasai men at a warrior dance in northern Kenya. This is from Sudan, Khartoum. "The spiritual is more important than the material." "If you're going to ask from God, take a large basket." We might as well expect a lot, right. There's a lot to give, so. "The wise person inquires into all things great and small." And this was a workshop for women to learn how to make soap. And that's the other thing I would mention, is that the idea again that Africa needs our help and that they're dependent on us, and that is so, it doesn't really make any sense. They're not helpless. They're very -- they're able to take care of themselves, and what we give them really probably doesn't help all that much. Sometimes it is detrimental, but you can just see in these faces the fact that these women want to learn something, and if they're given knowledge, they'll use it and they'll take it and they're so creative in what they will do with that information. And also, I think we need to recognize that, you know the ideas of what they want for their country and their future has to come from them, and they can do it. They just need access to resources, good leadership, and with that, you know, there's going to be a lot of changes that are going to come about. Another thing is that they're very rich in resources, and that they get to be able to control their resources for their people, which is really important. Sierra Leone has so -- we were just in Sierra Leone and they have iron ore, they have all these just [inaudible] minerals, but they don't really get the value from those. If they did, they would have, you know, be able to develop their country in a much better way. "Where there are two people, there is double wisdom." And I really felt like for this book with Annetta Miller, that the two of us came together and we came -- out of this came this book. And it was much better because we did it together. And there's a whole community effort in this book, and in any project that you do, you really need to rely on other people, work with other people. Africans have known that for a long time. "The word becomes time." This was a conference for peace -- well, more democracy in Togo. People speaking out, wanting to have a voice in what their government would do. And we're seeing that happen all over the world right now, in the Middle East, but it's also happening in Africa. And they're working those problems out. There are a lot of time people who, in civil society, who are able to deal with their problems. In Kenya, they just, because this last election was very difficult, but they had to sit down and work things out. They can do this, and they're doing it. There are less wars in Africa now, fortunately, because of that. "Old age is the history book for the youth to read." The youth there, they are so hopeful that they can do something. We were in Sierra Leone, again. We were working with a lot of former students, a lot of students from the university where my husband was lecturing, and we started a human rights organization to teach human rights in the secondary schools. The university students took this as a project, and they're doing it without really any financial compensation. They're just going out into the schools and teaching other students in the secondary schools, and even in the primary schools, more about human rights and what they should know about human rights. So there's, the youth, they're so eager to work and have something to do and a way to contribute. And, of course, life, what is life without death. Death is inevitable. We hope that it's not for the children, that life expectancies will be a bit longer in Africa, better health care, less famine. Unfortunately, we are seeing famine once again in Somalia, and this is a picture from Somalia in 1992. "Death is a story of life." And that's oftentimes when we start -- as we get older we start remembering our life. We try to pass some of the ideas onto our children. We put pictures of our mothers and fathers and grandfathers on the wall to remember them, to remember their life story. "The pillar of the world is hope," and this was taken in Eritrea, and Eritrea just ended their war not too long ago. This was in 1993 and they were celebrating that peace that did come to those countries after a long period of war. And this is the last image in the book and the last proverb in the book: "Hope resides in togetherness." These are children in Sierra Leone just playing, having a good time. But that whole sense of community is what's really important, and I would say it's also very important here. And the back cover then brings us full circle. "I am because we are. We are because I am." We're going through this, down this pathway, this journey through our life. What will our children's life be. And I would just like to end by reading something from Christiana Okechukwu. She's a Nigerian Igbo who kindly said she would write something for my book, and I just so appreciated what she wrote, so I'd just like to read this quick. "African, as well as non-African scholars, have written immensely in their bid to interpret Africa to the world. Betty Press is one more interpreter, even though from outside Africa. Therefore, she views with an outsider's gaze using photography to interpret proverbs has also added another dimension to the efforts at interpreting this great oratorical art of the African people. Africa is a great harvest in which many are accommodated, just as at the [inaudible] court of the Igbo people. Betty Press has paved other own path and contributed to the pot. Others will definitely follow. That is how it should be, for in the great chief's courtyard, there are always contributions from all segments of the family. Betty Press' work will serve as one more avenue for having accessibility to the meanings of the proverbs and the comprehension And that's, that is the last slide, the last part of book. At this time, I'd like to ask if there are any questions or any comments you would like to make. >> How many different countries were the photographs taken in? It seems like a lot. >> Betty Press: A lot, yeah. You know, I didn't actually total. Maybe 20? I didn't, we didn't go to southern Africa because this was when -- the Monitor had a correspondent in South Africa, so my husband and I covered, and we always travel together on assignments, covered East and West Africa, so it's primarily those countries. >> Was it in the 90s, in the 1990s? >> Betty Press: I started in -- we went to Africa in 1987, so I started taking pictures then. And then we go back every year, and then we spend a year in Sierra Leone. So the pictures cover a span of over 20 years. Yes? [ Inaudible audience comment ] It was, I mean, it was what I expected in some ways, but it's also different because, I mean, just going back to like Sierra Leone, we were there this summer. It is so alive. Here, you find the streets are empty and you walk down, and maybe in the cities you have a lot more, but, you know, in a smaller town and so on, and if it's air conditioning, everybody is inside. In Africa, everybody, you just have so much going on. When we lived there, we always had people around; we'd always have people to talk to. We would walk and everybody would say hello. It's just, you just feel like you're part of a community, and you start to know people. They're very friendly. And I just, there's something about that that's just really nice. >> You said that you liked the black and white because it helps to simplify things. When would color be more desirable than black and white in terms of your photographing African countries? >> Betty Press: Well, I am doing another project on Africa, and it is mostly like signs, like, I call it a linguistic landscape. And it's signs and how language used, and they do a lot of art. When they're in their little kiosk or their shops they paint a lot of -- like, for the barbing salons they'll paint people having their hair cut, and they'll always use slogans on all of these, or like almost proverbs to describe, have a name for their shop, and color is very appropriate there. It works in that sense. And Africa, it's beautiful with the color, it really is. And there are some beautiful, you know, Carol Beckwith and Angela Fishers', "The Ceremonies of Africa," all that in color. It's beautiful. What I was trying to do in this book, because of -- I was trying to deal with ideas more than, more than say just looking at what a ceremony is and appreciating the rituals and that kind of thing. Does that make sense? So, I mean, and that's the whole idea with the proverb, the image, the proverb. I felt like the idea came across better. And then, you know, I have a lot of, I took these pictures in black and white, too, so I've always had a body of work that I wanted to, I mean, to show. So, yes. [ Inaudible audience comment ] Yes. I mean, it's partly because I'm sort of coming out of a tradition of photojournalism and documentary photography, but I'm also just very interested in people. And, again, for this book, the idea, again is life, so people were involved. I do have one wildlife picture in here, if you can find it, because people do love to go to and see the wildlife and the landscape is very beautiful in Africa. So that is another reason for going there and to save those, to save that. It's very important, and that's part of the environment. But again, for most of this book, it is about life. [Inaudible comment] Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, they certainly do. I was just never good at landscape. [Laughing] I kind of have to have a person there to somehow anchor the picture and, you know, yes. Yeah. [ Inaudible audience comment ] The proverbs, you mean. Annetta Miller did all the proverbs, and so she contributed those. In some cases -- she knows Swahili, because she grew up in East Africa all her life, so she knows Swahili very well. We wouldn't know any of the other languages, so she would have to rely on other people to translate them and edit them. So I can't really answer that as well as I would like, but -- yeah, yeah, yeah. And then she does, she edits them a little bit Yes, and we had a discussion too, as to -- we did these proverbs by country, but they're really more associated with ethnic groups, and some people wanted us just to do it based on ethnic groups. Well, this is an Igbo proverb, or this is a Fante proverb, or this is a Swahili proverb. But, at the same time, Africa now is, you know, in countries, and they're trying not to stress ethnic groups quite so much, so we decided to just leave it with, just mentioning the country that the proverb came from, yes. [Inaudible] I'm sorry, it's a bright light and I couldn't see you. [ Inaudible audience comment ] Yes, yes. That was in Ethiopia. [ Inaudible audience comment ] Yes, yes. I mean there's so much universal in life. Yes, and I'm also -- I realized, too, that the African presence has expanded into so many places. You find African culture all over the Caribbean, in Cuba, in all of the South American countries. I have not been to Brazil, by you would love to go, and I know Tim's been just there, and I would like to hear his story. But, I mean, so I mean, regrettably, the Africans were taken out of Africa and brought to our country through slavery, that's the regrettable part. The benefit is what they have given our culture here, and for us to recognize that. Our culture is so much richer because of this mixture and this presence of the African -- >> [Inaudible] When you're talking about people, it seems like in some of the photographs, the people were very aware of your presence, like particularly children. Children with cameras, you know, are usually always -- the children will just gravitate toward the camera. But on other ones it really seemed as if you were invisible. How were you able to accomplish getting those kind of candid shots without people paying attention to the camera? >> Betty Press: A lot of times I was there on a particular assignment or something, so people knew why I was there, and maybe my husband was doing some interviews or something, so people -- we already had a relationship and there was some comfort level there of why we were there, so that helped a lot. And other times, you know, people want to know why you're taking a picture, and they sometimes refuse. But if they knew that we were there for a particular reason, it was, you know, they gave, they said yes, you can take our picture and so on. And that's another thing I'm very grateful to the people of Africa are willing to share their lives through this way so that we can see it and appreciate it. Did that really answer it, though? But there are other times when I do know some of the people, and that's nice, too. I know, I actually know the people in the pictures, sometimes I don't. But there's a lot of connections there of where I do know, and I just, to me, that means a lot. You don't know that, but it means a lot to me. >> Eve Ferguson: Well, let's thank Betty Press for sharing her images. And over in the back the books are for sale with the LC discount, so you have an opportunity to see the rest of the photographs and the proverbs. I really appreciate having this program, and you know, to me, the images were beautiful and they really do give a different perspective of the Africa continent than that which we're seeing on the news now. And so, again, thank you very much, and please, if you would like to purchase a book, Betty Press will be happy to sign one for you, thank you again. >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.