“I fell in love with travel while living in flyspeck villages on the edge of nowhere for a month, or two, or three, or four, where I could remember 300 names, and how the moon rose and set, the tonal note of a particular goat’s bell, and what time school let out and who would be waiting for me by the stream, to take me to their grandfather’s hut. I wanted to see the world. I wanted to meet thousands of people; I wanted to have conversations with as many as I could even if I only had command of fifty Greek or Arabic words, even if my Pidgin English was the lingua franca, or pantomime, or laughter. And I gazed deeply into the heart of the world, not as a trained sociologist, or a historian, but as a Gulliver, or Marco Polo, with big bounding steps up mountain trails chasing the wispy smoke of kitchen fires in a distant hamlet. More than anything, I wanted to know what people felt: breathing air, falling in love, making mistakes, being separated from love, feeling lonely, scared, traumatized, impoverished, radiant, old, young, sick, again, dying. Everything. From the long, wonderful years on the road, 18 books were published. Each time I now share myself at elementary schools, colleges, penitentiaries, trauma centers, nursing homes, food shelves and panties, I feel Providence pulsing in my heart.”

— Ethan Hubbard

Ethan is presenting 24 enlarged black and white photographs from around the world of rural and indigenous peoples in the Co-op’s cafe during the months of July and August. Ethan first started making art in 1953 when he won the camp award for photography and this led to traveling around the world to 72 countries and shooting 5,000 roles of black and white film. He traveled economically from 1960–2010 with a backpack, light camping gear, and small gifts to people who befriended him along the way, which later led him to writing 18 books and over 100 solo exhibits around the United States. Ethan’s creative process takes place in the dark room. He is inspired by other photographers, such as Paul Strand, Dorothea Lange, and Richard Brown.