Upcoming exhibit: “Mexico: Color and Contrastâ€
My upcoming exhibit, “Mexico: Color and Contrast†will will be the first time I’ve shown
black and white and color prints together. I decided to do this because I want to contrast the beauty that’s found across Mexico with the poverty and political unrest that’s also found there. It’s too easy to focus on one and ignore the other but by alternating color and black and white images, I hope to let people see them as they exist in Mexico: side-by-side.
This is also the kick-off for the Fair Trade coffee campaign I’ve been wanting to do ever since I got back from the coffee growing regions in Mexico three years ago. The basic idea behind this is pretty simple: patronize coffee shops (like Coffee Connection) that sell Fair Trade coffee and to buy it for home. Also, when you go into a coffee shop, ask if they sell Fair Trade coffee and if not, ask them to carry it. No big effort’s required but if enough people do this, places will catch on and (I hope) more places will start carrying it.
If you’re buying gourmet coffee, Fair Trade doesn’t cost any more and in some cases, it costs less. The people in the villages I stayed in are producing shade-grown, organic coffees—the best coffee there is—and yet are earning less than $2/day. Every grower told me that buying Fair Trade coffee will help them. I’ll probably talk more about this at the exhibit. I’m going to start compiling a list of places that sell Fair Trade coffee and sending it out to anyone who’s interested. Let me know if you are and I’ll put you on the list.
Here are the exhibit details:
Mexico: Color and Contrast
AT: Coffee Connection, 681 South Ave. Phone: 442-2180
OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, Feb. 2, 6:00-8:00
Exhibit runs through March 26
Related posts:
My wife and I have been buying fair trade coffee for so long it’s weird to think of having to go to a place and ask them to carry it. Cripes, even our *church* serves fair trade at coffee hour.
Good luck with the exhibit. If the pics in your on-line gallery are any indication, the exhibit’s gonna rock.
Another thought– a list like the one Joseph’s talking about, that would list all the local venues selling fair trade, should be kept on-line somewhere.
Rottenchester, would RocWiki be a good place for that?
This is a bit interesting and I don’t have a strong opinion, but I have a cousin who is working with Kenyan coffee farmers as part of a nonprofit NGO and he is against the Fair Trade coffee model (though he says he only really knows how it affects things in Kenya). His take is that is ends up propping up substandard coffee producers and that the amount of extra money that anyone gets under the Fair Trade agreement is minimal anyway. He says people should just buy expensive Star Bucks coffee (Star Bucks pays farmers more than most other buyers) if they really want to help the farmers.
Anyway, I just thought that was a bit of an interesting counterpoint.
This is certainly an interesting take on Fair Trade coffee. All of the coffee growers and cooperatives I spoke with in Oaxaca and Puebla said that Fair Trade was getting them a higher price for their coffee. I didn’t do any in-depth investigation of their claims but I don’t think the growers (all of whom were subsistence farmers ) were telling lies. I’ve read some articles that are negative about Fair Trade in general (and coffee specifically). There clearly are corporations who profit from labeling their product “Fair Trade” and then don’t pass the extra money on to their producers. Still, I believe that something that’s been certified Fair Trade does provide impoverished people with a little more money and we should support that whenever we can. I don’t have the animosity toward Starbucks that some people have and if they’re paying farmers more than the industry average, great. I’d like to see more information about that, however.
Joseph
[...] Joseph talked about it in a little more detail in an earlier post on RT.] [...]