6-8 pm

Location: The Painted Bride Art Center, 230 Vine Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106

Presentations by select memoir and documentary artists

In advance: $12 (First Person Arts members) / $15 (general public) – $15/$20 after 10/25

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First Person Arts presents an evening of new memoir and documentary art, including the winners of the “In These Hard Times” national competition, and presentations by four outstanding local artists:

In the early 1990s, Jennifer Baker began making monoprints of Northern Liberties, creating a visual record of a neighborhood that was literally going up in flames. She presents that work – with accompanying essays by her husband, journalist and author Stephan Salisbury – along with new paintings that depict the neighborhood as it is today.

In the four years since Hurricane Katrina’s devastating floodwaters receded, increasing numbers of residents have returned to New Orleans’ most vulnerable and damaged neighborhood, the Ninth Ward. Moved by their resolve and eager to understand their motivations, photojournalist Ryan Brandenberg began documenting the stories of a determined few who, initially displaced to locations around the country, refused to be cast out.

Nimisha Ladva was a 2004 finalist in the First Person Arts Story Competition, which led to readings at Drexel University and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. That story, “Good Girls Don’t Stare” was published by the British literary journal Stand, and her essay, “We Are Not Same Egg Twins” will be published by The Connecticut Review in 2010. She shares some of her new work.

Philadelphia photographer Laura Jean Zito shares her images and tales of the Sinai Bedouin – how she overcame cultural challenges, her subjects’ reluctance and her status as a woman in a Muslim world — to bring us a first-hand account of these unique personalities cloaked in veils of mystery.