Salon du Festival

First Person Arts presents an evening of performances by four of the best emerging artists in the memoir and documentary arts:
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 Katrinas 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 Dont 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 and exotica.