***Great Visuals! Photos and Interviews Available!***
WHAT: Crude Reflections: ChevronTexaco’s Rainforest Legacy is a photography exhibit that chronicles the human impact of ChevronTexaco’s oil pollution in Ecuador’s rainforest region, and the Amazonian communities’ efforts to restore the health of their families and land. Using personal testimonies alongside powerful portraits, two highly talented Bay Area photographers, Lou Dematteis and Kayana Szymczak, assisted by journalist Joan Kruckewitt, have captured the physical and emotional reality of those affected by pollution and their struggle for justice. The exhibit is opening in San Ramon, CA, the global headquarters of ChevronTexaco and coincides with the company’s Annual Shareholder Meeting. Over the next year, the exhibit will be shown in San Francisco, New York, Washington, Quito, and villages in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Beginning April 25th, the entire exhibit available online at: www.chevrontoxico.org
WHEN AND WHERE: Exhibit Launch Reception, Monday, April 25, 2005 from 5-9 pm with a Program 7-7:30 pm. Fireside Room at Mudd’s Restaurant, 10 Boardwalk (off Crow Canyon Rd.) in San Ramon, CA 94583
The exhibit runs April 25 – 28, 2005.
WHO: Presented by Amazon Watch and San Ramon Cares with co-sponsors Amnesty International, Sierra Club, the Amazon Defense Coalition, Rainforest Action Network, Global Exchange, the Pachamama Alliance and Corporate Accountability International. Reception Special Guests include Bianca Jagger, Ecuadorian Indigenous leaders and a host of Bay Area V.I.P.s
Award-winning photographer Lou Dematteis has spent more than two decades documenting social and political conflict and their consequences in the United States and around the world. A former staff photographer for Reuters, Dematteis has published two books: Nicaragua: A Decade of Revolution (W.W. Norton), an anthology of the Sandinista years in Nicaragua, and A Portrait of Viet Nam (W.W. Norton), which documents the social and economic transformation of contemporary Vietnam. He has exhibited extensively in the United States and abroad. Dematteis was based in Nicaragua during the war between the Sandinistas and U.S.-backed Contras. In 1986, his photograph of captured U.S. soldier-of-fortune Eugene Hasenfus being led through the jungle by a Sandinista soldier was named one of the top pictures of the year by The New York Times, National Press Photographers Association, and World Press Photo.
Kayana Szymczak is a documentary photographer whose work focuses on human rights and environmental justice issues. After graduating from the
University of Illinois with a BA in photography, Kayana launched her first
photojournalism project in the fall of 2003, traveling to the Narmada Valley
in India to document the impact of the world’s second largest dam project on
local communities. Soon after, Szymczak was awarded a grant from the Titcomb Foundation to document the impacts of oil development on the communities living in the Ecuadorian Amazon. As a woman of Native American descent with no link to her own tribe, she strives to be an advocate for endangered indigenous communities around the world who are struggling to preserve their land, culture, language, and right to life. This is the first part of a long-term photographic project documenting the impacts of, and resistance to, oil development in communities around the world.
Joan Kruckewitt is a journalist who lived in Nicaragua from 1983-1991 and
covered the war between the Sandinistas and the U.S.-backed Contras for ABC Radio. She received her B.A. from U.C. Berkeley and her M.A. in Latin
American Studies from Stanford University. She has reported from Latin
America and Europe for various radio networks (Pacifica, Mutual,
Monitoradio, and Canadian Broadcasting Company, National Public Radio) and
newspapers. She is the author of The Death of Ben Linder: The Story of a
North American in Sandinista Nicaragua (Seven Stories Press).
WHY: ChevronTexaco is currently a defendant in a historic trial in Ecuador
for having deliberately dumped 18.5 billion gallons of toxic waste directly
into the rainforest, threatening the survival of indigenous peoples and
leaving behind what is likely the worst oil-related disaster on the planet.
The amount of crude dumped was thirty times greater than that spilled during the Exxon Valdez disaster. Brought by five indigenous groups and 80
communities, the lawsuit (Aguinda v. ChevronTexaco) has the potential to set
a precedent that could benefit millions of persons worldwide victimized by
human rights abuses committed by private companies. The case implicates
important issues of globalization, indigenous rights, and corporate
responsibility. It represents the first time in history that forest
dwellers have forced a multinational oil company to submit to jurisdiction
in their national courts. This tenacious struggle for justice, which has
taken more than two decades, has been documented in photos that encompass the horrific health impacts, the traditional cultural of indigenous nations, and the beginning of a trial in a jungle courthouse attended by more than 1,000 local residents.
