"Gloriann Liu's lens gloriously brings Afghanistan and its people to life. In this breathtaking exhibit, she captures the raw, ethereal beauty of this war-scarred land and the unique spirit of its proud and resilient people"
-Khaled Hosseini
Author of "The Kite Runner", and Goodwill Envoy for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees
"If Louis Depree described Afghanistan the best with his pen, Gloriann Liu unfolded the Afghan culture the best with her eye".
-Wahid Omar
Board Member of Afghans4Tomorrow ,
and Afghans Master's Manager, Afghanistan Higher Education Project, UMASS
"Gloriann Liu and I started working together a few years ago. Like many of the photographers I've had the honor to work with.
I have printed fine art photography for over 20 years. My clients have included Irving Penn, Helmut Newton, David Hockney, the Getty Museum, the National Gallery in DC, the Louvres museum in Paris and so on.
Mrs. Liu came to me unannounced and has been one of those revelations that forever leave an indelible mark and a most powerful imprint.
It is the nature of photography and the camera to present a "point of view". Mrs. Liu doesn't care much about that for she transcends it, with the profound humanity she genuinely shares, on both sides of the camera.
Front. And back.
Mrs. Liu records, in the etymologic sense of the word: "to learn by heart".
One often says that the relationship between a photographer and a printer is one of collaboration and I strongly disagree. It is much, more than that.
It is a sensitive friendship that builds over years, and not just by sharing beautiful images, but also by understanding the depth of what the heart attempts to convey in a visual medium without words.
In her gifted craft Mrs. Liu just listens to what cannot be heard, and lets the people speak."
-Michel Karman
Master Printer - A&I Xhibit
"In all my life of watching people shoot, when viewing Gloriann's work for the first time, I have seen someone who really knows what to do with a camera. In my opion she is on a level with Henri Cartier-Bresson and Eugene Smith."
-Gleb Derujinsky
renowed fashion photographer
- excert from "Art of Phtography Show 2008" catalog forward - Full Text From Catalog
(Gloriann) Liu's In the Circle won 1st Prize, an image of enormous dynamism and intrigue not unlike the controlled chaos and compressed spaces of the 15th century Florentine master painter, Paolo Uccello. The photograph (along with her website video) shows a confluence of skilled, Afghan horsemen during a competition. Liu stands with a crowd on a hill above a vast plain where the games are played out. Everything within the environment shows her commitment to her subject matter — traveling to Afghanistan (she's also been to Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Africa, and Central Asia), abandoning comfort, taking risks, and establishing a relationship with people before picking up her camera. All of this supports what she hopes for her images, which is that they "affect change" by showing "ordinary people whose daily lives are unknown to most Americans ... and in need of our understanding and our assistance." How we understand belongs first in our ability to see. In this capacity, Liu provides what French theorist Roland Barthes valued most in photography, "the power of expansion ... I see, I feel, hence I notice, I observe, I think."
Carol McCusker
Curator of Photography
Museum of Photographic Arts