Julia Cumes

photographer

NPPA

Brewster, MA, United States

I'm a South African-born photographer based in Massachusetts with a focus on editorial photography. I'm particularly invested in exploring stories about the struggles women and girls face and have spent much of my career working on these kinds of projects in Africa and Asia. The images in my Blink portfolio are just a small selection of work from some of these projects. I first fell in love with photography as a teenager in apartheid-era South Africa when I began shooting black and white film and printing my own work. Since then, I've completed a B.A. at Brandeis University, an M.F.A. in writing at Cornell University, a Masters in Photojournalism at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School and have been working as a photographer ever since. Over the course of my career, I've photographed for a variety of newspapers, magazines, non-profit organizations, businesses, corporations and private clients. My work has appeared in publications such as the New York Times, Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, National Geographic, The London Times as well as local publications such as the Cape Cod Times, Cape Cod Magazine, Chatham Magazine andSouth Shore Living. I've also worked on numerous long term personal projects and multi media pieces. During the past four winters, I've spent time teaching photography to children in Rwanda as well as to tribal Samburu Women at the On'gan Women's Cooperative in Kenya. I also teach a variety of photography workshops and classes locally on Cape Cod and am a resident photographer at the Cultural Center of Cape Cod where I have a studio/gallery. Most recently, I received a 2017 AFCC visual arts fellowship for my continued exploration of female identity and experience through my photography. I strive to create photographs one can't turn away from--photos that are powerful and capture in a unique way this extraordinary world we live in.

2017 - AFCC Fellow in Visual Arts, 2015 - Arts Within Reach Grant and Solo Show, 2014 - Artist in Residence, 2012 - Magnum Foundation Emergency Fun Grant Nominee, 2009 - Northern Short Course-2nd place multimedia story, 2000 - Alexia Foundation Award of Excellence, 2000 - Research Grant in Photojournalism, 1995 - Writing Fellowship, 1994 - Sterling Scholar

Arts
Breaking news
Crisis
Editorial
Environment
Events
Interior
Interview
Medical
Portrait
Reporting
Wildlife

German
English

Ritual Cleansing

Julia Cumes

A young woman bathes in a communal bathing area before worshipping at the Yellamma temple during the Yellamma Festival in Saundatti, India. As part of Yellamma custom, all worshippers must wash before worshipping and during the full moon festival, young girls from impoverished lower caste families are "married" to the goddess Yellamma to appease her. Once they are married to Yellamma, they are regarded as servants to the deity and must perform temple duties as well as satisfy the sexual needs of the priests and other men in the community. They may no longer marry a man and often end up being sold by unscrupulous priests to pimps who take them to work in the red-light districts of India's urban areas.

The Day Before

Julia Cumes

I photographed artist, Coco Larrain, at her home the day before she had a mastectomy and reconstructive surgery as part of a series I'm working on documenting the experience of women whose lives have been affecting by breast cancer in the area I live in--Cape Cod--which has a 20% higher incidence of breast cancer than the rest of the country. Coco documented her first experience with cancer fifteen years ago through painting and drawing. “I’ve always done self-portraits and documenting myself going through the cancer treatment process helped me look at my body objectively and get outside of what I was feeling,” she says.

Forsaken Place

Julia Cumes

I photographed these young girls skipping at an abandoned goldmine hostel that is home to them and many poor families on the outskirts of Johannesburg, South Africa. In the previous few weeks before this photograph was taken, the area had been robbed of all its cable (stolen for its copper) so no one had electricity anymore. Ironically, the girls were using the casing from stolen cable to skip with. Violence and sexual violence against women in South Africa is widely recognized to have reached levels among the highest in the world and is particularly high in the impoverished shanty towns and squatter camps like this abandoned hostel.