Boulder veterinarian John McGee will present a talk and slide show at the University of Colorado at Boulder Sibell Wolle Fine Arts Building at 7 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 14, titled "Orphanages of China: An Adoptive Father's Perspective."
The talk and slide presentation will be in room N141 of Sibell Wolle Fine Arts and will be followed by a short reception and viewing of the photographs in the "Work Space" in the fine arts building.
The program will feature about 80 to 100 slides of three Chinese orphanages: one in Yiwu, one in Hangzhou, called the Lily Orphan Care Center, and the third in Qian Dao, which translates as "thousand islands" and is known for its scenic beauty. All three are in Zhejiang province in east central China.
McGee, who has practiced photography as an avocation for years while working as a veterinarian in Boulder and Greeley, turned his lens to Chinese culture and its orphanages after adopting his oldest daughter, Katie, in 1996. More than 100 adopted Chinese girls currently are estimated to live in Boulder County.
"With this project I wanted to show what a typical Chinese community is like, as well as the orphanages, and what sort of background surroundings exist in the communities where so many adopted Chinese girls were born," said McGee.
"In most cases the girls are too young right now to have a lot of questions about their culture, but the adoptive parents want information and often are interested in anything they can find out about the communities and orphanages their children came from," he said.Ìý
Although only three locations are featured in the talk, McGee said the photographs still convey a lot of information about the level of care in Chinese orphanages and provide a glimpse of three average Chinese communities.
McGee's daughter Katie lived in the Yiwu Social Welfare Institute, which is featured in the show and which provides high quality care in the orphanage. A manufacturing city of about 1 million people, Yiwu is a center for commodities trading in east central China. The Lily Orphan Care Center in Hangzhou, built by the Littleton-based adoption agency Chinese Children Adoption International, provides a high level of care to orphans and is being used as a model for improving orphan care in China.
In Qian Dao, McGee was allowed to take only exterior shots of the orphanage.
All of the photographs in the show were taken in July 2002. However, McGee began planning the photography project and developing ideas for the content in 2000 and 2001 when he lived in Guangzhou with his wife, Bev, and daughters Katie and Sarah to teach English as a Second Language.
A second slide presentation and talk, geared to fine arts students, will be presented at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 12, in room N141 of the Sibell Wolle Fine Arts Building. In that program, McGee will feature photographs of three universities in China and will focus more on photography issues. The university photographs are of South China Normal University in Guangzhou in southern China, Zhong Shan University, also in Guangzhou, and Shanghai University.
McGee's photography was supported by a grant from the Arts and Humanities Association of Boulder, a private nonprofit organization established to support local artists, now called the Boulder County Arts Alliance. His photography has been exhibited widely in Boulder-area shows and he has been a participant in the highly popular Boulder Open Studios program held annually in October involving scores of local artists.
The Sibell Wolle Fine Arts Building is located north of Euclid Avenue and borders the Euclid Autopark, where paid parking is available. Both are east of the University Memorial Center, located at Broadway on Euclid Avenue.
For more information on the slide show and presentation call Gail Siegel in the CU-Boulder Community Affairs Office at (303) 492-7084 or Jeannine Malmsbury in the CU-Boulder News Services Office at (303) 492-3115.