Author Archive for burn magazine

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Teresa Cos

I Was There – Observations on “The Society of The Spectacle”

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“I Was There” is the first chapter of a long term (lifetime) project which explores western society and its obsession with success. I started by depicting the worlds of art, fashion and culture, where anxiety and struggle for success, together with the desperate need for recognition and approval are ubiquitous; where people live with the constant fear of being considered losers. The images have been taken in 2010 at Venice Architecture Biennale, Venice Film Festival, Milan and London Fashion Weeks, Frieze Art Fair in London and Paris Contemporary Art Fair (FIAC).

I chose these events because they are globalised examples of a bubble (for instance the art industry) that is on the verge of explosion. As wrote Jean Baudrillard: When one looks at the emptiness of current art, the only question is how much such a machine can continue to function in the absence of any new energy, in an atmosphere of critical disillusionment and commercial frenzy, and with all the players totally indifferent? If it can continue, how long will this illusionism last? A hundred years, two hundred? This society is like a vessel whose edges move ever wider apart, and in which the water never comes to the boil.

If one substitutes current art with current society the equation doesn’t really change, does it? And who are these indifferent players, if not us? I want to keep on exploring and understanding photographically the Hyper reality created by consumerism, where people aspirations are dangerously confused with the models of living that the society of the spectacle is constantly selling us and where need has become desire and admiration envy.

To me, it is fundamentally important to understand these social dynamics because, by creating the idea that through a selfish individualism everybody can finally reach extreme forms of wealth and success, one drastically contributes to the social and economic disparities in this world.

Bio

I was born and grew up in a small town called Latisana, in the North East of Italy, a one hour drive from Venice, where I ended up living for six years as an architecture student. It is thanks to architecture that I discovered photography, because it taught me to look at the world through different eyes.

After graduating in 2008, I was in the Italian team of architects and urbanists in the international table of consultation wanted by the French government to produce ideas for the future of Paris. I lived for seven months in the suburbs of the French capital, producing my first important body of work, Banlieue 08/09, that allowed me to be accepted last year onto the Photojournalism & Documentary Photography MA program at London College of Communication, where I graduated with Distinction.

I live and work in London and I am also part of the photography collective Five Eleven Ninety Nine.

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Teresa Cos

Collective Five Eleven Ninety Nine

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Charlotte Tanguy

NYX

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In St-Petersburg, pollen comes out of poplars that were massively planted there after the second World War, in order to fill the holes in the city. Because so many of them were planted, and the pollen started to pollute the city, people became allergic to these pollen.

In St-Petersburg, I met Lielia during these so-called “white nights”, 21st of June 2010. I saw her walking through a cloud of white dots, pollen. She refused to be photographed, but took me to her home anyway. She showed me a cut out photograph of her son Anton, a journalist who got killed in St-Petersburg in 2000.

Her dog, a dalmatian, was jumping on me.

This project is about hopelessly trying to own absence… a walk with no beginning and no end through St-Petersburg, haunted by Anton’s photograph.

I came back to see Lielia in St-Petersburg in February, and will go there next time in June.

Bio

Born in 1979 in Lyon, France. Based in Paris.
Graduated from Ecole Nationale des Arts decoratifs de Paris (ENSAD) in 2004, started photography in 2008, and joined Agence Vu’ in January 2011.

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Charlotte Tanguy

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Amnon Gutman

The Promised Land

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In June 2002, the government of Israel decided to erect a physical barrier to separate Israel and the West Bank in an attempt to minimize the entry of Palestinian terrorists into the country. This has partially solved today’s terrorist infiltration problem but has caused grief and pain to innocent Palestinians in every area in which it was constructed, along the 1967 Green Line. In the southern region of Mt. Hebron, the movement of Palestinians who are coming into the country to find work has been disrupted. These people and their families are paying the price for the system of collective control that Israel has decided to implement with the erection of the Separation Barrier. Typically, a day’s work in the West Bank for a builder usually comes to about $18, while a day’s work in Israel brings them $60 – $110. Their families have come to rely on this income. Ironically, these Palestinian men, who are determined to keep providing for their families are the ones who are physically building the State of Israel. They endure terrible conditions as illegal workers, sleeping rough in river creeks, under bridges, on building sites and under highways in the Beer Sheva area, trying to avoid getting caught. If the Palestinians are apprehended, they go through a security check and when found innocent of terrorist intentions, they are sent back to their homes. And so the wearisome cycle continues. Israeli border patrol police and the army are in a constant but only partially successful race to apprehend these Palestinians. Every wall has its weak points. For a young man determined enough, it becomes a way of life- waiting for the right moment, for the prepaid accomplice driver waiting on the other side, depending on his faithful cell phone and on his buddies, all of whom are adjusting strategies to accommodate for the Separation Barrier.

Bio

Growing up in a war conflicted region, I have always been deeply aware of the possibility of loss. Photography empowers me to share this insight, demonstrating the horrible, equalizing moment of the possibility of loss, the universality of vulnerability. There is nothing clearer, nothing more precious than the preservation of the life force in the face of violence and disease. This is what I am attempting to articulate with my black and white images of the world.

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Amnon Gutman

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Mikolaj Nowacki

Odra

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Odra is the second largest river in Poland. Its waters joins three countries: Czech, where it starts, Poland and Germany. I grew up on the banks of this river in the communist era playing with my best friend on boats and on a landfill of anchors, observing barges that transported coal. I often dreamed of jumping on such a barge and going to the unknown. When I was a teenager I often walked many kilometers along the river searching for rare species of birds as an amateur ornithologist. At that time, Odra was just a beautiful sewage – a mixture of water, fecal and toxic, irritating chemical substances.
Now, after 22 years of post-communist transformation  Odra is slightly cleaner but barges became a rarer view.
This project is a continuation of my fascination in this river. Through these photographs I want to explore people’s connections with Odra and to explore its natural beauty. I want to share my impressions with viewers hoping that this story will somehow increase peoples need of protecting this beautiful river.

Bio

Born in Wroclaw, Poland in 1972. Graduated at the Faculty of Law, Administration and Economics at the University of Wroclaw. Received Master’s degree in Law in 1997. Finished post graduate studies; his doctoral thesis covered International Space Law. He renounced law and discontinued his doctorate for photography. Mikolaj is a freelancer cooperating e.g. with “National Geographic Poland” and “Newsweek Poland”. Since 2006 he participated in numerous workshops with National Geographic photographer Tomasz Tomaszewski. In 2010 he became a student of the co-founder of VII agency Antonin Kratochvil.

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Mikolaj Nowacki

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Francesca Mancini

Asylum, seeking Refuge.

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This is the story of a young man aged twenty, this is the story of a man aged thirty, this is the story of a boy. This is the story of someone who, out of necessity or choice, is compelled to fight a system and to pay the consequences: forced escape.
He leaves everything behind. Family, home, girlfriend or often a wife and children, sometimes a good job and a bit of money. He has to say goodbye to the sweetness and the colours of his homeland for ever.
He leaves everything, otherwise they will kill him.
He’s an Iraqi, Eritrean, Nigerian. A Somali, Afghan or Kurd.
They have told him that he believes in the wrong god.
That land, where his people have always lived, does not belong to him.
They have ordered him to kill for a cause, whatever it might be.
So he escapes.
Convinced that his life is worth more. Knowing that he is young, that he can, and wants, to do anything: any kind of work, even the most humble, to have another chance, a new future, no matter where. He comes to Italy to forget.
The one thing, the only thing he’s looking for is a new system. To try and simply be what he is: a young man of twenty, a man of thirty, a boy.

Bio

Francesca Mancini made her debut as a professional photographer when she was 24, shooting her first international reportages on war refugees in the Balkans and southern Italy, and in Kosovo immediately after the war, and on the effects of pollution on the environment in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
After studying photography for three years in Rome, she worked for the Italian press and published her photos in leading daily newspapers.
From 2007 to 2008 she worked as a freelance between Kosovo and Serbia, documenting the social and political changes in the region and the difficulties linked to Kosovo’s independence.
In 2009 she started a project on political asylum seekers in Italy, which was published in the book Rifugiati by Christopher Hein.
Mancini’s photos have been published in Le Monde Magazine, The Independent, Newsweek Japan, Epsilon, Internazionale, L’Espresso, Panorama.
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Prospekt

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Baptiste Giroudon

Working with Democracy

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This project is a photographic research of the concept of Democracy. As a photo reporter I try to work on contemporary issues implying a wider angle rather than just the next morning front page. As an artist I work with the single image process, which comes from a personal wish to show the world with a sharp and thoughtful point of view.

In every story I work on, I find myself facing a different situation that almost constantly brings up democracy. This isn’t advocacy for, or a critic of democracy, but the intention is to show where and how in different aspects of our globalized world, this concept can be understood, reclaimed and put forward. I have chosen democracy as a common factor not only to describe a blurry concept, but also to raise a question that everyone shares: what has democracy become today?

Art and photojournalism exist in what Susan Sontag has termed ‘febrile rivalry’ and my intentions equal those of a tightrope walker trying to express himself without falling to one side or another. My approach stands in the news media and I look for raw material in countries that make the headlines. The thread of the project is Lincoln’s famous quote: “the power to the people, by the people, for the people”, elections, demonstrations, public maters and revolutions are examples for me to draw sketches of pictorial symbols of Democracy.

I am aware of the effectiveness of both my experience and my naivety, I use them both as much as I can into the research, the act of photographing, the editing, and are my only weapons I can use to fight.

Bio

With my father’s old camera I left to Argentina when I was 17 years old. This is where I started photojournalism. In 2001 the country fell into a terrible economic crash. I understood that today Photojournalism should avoid the cynical perception; it should be used as a positive tool, not to mention the need to find new ways of assimilating and representing the real. After my first exhibition of the Argentina’s pictures, I worked on a long term project that focused on the backstage of the politic, fashion and cinema industries. It was exhibited as a personal show in Paris (AAA gallery) and Brussels (Jonas Gallery). After a few collective exhibition on my new project “Working with Democracy”, I just finished a story in Egypt: Life after the revolution. Today I keep working for magazines, newspaper and personal projects.

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Baptiste Giroudon

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Gustavo Jononovich

YUMA

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I traveled to Cuba because my girlfriend decided to do an internship in a hospital in La Havana, she’s a Doctor. Until then, I had always made photographs guided by a specific theme, trying to tell something about other people’s misfortunes. I decided to experience photography in a different way this time. I wasn’t interested in telling or describing anything about the well-known political and historical characteristics of the Cuban system. I didn’t want to need to look for ‘useful situations’. I tried to forget that I was there.

Liberating myself of having to tell something about Cuba allowed me to connect in a more authentic way with the place. Photographing using only my instinct allowed me to discover what I was feeling. My method was to walk the same streets over and over again, in silence, just focusing in contemplating. I sometimes felt attracted to the expression of the shapes and textures and to the simple beauty of nature. Other times I felt I was just photographing my own sense of calmness or the mystery that Cuba inspired me. Yuma is the way Cubans call foreigners, I was the Yuma.

Bio

Gustavo Jononovich was born in Buenos Aires in 1979. In 2008 he began as a freelance photographer, after two years of training covering local news as a contract photographer for an Argentine based newspaper.

His first long-term book project RICHLAND, currently in progress, is about the over-exploitation of the natural resources in Latin America and the resulting long-term negative effects, both human and environmental. His approach to photography led him far away from covering breaking news, being more interested in providing an in-depth analysis on the stories.
His work has been published in Newsweek Japan, PDFX12, the Black Snapper, Global Post, Bite! and Lunatic Magazine, among others.

AWARDS:
- POYi Latin America 2011 – Migration and Human Trafficking Stories – 2nd prize
- ICP Infinity Award in Photojournalism 2010 – Nominee
- Encuentro Internacional de Foto y Periodismo ‘Ciudad de Gij’n’ 2010 – Finalist
- Environmental Photographer of The Year 2009 – Climate Change – 2nd prize

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Gustavo Jononovich