Hover over the image for navigation and full screen controls

EPF 2010 Finalist

Michael Christopher Brown

China

play this essay

I feel most alive while on the road. As a result, I am often drawn to photograph people in a state of transition. Fifty years ago President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the construction of Americas Interstate Highway System, which helped open the Heartland and West and create a culture that would eventually spread around the world. China is experiencing a similar boom in industrialization and culture and I am currently driving around the country, photographing along the expanding road network. While the final form of this project remains unclear, while crossing the country I can only continue to listen, record and grow.  A loose approach, using small film cameras while often photographing without looking through the viewfinder, has enabled me to focus less on the lens and more on having an experience.

Bio

Raised in Washington State, Michael moved to New York and began working as a freelance photographer in 2006. His clients include GEO, Time, National Geographic Magazine, Smithsonian, Fortune, The Atlantic and ESPN The Magazine, among others. When not on assignment he might be found driving around China in his modified bread van.

Related links

Michael Christopher Brown

Hover over the image for navigation controls

Kerry Payne

Left Behind

play multimedia

In a small Australian town on June 12th 2001, my father, Myles Hilton Bean took his own life, aged 60. It was a decision I had no say in, but one which would alter me and the way I viewed the world forever. In the years that followed I encountered many social stigmas and outdated taboos associated with suicide. Whilst outwardly I functioned brilliantly, inwardly I was broken. I felt completely alone; haunted by emotions common in suicide bereavement — guilt, regret, anger, a sense of failure, shame, abandonment and utter confusion all hung in heavy layers over the expected feelings of grief and mourning.

Because I never spoke of what had happened, I prolonged my healing unnecessarily. Each year, 1 million people worldwide die by suicide — more than in war, terrorist activities and homicides — making it the tenth leading cause of death in the world. For every person that dies by suicide at least 20 more will attempt to do so, yet despite the high rate, little attention is paid to the phenomenon.

At least 90 percent of people who kill themselves have a diagnosable and treatable psychiatric illness – such as depression, bipolar depression, or some other depressive illness. In many cases, it is a treatable, preventable tragedy. Although most suicides are caused by mental health problems, mental health-care allocations often comprise less than 2 per cent of national health budgets. Greater attention must be given to suicide prevention, such as increased funding for research, help lines and mental health facilities.

I will continue this work and by sharing my story and those of my fellow survivors, it is my hope that others will learn from our experiences, speak up about their own, and seek comfort and support in the knowledge that they are not alone. We are many. The silence, secrecy and stigma that surrounds suicide has to end and if my work prevents a single suicide or helps one survivor avoid the many mistakes I made, it will give some meaning to a loss that nine years later, I still struggle to make any sense.

*If you or somebody you know is in crisis call 1800-273-TALK (8255) [USA]

thank you Dad, for the love you gave me in your life and the purpose you have given me in your death..

Bio

1969. Australia. I am a traveler and the urge to roam and my love of photography are happy companions. A reformed corporate world entrepreneur I now spend my days pursuing and documenting stories that matter; preserving my own version of history (with a small ‘h’) for the curious few who follow. I’ve had the honor of learning from some of the world’s most inspiring and generous photographers and I count my blessings every day to have discovered my passion so early in life. Some never do.

Related links

for image captions, visit: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=16483&id=113171415384160&ref=nf

website: www.kerrypayne.net

Hover over the image for navigation and full screen controls
ESSAY CONTAINS EXPLICIT CONTENT

EPF 2010 Finalist

Justin Maxon

When the Spirit Moves

play this essay

I’ve heard people say that since America has it’s first Black President in office, we have transitioned into a post-racial society.  If he can succeed, then all people of color can do the same.  This supposed land of the free is at liberty to those that have the wealth to buy it.

Those living in Chester, PA, USA, grow up in an environment where forces everywhere are against them; where gravity seems to be stronger and less forgiving. It is a place where pollution alters cognitive development, violence and crime are commonplace, poverty is oppressive, jobs are virtually non-existent, and people with nothing take from others who have little

If you walk these streets, you pass people in a trance, who speak without being heard. You see children with shallow eyes, with scars deep. Ghosts are everywhere, fading from neglect. There is little for people to grasp a hold of for support, to deliver them through. People are forced into carrying this burden of weight and thus are required to be strong to withstand it.

I was besieged while witnessing the issues weighing heavily on the lives of the people in this community. In experimenting with multiple exposures, I’m attempting to speak to the complexities I felt were so tightly woven into their lives.  With out this approach, my work would not begin to unfold the many consequences that have come out of their collective struggle. In this process of layering interrelated moments next to one other, I’m cautious not to bend or manipulate reality beyond recognition, for the benefit of my own aesthetics or ego. I want these moments to be believable and not just passed off as artistic representations of the truth.

This project is an attempt to bring awareness to the issues that plague many inner city Black communities, like Chester, throughout America. Mostly importantly though, it’s an attempt to show the resilience and strength that is present in these communities.

Bio

Justin Maxon (1983) was born in a small town in the woods of northern California. Nothing but trees and hippies sorta thing. He first got into photography at an early age, but then only took pictures of mountains and other woody features.  Today, Maxon is mainly interested in pursuing long-term projects that examine the complexities of human struggle, where he seeks out the hope always present in the shadows of life.

Maxon has received numerous awards for his photography, from competitions like UNICEF Images of the Year, POYi, and NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism. He won first place in the 2007 World Press Photo Daily Life Singles category, along with winning the Deeper Perspective Photographer of the Year at the 2008 Lucie Awards. In 2009, he was named one of PDNs 30 Emerging Photographers to Watch.

His clients include TIME, Newsweek, Mother Jones Magazine, Fader Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and NPR.

Related links

Justin Maxon

Razon Collective

Hover over the image for navigation and full screen controls

EPF 2010 Finalist

Kate Stone

At the Seams

play this essay

In “At the Seams” I used photographs of domestic interiors and common architecture to construct impossible, uncanny spaces that evoke a feeling of hesitant curiosity, a nervous desire to explore the room, to peek around the bend or to see what lies behind the door at the end of the hall. Our acceptance of photography as reality makes these images hard to understand, especially for those who know the original place. At first glance the rooms and buildings in these photographs appear real. Upon closer examination, however, something is clearly wrong. Doorways are misplaced and once rigid walls are twisted and torn. Distorted perspective creates incongruent angles and improbable shadows. These spaces are literally falling apart at the seams.

Bio

Kate Stone received her BA in photography from Bard College in 2009 and currently lives and works in Chicago. She was recently a recipient of the Tierney Fellowship and her work has been shown by The Center for Photography at Woodstock, The Photo Review, ARTribe NY and Eleni Koroneou Gallery.

Related links

Kate Stone

Hover over the image for navigation and full screen controls
ESSAY CONTAINS EXPLICIT CONTENT

EPF 2010 Finalist

Dima Gavrysh

Insha’Allah

play this essay

I took a photograph of Captain Harris, the commander of Combat Outpost Tangi, in Afghanistan’s Wardak province, as he was waiting for a helicopter to take him to the funeral of one of his soldiers. While he was covered by a cloud of dust, he seemed lost and overcome by his surroundings  the photo turned out to be truthfully despondent. His people are hated by the locals. He hates to lose his people to IEDs. I bet he hates the role he is assigned to play in winning hearts and minds of the locals, and he probably doesn’t believe in it even if he tries.

The photographs I shot through a night vision device had a quality reminiscent of early silver gelatin process and modern video games at the same time. In the first picture of my portfolio, the soldiers portrait acquired a GI-Joe-like quality, with the humanity taken out of his appearance. He looks like a war robot, a part of greater military machinery, and not as an individual human being. There is uneasiness and despair mixed with confusion. No one knows the right way to fight this war and when it is going to end, if ever. All of it looks like some huge experiment, where a civilization is being pushed forward through warfare. It doesn’t seem to work and yet we try.

Bio

Dima Gavrysh is a Ukrainian-born, New York City-based photojournalist. He started his career in the mid-90’s in Kiev, Ukraine. For the past 10 years, he has worked with major news agencies such as Associated Press, Agence France Press, European Press-Photo Agency, Gamma-Press, Reuters, and Bloomberg News.

Dima’s work has been published in magazines and newspapers worldwide including The New York Times, Time, People, Paris Match, Independent, Marie Claire, Stern and Newsweek.

Awards:
AI+AP (American Photography + American Illustration): published in 2008- 2010 yearbook.
2010 PDN Photo Annual Contest: Photojournalism.
International Photography Awards ? Lucie: honorable mention: 2008-2009.
XVIII Eddie Adams Workshop participant: winner of an internship for the Washington Post.com: 2005

Related links

Dima Gavrysh

Hover over the image for navigation and full screen controls

EPF 2010 Finalist

Matt Eich

Carry Me Ohio

play this essay

Once known for its bounty of coal, salt, clay and timber, Southeastern Ohio was stripped of its resources by the mining corporations that thrived from the 1820s to the 1960s.  When they had mined all that they could, the corporations left, leaving the communities with little but their cultural identity, which is a product of poverty.

For the past three years I have been documenting the people of this region as they attempt to recover from the aftermath of extractive industry. In photographing their daily life, I’ve explored the culture of the area, as well as on the crippling poverty that threatens to extinguish it. The foothills of Appalachia have been my home for the past five years. I met my wife here and our daughter was born here. Now, the same lack of opportunity that has plagued the residents of Southeastern Ohio for decades has forced us to move.

Rampant unemployment, poor housing conditions, drug abuse and sub-standard schools have left many families here in crisis. In 2006, Athens County, one of the poorest counties in the state, had a poverty rate of 27.4 percent and a per capita income of just $14,171. With the economic downturn of the United States these numbers have only gotten worse.

In this series of images I show the isolated and trapped residents of Southeastern Ohio. From Hercules the German Shepherd, chained to his house in the snow to Timmy, asleep on the couch, trapped in his body and requiring around the clock care from his family. Despite their bleak surroundings there is still a sense of whimsy and beauty in the lives of the region’s occupants. They opened their homes to me and this is my love song to the place I once lived.

Poverty is more than the lack of monies; it is the deprivation of opportunity and has a lasting emotional resonance for the individuals who live within its grasp. These images strive to remember a forgotten place and a unique time in American history.

Bio

Matt Eich (b. 1986) is a freelance photographer and founding member of LUCEO. His work is rooted in memory, both personal and collective and he strives to approach every photograph with a sense of intimacy. Matt’s images focus on his own back yard, often exploring communities, the issues they face and their sense of identity.

As a student Matt interned with National Geographic before returning to Ohio University to complete his degree. While finishing school Matt began working for clients such as Newsweek, Mother Jones, TIME, The FADER, Smithsonian, More and Apple. His accolades include POYi’s Community Awareness Award, The Magenta Foundation’s Bright Spark Award, the Joop Swart Masterclass, a Juried Fellowship at the Houston Center For Photography and being named one of PDN’s 30 in 2010.

Matt and his family now live in Norfolk, Virginia where he works on long-term projects while compulsively documenting everything around him.

Related links

Matt Eich

Sunday Afternoon by Margeaux Walter

Inspired by Georges-Pierre Seurat’s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte”.

Website: www.margeauxwalter.com

Hover over the image for navigation and full screen controls
ESSAY CONTAINS EXPLICIT CONTENT

Prabuddha Dasgupta

Longing

play this essay

“Longing” is my ongoing personal journal of memory and experience, based on everyday experiences…family, friendships, places known, spaces occupied, journeys remembered… At the centre of which stands a vital love story that became the pivot of my life six years ago… Elements from this love story appear as recurring motifs… Establishing the lexicon, which seeks to hold the journal together. All this is seen not in the context of specific time and place but through the personal, unfixed gaze of dream and memory.

The intent is to create an oblique, non-linear narrative, which seeks to evoke through the selective memory of my experiences, a journey of the viewer’s own.

The work in its infancy, with a different edit was shown at the Bodhi Art Gallery in New York in 2007-2008, and a selection of images from it were shown in a group show at the Whitechapel Gallery in London as part of “Where Three Dreams Meet” an exhibition of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi photography. The show opens at the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland on June 12th.

Bio

Prabuddha Dasgupta is a self-taught Indian photographer, whose work has been exhibited internationally in both solo and group shows. He is the author of 3 books, and the last one “Edge of Faith” (Seagull Books), a portrait of the disappearing Catholic community in Goa, India, was published in September 2009. He lives in Goa, India.

Related links

www.prabuddhadasgupta.com

Hover over the image for navigation and full screen controls

Kate Elizabeth Fowler

My Secret South

play this essay

This is a collection of images gathered throughout years of exploration in my home state, Virginia. Several of them feature my two traveling companions, biggest supporters, and best friends, Jackie Picariello and Robert Scott.

As a child I remember adamantly stating that I was not Southern, as it was my belief that the South did not begin until you had reached Georgia. In order to maintain this belief I had to disregard Richmond’s status as the former ‘Capital of the Confederacy’ and ignore my grandmother’s insistence in calling me “Katie Belle.î

To me, the South represented a shameful period of American History that I did not wish to be associated with; it represented the dislocation of families and cultures due to the presumptuousness of Western civilization.

It was not until my teenage years that I began to realize the beauty of my rich and troubled heritage. Many afternoons were spent driving down dirt roads with “no trespassing” signs searching for the remnants of forgotten homes.

The intricate tapestries of these strangers’ lives fascinated me. I found a strange comfort in my familiarity with the old houses and their belongings. The smell of dry wood and old paint, the light through aged and distorted glass, soft green grass of a large yard, and the frame of an empty barn; the landscape of my childhood.

I began to love these old homes and their fragments of lives once lived. Naturally, this love came with the fear of loss, and I began to see the temporary nature of these properties. As years passed I would return to find the homes gone; torn down by man and nature; segmented into lots for strip-malls and housing developments.

It was almost out of necessity that I began to photograph my explorations, collecting memories of a time passed and almost gone. For me, these images provide a memory of the beautiful mystery contained in Virginia’s soft hills; a memory of the people who tended the land and loved their homes.

At this point in time I find myself living in Finland, one of the Northern-most countries in the world; a country uniform in its cold white landscapes and modern architecture, founded on the principles of equality. In this safe and fair land I find myself longing for the diversity of my home and its healing wounds. I am able to see just how far we’ve come and to appreciate the beauty of our struggle.

Bio

Kate Elizabeth Fowler was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia in 1988. She is attending Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts for Photography and Film Studies.

Related links

www.kateelizabethfowler.com

Hover over the image for navigation and full screen controls

Davide Monteleone

Northern Caucasus

play this essay

Northern Caucasus is a mix of stereotypes as well as surprises. For centuries it has been a country of political, religious, military and expansionist rivalry, a struggle between opposing states, and also between allied states. Ever since the beginning of the 19th century, this region has been part of the tsarist Russian Empire, later absorbed by the Soviet Block.

With the 1991 radical transformations involving the entire Warsaw Pact coalition, and the storm caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union,  new and ancient disputes resurfaced, and in some cases worsened, and revived political and economic aims of supremacy in the area.

This project takes into account the regions in which these disputes are not over yet, or may be apparently concluded, as intermittent fires under the political rhetoric of normalization and pacification. I intend to investigate with without prejudices such reality, beginning with the daily life of people living in the Northern Caucasus, who never reached their coveted independence and are still suffering the ramifications of the Russian Empire during the colonial age. They are divided between the claim for independence and the pride for their diversity, economic subordination, the historical-political and mental affiliation, the condemnation to an eternal geographic position in a limbo limes, and the elaboration of a new post-soviet identity. My goal is to go further away from the bird’s eye view of the geopolitical analysis, gliding down to a low altitude to find the details of such a complex world, with the aim to give a new key to the present day Russian Caucasus.

I’ve been working from Chechnya to Dagestan, from Northern to Southern Ossetia, just after the war in August 2008, all the way to Abkhazia, from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea coasts, crossing geographical and political borders. My interest isn’t to cover the news that brought the region back under the international floodlights, but to carry on a considered path by making notes of the tracks left behind.

Bio

Born in 1974, Davide Monteleone spent the first 18 years of his life moving to various cities of Italy because of the work of his parents. After graduating, he studied engineering and then stopped to move to the U.S. and after that to England. Is here that he discovered his interest in photography and journalism. Back in Italy in 2000, he completed his studies in photography and journalism and began working with the major Italian magazines. At the end of 2001 he moved again, this time to Moscow, where he lived until 2003 working as correspondent for the photo agency Contrasto. This choice proved to be determining for his career. He started working regularly with major national and international newspapers such as D, Io Donna L’espresso, New York Times, Time, Stern, and the New Yorker. Since 2003 he lives both in Italy and Russia, where he is pursuing long-term personal projects and continues his editorial work. He published his first book Dusha, Russian Soul in 2007.

Related links

Davide Monteleone

Hover over the image for navigation and full screen controls
SOME ESSAYS CONTAIN EXPLICIT CONTENT

Emerging Photographer Grant 2010 Finalists

play this essay

This is a short preview of the essays of our 13 EPF finalists……their complete essays will be published on Burn in the coming weeks……the jury: Bruce Gilden, Michael Nichols, and Alessandra Sanguinetti

Hover over the image for navigation and full screen controls

Pete Pin

The Ave

play this essay

“My whole take on the Telegraph life is, basically, my life is very simple: I sit around all day and I spare change for hours for alcohol which I use to compensate for the fact that I live on the streets everyday.” Coconut, then a 16 year-old street kid (transcribed from an audio interview).

Since the late 1960’s, Telegraph Ave – a four block commercial strip on the south side of the University of California in Berkeley, CA – has been a magnet for street kids, travelers, and runaways like Coconut. Arriving for several days, weeks, or sometimes years, the young transients sleep on the street, in various shelters scattered across the city, or secretly in the numerous squat houses scattered on the south side of Berkeley. They come for a multitude of reasons: broken homes, a defunct foster care system, or simply a desire to travel and be disengaged from society.

“Telegraph is a family, it is home” Coconut confided, “I love this place.” The portraits presented here are part of a larger and evolving project on the young transient population in Berkeley mixing studio with street shots. As a student at Berkeley, I was always dismayed at how the transients were ignored and dehumanized by others.

My rationale for the studio shots were to strip the subjects from their environment with the aim of enabling the viewer to empathize with the subjects first and foremost as human beings. All of the subjects came into my makeshift studio exactly as they were on Telegraph. The street shots – currently a work in progress – in turn provides the context. In the course of working on this project, I at times fully immersed myself on Telegraph; I have slept on the street, under bridge overpasses, spent time in squat houses, and even hitchhiked with a group of young travelers with nothing but the clothes on my back. I have been exceptionally fortunate to have been given a glimpse of their reality. In many ways, these photographs – the subject matter, the aesthetic, the minimal lighting, etc., are also testament to my state of mind at that period in time; I was overcome with a lack of direction, was deeply depressed, and felt “unchained from the sun” after leaving graduate school to pursue photography. As such, in an admittedly exceptionally limited way, I related with my subjects. The decision to leave a PhD program to pursue photography was improbable and professionally suicidal as I had just purchased my first camera only a year prior. These photos were taken within a month of leaving academia and, concomitantly, less than a year of taking my first photograph.

Bio

Pete Pin was born in a Red Cross refugee camp in 1982 following the Cambodian genocide and immigrated, along with his family, as a refugee to Northern California in the mid 1980’s. He attended inner-city high school in Long Beach, CA and dropped out as a junior to work full-time. With the generous emotional and financial support from patrons at his place of employment, he was encouraged to return to academics and received his BA in Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley, graduating magna cum laude with high departmental honors and was the recipient of the Outstanding Honors Thesis Award by his department. In the summer of 2008, months before embarking on an eight year PhD program in the social sciences at Berkeley, Pete purchased his first camera with the initial intent of pursuing photography as a hobby. Within a year of graduate school, he abandoned his PhD program to focus on photography full-time. The Ave is his first sustained project. He has received no formal artistic or photography training and is entirely self-taught. Pete currently resides in San Francisco, CA.

Related links

www.petepin.com

Hover over the image for navigation and full screen controls

Zisis Kardianos

Feast day

play this essay

“Memory demands an image”
Bertrand Russell

Rituals and traditions represent a very strong manifestation of the Greek way of life. It can be sensuous, surreal, mysterious and always loaded with the indelible sparkles of memory. I look at these traditions not as isolated events but as part of the life and spirit of my place. As photographer, I am allured by the idea of traveling. Going to different places, often without fixed ideas, just hoping for a prolific encounter with anything I may happen to stumble across. But since this is not always possible, I have to take advantage of what is around me, even outside my doorstep. I have to try to understand it and articulate it in a meaningful way. I am not very good in elaborating on an intellectual idea with the camera. I feel the camera as part of my heart, an extension of my intuition. I’m not sure about the documentary nature of these photographs, but for sure it is undermined by my responsive approach. It’s a rather subjective experience, constructing metaphors of my own narrative, through which I try to awake memories and to identify my cultural origins.

Bio

I was born in Greece in 1962. I studied sociology and in 1985 I enrolled in a two year photography course in Athens. I have recently attended a workshop with Nikos Economopoulos, one of the photographers I greatly admire. I am an amateur with some occasional publications of my work that subsidize my income together with my freelance travel writing.
I consider myself a street photographer more than anything else. I relate to the world by taking pictures and I give back slightly altered something of what I have been given.
It’s an emotional exchange and the highest reward I can expect from photography.
“Feast day” was not conceived as a series until much later when I felt I had a lot of singles with a common thread. The images were shot in my home island Zakynthos and other towns of south-west Greece, between 2006 and 2010.
A different edit has been first published in Geotropio magazine. The series has not been completed.

Related links

www.zisiskardianos.gr

Hover over the image for navigation and full screen controls
ESSAY CONTAINS EXPLICIT CONTENT

Brian Shumway

Black Girl

play this essay

“Modeling is an addiction.” Johanie, 24, aspiring model

Black Girl is a portrait series on young black women in the New York City area who aspire to be models.

Even as little girls, many women dream of becoming a model. The glamour of strutting along the runway with cameras flashing, being a spokesmodel for the latest line of make-up, or being plastered on billboards in Times Square can be too enticing to ignore. Shows like America’s Next Top Model, which can shoot a model to stardom almost instantly, and easy accessibility to professional photographers through numerous modeling websites make this dream seem more realistic and attainable than ever before. Indeed, everyday countless girls around the United States and the world are actively pursuing this dream.

There is, however, a huge segment of aspiring models who will find attaining their dream disproportionately difficult. They are black women. We all realize, at least in some way, that the mainstream modeling world is white-washed, especially at the high-fashion end. At the February 2010 New York Fashion Week, a whopping 85% of all models used on the runway were white, just 8% black (see jezebel.com/5476920). This is in no way representative of New York City’s, the United States’, or the world’s population. On the ground level, where women are just starting to put a portfolio together, the reality is quite different than Fashion Week’s. In doing this project, I used a modeling website to contact models. I found that, despite so few black professionals, nearly three-thousand young black women (just within 50 miles of my NYC zip code) are striving to attain their dream, or at least their interpretation of it.

Despite the odds and a stark downturn in the fashion, advertising, and magazine industries, these aspiring models have high hopes and remain steadfast. They work hard, often juggling school, work, relationships, and family (some are even mothers) to find a few hours a week to squeeze in a shoot, or perhaps two if they’re lucky. Using an approach that is part anthropology and part fantasy, the women photographed are a cross-section of real people who want to do every kind of modeling, from runway, high-end fashion, print or commercial work to eye-candy and artistic nudes. Their interests are varied, as are their looks and beauty, but this one dream ties them all together. Behind that dream are fundamental human issues that touch upon identity, body, beauty, sexuality, race, and the drive to be recognized in a culture obsessed with fame and celebrity. I hope that these portraits can in some way contribute to their pursuit.

Post Script:
The portraits here I feel represent how the models wanted to look. For each shoot, we would talk about possible ideas and outfits before or during the shoot. Many of the models were open to shooting everything from high-fashion to lingerie, and some even nude. She would bring different things to wear, try them on, see how it looked, and we (or I, or she) would say yea or nay. None of the models are wearing something they didn’t want to wear (or any outfit they felt to be demeaning) or suggest wearing themselves. The pictures give us a glimpse into how the models understand fashion, modeling and themselves as a model-in-the-making.

Bio

Brian Shumway is a New York City based photographer. He has worked for publications like Time, Newsweek, Smart Money, Reader’s Digest, and XXL. His work has been awarded and exhibited throughout the United States. Please visit his website to learn more.

Related links

www.brianshumway.com

Mike Pinches

Pastures New

I was born in the English New Town of Milton Keynes in the 1980s when much of it was still fields. It had been conceived, in the 1960s, as a radical solution to the post-war housing crisis and as an opportunity to create a utopian city of the future in the Buckinghamshire countryside. Recently, I went back to find that a place designed to make perfect sense had ended up making no sense at all.

Central Milton Keynes is like an out-of-town shopping mall. Underpasses, overpasses and self-contained shopping areas ensure pedestrians and cars are kept apart. On its outskirts, high-speed roads are littered with blocked exits and unfinished slip roads which wait for new housing estates and industrial units to be built. In between, housing developments with names like Oakgrove, Newlands, and Springfield fill the gap. The town has seen phenomenal growth over its relatively short lifespan – today nearly a quarter of a million people call it home.

Bio

I studied Photojournalism at the London College of Printing and Architectural Design at the University of Edinburgh. Pastures New currently exists as a book dummy of forty-six photographs, sixteen of which are shown here. A lightbox installation of the project was exhibited in Milton Keynes as part of the town’s fortieth birthday celebrations. It has also been nominated for the Creative Review Futures Awards, the Creative Review Photography Annual, the Picture Editors’ Awards, and the Guardian Student Media Award.

Related links

www.mikepinches.com

Music

“Let’s Hear That String Part Again, Because I Don’t Think They Heard It All The Way Out In Bushnell” by Sufjan Stevens.
Used with permission.

Hover over the image for navigation and full screen controls
ESSAY CONTAINS EXPLICIT CONTENT

David Rochkind

Heavy Hand, Sunken Spirit: The Costs and Consequences of Mexico’s Drug War

play this essay

In the three and a half years since Mexican President Felipe Calderon escalated the battle against the country’s drug cartels, more than 20,000 people have been killed and kidnappings have skyrocketed. The cartels in Mexico are ruthless, meting out an awesome brutality where heads are rolled into crowded discos and dismembered bodies are abandoned on busy streets. Heavy Hand, Sunken Spirit is a project about the societal costs and consequences of Mexico’s violent drug war. It frames the violence as a symptom, as opposed to the problem, and one of a variety of symptoms that will haunt the country for generations. This country is in the midst of a “conflict” in every sense of the word, and when documenting this conflict it is important not to reduce what is happening to a series of nearly anonymous images of carnage that could be happening anywhere.

I am not creating a story about violence that happens to be set in Mexico, but rather a story about Mexico’s present situation, offering a snapshot of a time that will be referred to for decades as people look for answers to make sense of Mexican society. I want each image to convey a sense of Mexico, her color, and her culture. The wounds of this war bleed into every corner of the country, staining the very fabric of Mexican life with violence, death and fear. The psychology of the country is also changing, as people become accustomed to horror and distrust, weakening an already fragile democracy. I am most fascinated by the space between what Mexico has always been and what this carnage is creating.

The heat of the conflict is melting two worlds together, making a singular Mexico defined as much by violence and tension, as by history and culture. I chose to work on this project because it represents how a grand, intense struggle can be transformed into quiet, daily dramas that are woven seamlessly into the lives of those involved. I am drawn to extreme crises that become internalized, even routine, to the communities that they touch. Many in Mexico are forced to make sense of a situation that is, simply, irrational. Their faith in democratic institutions is being tested and their sense of normalcy is being assaulted; what appears to an outsider to be a horrific campaign of violence and intimidation is simply a routine part of life for many Mexicans.

This project is meant to expose the evolution of deep changes that this conflict has brought about, as well as the scars that will remain long after the violence subsides.

Bio

David Rochkind (b.1980) graduated from the University of Michigan in 2002. Shortly after graduating he moved to Caracas, Venezuela to begin working as a freelance photographer. He was based in Caracas for 6 years and recently relocated to Mexico City, Mexico. Mr. Rochkind’s work has been published in a variety of media, including: The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Stern, Le Monde Magazine, Glamour, Rolling Stone and others. In addition he has worked for several development organizations, including: the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the United Nations Mine Action Center for Afghanistan (UNMACA), CARE and The Carter Center. His work has been recognized by : the Center Project Competition (Santa Fe), the Anthropographia Human Rights and Photography Award, the National Press Photographer’s Association, Photo District News, the Magenta Foundation and others. In addition to his project on Mexico, Mr. Rochkind is in the process of creating an education program about Tuberculosis based on his photographs.

Related links

www.davidrochkind.com

www.anthropographia.org

Hover over the image for navigation and full screen controls

Emily Schiffer

Cheyenne River

play this essay

In 2005, I founded a photography program for youths on Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota. In this ongoing program, my students and I photograph together, share our images while they’re still in the viewfinder, and operate as both subjects and photographers. Our favorite locations are the fields and abandoned buildings on the fringes of town, forgotten places thick with the past that lend themselves to imaginary games and textured photographs. The absence of an adult presence is evident in both the children’s play and our images. The 500 inhabitants of Dupree, SD are confident in the area’s relative safety. Children explore freely, and develop a community of young people that operates without adult involvement. My images explore play as a vehicle through which youth reveal and negotiate their emotions, traumas, and desires. Children have a unique ability to experience love and joy alongside pain without compartmentalizing their experiences. I seek to convey this complexity. Over the course of four years, my students and I have documented our relationships with one another and this land. The validity and meaning of my images are linked to the shared context of their creation. Therefore, my work will be exhibited alongside the children’s photographs, which present the other parts of the whole. The design of a group exhibition represents the next phase of this program. In summer 2010, I plan to host six committed teenage photographers and two adults in New York City. The purpose of this visit is to expose the youth and elders to ideas of representation: the artist’s intent, and the viewer’s perceptions. We will tour museums and galleries, and meet with artists and curators. This artistic exposure is designed to inspire the creation of a photographic instillation that will enable the viewer to interact with our images and form relationships with our photographic subjects. Currently, my students, their families, and I are engaged in a fundraising campaign to support this next stage. We hope to reach a wide audience at home and abroad.

Bio

B. 1980. In 2003 Emily Schiffer received her BA in Fine Art and African American Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. In 2005, she founded the My Viewpoint Youth Photography Initiative on the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota, where she continues to teach and shoot. Awards include: the 2010 Arnold Newman Prize for New Directions in Portraiture, the 2010 winner of the PDN Photo Annual Personal Project Category, the 2009 Inge Morath Award, presented by Magnum Photos and the Inge Morath Foundation, a 2006-2007 Fulbright Fellowship in Photography, and recognition as one of the top ten portfolios for the 2007 Leica Oskar Barnak Award. Emily has exhibited her photographs internationally. Her work is in the permanent collections of The Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts, Japan, Foto Baryo, Philippines, and The Center for Fine Art Photography, US. Emily lives in Brooklyn, NY and is available to work internationally.

Related links

www.MyViewpoint.org

www.emilyschiffer.com

Hover over the image for navigation and full screen controls

Mark Gong

Cuban Life

play this essay

I wanted to do one last great backpacking trip before settling down in the Big Apple, so in Spring 2008, I visited Cuba.  Like most countries I travel to, I try not to have any preconceived notions of what to expect.  What I found was a land and people far more familiar than I could have imagined. Cuba resonated with me like no other country I have traveled, and reminded me of what life was like being raised in Communist China.  From the red handkerchiefs tied around the necks of students to the bicycles on the street, at almost every turn I experienced déjà vu. Scenes from my childhood came to life, lifted from memory and morphed into my surroundings, replaced with Spanish and colonial buildings.  With this feeling of nostalgia, I began to capture settings that reminded me of the life that I once knew. While Cuba has its own cultural identity, many common threads linked me to my past. Larger themes such as the close-knit communities, the omnipresent government, sports, and the patient wait for change is something that both counties share. I went about photographing the people as if I had always lived there.  Cuba gave me the opportunity to relive my youth as if I always had a camera around my neck.

Bio

Mark Gong is an award winning New York City-based freelance photographer.  His passion for photography started when he took his first camera on a solo backpacking trip across Africa and Europe.  Not long after, Mark landed the prestigious internship at The Washington Post and the Eddie Adams Workshop.  His photographs have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Fader, Surface and Popular Photography.  Recently Mark won Best in Show at FotoWeek DC as well Surface’s Avant Guardian Project.

Related links

www.markgong.com

Hover over the image for navigation and full screen controls
ESSAY CONTAINS EXPLICIT CONTENT

Jamie Maxtone Graham

When Evening Comes: Night Market Portraits

PLAY THIS ESSAY

The photographs in this body of work came to be out of a couple of different but complimentary impulses.  The first was a simple curiosity of what the Long Bien night market in Hanoi, Vietnam – where I have lived since 2007 – actually looked like at night.  I have often been past the market during the day when it is closed and very little, if anything, is ever happening.  It is, in fact, asleep.  I found it is an entirely different place after night falls.

The second, more personal, challenge for myself was to make photographs in a different mode – both technically and aesthetically – and to engage the subjects, the people who work and even live in the night market, in a manner that required collaboration and ultimately a trust.  I wanted to bring some of the aesthetic of the studio into the street and to do this at night in this venue – a rough wholesale fruit and vegetable market in a tough section of the city near the Red River – seemed both absurd and entirely logical.  I like that kind of friction.

On a separate note, there are a couple of other ideas at work here for me.  In the West, ‘Vietnam’ continually connotes a war long over and other socio-political issues which often seem to sublimate the very “everydayness” of the place.  With as little prejudice as I am capable of, in this series I wanted to just look and be looked back at by people with no more overt agenda than just that.  These people photographed and I developed some relationship both in the moment we made the image and in the weeks I regularly returned, always with their portrait as a gift.  I also had in mind to embrace some tone of a 19^th or early 20^th colonial portraitist (in Indochina they were typically French and I admire a lot of that work) and so I tried to adopt a somewhat neutral distance and attitude with the camera while looking for something that expressed the nuance of this time, these people, this place.

Bio

I have been a cinematographer working originally in New York and then in Los Angeles on feature films, commercials and episodic television but also with strong exposure to documentary and independent films as well. I began coming to Vietnam in 1990 to shoot a documentary and have returned many times in the two decades since on other non-fiction and narrative films and for personal work too.
In 2007-08 I became a Fulbright Research Fellow after receiving a grant funding my proposal to photograph contemporary youth culture in Vietnam. My wife, our young daughter and I continue to live in Hanoi and I have made several other portfolios of photographs in that time (When Evening Comes is the most recent) while pursuing commercial and narrative film work in the region. A selection of this body of work exhibited at The Bui Gallery in Hanoi in February and March, 2010.

Hover over the image for navigation and full screen controls

James Dodd

Olympic Dreams

play this essay

Sport funding in the UK has increased dramatically as a result of winning the 2012 Olympic bid. Knowing the eyes of the world will soon be upon the nation, much of this funding has been spent scouting exceptional youth talent and intensely developing them into potential Olympians. Over the past 2 years (2008-2010), James has been following the British junior diving team in Sheffield UK, documenting their trials and tribulations en route to the games. This work explores the pressures and expectations placed upon the youth of a nation aiming to succeed, and in this case reach their olympic dreams. This project is ongoing.

Bio

James Dodd, a 26 year old UK based photographer from Sheffield, originally studied Computing and Business Practices, before completing his photojournalism training through the National Council for the Training of Journalists. A founding member of the photography collective Statement Images (www.statementimages.co.uk) James is also the current photographer & curator in residence at Bank Street Arts (www.bankstreetarts.com) in Sheffield. Through his work James covers a vast range of subjects and concepts, from hard news coverage, to in-depth documentary series on sport and pastimes.

Related links

www.jamesdodd.net