Author Archive for burn magazine

Page 4 of 18

EPF 2011 Winner

Emerging Photographer Fund – 2011 Recipient


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Irina Werning

Back to the Future

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I love old photos. I know I’m a nosy photographer. As soon as I step into someone else’s house, I start sniffing for those old photos. Most of us are fascinated by their retro look but to me it’s imagining how people would feel and look like if they were to reenact them today… A year ago, I decided to actually do this. So, with my camera, I started inviting people to go back to their future.

It starts when I get together with my subjects and we choose the old picture. I go through their boxes and albums looking for an image that speaks about them. Next comes a bit of a photographic investigation: studying the lighting, the angle, the type of camera and lens it was shot with, etc. Then, from there, the search begins: internet auction sites, second hand stores, borrowing from friends wardrobes, cutting, dying, sewing, attaching, adapting, assembling, gluing, coloring, painting, renting rare and hard to find objects. This project requires a lot of improvising on the run and it involves searching endlessly for stuff in the streets of Buenos Aires. I guess I really like finding things. If I cant find something, then I make it.

Once I have everything I need, we are ready to go back to the future. I dress them up and put them either in the set I built for them or, when possible, back in the real location. Once I get the light right, I ask them to do that thing they were doing in the original photo. I am always amazed that they do it.

Its funny how what you do can show you who you are. I always thought of myself to be the opposite of perfectionist as I live in complete chaos most of the time. However, when I now look at these pictures and see the attention to detail in them, I have to question my self image…

This story has been published in Sunday Times Magazine (Spectrum).

Editor’s Note:

Irina will receive $15,000. from Burn Magazine through the Magnum Cultural Foundation to continue her project.

The EPF 2011 judges:

Trent Parke – photographer, Magnum Photos
Narelle Autio – photographer, Agence VU’
Maggie Steber – photographer, editor, teacher
Barbara Stauss – photo director, Mare magazine, Germany

-dah-


Bio

Born in Buenos Aires
BA Economics, Universidad de San Andres, Buenos Aires, 1997
MA History, Universidad Di Tella, Buenos Aires, 1999
MA Photographic Journalism, Westminster University, London, 2006
Winner Ian Parry Scholarship 2006
Gordon Foundation Grant 2006
Selected for Joop Swart Masterclass (World Press Photo Organization), 2007


Related links

www.irinawerning.com



—

Emerging Photographer Fund – Finalists:

Dominic Bracco II
Michael Christopher Brown
Zhe Chen
Laura El-Tantawy
Daisuke Ito
Tushikur Rahman
Benjamin Rusnak
Daria Tuminas


—

Emerging Photographer Fund – Honorable mentions:

Walter Astrada
Victor Cobo
Maurizio Cogliandro
William Daniels
Marc Davidson
Alvaro Deprit
Rian Dundon
Matt Eich
Ryan Gauvin
Robin Hammond
Tom Hyde
Sebastian Liste
Alberto Lizaralde
Nicola Lo Calzo
Guy Martin
Gabriele Micalizzi
Karen Mirzoyan
Jane Moriarity
Isabelle Pateer
Emily Schiffer
Valerio Spada
Andy Spyra
Anastasia Taylor-Lind
Munem Wasif

Published on June 11, 2011 by burn magazine. 63 Comments

chris anderson – capitolio

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Chris Anderson

Capitolio

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The word ‘capitolio’ refers to the domed building that houses a government. Here, the city of Caracas, Venezuela, is itself a metaphorical capitolio building. The decaying Modernist architecture, with a jungle growing through the cracks, becomes the walls of this building and the violent streets become the corridors where the human drama plays itself out in what President Hugo Chavez called a ‘revolution.’

Originally published as a traditional book in 2010 by RM, “Capitolio” is an intimate journey through a time of revolution in Hugo Chavez’ Caracas, Venezuela. This series was photographed between 2004 and 2008.

“Capitolio” is the first authored monograph photography book for the iPhone and iPad.

 

DAH – Chris Anderson Interview

This is an excerpt of a recent skype conversation with Chris Anderson, talking about how the iPad application of his most recent book, Capitolio, came to be. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

-DAH

David Alan Harvey: …tell me in your own words a little bit about where you got the idea [to make an iPad monograph out of Capitolio] and what you did.

Chris Anderson: Basically, the book was starting to sell out, and I started thinking, only a certain number of people can actually get this book, and the ultimate expression of what I did in Venezuela really comes together in a book. You know, a slideshow on the web doesn’t really capture the whole thing, seeing a print doesn’t really capture it, it’s in this book form, and the way I put the pictures together, and the way the pictures come one after another, the relationship between the other one…this final book form that we think of, that’s what this book was. Not just a collection of pictures. And, I sorta think, well, there’s only 3000 copies of this book printed, so there’s only a certain select people who are actually going to experience that book, and because it’s an expensive book, only a certain number of people with the money to buy the thing. So, I started thinking, you know, it was kind of the confluence of a lot of things. Thinking about the finite audience of a printed book at the same time that I’m sitting here holding this new technology in my hand, an iPad and an iPhone, and thinking,

“a ha!”

Maybe this is a way to have an in-finite audience. And, that really I could, even though my first love is the printed book, I could still kinda get this experience and get across what I was trying to say to a much larger audience than I ever could with the printed book. And the applications of that in terms of reaching audience and what does that mean, even in an academic setting with students, you know? Think about a university classroom that’s teaching photojournalism, or that’s teaching book making, or even in the case of this book, you know, political science or something. And being able to have that book, which you could never have in a college curriculum, you could never have everyone in the class buy the printed book, but here’s a way that in an academic setting…

DAH: Everyone could be sitting there with their iPads looking at it.

CA: Exactly.

DAH: The quality, you know, it looks amazing. The quality is kind of better there than…I mean, in terms of there’s a certain texture or quality to it that you see on the iPad that kind of beats everything, don’t you think?

CA: Yeah, oh yeah. And actually, I just saw it recently on the iPhone for the first time, and that’s actually where I really liked it.

…I think it has something to do with being able to have something to say. You know, nice pictures photographers want to look at or people who like pictures want to look at, but to reach that other audience, you have to have something to say to them…We as photographers, we’re going to have to find a way to then become a writer and also a filmmaker, and also a radio producer and everything like that…maybe that’s one path to it. But it’s also just about having something to say about the world, even purely through pictures…somehow that voice of whatever you want to call it, authorship or whatever, is really important.

You know, I think about Paul Fusco’s Chernobyl Magnum in Motion, which is something I show my students a lot, it’s really, it’s pretty simple, there’s not really any whistles and bells. It’s him talking and showing his pictures. But it’s so powerful because he really has something to say, you know what I mean? And, it’s not about having fancy music as the background track, it’s not about slick jump cuts, it’s really about having something to say. I have a feeling that in the future, you know, I imagine…this app that I did is pretty basic in the end. There’s a pdf, a digital version of the book pdf style, to look through, theres some extra pictures, there’s a video interview, pretty basic. There’s not too many bells and whistles. I can imagine though that in the future, people are going to do things that will really be amazing in terms of how to use this medium, how to use this technology to tell stories, or to offer the public things that a printed book can never do.

DAH: Oh yeah, you can imagine that if you had 10 or 15 or 30 or 50K to spend on building the app, yeah, you could imagine…you’ve got directors cut, you’ve got the video component, you’ve got the about, you’ve got those kinds of things, but you could go even further, right? You could even go back there and have a 5 minute movie on there, or on some other topic….but you can imagine having an incredible thing. Are you guys gonna have that for Postcards [From America]?

CA: Well, we don’t have an app version yet, but we want to try and incorporate as much as we can in terms of like…

DAH: You don’t have anybody shooting video or anything though?

CA: I’m going to try and shoot a lot of video.

DAH: Yeah, I was gonna say, that would be, that would always be an interesting component for any app. How long is your interview in your app?

CA: It’s ten minutes.

DAH: ..You’ve already reached I don’t know how many people with it, but we’ll just, we want to just promote the app, but in the best possible way. And to get it on some Facebook pages, like people who are interested in political science in Venezuela, and see what happens, outside of your fan club. You know, your fanclub is gonna buy the app. But, you’re right, you want to see if you can sell it to other people as well.

CA: Yeah, that’s the real test, if you can find a way to break out of that.


Bio

Christopher Anderson was born in Canada in 1970 and grew up in west Texas. He first gained recognition for his pictures in 1999 when he boarded a handmade, wooden boat with Haitian refugees trying to sail to America. The boat, named the Believe In God, sank in the Caribbean. In 2000 the images from that journey would receive the Robert Capa Gold Medal. They would also mark the emergence of an emotionally charged style that he refers to as “experiential documentary” and has come to characterize his work since. Christopher’s photographs often explore themes of truth and subjectivity, and his subjects range from war to fashion to his own family.

Christopher is a member of Magnum Photos. He is the author of two monographs: Nonfiction, published in 2003 and CAPITOLIO, published in 2009 by RM and named one of the best photography books of 2009/10 at the Kassel Photo Book Festival in Germany.

Related links

Capitolio on iTunes

Chris Anderson

Published on June 10, 2011 by burn magazine. 43 Comments

daisuke ito – losolmo gym

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EPF 2011 Finalist


Daisuke Ito

Losolmo Gym

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“More than the development of the muscles of the body, there is the development of the muscles of the soul. It is not only task of the athletes but task of instructors, of trainers, and of all?”
- Fidel Castro, 10 July 1996

Losolmo gym is in Cuba’s second city of Santiago. The boys here train barefoot, dressed in little more than rags. The equipment is decrepit. The boxing ring floor is unevenly patched together, the ropes are frayed and there is barely enough equipment to go round and it has produced four Olympic champions. Each of these impoverished Cuban boys carries the dream of becoming a champion. I think it is not for the money, not even for the fame, but for these boys to be a boxer is the noble and heroic pinnacle of human aspiration.

There has been an exhibition “LOSOLMO GYM” in the Zen Foto Gallery, in Tokyo, 2010, and in Beijing, 2010


Bio

Daisuke Ito was born in 1976 in Japan. He had studied photojournalism for two years in 2000-2002 at IDEP in Barcelona, Spain. He had wandered around Central and South America for seven years in 2002-2009. He started his career as a photographer in 2007 in a slum named Chapeu Mangueira in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His work has been published by magazines in Brazil and Japan. He moved to Tokyo in 2009.

Published on June 7, 2011 by burn magazine. 45 Comments

dominic bracco II – life and death in the northern pass

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EPF 2011 Finalist


Dominic Bracco II

Life and Death in the Northern Pass

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“There are two ways of thinking about living here; either you go on every day and when it’s your turn to die you die, or you live every day in fear.”
- Daniel Gonzalez, 26, a resident of Ciudad Juarez who later moved to El Paso, Texas.

Sprawled across the tail end of the Rocky Mountains where the starved Rio Bravo pushes mud through a barren desert valley sits Ciudad Juarez, arguably the most violent city in the world — historically known as ‘El Paso del Norte’ or ‘The Northern Pass.’ The last three years the city of 1.5 million has seen over 8,000 murders.

As the drug war rages on violence has become more sporadic and faceless. Random crime has increased. Car jacking, robberies, and assaults are a daily occurrence.In the past five years, over 10,000 businesses have closed in Ciudad Juarez and up to 230,000 people have fled their homes. The economic downturn has exacerbated destabilization.

Drug bosses often offer the equivalent of a factory worker’s weekly wages to perform an execution. The most vulnerable social group is ‘Los Ninis’, young men and women who earned their name from the phrase ‘ni estudian, ni trabajan’ (those who neither work nor study).

According to a recent study by the Colegio de La Frontera Norte, up to 45 percent of all Juarez residents between 14 and 24 fall into this category and make up a quarter of the city’s total homicide victims. Massacres of Juarez’s youth are common – they have been gunned down at parties and targeted at rehab centers. They are killed indiscriminately.

The first mass killing of youths took place in January 2010 when 15 teenagers were gunned down at a party. Another massacre of 14 teenagers took place in October.

Without work or real incentive to work, young people are increasingly turning to the cartels. According to Miguel Parea, a local Juarez journalist, the mentality of many youth is fatalistic: “they say it’s better to die young as a rich man, than to die poor as an old one,” Parea said.

An earlier edit of the project was published on BURN Magazine, sections of the project have been published in The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal.


Bio

Dominic Bracco II specializes in documenting the effects of Mexican and North American policies on the border region where he was raised. He has degrees in journalism and Spanish literature from The University of Texas at Arlington. Past clients include The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The New York Times Sunday Magazine. Dominic is also a founding member of the collective Prime. He is based in Mexico City. His project “Life and Death in The Northern Pass” was a 2011 Alexia Foundation Professional Grant Finalist, won 2nd place in spot news in the 2011 POYi competition, and was a finalist for the 2011 Michael P. Smith Fund For Documentary Photography.


Related links

www.dominicbracco.com

Published on June 5, 2011 by burn magazine. 30 Comments

michael christopher brown – the libyan republic

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EPF 2011 Finalist


Michael Christopher Brown

The Libyan Republic

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Since arriving in Libya, I have tried to understand the situation. People swap facts, predictions and rumors, but the complexity of the conflict makes it impossible to fully comprehend. Once a picture is taken or a word is written it is already old news. There seems to be no way to catch up, as the database of history is filed before it is processed. And as a result I have become more confused. But I can attest to one reality, shown in these photographs. They form a loose record of my experience during the war in Libya.

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi ruled Libya for 42 years. During his reign, supporters were given power while those opposed saw their lives crumble. Libya changed from an optimistic, patriotic society to a people living double lives, resigning basic human rights in the face of a brutal authoritarian regime. Trust was elusive and the people were cold.

Then everything began to change. After dictators in similar Mafia-like states of Tunisia and Egypt were forced to leave, thousands of Libyans planned their own Day of Rage. In Benghazi, a peaceful protest on February 15th became a massacre, as protestors were fired upon by police forces. As the uprising spread across eastern Libya, young men throwing stones stormed the Katiba in Benghazi only to be slaughtered by anti-aircraft guns. Though hundreds of them were killed, with help from General Younes special forces the protestors took Benghazi back from Gaddafi. So began the revolution in Libya.

Today, as the war rages on in eastern Libya and in Misrata, Libyans are treating each other as family while creating a new Libya for themselves, not Gaddafi. Though their cities are in shambles, freedom is in the air.

The more time I spend in Libya the more questions I have. Will NATO give up? Who are the rebels and the people creating the new Libyan Republic? Who were the children affected by the HIV trial? What happened to the missing soldiers in the war with Chad and where are their families?

This summer I will attempt to find some of these lost pieces of a past long covered up by the Gaddafi regime and continue documenting daily life, both of which have been shielded from foreign eyes for nearly half a century.

This story has been published before on BURN Magazine, in FOAM magazine (Spring 2011), National Geographic Magazine (July 2011), Das Magazin (April 2011), Photoworld (April 2011), and on Time.com (2011).


Bio

Michael Christopher Brown is a contributing photographer to National Geographic Magazine and works regularly for Fortune, GEO and Time magazines, among others. While earning a master of arts in documentary photography from the School of Visual Communication, Brown was named College Photographer of the Year. A former attendee of the World Press Joop Swart Masterclass, his work has won numerous awards from organizations such as BURN, CENTER, Magenta, PDN, The Art Directors Club, Canon and Anthropographia. American Photo magazine named him among a new generation of photo pioneers.


Related links

www.mcbphotos.com

Published on June 3, 2011 by burn magazine. 55 Comments

irina werning – back to the future

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EPF 2011 Finalist


Irina Werning

Back to the Future

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I love old photos. I know I’m a nosy photographer. As soon as I step into someone else’s house, I start sniffing for those old photos. Most of us are fascinated by their retro look but to me it’s imagining how people would feel and look like if they were to reenact them today… A year ago, I decided to actually do this. So, with my camera, I started inviting people to go back to their future.

It starts when I get together with my subjects and we choose the old picture. I go through their boxes and albums looking for an image that speaks about them. Next comes a bit of a photographic investigation: studying the lighting, the angle, the type of camera and lens it was shot with, etc. Then, from there, the search begins: internet auction sites, second hand stores, borrowing from friends wardrobes, cutting, dying, sewing, attaching, adapting, assembling, gluing, coloring, painting, renting rare and hard to find objects. This project requires a lot of improvising on the run and it involves searching endlessly for stuff in the streets of Buenos Aires. I guess I really like finding things. If I cant find something, then I make it.

Once I have everything I need, we are ready to go back to the future. I dress them up and put them either in the set I built for them or, when possible, back in the real location. Once I get the light right, I ask them to do that thing they were doing in the original photo. I am always amazed that they do it.

Its funny how what you do can show you who you are. I always thought of myself to be the opposite of perfectionist as I live in complete chaos most of the time. However, when I now look at these pictures and see the attention to detail in them, I have to question my self image…

This story has been published in Sunday Times Magazine (Spectrum).


Bio

Born in Buenos Aires
BA Economics, Universidad de San Andres, Buenos Aires, 1997
MA History, Universidad Di Tella, Buenos Aires, 1999
MA Photographic Journalism, Westminster University, London, 2006
Winner Ian Parry Scholarship 2006
Gordon Foundation Grant 2006
Selected for Joop Swart Masterclass (World Press Photo Organization), 2007


Related links

www.irinawerning.com

Published on June 1, 2011 by burn magazine. 59 Comments

tushikur rahman – fatalistic tendency

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EPF 2011 Finalist


Tushikur Rahman

Fatalistic Tendency

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There is a place in which your privacy, intimacy, integrity and inviolability are guaranteed. Your own body and mind, that unique temple and a familiar territory of sense and personal history.

Anxiety and stress can cause sleep deprivation, warping space and time, ultimately leading to fatalistic tendencies.

If one wishes to commit suicide, one gradually loses his mental resilience and sense of freedom… Feeling alien and objectified – unable to communicate, relate, attach or empathize with others… Floating in dreams and eventually fleeting in the sky… The taste of suicide: the true sensation, the extreme fantasy.

I could never write a diary; thinking about the things which should be written in a personal diary was the most difficult part for me. Making this photo story was like writing a personal diary about my past, and feeling the same kind of difficulty. Thinking about those times is still hard for me.

This work has been published before in Viewbook Photostory 2010-Yearbook and WPO (World Photography Oranization) 2011, Student Focus Award.


Bio

Tushikur Rahman, born in Bangladesh in 1987 is a documentary photographer who prefers to work with social issues both urban and rural. In 2009, Tushik enrolled in Pathshala South Asian Media Academy for BA in Photography. He participated in various international workshops conducted by renowned teachers and practitioners including Stuart Freedman, Jorge Villacorta, Shannon Lee Castleman, Abir Abdullah and Munem Wasif. He is also devoted in travelling and capturing thrilling subjects including the lives of Tiger widows and a full sequence of a tiger being slaughtered by hundreds of people in Shatkhira, Bangladesh. In 2010, he finished his latest project, Fatalistic tendency, a deep subject concerned with depression that results in violence. In 2010, he received 3rd prize of Jury award in conceptual category of prestigious Viewbook Photostory, Slected as a finalist for the WPO-World Photography Organization Student focus award 2011.


Related links

www.lightstalkers.org/tushikur-rahman

Published on May 30, 2011 by burn magazine. 58 Comments

laura el-tantawy – In the shadow of the pyramids: egypt

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EPF 2011 Finalist


Laura El-Tantawy

In the Shadow of the Pyramids: Egypt

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The revolution of Jan. 25, 2011 revived a long lost sense of pride and strength for Egyptian people.

In my lifetime, I’ve seen Egyptians live under a totalitarian regime pressing down against their dignity. People lost their national pride and unity. Wealth and power rested in the hands of a few who seemed the only ones with the right to live. The masses felt isolated and with this isolation people became foreigners in their own land.

Over the past three decades this country of nearly 85 million – the Arab world’s most populous and traditionally its most revered – became a country of lost souls – ripped apart by political, social and economic turmoil. I didn’t have to go beyond the streets to see the depth of this estrangement.

The signs were this is a country on the verge of an explosion.

“It’s a horrible feeling to realize that your country is weak, your voice is weak, your opinion is weak – to realize that if you sell your soul, your body, your pen and your name, you still wouldn’t be able to afford a loaf of bread,” writes the Egyptian vernacular poet Hesham al-Gokh in “Goha”.

In the 30 years of former President Hosni Mubarak’s regime, Egypt became one of the world’s top 10 most corrupt nations. Bribery was common practice to get anything done, from a driver’s license to getting employed. Torture & humiliation of Egyptians was a daily occurrence. At least 24 million can’t read or write & estimates say more than 10 million live outside Egypt in pursuit of a better life. Egypt is one of a handful of countries where poverty forced roughly one million people to make homes out of cemeteries, breathing the spirit of the dead to stay alive.

In 2005 I began to document the lives of everyday Egyptians. The purpose of my work has & is to identify the essence of being Egyptian during & after Mubarak’s era. In doing so I aim to show how events in this strategic North African country can give insight into the future of the Middle East.

In parts, this project has been published before in different places, one of them being BURN magazine.


Bio

Laura El-Tantawy is a British/Egyptian photographer spending her time between London and Cairo. She was born in Worcestershire, England and grew up between Saudi Arabia and Egypt. She works on self-initiated projects.

She worked as a newspaper photographer with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Sarasota Herald-Tribune (USA). In 2006, she became freelance to focus on personal projects. In 2008, she was nominated and accepted as one of 15 photographers from around the world to participate in Reflexions Masterclass, a two-year photo seminar directed by Italian photographer Giogia Fiorio and French curator Gabriel Bauret. In 2005 she started work on her first book documenting her journey through a changing Egypt. As part of her urge to understand the issues, in 2009 she accepted a six-month fellowship at University of Oxford (UK) to research free speech in Egyptian. Her work has been published and exhibited in the US, Europe, Asia and Middle East.


Related links

www.lauraeltantawy.com

Published on May 28, 2011 by burn magazine. 44 Comments

zhe chen – bees

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EPF 2011 Finalist


Zhe Chen

Bees

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They left their lives in the very wounds they had created for themselves.
- Virgil (Roman poet, 70BC – 19BC)

To jeopardize existence for existence itself: ‘Bees’ records a marginalized group of people in China, who, faced with chaos, violence, alienation and irredeemable loss in life, feel propelled to leave physical traces and markings on their bodies, in order to preserve and corroborate a pure and sensitive mind from within.

In 2010, having ‘The Bearable’ (a photo series documenting my own self-inflictions over the past 4 years) as my passport, I had the opportunity to develop a close relationship with some of these obstinate souls – the bees. During the process of exchanging secrets with them, I crossed paths with certain possibilities that were formerly untouched but towards which I had struggled greatly in my personal life. I’m struck by the unyielding actions and reactions that the bees carry on with while encountering sudden and acute emotional fluxes, and moved by the recurrent effort they make to recover themselves afterwards. No matter how different our lives seem to be, we undoubtedly share common psychological experiences.

I hope my photographs inquire upon society’s prejudice and preconception towards this community, and not become illustrations or pictorial evidence for the topic at hand: every subject is an individual, not just ‘one of them’ – his or her life cannot be predicted or dictated by any constructed social code or notion. Depression plants the seed of introspection. The bees take it in; They reason it, embrace it and explore it, forming an isolated universe in their own minds. These self-sustained universes contain every reason that explains the ‘abnormality’ that no one who lacks in common experiences could decode. I hope a first glance of my work conveys the idea of secrecy and sentiments, under which lies information awaiting exposure and recognition: like an index page pointing towards all the unanswered questions.


Bio

Brought up in Beijing, Zhe Chen is a photographer currently living in Los Angeles. In the past 4 years, Zhe has been documenting her self-inflicted activities while creating a series of projects focusing on body modification, human hair, post-traumatic stress disorder, identity confusion and memory. Zhe holds a BFA in Photography & Imaging from Art Center College of Design.

Related links

www.zheis.com

Published on May 26, 2011 by burn magazine. 38 Comments

benjamin rusnak – 23º, far from paradise

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EPF 2011 Finalist


Benjamin Rusnak

23º, Far from Paradise

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23º of latitude separate the Equator from the Northern tropic. These latitudes are home to beaches, palms, vacation resorts, idyllic paradise — and poverty.

This is where the sun bares countless dark and desperate lives. This is where the unfortunate location of birth often condemns people to a life of struggle in an unforgiving land, beset with drought and flood, famine and tempest.

Conversely, this is where hope and resilience coexist with tribulation. For the poor, there is a duality to life. In each person, each moment holds joy and pain, a mourning for what is lost and a yearning for what may be. These lands represent a dream holiday to tourists, but they are only an elusive fantasy to millions of residents still hoping for the reality of paradise to become theirs.

I have documented the lives of the poor in the Caribbean and Latin America for a decade. The people I meet struggle, strive, hope, dream, live and die in those 23º. While this region is only one part of the globe, the lives of turmoil and legacies of hope within it are emblematic of people around the world who suffer at the same latitudes. Their lives are separated by a chasm of degrees, in contrast to those living in developed nations to the north and south.

This work in progress seeks to illuminate this intersection of geographic lines with circumstance of birth and how the irony of being poor in paradise creates strength, resilience and a duality of spirit. I believe the broad view of the panoramic format, combined with an often intimate perspective, creates a novel way to explore the relationship between the land and those who must scrape together an existence from it.

To continue this work, I will return to Haiti, where the seismic shifts to land, culture, economy and politics since the 2010 earthquake have made the nation’s story even more poignant to this tale. I also plan to return to violence-plagued Guatemala and to Guyana, a country in a decades-long state of decline.


Bio

Benjamin Rusnak is a humanitarian photojournalist. He has documented poverty in the Caribbean and Latin America since 2000 as staff photographer for Food For The Poor, one of the largest international relief agencies in the United States, based in Coconut Creek, FL. He brought a decade of newspaper experience to telling the stories of those in need in the developing world.

His work has been recognized by Pictures of the Year International, the Best of Photojournalism, the International Photography Awards, the New York Photo Awards, Photo District News, the Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar, the Alexia Foundation and the China International Press Photo Contest. In 2008, Rusnak won the prestigious Gordon Parks Award. In 2009, his exhibition of Dreams & Tempests premiered as part of the citywide festival, Atlanta Celebrates Photography and has traveled to California (The KONA Gallery), Washington, D.C., and Florida. ZUMA Press represents his editorial work, and zReportage.com and DOUBLEtruck Magazine often feature his essays. He was awarded InterAction’s Effective Assistance Humanitarian Photography Award in 2010.


Related links

www.benjaminrusnak.com

Published on May 24, 2011 by burn magazine. 52 Comments

daria tuminas – ivan and the moon

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EPF 2011 Finalist


Daria Tuminas

Ivan and the Moon

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Ivan is the elder, he is 16. Andrey, nicknamed Moon, is the younger, 14 by now. The two brothers live in a distant village in the northern part of Russia. They are not like regular teenagers, and live in a fairy tale world, yet deeply connected to nature: they go hunting and fishing, can use a joiner’s chisel, play with ghosts at abandoned places, do not want to move to a city, and love nature. Mature and childish. Naive and enigmatic. In this ongoing project I want to show the mysteriousness of the world of these brothers.

The narrative in ‘Ivan and the Moon’ is neither chronological nor event related. It does not have a strict and one-way-to-read plot. All the images are connected to each other on the level of correlated motives and on the level of hypothetical story interpretations. Each picture is supposed to provoke some inquiry about ‘What is going on?’

Moreover, the two brothers are reflections of each other. Many people might even think that they are twins. The main corpus of works contains their individual portraits, so that it is no longer clear who is who. It was also important to show that the world around the boys is itself magical and their games and fantasies are consequences of being a part of this world.

My aim is to follow the brothers through their life (I met them at a folklore expedition) and ‘document’ things that are impossible to document: the world of a boy’s fantasies, ghosts, gods, spirits of specific places, magic itself. Such things usually can not be literally depicted. As J. Szarkowski stated in his famous work ‘Mirrors and Windows’: ‘most issues of importance cannot be photographed’. My goal is to try to photograph the ‘unphotographable’ side of the matter and challenge some formal criteria of ‘classical’ documentary.

Works from this series were published in several magazines (GUP, DigitalPhoto etc.); awarded with the first prize documentary at the Viewbook Photostory Competition, exhibited at several Amsterdam and St-Petersburg’s galleries, at Lodz Fotofestival etc.


Bio

I was born in 1984 in St.-Petersburg, Russia. I have always been interested in approaching photography in several ways. First of all, I am doing academic researches. I wrote an MA thesis about amateur photography at St.-Petersburg State University and for now I am a student at Leiden University’s MA program ‘Film and Photographic Studies’. I am also practicing writing critical essays on photography; and used to be the coordinator and curator of an International Summer School in Photography focused on the new language of documentary and journalistic photography. Currently, I am an intern at Foam magazine (Amsterdam), working in the editorial team. Finally, I also take pictures. ‘Ivan and the Moon’ is my first project.

Published on May 22, 2011 by burn magazine. 96 Comments

mary anne mitchell – altered states

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Mary Anne Mitchell

Altered States

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The waves are crashing and the lone figure is approaching, is he friend or foe?  The girl appears to be washed ashore; is she asleep, just resting, or worse?  The young man is entangled in the net or is he…?

This work documents the world in a manner that transforms the subject into something quite different from reality. The work depicts situations, often mysterious, which draw the viewer into a narrative. The subject often appears isolated in a strange or surreal setting. These depictions sometimes seem like an overlooked moment in our peripheral vision. Other times they feel like they are visions from a whimsical imagination. In each piece, the artist invites the observer into her curious world. They evoke ambiguous moods and each viewer’s response to them will be tempered by their own experiences.


Bio

Mary Anne Mitchell is a freelance photographer in Atlanta, GA.  All of the artwork is shot on film and printed by the artist.


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Mary Anne Mitchell

Published on May 19, 2011 by burn magazine. 13 Comments

scott brauer – we chinese

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M. Scott Brauer

We Chinese

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“We Chinese” grew out of a curiosity to find out what Chinese people think about their country and their future.  Media coverage of the country and its development often raises questions about the direction of the government in Beijing on the world stage.  Few reports take into account the feelings of the Chinese people, instead making reference to the country as a monolithic actor without constituent parts.  A country’s trajectory through history cannot be mapped without careful consideration of the people.  This project aims, in a small way, to develop a portrait of the country by looking at the individual people that make it up.

I started the project as a way to respond to friends’, family’s, and strangers’ questions about the global direction of China and their stereotypes of the people. ‘Should we be scared of China?’ or ‘Where is China headed?’ or broad assertions about the collective character of billions of individuals that make up the country. The project aims to give faces and voices to a small section of the Chinese people caught in the center of historic shifts in the country’s socioeconomic circumstances. Recent years in China have been marked by mass migration toward urban centers, substantial increases in personal wealth, radical changes in the country’s educational and industrial sectors, and the start of China’s role as a global leader in political and economic matters.  Ordinary people, the subject of We Chinese, are caught in the middle of this unprecedented change. While the big story is this change itself, an important and often-overlooked aspect of modern China is what this cultural transformation means to the people and their future.

In 2010, I traveled throughout major urban centers in eastern China stopping people on the street to ask the same two questions about their country and their future. The respondents filled out a one-page typewritten questionnaire that included these two questions and some basic information including name, age, and occupation. The questions were interpreted variously, and the responses range from prosaic to poetic, from rote to inspired, and from unemotional to patriotic. While it’s difficult to draw conclusions about the entire population, the people photographed here expressed a sincere love of country and optimism about the country’s future development and peaceful position in the world.

The name ‘We Chinese’ comes from a phrase I encountered time and again when talking with Chinese people in China, both in Mandarin and English. Answers to questions about the person’s opinion about something or other would often begin with ‘We Chinese…’ (‘Wo men Zhong Guo ren’), instead of beginning with something like ‘I think…’

The project also comes from suspicions of my own methods in documentary work. My work imposes visual and written narratives on situations and cultures. By photographing anyone willing to be a part of the project, using the same set up for the portraits, and asking the same questions of all the subjects, I hoped a narrative about China and its people would naturally emerge.

The final project comprises 100 portraits and short interviews. The text and pictures are meant to be viewed simultaneously. The work has not previously been published, beyond on the website and blogs. Word of mouth has been tremendous, but I’m still looking for exhibition and publication opportunities for the project.

Translations by Heidi Wickersham, http://www.threeriverslanguage.com/


Bio

M. Scott Brauer is a photojournalist based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  His work can be seen at: http://www.mscottbrauer.com/ and, along with Matt Lutton, he founded dvafoto.com, a blog about photojournalism.


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M. Scott Brauer

We Chinese

dvafoto blog

Published on May 19, 2011 by burn magazine. 12 Comments

theo stroomer – prison boot camp

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Theo Stroomer

Prison Boot Camp

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At first the inmates were too busy getting their asses kicked to notice me. They were experiencing the first day of the Colorado Corrections Alternative Program boot camp, a program aimed at reducing recidivism using military-style structure and discipline. Some of them quit on the first day. The rest struggled and adapted. I drove to Buena Vista once or twice a week when I had time, photographing their progress through the three-month program in late 2008.

It was one of the only programs of its kind. First-time offenders with nonviolent crimes were eligible.  The rewards were substantial if you finished. You had a chance see your wife or your baby sooner. You could get on with your life. Along the way you could earn a G.E.D.

The thing was, it didn’t work. The program closed in June 2010 as the state cut prison funding. A troubling statistic was the nail in the coffin: nearly the same percentage of inmates from the program were returning to prison as those who had not completed it. Graduates weren’t any more likely to stay out.

I think it still mattered. Alternative corrections programs are attempts to create a better prison system. Beyond housing its prisoners, CCAP invested time and money in their future. The inmates were offered education and purpose and a way to better themselves.

Everyone deserves this. A penitentiary must be just that: an opportunity for penitence and redemption. With many states cutting prison funding and the highest incarceration rate in the world, the United States must reexamine the way it treats its prisoners. It is critical that we continue to fund, and experiment with, alternative prison programs.


Bio

After teaching English in the Peace Corps, Theo Stroomer (b. 1982) studied photojournalism at the University of Colorado. He was selected to attend the Eddie Adams Workshop in 2009. His latest work explores the relationship between mining and water resources in Bolivia.


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Theo Stroomer

Published on May 16, 2011 by burn magazine. 19 Comments

pej behdarvand – bingwa

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Pej Behdarvand

Bingwa

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Bingwa is a Swahili word that translates not only as “expert” or “competent,” but also as “bodybuilder.”

This project began when I stumbled across a website featuring African bodybuilding and was struck by the appeal that bodybuilding has around the world, even in impoverished rural Africa. I traveled to Kenya and Uganda, documenting the homemade gyms and a local contest. I was amazed by the enterprise and determination these men possessed by taking up bodybuilding in countries where there are so few resources, opportunities and facilities for it.


Bio

Born in Tehran, Iran, Pej Behdarvand is a photographer who currently resides in Los Angeles, CA.  He was screening his short movies domestically in film festivals while attending the San Francisco Art Institute where he received his B.F.A. in Film.  After his education, he began to experiment with photography and developed a portfolio, which landed him commercial assignments and awards from American Photography and Communication Arts.  He is generally drawn to unfamiliar, lesser-known or forgotten subjects, and often uses structuralist working methods. For the series, Full Moon (2007-2010), for example, he photographed the full moon every month for three years in a desire to reintroduce the moon, once a prominent subject in poetry, fiction and art, as a character in our modern landscape.  The ongoing Monk portraiture series brought him to Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka to document different traditions of monastic life and explore why individuals choose to live outside society.  The ongoing landscape series, Dreaming California, employed the old Hollywood technique known as Day for Night to capture a somewhat darker aspect of the “sunny California” landscape.  The series, BINGWA, is his first completed personal documentary project.


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Pej Behdarvand

Published on May 10, 2011 by burn magazine. 9 Comments

katia roberts – your dark euphoria

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Katia Roberts

Your Dark Euphoria

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They wanted to flower, and flowering is being beautiful.
But we want to ripen, and that means being dark and taking pains.
-Rainer Maria Rilke

In 2004, I met a young man, named Noel, in a park.
He had lots of interesting tattoos but what really drew me in was seeing the symbol for anarchy branded onto his upper chest.
I had never seen a human branded before.
He said if I followed him I’d see lots of things I’d never seen before.
Man, was he right about that.

These photos were made in 2004-05 as I photographed P.U.R.E.– People Undergoing Real Experiences–
a piercing and suspension subculture in Seattle.

As their name implies everything you see is real.  The hooks are real. The spears are real. The blood and the emotions are real.
I would have had no interest in photographing them otherwise.
Lest you think this is about pain or masochism, think again.
Pain is not the goal, it is the gateway.


Bio

Katia Roberts is a photographer residing in Seattle, WA.


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Katia Roberts on Lightstalkers

Katia Robert’s Blog

Published on May 8, 2011 by burn magazine. 62 Comments

patrick hogan – solitary half mad

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Patrick Hogan

Solitary, Half Mad

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A photographic short story.

When I began this essay, I decided to move from the urban area where I had been living to a small cottage in rural Ireland.  I was interested in people who lived alone.

For six months, I took pictures around the area.  Mostly, I photographed rooms where people lived or died on their own.

I became interested in the capacity we have as people for isolation, and how romantic ideals of solitude and escapism are often more fantastical than reality can offer.

This short essay is about living alone and the relationship between reality and fantasy.


Bio

Patrick Hogan is an Irish photographic artist. He currently lives and works in the south-east of Ireland. He is the winner of the Dublin Gallery Of Photography Artist Award 2011 for his project ‘Solitary, Half Mad’, a photographic short story about isolation in rural Ireland. He was also shortlisted for the Winter Solo Show Award, 3rd Ward Gallery in New York in 2010. He is currently taking part in the photographic project ‘Graphic Intersections V. 02′. He completed two International artist-in-residence programs in Iceland in 2009. He self-published his first photographic book in 2010. He will be exhibiting nationally and internationally throughout 2011.


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Patrick Hogan

Interview about Solitary, Half Mad

Published on May 4, 2011 by burn magazine. 47 Comments

vladimir vasilev – life in concrete

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Vladimir Vasilev

Life in…concrete

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A concrete city of Bulgaria’s post-communist world -  this is my homeland.

It is real, without any decor. The unfinished transition to a European way of life is a bitter reality that cannot be hidden – it is visible in the mind.

On periodic returns to my native town in the late 2000s, I constantly rediscovered people, and the still slow and painful break with the past and…concrete. Their fate and destiny turned to concrete, a cheaper existence far away from life’s previous harmony. Concrete has transformed them into itself, into its own fellow grays. The reinforced concrete structures have done a good job – they are barriers between the vital biological environment and people, it has broken their contact with nature. Man, like any living creature separated from its natural environment, has changed both physically and spiritually. In these deformed human beings. I tried my best to find the truth.

These images are dedicated to: Anyone living and working in the concrete city of the modern world; the cheerful and carefree children playing in a lifeless environment of stone and debris. They are young and energetic enough to get over everything, to stand the changes and recover. They still do not feel the slow withering embrace of reinforced concrete. But it is a hard mission to restore natural harmony for the future.

This theater is displayed without makeup or decorations.


Bio

Vladimir Vasilev, 33,  was born in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria. He graduated the college of teaching foreign languages in his hometown. He received basic photography training at age 19. In 1996, he enrolled at the University of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geodesy in Sofia. Three years later, he stopped his studies in order to devote himself to photography entirely.
He then worked as an assistant photographer and lighting designer in the advertising studio “Karkelanov”, Sofia. In 2001, he left for France where he spent 8 years waiting to be a legal resident, all the while following the path of photography.
He has been working as an independent photographer since 2008.


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Vladimir Vasilev

Published on April 19, 2011 by burn magazine. 34 Comments

matteo armellini – simon

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Matteo Armellini

Simon / Story of a Softgunner

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In these years of virtual reality,
 where children have stopped playing war in the courtyard
 and do it in front of the computer instead,
 there are those who don’t want to miss the adrenalin on the skin.
 Weekly, groups of fans of military tactics come in lost places.
 Wearing uniforms and with weapons in hand, they simulate real battles, 
sometimes recreating episodes of real wars.
 Of course they do it with “toy” guns, rifles that shoot plastic pellets.

What drives these people playing war, at a time when we are bombarded 
with pictures of pain and suffering associated with conflicts?

How could it be that one could confuse the images of a game with images of a real war?

This is the world of SOFTAIR.

The protagonist of this project is 
Simon, aka Sergeant Ramirez, 24th Marines Expeditionary Unit. 
Simon is a young, precarious, man born in the Dominican Republic. Now he lives in Rome in the multi-ethnic neighborhood of San Lorenzo, where
 young people from all over the world live a reality 
made of short-term project contracts and dreams of quick profits.

Softair is a chance at integration. Playing war shares intense emotions with unknown people.
 Despite the fiction, the atmosphere is true and sincere, as are the relationships established between participants.
 Friendship, envy, hate, submission, admiration and loyalty all come to play.

With this long-term project, I am examining in depth 
the concepts of social and sociability, conflicts,
 deviations, and definition of roles, especially in places of male aggregation.


Bio

Matteo Armellini was raised in Rome where he currently lives.
 He studied Sociology at La Sapienza University of Rome and Photography and Visual Arts at European Institute of Design. 
In 2008 he started travelling as freelance photographer through Europe, Asia and South America, focusing on social issues and subcultures.
 His pictures have been published in many magazine, such as The Big Issue Australia, The Times, Aftonbladet, Vice International, The Trip, Fotografijos ratas, Freak and Kult Magazine.


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Matteo Armellini

Published on April 18, 2011 by burn magazine. 48 Comments

sam harris – postcards from home

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Sam Harris

Postcards from Home (2008 – 2011)

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Postcards from Home revolves around my domestic life and especially focuses on my two daughters Uma & Yali growing up.

After several nomadic years, we migrated to Australia in 2008. It was with the restrictions of our migration process (keeping me from professional photography and travel) that home life became my only consistent opportunity to photograph and the project was born.

As I witness my daughter’s transformation in what feels like the briefest of moments, I’m compelled to preserve something of our time living together.

An early part of Postcards from Home was previously published on Burn Oct 2009.


Bio

Born and raised in the suburbs of south London, Sam Harris is a self-taught photographer. In his late teens he made a home darkroom that he practically lived out of for several years, experimenting nightly whilst listening to records. These passions led him to start freelancing in the London music industry of the early 90s, making album sleeve art. Sam went on to also shoot editorial portraits and features for magazines such as The Sunday Times Magazine, Esquire, Dazed & Confused and Raygun.

In 2002 Harris felt the need to re-evaluate his lifestyle and photographic direction. Together with his wife and small daughter he left London and travelled slowly for several years. During this period Sam began the process of turning his camera inward… In 2008 Sam & family settled in the forests of Western Australia. He now teaches photography and records his family life.

Postcards from Home will be exhibited as part of the Sydney ‘Head On’ photo festival at Global gallery, Paddigton May 6 -15th 2011.

Sam will also be giving two talks at the Head On Seminar – Day 1, 14th May. ‘Transition – From London to the Bush’ and ‘Rock N Roll Photography’, along side Tony Mott, Sophie Howarth & Tali Udovitch.


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Sam Harris

Blog

Head On Photo Festival

Published on April 18, 2011 by burn magazine. 189 Comments