Archive for the 'photographic essays' Category

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bruce gilden – haiti, 15 months later…

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Bruce Gilden

Haiti, 15 Months Later…

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Haiti, a land of great spirit and tremendous hardship occupies a special place in my heart. My first visit to Haiti goes back to 1985. Then, for ten years, I made a total of 19 trips, and my work culminated in the publication of the book “Haiti” that earned the European Publishers Award for Photography in 1996.

I thought I was done photographing in Haiti, but when the earthquake struck, I felt the urge of going back. Last February‐March 2010, in Port‐au‐Prince when I saw the enormity of devastation, I feared that once the media attention would shut off, Haiti would fall into oblivion again, so I decided that I had to keep the light burning.

All of the familiar sites I knew had been destroyed. Instead, I found rubble, chaos and homeless people sleeping on the streets, in their cars, in tents and makeshift shelters. For all of that, when I looked around at the improvised shelters that people had built out for themselves out of scavenged material, it seemed to me that the Haitian spirit was alive and shining on the decorated flimsy walls of these tiny huts.

The “residents” of these encampments had recreated all the elements of Haitian life as if they knew right away that this temporary settlement would be their long term home: a one-seat barbershop, a two-pot restaurant, and families taking bath buckets in the open, women ironing and watching TV, courtesy of the diverted electricity from the Presidential palace. The first time I stepped into one of these encampments, it felt awkward, as if I were invading people’s privacy, stepping into an open living room without being invited. But this was the street, this was Port-au-Prince post earthquake last year.

Unfortunately, when I returned, last April, 15 months later, I did not notice much improvement. The encampments were still there, with more small huts built and decorated. The walls display all kinds of statements, personal, religious, and political, and once again I was touched by their poetry, proving that the vibrant and unique Haitian spirit could fall through the cracks of the worst possible living conditions. During this last trip, I was able to capture the mood around, and I felt that I am today even closer than before to the people of Haiti: Older ones distressed by the emotional impact of the earthquake, and younger ones in need of work and leadership to human development.

 

editor’s note: these photographs were shot on exclusive assignment from Burn…dah


Bio

Bruce Gilden, a native New Yorker, has received acclaim for his black and white portraits and street scenes. Gilden has won multiple awards including the European Award for Photography, three National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and a Japan Foundation fellowship. He has published many books. His work, exhibited widely around the world is part of numerous permanent collections.
In 1998, Bruce Gilden joined Magnum Photos.
While another early essay focused on the famous “Mardi Gras” in New Orleans, Gilden worked from 1968 until the late 1980’s on his first long-term project on Coney Island. It was published in his book Coney Island, in 2002.
In 1984, Bruce Gilden began to work in Haiti where he returned nineteen times. The book Haiti concluded this work in 1996.
Since 1981, Bruce Gilden had been working on his on-going project, the streets of New York City. It culminated in the publication of Facing New York in 1992, and later in 2005, in A Beautiful Catastrophe.
His next project explored rural Ireland and its passion for horseracing. After the Off juxtaposes Gilden’s photographs with text by the Irish writer Dermot Healey.
Published in 2000 Gilden’s next book, Go, is the result of Gilden’s immersion in Japanese culture, with images of Yakuza (the Japanese Mafia), the homeless, and Bosozoku or young biker gangs.
After years of worldwide travel, in 2008, Bruce Gilden felt the need of photographing his own country and draw a social portrait of America in this time of great recession. Gilden has just completed an extended personal project on foreclosures, in Florida, Detroit and recently in Fresno, California.
In February 2010 and April 2011, Bruce Gilden returned to Haiti a country that occupies a special place in his heart. He is passionate about dedicating a second opus to the people of Haiti and continuing to raise awareness on their everyday life struggles.


Related links

Bruce Gilden on Magnum Photos

maurizio cogliandro – lidia, the sky is falling

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Maurizio Cogliandro

Lidia, the Sky is Falling

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This selection of photos is part of a work that I have created together with my mother during the last two years of her life.
My mother passed away on the 14th February 2005.
After being diagnosed with an ovaries tumor in the Spring of 2000, she spent her days composing with me a diary of images. The saying goes that a photo speaks a thousand words, but this reality is so intimate that both words and images lose all their value.
These photos aim to be the most truthful and essential, not a social allegation, but a testimony of our bond.
The one who is approaching death longs for life, a life lived with his own family until then, when his status changes and is therefore unknown… illness catapults us in a new condition, these are the days of those who are drawing near death, but who are not necessarily conscious of the fact that it is going to happen.
The ones who really suffer ask, dream to live and invent something, because they don’t know where else to take refuge.
Hope and awareness blend into each other in their mind, and the feeling that is generated enriches each and every one of their daily actions.
My mother made herself completely available to me, she fully trusted my vision to tell people not only about her illness, but also her pain and her abandonment.
I hope I have helped her to understand herself.

 

Bio

Maurizio Cogliandro was born in Bracciano (Rome) in 1979. He studied photography at Leeds College of Art and Design (Leeds, UK) and then at the Scuola Romana di Fotografia (Rome). His works have been displayed at a number of museums and national and international galleries. In 2010 he publishes Lidia, the sky is falling an intimate and private diary about his mother’s last years. He joined Contrasto Agency in 2010.

 

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Maurizio Cogliandro

anton kusters – odo yakuza tokyo LIMITED EDITION (SOLD OUT)

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Anton Kusters

Odo Yakuza Tokyo

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Below is an excerpt of my conversation with Anton Kusters, talking about the birth of his first book. We are sitting on my front porch during a beautiful sunrise. Somehow appropriate. Even more appropriate is that today is Anton’s birthday.

-DAH

 

DAH: Well, the bottom line is, Anton, you have your first book… Tell me, a first book is comparable to what?

AK: It’s… It feels like I actually did something for the first time. I mean, it’s not that the book was more work than the project itself, but… it does feel like I took a step in some way, like a kind of achievement in some way, for myself, personally. It really feels like a personal victory. And whatever that victory, that achievement, will mean to the outside world, I would almost say, that is out of my hands. I mean that in the best possible way. I love seeing cutting my book “loose” into the world, let it go, beyond my control.

DAH: So… Validation?

AK: Validation… a little bit a sense of pride deep down inside… that I could actually pull something off, because for some reason, it always feels like nothing is really complete, or at least this project could not be complete, without the validation of a physical object, like a book, an exhibition… like Massimo Vitali said at LOOK3 a couple of days ago… “I’m looking at the picture as that unique physical object, impossible to see separate from the plexi it is printed on”

DAH: …Yes… I don’t know if everybody feels that way…. I certainly feel that way also, if there’s no physical object then there is nothing, actually.

AK: Yes

DAH: There’s instruction, there’s information, it’s up there on the screen, but it’s meaningless without the physical object…

AK: … things remain fleeting until something physical is made.

DAH: and even though you reach fewer people, it doesn’t matter –

AK: Yes… You reach so many less people… I mean, the internet is like multiple, you reach multiples of the audience of the book… but… I think the feeling it will never change as to what it must have been before the internet… it must be still exactly the same, that kind of feeling… the internet adds to it, but the feeling of selling the book, making the book, is… is something… is a different category. at least it feels like that. And seeing friends and strangers, complete strangers, hold that book, and look at them while they are looking at the book. that’s the thing that completes the circle for me.

DAH: You don’t see that on the internet, you don’t see that with an international magazine either… occasionally you do by accident, at the airport you see somebody looking through one of your articles, and of course they flip right through it.

[laughs]

Let me go back on a couple of basic things: so… it’s fun to have a book out there.

AK: Absolutely.

DAH: I remember, Sam Abell said one time, to me, “David, when you do your first book, life will change”. And he was right about that: after your first book, life does change.

AK: Yea… I feel it does… I mean, I don’t know, I obviously it’s too soon to say because it’s only hitting the stands right now, I mean “the stand”, singular, being here on burn, so I don’t know what the actual impact will -

DAH: – Oh I predict that, I think this book will, I think this, your limited edition of 500 copies, of a very well priced book and a very high quality book, and a very heart felt… done book, I think that this book will sell out in less than two weeks. That’s my prediction. I think it’ll be gone in ten days. Something like that, I really think that.

I think that people will, people will feel that this is a one of a kind object, as you described, there are people who get more out of photography than seeing, to flick a page, or even on burn or anything, anything that’s online, and will go for that physical object. and they’ll see it the same way that they saw Alec Soth’s “Sleeping by the Mississippi”, and they’ll want to be one of the ones to have an original, first edition, from the first five hundred.

AK: Yea… and it’s, it’s almost like I wish there was this tactile… extension to the internet where you could make people reach into the screen and pick up the book to be able to feel it, that they can feel what the object is like, because I feel that that’s such an important aspect.

DAH: Your book is a physical object, it’s a beautifully done physical object, and the printing and the binding and the making of this book are clear, and speak to the subject… So tell us a little bit about… the making of the book in relationship to the subject of the book.

AK: That’s of course pretty crucial, as I regard the book as an integral object of what the project is about… I mean, I’ve been fortunate enough to have worked at a printer a long time ago, and that opened a whole new world to me back then. But it wasn’t until last year that I realized was using all that knowledge for this book.

I completely did the process all by myself, I designed the book, I found the right papers and the right printer, prepared for print, went to press, and oversaw the binding…. I learned obviously a lot during the process, but… it’s such a fun thing to do, it’s a lot of work, you gotta follow up everything personally, but you’re basically taking up the role of, of…producer

DAH: OK, so we’ve covered the thrill of having the book… and the physical production of the book. But I think the word of mouth on the physicality of this book will quickly get out there, and I think that, you and I are of like mind of what Burn does, and our basic philosophy is a quality one.

AK: Yes… whatever the case, quality comes first, and that’s why I was so happy that you were willing to endorse and write the foreword for the book, because I knew that you would never, ever, even as a close personal friend, you would not do that if you wouldn’t be very sure about the quality of the work.

DAH: No, I would not do that. Of course I’m expecting a hell of a kickback from this book, I’m expecting a lot of money into my my bank account [laughing]

The thing is… photographers do want to do books, and I think everybody knows, that books are not how we make money, but you will, even if this book is a raging success, you won’t be paying your home bills with this book, no matter how successful this is….

AK: I might break even on some aspect of the printing, and I’d be really really happy if that happened, but I’m pretty sure I can forget about trying to pay for all the trips I took.

DAH: Now tell me a little bit about how the subject of your book.  Any way you look at it, is going to be controversial, inside Japan, outside Japan, all around the town. I mean, you’ve turned into a physical object of photography, a crime organization. So. justify that for me please.

AK: Justify…

DAH: I mean, don’t justify it for me, because I understand it…. Justify it to those who might be reading this.

AK: I think it goes back to the fact that I’ve always taken aback by… prejudice. I’ve always been taken, really taken aback by blanket statements, I’m taken aback by the judging of people and things… Personally, I’ve always asked questions instead, being inquisitive, at least in my mind ask questions, trying to understand things…

I do not want to be a judge in my photography. I want to be a witness in my photography. A faithful witness of my own vision. A vision which I know is shaped and skewed by my upbringing and my life’s experiences.

I guess that’s why the Yakuza project actually quickly turned into something different than I expected, I started to feel that it’s a way of life more than anything else… and that’s where I latched on. The bad part or the good part for that matter, very quickly became irrelevant after that. The subtle shades of grey are the key.

Who am I… can it ever be my right to say about someone that he is “bad”? about anyone?

DAH: So your essay, your book is, how would you describe what it is in relationship to a crime organization? is it a revelation, is it an exposé, is it a behind-the-scenes? what is it exactly? what are you telling us with this book?

AK: Well… that’s a good question. I might have to find that one out as we go along, because I actually just want to show, I think, basically what I just said, I started feeling that that Yakuza is many shades of grey, and not simple black vs white.

DAH: so is that your, your…mission?.

AK: It’s the subtlety of the story that hit me, I think it would be kind of easy, or cheap, in a way, to show the Yakuza and what they do, instead of what they are, because I would, in a way, stereotype them, and that is something I don’t want to ever do to anybody.

DAH: yeah… do you want me to get you another coffee?

AK: yes, sure.

DAH: you drinking it black?

AK: as always

DAH: OK. Here, think about this question: what do you think the Yakuza are going to think about this book? What are they thinking that this book is? You’re thinking that it’s a revelation of some sort, what do they think it is? Everyone wants their thing out of it.

[DAH gets a cup of coffee]

AK: Interesting question… The thing is, I think, and I have the feeling, that they want to have, kind of a chronicle of their family, of sorts, a chronicle of what they are about.

DAH: When I look at the pictures, I  don’t see them doing anything bad… If I weren’t reading about the Yakuza, or know about the Yakuza, your pictures here do require text, and context, which, I think, only adds to the texture and to the feel of these photographs. Is that correct? They seem here to appear as traditional Japanese businessmen.

AK: Yeah… Though you can’t really misinterpret the tattoos, covert training camps, prostitutes and severed fingers.

DAH: So aside from the fact that people who buy this book are going to receive a physical object, and a lot of visual stimulation, on a topic that you have decided was worth photographing, what do you, what do you think that people will get out of this book, or should get out of this book, besides the fine object aspect of the book? Because it is a documentary. it is not a conceptual thing.

AK: Actually, I would like to describe this as a conceptual documentary, because I have no intent, to tell the truth, but rather I have the intent of telling the Yakuza story as I personally experienced it, me, Anton Kusters, the person and character that I am, with all my flaws and shortcomings, and I will most probably see things in a completely different way and therefore be sensitive to, and concentrate on, the things that strike me or touch me… the shades of grey i see, the realization that being Yakuza is a way of life more than anything else. I hope others will see that too.

DAH: So in that sense you are being very documentary, mission oriented documentary. In that sense.

AK: Yeah. in that sense. I could even consider that a mission in life in general.

DAH: I know exactly where you stand on this. Personally, for me, I find any topic interesting, if a someone, if a photographer, if a writer, or a film maker is telling me that they are interested in whatever the topic is, whether it’s the sinking of the Titanic, as a piece of history, or Restrepo, a war story by Tim Hetherington, or your story on the Yakuza. I don’t really care, I mean, somebody who is a storyteller, or a visual artist, if they have decided that they’re going to do this particular thing…. i’m not ranking subject matter by some subject matter being more important, or right, than others. It becomes important by the fact that this particular storyteller is going to tell it.

AK: Yep. About Tim…. I met Tim only a couple of times, and the last time we talked at length about the Yakuza project, which was then only halfway, and he was the one who also told me, like you had always told me too, David, because there was one particular picture, when he saw that one he stopped in his tracks and said “this is the one” and that was the picture of the empty table with empty glasses and cups and a burning cigarette and the two empty chairs, the full ash tray, and he said “right there, that’s the kind of image, that’s the image you have to have in there, because there you are saying that you are personally telling that story that is your story, and that you are not just ‘covering’ the Yakuza”… and I hope I have taken that to heart.

DAH: well I think there is no doubt that you’ve done that. The only thing left I wanted to ask you is… you will now probably spend the next year working on the film, on the same topic.

AK: I hope that works out, yes. There is… we’re starting, my brother Malik and I are starting to, because obviously film is way more complex than photography from a production point of view, my brother will be doing sound, I will be doing video, the moving image…. I hope that works out… we’ve got a good story. And the book, offering the book to the Yakuza bosses now, tomorrow I’ll be flying over to Tokyo to, you know, present the book to them, give copies as a gift, which will hopefully open gates.

But again, this will be way more complex, also financially… so, I will be using the potential success of the book as a gauge for myself, if it’s viable to continue on that path or not. But I obviously feel I should do it no matter what. so I hope it will work out.

On the other hand, photographing daisies is great fun too.

 

(the limited edition sold out on July 21, 2011)

 

Bio:
Anton was born in Belgium. He grew up in Australia, Saudi Arabia and Belgium, and has been visiting Japan ever since his brother moved there a decade ago. The long term YAKUZA project started out three years ago, and the first major step now has been taken with the book “ODO YAKUZA TOKYO”.
Anton feels that life should be about going deep down rabbit holes as much as you possibly can.

 

Related links:

www.antonkusters.com

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

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

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.


Related links

Katia Roberts on Lightstalkers

Katia Robert’s Blog

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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william eckersley alexander shields – u.s.80

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William Eckersley and Alexander Shields

U.S.80

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These photographs are from a recently completed body of work, titled U.S.80.

U.S.80 was the first coast-to-coast highway in America, pre-dating even the fabled Route 66. It spans nearly 3,000 miles between Savannah, Georgia and San Diego, California, covering an enormous diversity of the American landscape and culture.

This includes the rural south, scarred by civil war and civil rights, boom towns of Texas enriched with oil surplus, and creeping scarcity as scrubland gives way to the western deserts along the Mexican border. Having been superseded by interstates, this once thriving road now lies neglected through parts of America that are also frequently overlooked.

During three visits between 2008 and 2009, we travelled U.S.80 several times, building a collection of large and medium format photographs that document the road and its environs. We’ve always had a fascination with America and particularly with the travelogue genre of American film and literature. Through this prism, we wanted to explore our interests in forgotten worlds and slightly wild, inhospitable landscapes, as well as the often transient nature of America’s built environment – something that reflects the history of migration in U.S. culture.

The project was recently published as a book with a foreword by the renowned journalist and broadcaster Jon Snow, and exhibited at Cole Contemporary on Little Portland Street during London’s Frieze Art Fair.


Bio

Eckersley and Shields have been photographing for the better part of a decade, after initially studying at LCC and St.Martin’s. In that time, Eckersley spent a number of years working as an architecture and interiors photographer for a London design agency, whilst Shields worked as a graphic designer for a news channel in Washington DC. However, it is their collaborations that have produced their most arresting work.

Their first project, Left London, was an historic study of derelict sites and buildings around their home city. It reflected their interest in abandoned spaces and garnered wide critical acclaim. After setting up Stucco Press to publish the work as a 176 page book, Sarah Kent (Time Out’s influential Art Editor) was among consenting voices when she asserted that “never before has vanity publishing led to such a splendid publication”.

The success of the book prompted involvement in two high-profile exhibitions- London Stories at Shoreditch Town Hall and the Photo London 2007 exhibition in Old Billingsgate Market. Work from this project is held by various collectors, including the sportswear company Nike, and Sir Elton John.

U.S.80 was published as a book in September 2010, with a foreword by the renowned journalist and broadcaster Jon Snow, and complimented by an exhibition at Cole Contemporary on Little Portland Street during London’s Frieze Art Fair. Eckersley has a further project, with the working title of Dark City, due for publication in 2011.

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US 80 The Book

gabriela bulisova – iraqi refugees

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Gabriela Bulisova

Iraqi Refugees

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The Option of Last Resort: Iraqi Refugees in the United States

One of the least reported stories of the U.S. invasion of Iraq is the dispersal of close to 5 million Iraqis displaced internally or forced to flee across the country’s borders.  This exile is one of the greatest refugee crises in modern history—the statistical equivalent of nearly 50 million Americans leaving the United States. These masses of people displaced by the war in Iraq have become invisible and insignificant, overshadowed by other war-related events. Many of the displaced were the brains, the talent, the pride and the future of Iraq. Many of them, traumatized by unforgettable violence, will never return home.

In 2007 and 2008, I traveled to Syria to photograph Iraqi refugees living in Damascus. I found them in dire economic and emotional straits—often scarred, desperate and disillusioned.  Uprooted from their homes and families with no future and no hope for return, they are the lesser seen, lesser-known consequences of the war. I wanted to tell their stories. I also heard about the plight of Iraqis who were forced from their homes specifically because they had helped the United States. Some of them had made it to America where they were having experiences and feelings both similar to and different from those of Iraqi refugees who had remained in the Middle East.

Some of the most recent Iraqi refugees in America had signed up to serve as translators working for the U.S. military or as experts with other U.S. government agencies, NGOs, or American companies in Iraq. They saved lives, they built cultural and linguistic bridges, they sacrificed their own safety and the safety of their families to help participate in what they thought would be the creation of a better Iraq. They quickly became one of the most hunted groups in the country. They bore a lethal stigma as “collaborators” or “traitors” that transcended sect or tribe, and they were targeted in assassination campaigns that drove many of them either into hiding or out of the country.

For people who fear for their life and seek refugee status in America, the U.S. government offers resettlement as the “option of last resort” for the most vulnerable refugees. In this project, I photographed and interviewed Iraqi refugees who have been resettled to the United States and are living in Washington, D.C. or other American cities. In some respects, these immigrants might be considered lucky, since they made it safely out of Iraq where their lives were in immediate danger.  Thousands of others are still in Iraq or neighboring countries.  In fiscal years 2007 and 2008, the Department of State’s Bureau of Consular Affairs issued only 1,490 special immigrant visas for Iraqi translators and interpreters who had assisted the United States. This number includes family members.

Once in the United States, these refugees encounter the intricate, challenging and often disillusioning process of transitioning to life in America.  Many feel abandoned by the country they helped and risked their lives for; many are unemployed and facing dire financial crises; many yearn for the embrace of family and friends left behind; and many wish they could return home. Still fearful for their own safety and the safety of family members in Iraq, many refugees asked that I not reveal their faces or names.

Under President George W. Bush, questions about assistance and safety did not receive serious attention until 2007 when Congress passed legislation to facilitate asylum for Iraqis who had aided the United States. As a candidate, Barack Obama declared, “We must also keep faith with Iraqis who kept faith with us. One tragic outcome of this war is that the Iraqis who stood with America—the interpreters, embassy workers, and subcontractors—are being targeted for assassination. Keeping this moral obligation is a key part of how we turn the page in Iraq.” Yet today, a new challenge is emerging as the United States cuts back its military presence in Iraq, and takes with it the ability to protect the Iraqis it employs.


Bio

Gabriela Bulisova is a documentary photographer from the former Czechoslovakia, based in Washington, D.C.  She carries her camera to marginalized communities in places such as Azerbaijan, Chernobyl, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and the Unites States. By bringing the faces of the forgotten to light and giving voice to those who have been silenced, she hopes to capture people through the lens of an advocate, rather than a dispassionate observer.

Bulisova has received numerous recognitions and awards including the Open Society Institute’s Documentary Project: Moving Walls 18, the Aperture Portfolio Review Top Tier Portfolios of Merit, the CANON “Explorer of Light” award, a CEC ArtsLink Projects grant, the Corcoran School of Art and Design Faculty Grant Award, a PDN Annual Photography Competition (Student Category), and a Puffin Foundation Grant. Bulisova was a participant at the Eddie Adams Workshop for emerging photographers and a graduate fellow at the National Graduate Photography Institute, Columbia University.

Bulisova received her Master of Fine Arts in Photography and Digital Imaging in 2005 from Maryland Institute College of Art/MICA in Baltimore. She is currently an adjunct professor of photography and photojournalism at MICA and at the Corcoran College of Art and Design, Washington, D.C. Bulisova is a member of the Metro Collective Photographic Agency and the Women Photojournalists of Washington.


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Metro Collective Photographic Agency

laura el-tantawy – cairo

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Laura El-Tantawy

Cairo

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Editors note:
After a week of shooting and updates, this is an edit of Laura’s work…she leaves tomorrow to return to London….this is her final essay.
-dah-

February 11, 2011

Cairo, Egypt

I was in Tahrir Square when it happened.

Two weeks ago I arrived in Cairo determined to tell a story. I came here to document what I now know is the most significant chapter in my generation’s history as an Egyptian.

Friday February 11, 2011 felt like a normal day in the square.

Crowds slowly filtered in to join the weekly Friday sermon and prayers. The night before had ended in utter devastation as news had spread the Egyptian President would resign his post — a much anticipated cause for joy for the hundreds of thousands (at times estimated in the millions) who had made Liberation Square their home for the past 18 days. But their hopes ended in tears as Mubarak once again asserted his authority and military pride as a former member of the Egyptian armed forces and refused to meet their demands.

I was in the square photographing as I had been for the last few days. I chose to take the square as my focus, trying to highlight the human element and the square as a symbol of a new Egypt. Moments after crowds took part in Maghrib (sunset) prayers, people tuned into their radios, televisions and mobile telephones to listen to a statement from the Presidential Office. Given the chaos of the last few days, it was hard to predict what this statement might unveil. Anything could have happened.

But for the resilient protesters who were determined to have their demands met, they knew it was a matter of days before the regime gave in. For days their chanting had changed from, “The People Demand the Regime Step Down” to “The People Have Already Toppled the Regime.”

In my line of vision, I saw a group of five or six youths silhouetted by the glimmering sunset jump and strike their fists in the air. They said, “We did It! He’s Gone.”

Seconds later the entire square joined in, chanting “Allahuakbar” (God is Great) and “Lift your Head Up high, Your Egyptian”. Their echoes could literally be heard throughout the entire city and surely the country.

I never really grasped the extent of people’s determination to topple the regime. The two weeks I spent in Tahrir Square were an education. The more time I spent there, the more I realized something big was about to happen. Looking at the people sleeping in makeshift tents in the cold, under the rain, eating bread and boiled eggs for days on end showed me a sense of resilience I thought we had long lost as Egyptians. The stories people told, how they had lost their dignity, pride and their dreams during Mubarak’s 30 years of ruling the country.

Friday, February 11, 2011 is a day that will never be forgotten. It’s the day when the people’s persistence for change forced a dictator to step out and let a dream in.

I was there…

——

February 6, 2011, 3:17 p.m.

Everyone has a story to tell at Tahrir Square.

For nearly two weeks, thousands of protesters have made this former bustling part of the Egyptian capital their home–literally sleeping in makeshift tents on the ground and along the pavement. Some don’t sleep at all, but take turns guarding the roads leading into the square from attacks by pro-government supporters, or hired thugs.

Tahrir (Liberation) Square has become a microcosm of Egyptian society. The protesters here represent all classes of people, from the art world, politicians, engineers, lawyers, bankers, school teachers, government employees, construction workers, plumbers. They all came here to fight for something.

Abdel Rahman Mohamed Atif and his wife, Dalia, cradled their two babies as they walked through the square on a recent morning. Their faces were beaming as their eyes searched around, hearing the booming loudspeaker broadcast anti-Mubarak chants: “The People Demand the Regime Step Down.” They armed cradled their babies higher, lifting them up into the air so they could breathe the spirit of freedom echoing throughout the square.

On the other side of the square sat Ashraf Abdelhami, an Arabic teacher at one of Egypt’s most prestigious universities, the American University in Cairo (AUC). He has been at Tahrir Square since Tuesday January 25th, a day the protesters dubbed the ‘Day of Rage’. On that day, his body was sprayed by bullets fired by the Egyptian police, their traces still bruising his body. “I don’t want Mubarak’s regime. I don’t want the police” Abdelhamid said. “We are suffering and I’m here for freedom,” he added.

Across the other end of Tahrir Square sat a young farmer, Qutb Ali Ibrahim al-Sayes. He traveled from the town of Kafr al-Zayat in western Egypt to support the anti-government demonstrators. He said he was there “…for the freedom of my children.”

There are many more stories on Tahrir Square. I have seen many people weeping in the last few days and heard heartbreaking stories from people I have never met before. Protesters here vow not to leave the square until Mubarak has stepped down, seeing him as a symbol of a chain of corruption that has plagued the country for generations to come.

——

February 3, 2011.

My name is Laura El-Tantawy and I am an Egyptian citizen.

Twelve years ago my life changed dramatically. I still remember the day—the exact moment. It was just after sunrise had ushered in a new morning. I stood under Cairo International Airport’s flickering fluorescent lights, my heart pounding ahead of what was about to happen.

I knew my life was about to change forever.

My whole family surrounded me. My weeping mother and worried father. My ailing grandmother—my uncle, aunts, sisters, cousins. I will never forget the moment my mother and father had to let go of my hand. Their eyes holding back a silent pool of tears.

That was my reality.

This is not just my story. I am merely one of thousands, if not millions, who had to leave Egypt to pursue a better life. My family and I have endured a diaspora that has affected many Egyptian families who had to be broken apart in pursuit of a better education, better career, better treatment and ultimately a better future.

I have now lived away from Egypt for more than a decade but my heart has always been here and I know it will forever stay here. I am 30-years-old and Mubarak is the only President I have ever known. In his years of ruling this country I have seen so much injustice happen to the people. Many times I wondered how the human spirit can be so mean—so corrupt. I have wondered how the obvious sadness I saw in people’s eyes could go unnoticed by the government. I wondered how the Egyptian people were so put down socially, economically and politically that their defeated spirit had lost the natural ability to dream.

I do not represent all Egyptians but my opinion is certainly shared by many. When people took to the streets more than a week ago I felt like I had to be among them. This was my story: my present, past and future. This is the story of my generation of young Egyptians who have felt like foreigners in our own land.

Today I stood in Tahrir (Liberation) Square where a unique spirit echoed throughout every corner. I saw men and women weeping: “We are loosing our country,” they muttered. I saw men bleeding, saying they would rather die on Tahrir Square than have Mubarak remain in power. Today I saw Egyptians beating each other, saying they will kill one another. Today I saw an Egypt split apart by political turmoil.

I stood bewildered and confused. This is not the Egypt I know. The Egypt I knew screamed in silence but today people screamed at the top of their lungs. I was torn between photographer and protester. I wanted to scream and at moments cry. I wanted to hug people and thank them for their courage. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs with them.

Today I stood in Liberation Square and for the first time in my life I said: My name is Laura El-Tantawy and I am a proud Egyptian citizen.

Bio

Laura El-Tantawy is an Egyptian photojournalist and artist based in London, UK. She studied journalism & political science at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia (USA) & started her career as a newspaper photographer with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Sarasota Herald-Tribune (USA). She became a freelance in 2006 and has since exclusively worked on self-initiated projects. Her work has been been published & exhibited in the US, Europe, Asia & the Middle East. Laura lives between the UK, her country of birth, and Egypt, where she associates most of her childhood memories.

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imants krumins – painter

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Imants Krumins

Painter

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michal novotny – street kids in odessa

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Michal Novotny

Street Kids in Odessa

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On Odessa streets, children from all over Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Prydnestovye and Russia coexist. “According to…official statistics about three thousand children live in the streets of Odessa. According to the words of the specialists it is just a top of the iceberg”, says Tatiana Semikop, Chief of Criminal Militia on Youth Affairs. No one has real data on the number of homeless children in Ukraine, but the country is overflowing with a third wave of child homelessness. During the first two waves of the Civil War and Second World War, children became orphans when their parents died. The majority of modern homeless childrens’ parents are alive. An awful concept has appeared in Ukraine: “social orphans,” children who in theory have somewhere to go, but who will go never there.

In the streets, children find refuge from parents’ aggression and violence or alcohol and drug abuse. The street is a complex environment where survival is an every day goal. Uniting into groups and searching for deserted basements, garrets and hatches, children create their own niches and tough rules. The cost of a mistake is life. In order to live one must eat. In order to get food one must have money. This chain of logic is acquired by homeless children from their fist day on the street. Some of them wash machines, work as loaders, do casual repair work. Others beg, becoming professional “homeless children,” and some steal. Kind “uncles” and “aunts” turn handsome boys and beautiful girls into sex-toys. Payment comes as a bottle or a dose. Obstinate children are beaten. Juvenile homeless children brighten up their uneasy lives however they can – cigarettes picked up from asphalt or a passers-by’s alcohol, drugs, glue…

What fruits will bear these plantlets, tremulously grown by deflected morals and severe distortion of normal human values? The street means illnesses, from “harmless” bronchitis and lice, to tuberculosis, infectious hepatitis and HIV. According to “The Way Home,” an organization working with Odessa street children, two thirds of street children are HIV positive. They die with AIDS in crude cellars and miasma hatches. Street children do not go to school, but not because they are dumb (though the glue does work its magic over time, and the intelligence of the child sustains irremediable losses). Homeless children do not go to school because they have nothing to put on, no books to take with them. But mostly they simply have no time, they have to earn a living.


Bio

Michal Novotny (born 1973) is based in Prague, Czech Republic and his career began at the age of eighteen when he hitchhiked to the war zone of the former Yugoslavia. Since this time he has covered major international events and feature stories in more than fifty countries, usually under contract with the national daily newspaper Lidove Noviny or Reflex magazine. He has received many national and international awards in competitions including World Press Photo, Best of Photojournalism and Czech Press Photo. He regularly works on assignment for major international newspapers and magazines. His work has been published in The New York Times, GEO, Time, Stern, DAYS JAPAN, Vanity Fair, Focus, L’Expres, L’Equipe and El Mundo magazines among others.


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aaron vincent elkaim – exodus: jewish morocco

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Aaron Vincent Elkaim

Exodus: Jewish Morocco

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Jews first arrived to the land now known as Morocco over 2000 years ago.  Protected under the Islamic Principle of Tolerance since the 7th century, they flourished, holding high positions in trade and government.  The Star of David was a symbol shared by all Moroccans, appearing on currency and even the national flag. During the Holocaust, when asked for a list of Jews, King Mohammed V declared, “We have no Jews in Morocco, only Moroccan citizens.”  Jews and Muslims were united by culture and kingdom.

Following World War II, Zionists recruiters targeted Moroccan Jews to populate the new State of Israel. Israel’s expansion marked the beginning of a Moroccan Jewish exodus. 300,000 Jews inhabited Morocco as of 1940; it was the largest Jewish population in the Arab World. Today, less than 4000 remain.

What remains today is a Jewish past nearly abandoned, fragments of Morocco’s Jewish culture that have been left under the protection of Muslim guardians devoting their lives to a history that isn’t even their own, yet entirely is. The majority of the remaining community now lives in Casablanca, where they choose to identify with their French past rather than their Arab heritage. Across the country amidst breathtaking landscapes lay the tombs of holy Jewish saints, abandoned relics and sacred spaces.  Within these spaces are pilgrims seeking to identify with what remains of this ancient and holy history.
This work represents a journey into the remnants of this cultural exodus and aims to reveal a history of co-existence that has been lost in the wake of Zionism.


Bio

Aaron Vincent Elkaim was born in 1981 in Winnipeg, Canada. He is currently a freelance photographer based in Toronto. Aaron has a degree in Cultural Anthropology and a diploma in Photojournalism, and focuses his work on exploring cultural issues in the modern world. His work has been acknowledged internationally, garnering awards and recognition at the New York Photo Festival, American Photography 26, PX3 2010, PDN Photo Annual, the News Photographers Association of Canada and the Ontario Arts Council. He is an Eddie Adams Alumni and was recognized as an Emerging Photographer in 2008 by Photolife Magazine.

Aaron began this project in 2009 while on a trip with his father to the place where he was raised. He and most of his family left Morocco in the 1960’s at the peak of the Jewish Exodus. As Aaron learned more about the history of Jewish Morocco, he realized how unique their history and co-existence was and felt it was something he needed to explore further.


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Boreal Collective

lassal – disencounters

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Lassal

Disencounters

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After two years of feeling absolutely not myself, I was diagnosed with Hypothyroidism, a hormone deficiency. Modern medicine can supply synthetic hormones but it took me more than half a year to build up to the correct dosage. The medication made for a time of extreme advances and many setbacks so that night and day I felt completely displaced at times. I was terribly worried about straining my partnership beyond repair during this time. When I got to bed, Tone was long asleep, and when I woke up he was long gone …

I decided that I wanted to document the situation. On one hand, it was simply a good feeling to step out of the victim’s position, and on the other hand, I thought, whatever would happen, I could dedicate these images to my partner for a patience that I myself sincerely might not have had with him! So I began to take a picture of his side of the bed when I went to sleep and one when I got up. A little over 80 days later I took the last pair of images for the series.


Bio

Born in Germany, I grew up in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, returning to Germany in my late teens.

I studied economics, computer science and architecture in Germany, financing my studies in large part by visualizing scientific processes in a German research institute and by developing and drawing storyboards for movies, music videos and commercials.

In 2000/2001, while working on my diploma in architecture, I bought a digital point & shoot camera to document my works in progress. It was with this camera that my passion for photographic note-keeping was ignited. But it was not until the end of 2007, when I stumbled upon David Alan Harvey’s blog “road trips”, that I became aware of photography as a means for individual expression.

I am currently based in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

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Lassal

thodoris tzalavras – nicosia in dark and white

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Thodoris Tzalavras

Nicosia in Dark and White

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On Your Fiftieth Anniversary
Short story by Ioanna Mavrou

Everything is quiet. The years pass like water in a stream. You sit and wait patiently and impatiently. You can’t decide if you’re happy that nothing bad happens, or sad that nothing happens. You can’t be sure but you think you were lucky. You are alive. You have mementos of the time before the war. You have mementos of the war too. You wonder if broken countries can be put back together and what kind of glue is necessary for such a delicate operation. You are growing old and weary and your children flew to places far, like migratory birds coming back once a year, and then going away again. The TV doesn’t show the Don’t Forget places anymore and you wonder if that means you should stop remembering.

When the roadblocks opened you couldn’t help but go through, but instead of reconnecting with your family ghosts you felt betrayed that your old house would go on living without you. They smiled and stood there and held the door open for you to come in and look, but their family pictures on your old mantle told you that they would never want to leave. When you saw the sea of your youth you felt a piece of your heart sinking in it. The smell told you this was home but you doubted that any court could give it back to you.

You now have a new picture to put on your wall, a new thing to keep you up at night. The centuries aren’t comforting you anymore, history stays with history, and you feel like you’re fading into it. You raise your flag in defiance every October, of that country that could have been. You keep thinking of inappropriate jokes you don’t dare tell people, like how the whole thing was a big practical joke, payback for April Fool’s Day 1955: “Here, have a country, we swear, it will work, in fact we guarantee it.”

You are both ashamed and entertained by your wit. You think of the days when you had frappés with your friends at the Nicosia Airport café and watched the planes land and take off. You were too old to fight in 1974, too scared to not run away. You were never one to want revenge but sometimes when you follow the road that no longer takes you home you feel like crying.

The years have been kind to you, your children often say, and you don’t want to make a fuss so you don’t tell them. About the dreams that come now almost every night where you are stuck in mud on the bottom of the sea like the Kyrenia Ship, waiting for divers to dig you out. The ancient faces you see now are your own, you speak to them in Ancient Greek and tell them what they already know. That you are afraid.

(Note: On Your Fiftieth Anniversary is a work of fiction.)


Bio

Thodoris Tzalavras is a Greek photographer currently based in Nicosia, Cyprus. Nicosia in Dark and White is his first monograph.

Ioanna Mavrou writes fiction and is studying for a Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford. She loves photography.


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Thodoris Tzalavras

Nicosia in Dark and White

danny wilcox frazier – detroit

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Danny Wilcox Frazier

A Detroit Requiem

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Detroit…the word alone incites many emotions within America’s conscience.  Detroit was the epicenter for economic equality in the U.S., the home front for the ideal of well paying jobs for the masses and a political force behind a strong middle class.  Henry Ford made Detroit a boom town.  Five decades after he started, the boom began to bust.  Many reasons are at the heart of Detroit’s decline: postwar industrial policies, urban planning, the 1967 race riots, UAW and auto industry management, Detroit’s political cronyism, Clinton era trade deals, and quit possibly the mobility of the automobile itself.  It was the 1950’s when Detroit began the long decay that has brought the city to its present state, a time when Detroit, and America, was at its peak.

Today, Detroit is America’s poorest large city.  To avoid being the nation’s perpetual murder capital, the police began cooking stats.  In 2008, they claimed 306 homicides – until local reporter Charlie LeDuff discovered there were actually 375.  He also reported that in more than 70 percent of murders, the killer got away with it.  Detroit’s East Side is now the poorest, most violent quarter of America’s poorest, most violent big city.  The illiteracy, child poverty, and unemployment rates hover around 50 percent.  The shooting death of seven-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones by police on Detroit’s East Side brought national attention to this quarter.  But as the spotlight faded, the killings continued.

Detroit seemed off everyone’s radar until the collapse of the Dow and bankruptcy of GM.  As the nation and world looked for answers, Detroit came back in style.  Instead of Motown, this go around Detroit is exporting its misery.  Reality TV, television dramas, the movies – all selling Detroit’s murder and despair.  The night Aiyana was accidentally shot by police, a film crew from A&E’s true-crime series The First 48 was along for the show.

Detroit is a city that still has much greatness to offer. That was not the story Charlie and I were assigned to cover for Mother Jones magazine.  With 103 kids and teens murdered in Detroit between January of 2009 and July of 2010, Charlie and I were sent to cover the failure of political and civil leaders in Detroit, the failure of industry in Detroit, the failure of the federal government in Detroit, the failure of America in Detroit.

While I was in Detroit, 17-year-old Chaise Sherrors was shot and killed while giving a haircut on a porch.  We met his mother, Britta McNeal.  Britta was broken, often lost in memory while her eyes filled and sometimes tears flowed.  From her porch, she stared across the street that ran in front of her humble one-story on the East Side.  She stared at a half-burnt skeleton of a house, gutted inside and out, and a constant reminder of her misery.  Britta’s grandson played in broken glass and garbage that littered the driveway of the abandoned house next door.  Gang graffiti added the only touch of color to the black and gray left behind by a fire.  Britta showed us the urn containing the remains of her 14-year-old son, De’Erion.  He too was shot on Detroit’s East Side, killed a year before his older brother.  After Chaise’s funeral, Britta will have two urns to decorate her mantel.

“I know society looks at a person like me and wants me to go away,” Britta said. “‘Go ahead, walk in the Detroit River and disappear.’ But I can’t. I’m alive. I need help. But when you call for help, it seems like no one’s there.”

Charlie LeDuff’s accompanying article in Mother Jones


Bio

Danny Wilcox Frazier focuses on issues of marginalized communities in the U.S. and abroad. He is a contributing photographer to Mother Jones magazine.  His work has also been published by: The New York Times Magazine, TIME, Newsweek, Fortune, Forbes, Sports Illustrated, Der Spiegel, and Frontline (PBS).  In 2006, Frazier was awarded the Center for Documentary Studies/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography.  His book, Driftless: Photographs from Iowa, was published by Duke University Press and CDS in 2007.  Frazier then directed a documentary that confronts issues highlighted by these photographs, premiering the film in New York in 2009.  The film was nominated for an Emmy in 2010 and won a Webby for Frazier and MediaStorm that year.  In 2009, Frazier received grants from The Aftermath Project and Humanities Iowa, an affiliate of the NEH.  He was named a finalist for the W. Eugene Smith grant in 2007 and 2008.  At present, Frazier is working on his next book, Lost Nation, a look at economic and geographic isolation across America.


Related links

Frazier’s essay of abandoned Detroit homes

Redux Portfolio

Driftless

stefan bladh – the family

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Stefan Bladh

The Family

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Stefan has been following a Turkish nomadic family for seven years. He is invited to stay as their friend and lives close together with them from time to time. He finds them through their mobile phone in various places throughout the country, living in cramped conditions without heat, electricity, clean water or proper sewer systems, in abandoned house skeletons and under motorway bridges. Difficulties with money, health care, and welfare rights take turns playing havoc on their lives, and every day is a struggle to keep the whole of the large family alive.

From the introduction to “The Family” by Stefan Bladh, published by Nouvel Publishing in March 2010:

“We lay beside each other like a rosary, feet next to faces. Me at the end next to big brother Ali, 20. On the other side is dad Hüseyin, 40; snoring. The little ones are tucked into the middle. Above us is the booming noise of traffic, it’s late summer and the air is raw and damp. I tug the blanket I stole from the hotel further up over my nose, but the bitter cold and the acrid stench of garbage, urine, and greasy food still gets through. Also, beyond that, the highway smell: exhaust fumes, asphalt, burned rubber. We sleep on randomly dug up carpets and blankets, our rest provided us by the viaduct’s concrete foundation. The night is jet black. I lay awake listening to the sound of stray dogs chasing rats in and out of refuse bins, accompanied by the whispering of people’s feet sneaking past us in the gravel.”


Bio

Stefan Bladh was born in 1976 in Örebro, Sweden. He is now based in Stockholm where he has been working as a professional photographer since 2002. He spends most of his time traveling and working in middle Asia and eastern Europe.

Photographer Anders Petersen states in a brief afterward of the book: “Stefan is invited both as a friend and a photographer and he is aware of the responsibility this invitation brings. You´ll find his pictures full of despair and tenderness, focusing on the humanity we share. He knows that photography is not all about photography. In the end, it is the encounter that matters the most.”

The book The Family is available from PhotoEye

Related links

www.stefanbladh.se

www.nouvelpublishing.com


gianluca tamorri – the hornet’s nest

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Gianluca Tamorri

The Hornet’s Nest

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San Luca, a remote hill top town in southern Italy, is the ancestral home and principal headquarters of a criminal organization that has emerged as the country’s most powerful and dangerous mafia, the ‘Ndrangheta.’ San Luca was an unfortunate city even before the mafia took over; a succession of tragedies scar its history. In December 1972, a flood destroyed the beautiful scenery of San Luca, tearing apart the upper section of the city, famous for being a “hornet’s nest.” Though the name originally came from the shape of the streets and buildings in the neighborhood, it is now sometimes used as a hideout for Ndrangheta fugitives.

This project was born from an encounter with Mrs. Rosy Canale, the chair of the Movement of Women of San Luca, a group engaged in the development and awareness of the village. I spent a week in San Luca, hosted by one of the families working in the neighborhood, trying to show the cultural isolation of the community. My interest is to raise awareness about a little known part of Italy that is often connected only to news reports about mafia without real understanding of social and cultural dynamics. This work is ongoing.


Bio

Gianluca Tamorri was born in 1971 in Rome, Italy, and currently lives in Paris. He holds degrees in political science from the University of Rome “La Sapienza,” and the Rome School of Photography. Tamorri assisted various photographers in Italy between Rome and Milan, and moved to Paris in 2005 to work with the artist Michael James O’Brien, known for his collaboration with Matthew Barney in the Cremaster series 1,2,4,5. 
Concurrently, he has worked on his own personal projects in still-life, portraiture and street photography.


Related links

www.gianlucatamorri.com

terraproject – italian coastline

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TerraProject

Italian Coastline

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“The more shopping centers are built, the more building sites are started, more merchandize arrives, more dealers work, more transportation happens, and faster money will be able to overcome the uneven boundaries separating illegal and legal territories”
Roberto Saviano – “Gomorrah”

Italy, with its 7400 km of coastline, is one of the main tourist attractions for those who want to spend time on the beach. Also in the past, with its ports and sea towns, the shoreline has had a major role in the birth and history of the country.
However the more recent transformations the coastline of Italy has undergone seem to assert the absence of a policy to preserve and protect its historical and natural heritage.

Humans have built ports, defenses, artificial beaches, homes and industrial plants, permanently destroying the balance obtained over the centuries. This project is a discovery of the traces left by the presence and activities of humans along the shorelines of Italy.


Bio

TerraProject Photographers is an Italian collective of documentary photographers founded in Florence in 2006. TerraProject currently has four members: Michele Borzoni, Simone Donati, Pietro Paolini and Rocco Rorandelli. Coming from diverse educational backgrounds, the photographers of the collective complement each other in the various aspects of their photographic work, from project managing to distribution.

In addition to being a promotional tool for its members and their individual works, TerraProject Photographers is also a platform for collective engagement and growth. The experimentation of novel narrative structures within documentary photography is one of the main concerns of the collective, and this is achieved with collective projects and multimedia productions. The members of the collective also work independently on assignments and personal research. Collective projects are produced by the members with constant group discussions, right from the conception of the idea to the definition of the topic to the final editing of the work. The stylistic and journalistic approaches are defined a priori, leaving to each photographer the individual freedom to interpret the story, without forgetting the need for a stylistic unity and a common passe-partout. The objective is to build a strong, unified body of work where the views of the individual are an instrument to realize the work of the collective.

Photo reportages of TerraProject Photographers have been published on the pages of numerous mainstream national and international magazines, including Newsweek, Der Spiegel, GEO, D di Repubblica, Io Donna, Vanity Fair, Magazine del Corriere della Sera, Financial Times Magazine, Internazionale, L’Espresso, Le Monde Magazine, Paris Match, TIME and many more. The collective members have exhibited their works in New York, Beijing, Berlin, Sao Paolo and many venues in Italy, and have also been guests of numerous national and international festivals. The photographers of TerraProject have received prestigious international awards such as the World Press Photo (2010) and the Canon Prize (2010).


Related links

TerraProject

dominic bracco ii – life and death in the northern pass

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ESSAY CONTAINS EXPLICIT CONTENT

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.

May 4, 2010 1:51 am – EMT workers Adrian and Jorge hardly stop to lower the Delilah Radio Show blaring over their two-way radios from El Paso. “What – what did they say?” Jorge responds, “Two dead by firearm.” Later Adrian and Jorge find a couple murdered minutes earlier idling in their small white pickup.  The woman was far into her pregnancy. Adrian declares them dead. The couple’s heads touched in a last embrace. A single bullet entered the man’s skull and took all three lives (opening picture above)

Sprawled across the tail end of the Rocky Mountains where the starved Rio Bravo pushes mud through a barren desert valley sits Ciudad Juarez, one of most violent cities in the world ­– historically known as El Paso del Norte or The Northern Pass. Over the past three years over 5,000 people have lost their lives in a struggle for power thats roots reach deep into Mexico’s history. Here Mexicans are still fighting the same class war that led them into a revolution in 1911, as droves of unemployed and disillusioned youth turn to crime to move up in a society that’s class lines are firmly drawn.

Mexico’s past is filled with class-based conflicts and violence.  Mexican Independence from Spain in 1810, The Caste War of the Yucatan, The Reform War, The Mexican Revolution, the Zapatista uprising, The Actael Massacre, the Tlatelolco Massacre, and finally the current conflict between cartels and the Mexican government have all been rooted, in sorts, in the frustrations of an underrepresented and impoverished underclass that lacks economic mobility and genuine political voice.  Ciudad Juarez, the Mexican city that has seen the greatest amount of violence, serves as a microcosm for what is happening across the entire country. Despite a robust economy and relatively large middle and upper classes, the city has seen the drug war demolish its infrastructure (material and human) as Juarez continues falling deeper into a recessive pattern of violence, economic hardship, and social injustice. A statistic released five months ago stated that every three hours someone in Ciudad Juarez is executed. Since 2007 more than 5,000 individuals have lost their lives. The violence in Juarez is sporadic and faceless, making it difficult to pinpoint; this is the epicenter of a type of violence that is spreading across Mexico like a plague.

Without law and order the residents of the city have no faith in their government. Thousands of businesses have closed due to high extortion rates and a depressed market with aftershock from the international financial crisis. The combination of poverty, frustration, and unemployment continue; with less jobs, residents turn to crime. As a result of the violence, many individuals, families, and businesses see no future in Juarez, and flee to the United Stated or other parts of Mexico, leaving fewer opportunities for those that stay and struggle to live in the city.

In Juarez the war goes beyond the cartels and Mexican authorities, it is a conflict that involves citizens as well. It is impossible to live in the city without being effected. I make photographs of the peripherals of violence while focusing on what is happening to the average citizen of Ciudad Juarez. I spend time with factory workers, the unemployed youth and the average citizen hoping to somehow humanize the situation. I hope that my work will show a human side of a tragedy that is often ignored.


Bio

Dominic Bracco II (b. 1986, Texas USA) 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. He is a regular contributor to The Washington Post, where he was selected for a six-month internship in 2008, and The Wall Street Journal. He is currently based in Mexico.


Related links

Dominic Bracco II