Anthony Delgado June 20, 2013
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in Spain.Tags: Spain
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La Cena brotherhood, Seville, Spain, Palm Sunday 2011
Anthony Delgado (b. 1954, USA) is a San Francisco based photographer, who has been pursuing a passion for photography in a more conscious manner since 2007. In the 30 years prior, he worked as graphic designer for a variety of hi-tech, food and sports clients. His work has appeared in individual and numerous group shows. A selection of his photographs from the 2009 Holy Week processions in Sicily were published in PDN.
About the Photograph:
“During Holy Week in Seville there are sixty different religious processions by recognized brotherhoods, each with their colors and symbols. The tall pointed cap—the capirote—recalls the KKK in the minds of most Americans. The actual origins of the costume date back to Inquisition, hardly a better association but are now viewed as a means of creating anonymity among the Nazarenos — that their participation should be an anonymous offering and not a prideful exhibition. This photograph of the brotherhood La Cena—The Last Supper, was taken on the first day of processions, Palm Sunday, during a pause while the procession readied itself to pass before the main viewing stands in Plaza San Francisco. The red poles they carry are candles and a typical activity for children along the procession route is to ask for wax to be dripped on to a ball —the object being to form the largest wax ball possible. Despite the initial alarming association invoked by the costumes, viewing the processions through the week helped me look past that and see them in context of Spanish culture.”
Adrian Fussell June 17, 2013
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in United States.Tags: United States
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JROTC Army Recruits. Louisville, Kentucky 2012
Adrian Fussell (b.1989, USA) is a Panamanian-American photographer based in New York City. He grew up in Switzerland, Zimbabwe, and Guatemala, following his parents and their work as American diplomats, before returning to the U.S. at age 16. While attending New York University for degrees in journalism and political science, Adrian worked as a writer and photographer for the Village Voice and for the Black AIDS Institute. In 2012 he studied photojournalism at the International Center of Photography, where he documented the world of a high school JROTC program in Queens, NY. That same year he was the recipient of the ICP George & Joyce Moss Scholarship, the Magnum Foundation: Emergency Fund Fellowship, and the Ian Parry Scholarship. He attended Eddie Adams Workshop XXV, and currently shoots for the Wall Street Journal and for Getty Images. He is also recognized on the Emerging Talent roster at Getty Images, Reportage section.
About the Photograph:
“This photograph is one from a series titled My Name is Victory, on JROTC Army programs in public high schools in America. The subjects are drill team cadets from Francis Lewis High School, and they’re pictured training in a parking lot outside of their hotel in Louisville, KY. The team, called the Patriot Guard, was seeking it’s third consecutive national championship in 2012, but they placed second after a cadet dropped his rifle during the performance. In the foreground is cadet Jenny Chen, age 17 when this photo was taken, who was a squad leader and is giving the command for her cadets to march. Drill team duty requires hours of weapons handling practice and marching six days a week. The cadets spin and throw to each other their dummy Springfield 1903 rifles, World War 1 era weapons that weigh roughly nine pounds and are kept by the Francis Lewis JROTC officers in a locked closet on the school campus, located in Fresh Meadows, Queens, NYC.”
Antonia Zennaro June 13, 2013
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in Germany.Tags: Germany
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Safari Club, Grosse Freiheit, Hamburg 2012/2009
Antonia Zennaro (b. 1980, Italy) studied at the ISFCI in Rome and took part in a master program in the Danish school of journalism in Aarhus, Denmark. Since 2010 she has been a freelance photographer working with the journalist agency Zeitenspiegel in Stuttgart. In addition to commissioned works for magazines and newspapers she is dedicated to long term projects on social issues. Antonia’s work was show at the Lumix Festival for Young Photographers. Her first long term project, Reeperbahn, about the remains of the famous red light district in Hamburg, was published by Prestel in February 2013. She is currently based in Hamburg.
About the Photographs:
“Peter and Griselda. Peter is one of the last typical bouncers you can find on the party mile and red light district in Hamburg, the Reeperbahn. He is working since 1976 in front of the Safari Club, the last Sex cabaret in Germany. In this street, Die grosse Freiheit, there were over nine of such Cabarets in the sixties and seventies. Not much is left over from these time and lifestyle. The Safari Club lives more like in a time in between, and Peter is becoming the entrance to it. Griselda arrived in the eighties from the Philippines. She works as a Transvestite artist. Nowadays it is difficult to get paid for her shows so she has to travel all around Germany. Both pictures were taken as part of my long term project Reeperbahn, Griselda was one of my first pictures I was allowed to take inside the Safari Club in 2009. Since then I have returned back and spent some years with them inside their backstage cellar. Peter was one of the last pictures taken in 2012. The work and life in the Reeperbahn is hard, and the ones who earned a lot of money are old, poor and lonely today.”
Robert Nickelsberg June 10, 2013
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in India, Kashmir.Tags: India, Kashmir
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Shah-i-Hamadan shrine in Srinagar, Kashmir 2010
Robert Nickelsberg (b. 1950, United States) has been TIME magazine contract photographer for 25 years based in New Delhi from 1988 to 2000. During that time, he documented conflicts in Kashmir, Iraq, Sri Lanka, India and Afghanistan. He was one of the few photographers who had first hand exposure to the early days of the rise of fundamentalist groups in the Afghanistan-Pakistan tribal areas and al-Qaeda, and his work provides a unique up close view of the Soviet withdrawal, the rise of the Taliban and the invasion by the U.S. Robert moved to New York in 2000 and continues to travel overseas – reporting on the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 – and focus on chronicling the devastating psychological effects of war in Kashmir. In 2008, he was awarded grants from the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, and from the South Asia Journalists Association to document and report on post-traumatic stress disorder in Kashmir after 20 years of insurgency. He serves on the advisory board of the Kashmir Initiative at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University.
About the Photograph:
“I’ve been visiting the Shah-i-Hamadan mosque for over two decades. It’s one of a series of historic shrines that lace Srinagar’s old city, built with colorful paper mache artwork skillfully placed throughout the building. Regardless of when you visit the shrine, a special peacefulness prevails whether it’s during the uncrowded early morning or mid-afternoon hours or during prayer time when the mosque’s floors are usually filled. The photograph was taken of the women’s section at the end of Friday’s mid-day Jumma prayers when women linger to recite prayers from the Koran or greet their neighbors before walking home. It’s an island of tranquility, where Sufi spirituality serves as a healing mechanism for a population effected by chronic violence and trauma. Not only do the bereaved find comfort and refuge here, but so do occasional travelers.”
“The wooden shrine was the first mosque built in Kashmir in 1395 by the Persian saint Mir Sayed Ali Hamadani. Many Kashmiri civilians suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder seek refuge in prayer and song (as well as attending medical clinics and hospitals). The numerous shrines in Kashmir provide a peaceful sanctuary to a population suffering from more than twenty-years of violence between Kashmiri Muslims, Islamic militants and the Indian Army. More than 70,000 civilians have died in the fighting beginning in 1989.”
Carlo Gianferro June 6, 2013
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in Romania.Tags: Romania
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Iasi, Romania 2008
Carlo Gianferro (b. 1970, Italy), is a freelance photographer based in Rome, he worked from 2004 to 2008 with the Romanian and Moldavian wealthy Roma communities, as a result of this long term project he published two books “Gypsy Architecture” by German Axel Menges Editions and “Gypsy Interiors” published by Italian Postcart Edizioni. In these years he carried on personal projects in Eastern Europe, Africa and Middle East. He’s actually working on Italian issues exploring mental illness subject. He’s interested in exiled workers and other fragile communities. His photographs document people conditions and show them in their environment where the architectural setting or backdrop is just as important as the human figures . His work was awarded 1st prize for portraits stories in World Press Photo 2009.
About the Photograph:
“I took this photograph during one of my t travels among the wealthy Roma communities of Romania and Republic of Moldova, I was shooting a series of portraits for ‘Roma Interiors’, my more successful work, documenting some Roma villages created after the 1992 fall of the Soviet regime in eastern Europe, a new generation of Roma that quickly developed its full potential, accumulating wealth using capitalist methods and expressing it by the construction of the huge houses. I wanted to show Gypsy people in a new way; no more beggars or the poor living in camps as always described in photography before. That day I was in a small rich Roma village near Iasi, Romania, I knocked the door of a villa and this woman appeared to me , she was very kind and very happy to be photographed, she conducted me in her bedroom. I prepared my tripod and my camera and when I looked at the viewfinder I saw the magic, a woman in orange in an orange room next to plastic plant. This picture as the others in the series, was photographed quickly, without prior preparation, aesthetic tricks or any special choice of clothes: what you see is what there is, what there was at the time of the shooting, what there is every day.”
Scout Tufankjian June 3, 2013
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in Gaza, Israel.Tags: Gaza, Israel
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Gaza City 2005
Scout Tufankjian (b.1977, United States) has spent the bulk of her career working in the Middle East, including four years working in the Gaza Strip. Her book on the 2007-2008 Obama campaign, Yes We Can: Barack Obama’s History-Making Presidential Campaign was a New York Times and LA Times bestseller, selling out its first run of 55,000 copies a month before its release date. More recently, she has documented the aftermath of the Haitian Earthquake, and has been working in Brazil, Ethiopia and Turkey on a project documenting the Armenian diaspora. In February 2011 she covered the Egyptian Revolution covering the aftermath of the revolution, particularly its effects on the ultra-religious Salafi community. In the summer of 2012, she returned to the campaign trail as a photographer for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign. She speaks conversational Arabic and is based in Brooklyn, NY.
About the Photograph:
“This picture was taken at an old amusement park just north of Gaza City in March of 2005. The young women were law school students on a field trip to the park for some relaxation. In the four years I spent traveling back and forth between New York and the Gaza Strip, I tried to spend as much of my time as I could focusing on the normal parts of life in Gaza – the amusement parks, the family trips to the beach, the hip hop concerts, and the lavish weddings. The Middle East, and especially Gaza, is too often ‘othered’ and exorcised, when it is largely made up of men, women, and children who want the same things out of life that everyone else does – a job, a roof over their heads, food on the table, school for the kids, a doctor when they are sick, and the occasional trip to the beach or the amusement park. As a photojournalist, I think it is as, if not more, important for me to show what people have in common rather than to just highlight the differences.”
Tim Richmond May 30, 2013
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in England.Tags: England
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The knife thrower’s assistant. Kent, England
Tim Richmond (b.1959, England) studied film and photography in London. For twenty-five years he has photographed portraiture, fashion and for the last five years has been concentrating on his fine art projects. Continuing to shoot on film, he prints all his own exhibition prints at his base in Somerset, England. Tim’s work has appeared in Vanity Fair, Vogue, L’Uomo Vogue, The Sunday Times and Saturday Telegraph Magazine, and is in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery, as well as in Private American and European Collections .
About the Photograph:
“I had been looking for a modern day knife thrower and assistant to photograph, and found Jon Anton in Kent, England. Living in a luxury caravan on a farm, he was able to use the un-used barns while he was practicing with his assistant. I caught a moment where her eyes betrayed an expression that indicated she had seen enough knives flash by her for one life.”
Albertina d’Urso May 27, 2013
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in East Timor.Tags: East Timor
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Dili, East Timor 2012
Albertina d’Urso’s (b.1976, Italy) photographic projects have been recognized by “Canon Young Photographers Award” and “Lucie Awards”. She has exhibited internationally including in Insa Art Center in Seoul, 291 Gallery in San Francisco, Speos Gallery in Paris, VII Gallery in New York, “MIA- Milan Image Art Fair”, “New York Photo Festival”, “Angkor Photo Festival”, “Forma Centro Internazionale di Fotografia” in Milano. She published the book “TI MOUN YO, Children of Haiti”, Contrasto, that was voted “Documentary Book of the Year” at the “International photography Awards” Her work is regularly featured in magazines including Vanity Fair, Marie Claire, Panorama, L’Espresso among others.
About the Photograph:
“I made this photo of a group of fishermen who were preparing their nets before going out to sea on a beach in central Dili, the capital of East Timor a few months before the withdrawal of the international peacekeepers stationed there. East Timor (officially titled the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste) a former Portuguese colony for three centuries, suffered 24 years of brutal Indonesian occupation that left more than 250,000 dead and much of the country’s infrastructure destroyed. International armed forces entered the country in 1999 and even if formal independence was declared in 2002, extreme poverty, internal rivalry and mistrust, riots and violence required the blue-helmeted soldiers to stay for five consecutive missions. A decade after, Asia’s youngest country, has made significant progress but with the departure of UN troops. Still, the future remains uncertain. I included this image in my story because I wanted to show the return to normal life .”
Katharine MacDaid May 23, 2013
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in Scotland.Tags: Scotland
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Lynne, Orkney Islands, Scotland 2001
Katharine MacDaid (b.1979, Belfast) spent her childhood in Oman and America and studied photography at Napier University and then the Royal College of Art where she gained her masters. She has recently returned from Oman where she produced a large body of work as she explored the interior of the country far from the expat enclaves. Her ongoing project “Kate and Denis” looks at her parents with a dry humor and often bracing honesty about what makes relationships last. Katharine’s work has been exhibited at the Macro Testaccio Rome, The Palm Springs photo festival and the Ian Parry Scholarship exhibition. She currently lives in London.
About the Photograph:
“I met a boy from Orkney when I first went to Edinburgh to study. After four years of traveling back and forth I began to make work about a small group of friends, all living on the Orkney Islands. The girls and the boys mooching about, smoking joints, throwing stones. I’d spent my teenage years in London dressing up and hanging out in clubs. Lynne was a good friend. She’s sitting in what was called the summerhouse, in their garden rolling a joint. We were drinking beer and hanging out. It was too windy to roll joints outside. Every so often conversations drifted over thoughts of leaving and the desire to stay. The landscape seemed to promise a sense of freedom and stability yet it could constrict with a closed familiarity. I thought my work was about them, but I now think it was about the place and me.”
Joel van Houdt May 20, 2013
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in Spain.Tags: Spain
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An unemployed Moroccan, Canary Islands, Spain 2009
Joel van Houdt (b. 1981, The Netherlands) is an independent photojournalist based in Kabul, Afghanistan since 2010. He studied photography and design in Bradford, UK and graduated from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague in 2003. Before moving to Afghanistan he worked on stories in a resurgent Russia waking up to an oil boom and from 2007 to 2010 on his project Entering Europe, documenting the life of an educated Moroccan before, during and after he illegally sneaks into Spain. Alongside his decade-long work for Dutch newspapers and magazines Joel’s work has appeared in various publications including The Sunday Age, Der Spiegel, Stern, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times Magazine.
About the Photograph:
“I took this picture when I flew back to the islands after the police finally released my memory cards with the pictures from Mohamed’s crossing. We arrived on a small island, La Graziosa, and were all arrested by the only police officer and the villagers. In court I was asked to name the captain of the boat, I refused because that’s not my job as a journalist and against my ethics. A captain can get up to eight years in prison. After this they decided to keep all my photographs as evidence. I needed a very good lawyer and six months to get them back. It was early evening, six months after Mohamed arrived illegally in Spain. He’s sleeping in a house of a friend while trying to get asylum, which never happened. This is around the time he started to realize that living in Europe wasn’t going to be as easy as he imagined. He moved to Europe’s mainland where he was able to live from food donations from a church among others but couldn’t find work. Mohamed arrived in September 2008 a week before the economic crisis. He’s been jobless and illegal ever since.”
Chiara Tocci May 16, 2013
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in Albania.Tags: Albania
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Shllak village, near Shkoder Albania 2009
Chiara Tocci (b. 1982, Italy) graduated from the Università di Firenze in 2006 and earned a BA in Documentary Photography from the University of Wales, Newport in 2010. After graduating she won the Portrait Commission at the National Museum Wales and National Portrait Gallery, London in 2010. Chiara’s photographs have been published in Context and Narrative in Photography, British Journal Of Photography, Ag Magazine, and the Guardian. She is included in the 2012 Magenta Foundation Emerging Photographers and in the Fresh Faced and Wild Eyed 2011, curated by The Photographers’ Gallery, London. Other exhibitions include Hereford Photography Festival (2011), TRACE Gallery, Cornwall (2010), and the Pingyao International Photography Festival, China (2010). Her series Life after Zog was the recipient of the Marco Pesaresi award and was published by Schilt.
About the Photograph:
“My fixer and interpreter Antonela wanted to show me a new place one morning. We jumped on a “furgon” (a sort of shared taxi ) and ventured to the village where my fixer’s mother works as a teacher a few days a week. Surrounded by loud men smoking cigarettes and a crying goat at the back we arrived at the village of Bajze. Our first stop was a visit with a family related to Antonela: a big house inhabited by two toddlers and their extended family. The boys in this photograph, Sokol and Simon, were the newest addition to the family. A few years ago their relatives moved to the USA seeking asylum. This was a story shared by many Albanians.”
Sam Wolson May 13, 2013
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in South Africa.Tags: South Africa
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A room in the Central Methodist church used for individuals with HIV. Johannesburg 2011
Sam Wolson (b. 1989, USA) is a California-based freelance photographer and multimedia producer, currently interning at the San Fransisco Chronicle. In 2011, Sam graduated from the University of Michigan where he studied film-making. Over the past year he has been working on stories around the world from Zimbabwe to Colombia covering issues surrounding public space, immigration and marginalized communities. He has published with Slate, The Mail & Guardian, The Atlantic Cities, the San Francisco Chronicle and maintains a photography blog for the The Huffington Post.
About the Photograph:
“This photo was taken in a large church turned refugee camp in downtown Johannesburg, South Africa. I had been working on a story with a writer about a Zimbabwean immigrant named Reymond who had been living in the church for the last five years. In October 2011, we traveled to Reymond’s home in Zimbabwe to see what would lead someone to leave in order to live under such difficult conditions in the church, where every night can be a struggle to find a safe place to sleep, food to eat, and shelter from potential violence that engulfs Johannesburg. Upon returning from Zimbabwe I spent extensive time at the church with Reymond. This scene takes place in a room at the church that houses people with HIV and other heath issues. Typically during the day everyone is asked to leave the building, but exceptions are made for the sick and families with young children. In composing the photo I tired to flatten the space making the man almost seem to become part of the fading mural in the background.”
Lorenzo Tugnoli May 9, 2013
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in Afghanistan.Tags: Afghanistan
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Planting wheat in Sorubi province. Afghanistan 2011
Lorenzo Tugnoli (b. 1979, Italy) is a documentary photographer based in Kabul and a member of the photographic collective Razistan. His work has been published by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, TIME Magazine, as well as several Italian magazines. Since 2010, Lorenzo has been working on the production of photographic books for development organizations in Afghanistan, including the UN and The German Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He’s currently working on two photographic book projects, one focussing on the Pashtu tribe in Afghanistan and another on the artistic scene of Kabul.
About the Photograph:
“This image is part of an on-going project that focuses on the daily life of Pashto tribes in rural Afghanistan. This is a part of Afghan contemporary history that is significantly under reported – most Pashto tribes, in fact, live in areas of the country where the insurgency is still very active and access to foreign reporters limited. I visited the village of Lagubu, in eastern Afghanistan, a number of times and have now become familiar with the local farmers. Working in this environment is particularly hard. People are suspicious and scared to be found giving hospitality to a foreigner. The day I took this photo, I was enjoying the setting sun. The only way to get such a light is to sleep in the village, but nights are pretty dangerous in Taliban controlled areas. The sun was setting and the farmers were repeating old gestures. It was a moment frozen in time, it could have been a century ago. It was a moment in which, after a long day photographing them, they stopped being concerned about me; perhaps they were also feeling the magic of dusk, and I felt I was able to get a glimpse of their real life.”
Neil A. White May 6, 2013
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in England.Tags: England
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From the series “Lost Villages“. Skipsea, East Riding of Yorkshire, England.2011
Neil A. White (b. 1972, England) is a photographer and teacher currently living in London. Growing up in the north of England, Neil would escape to the countryside whenever he could. This fascination with the natural world and contrasting environments is at the heart of his photography and an infinite source of inspiration. Neil received and MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography in 2006 from the University of the Arts in London, adding to his BSc in Engineering Management. Work from his Lost Villages series has been published in The Guardian Magazine and Geographical Magazine and was highly commended in The Environmental Photographer of the Year competition in 2011.
About the Photograph:
“This photograph is from a series called Lost Villages. The Holderness coast located in the North East of England endures the highest rate of coastal erosion in Europe. The devastating consequence of this is villages and land slowly disappearing into the sea. This project explores the constant battle between the North Sea and the mainland, and to document the irreversible change-taking place on this coast line. I had actually taken the picture of the road and packed my equipment up and started to walk back to the car. Then in the not so far distance I saw the man and dogs walking towards me and thought this could bring something else to the picture. With moments to spare I quickly ran back, got my field camera back on my tripod frantically put a film case in the back of the camera and took the picture with literally seconds to spare. It all happened so quickly I was worried that I may have made a mistake. When I saw the negative from the lab I knew I had a great photograph. It was one of those rare times in photography when the elements came together and I really felt everything come together.
