Day Without an Immigrant March. Chicago 2006

Carlos Javier Ortiz (b.1977, Puerto Rico) attended Columbia College where he studied photojournalism. Carlos was a staff photographer for “Chicago In The Year 2000″, a year long project documenting the city and its inhabitants. He worked for several years as a photojournalist for newspapers in Philadelphia and New Jersey and is currently working on a cross-cultural youth violence project, which documents adolescents in Chicago and Guatemala. Carlos was a finalist for the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography in 2008 and recently received the 2009 domestic photography award from the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights for the Too Young To Die project. His work has appeared in Newsweek, Washington Post, Time Magazine, NPR, The Guardian, Stern Magazine and other publications.

About the Photograph:

“The photo is of a man at an immigration rights rally in Chicago. I was drawn to him because he was dressed as the Statue of Liberty and therefore was dressed as a woman. I was also interested in him because he represented an American icon in a sea of people who were fighting for their rights as Americans. There was something about the image of a man dressed as the Statue of Liberty juxtaposed with people engaged in such an important fight that really captured me. An estimated 400,000 protesters took to the streets of Chicago almost four years ago to show their support for the eleven million illegal immigrants living in the United States.”

Abraham Lincoln’s Traveling Log Cabin. Kentucky

Greta Pratt (b.1975, United States) is the author of two monographs, Using History, and In Search of the Corn Queen. Pratt’s works are represented in major public and private collections, including The Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Photography and The Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Pratt was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, served as photography bureau chief of Reuters International in New York City, and her photographs have been featured in The New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker. She is a recipient of a New Jersey State Council on the Arts Artist Fellowship. Pratt is currently an Assistant Professor of Photography at Old Dominion University.

About the Photograph:

“This is a photo of Lincoln presenter Gerald Bestrom. Mr. Bestrom drives this camper around the Midwest performing for school groups and senior citizen gatherings as the 16th president. He likes to entertain so he plays a comb and a saw, dances a jig and recites from Lincoln’s speeches.  The men that I photographed for this series belong to The Association of Lincoln Presenters. They are passionate about Lincoln and spend time studying, reading and performing for school groups, community celebrations, and senior citizen centers. Each one started this unusual occupation for a different reason, but all became completely immersed in the ideals of Abraham Lincoln.”

American Girl Place on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan

Christina Paige (b.1972, USA) is a graduate of the International Center of Photography’s program in Documentary Photography and Photojournalism.  She was chosen as one of Photo District News’s 30 Emerging Photographers for 2008, where she was described as finding “grace and bits of humor swirling in the maelstrom of everyday life.”  Before becoming a photographer, she worked as a clinical social worker with Spanish-speaking communities in California and Massachusetts. Christina clients include: Esquire, W Magazine, Vrij Nederland, ESPN The Magazine, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Technology Review and The Wall Street Journal.  She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter.

About the Photograph:

“This photograph was taken outside of American Girl Place, a high-end doll shop on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, where I ended up taking many photos for a series about women and beauty. On this day, there were hundreds of girls waiting in line to audition for the Kit Kittredge movie. Most of the pictures I shot that day have a manic quality, but this little girl seemed quite calm, more interested in her pretzel than the commotion around her. I think I only took two frames. I usually work quickly and think little—I only noticed the repeating patterns in the image later on in the editing process—the time when most things become clear for me.”

Twins, St. Louis, Missouri, 2009

Erik Lunsford (b.1980, USA) is currently a staff photojournalist at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He previously worked at The Stuart (FL) News and the Palm Beach Post in West Palm Beach before returning to St. Louis in 2007. He interned first at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, then at the Springfield (IL) State Journal-Register and the Peoria (IL) Journal-Star before heading to Florida. A St. Louis University graduate, Erik documents stories ranging from news to sports and features in his own hometown community.

About the Photograph:

“I was assigned to shoot a family homeschooling their children in downtown St. Louis. After a period of “class” in the living room, the family broke for playtime in their loft garden. I had been following the twin girls hoping to document them in the same frame when patience paid off and they climbed on the swing. After only a few seconds of squirming between the bars and cushions, the girls alighted from the swing to the sound of their mother’s calling. Moreover, it wasn’t until I was preparing selects for the editor later in the newsroom when I saw this image pop off the edit. Not only were other staff photojournalists surprised by the uniqueness of the girls’ positioning, but the image seemed to emote a fleeting connectivity between the twins. Although they are two entirely separate individuals, they for a brief moment were one and the same.”