Martyrs’ Day. Gillipoli, Turkey

George Georgio (b. 1961, England) is a freelance photographer represented by Panos Pictures (UK) and Signatures (France). He has photographed extensively in the Balkans, Eastern Europe and Turkey for the last decade, living and working in Serbia, Greece, and, for the last four years in Istanbul. Georgio’s work has focused on people caught between communities, cultures, and ideologies. He recently finished a book project about Turkey to be published by Mets & Schilts, called Fault Lines: East to West. His awards include two World Press Photo prizes for “The Serbs” 1st Portrait stories 2003 and “Flour War, 2nd Arts stories 2005” a Pictures of the Year International first prize for “Istanbul Bombs,” 2004 and a Nikon Press Award UK for best photo essay 2000. He recently moved back to London and started a new book project looking at the topography and migrations of London.

About the Photograph:

“This Photograph was taken on Martyrs’ day in Gallipoli, Western Turkey. I was really surprised when I arrived at Gallipoli because I had always associated Gallipoli with the failed Allied campaign against the Ottomans during the first World War and the image of English, French, Australians and New Zealand veterans commemorating their dead on Anzac day. For Turkey, Gallipoli is perceived as one of the most important defining moments in their history and laid the grounds for the Turkish war of Independence and the foundation of the Turkish Republic. They celebrate this victory, which cost the lives of over a 100,000 people, on March 18, marking the day in 1915 when the Allies launched their naval attack on the Dardanelles. For me the significance of this event in relation to the work I was doing about contemporary Turkey was how the central position of how the Military and Ataturk have continued to play in modern Turkey and in many ways is best symbolized on this day.”

Mozambique, Maputo, November 2004

Sven Torfinn, (Belgium, b.1971) studied photography at the Academy for Fine Arts Sint Joost in Breda, The Netherlands from 1990 to 1995. After a small stray off to fashion photography, he worked as a freelancer for Dutch media. In 1999 Sven Torfinn moved to Namibia where he briefly worked for Reuters and contributed to a countrywide HIV/Aids campaign in corporation with UNICEF. In 2000 Sven Torfinn based himself in Nairobi, Kenya, from where he travels all over the continent, working on assignments for Dutch and International media and NGO’s. Among them De Volkskrant, Elsevier, Economist, The Guardian, Observer, Time, Medicine Sans Frontiers, WHO, Action Aid. His work is represented in Europe by Hollandse Hoogte and Panos Pictures in London. His awards include: World Press Photo (2005), Zilveren Camera Awards (2003, 2005) and the Dick Scherpenzeel prize (2006).

About the Photograph:

After his first encounter with East and Central Africa, Sven “concluded” that just as correspondents, photographers should base themselves in a particular region, instead of traveling around the globe from one hot spot to the other. By living on a continent like Africa the chance is bigger that you develop an understanding for it, and the produced pictures could start showing something more than the already known image of wars, famines and other disasters. For this image Sven comments: “This a continent of young people. They are in the majority, they don’t have the lead yet, but soon…” in other words Sven is hopeful.

E. and his Son at Home. Yonkers, New York, 2007

Rocco Rorandelli was born in Florence in 1973. His interest in photography commenced at an early age, but it wasn’t until completing his doctoral studies in Biology that he decided to commit to his lifelong passion. He has complted projects in Africa, the Americas, and Europe. His photos have been published in magazines such as D di Repubblica, Vanity Fair, Corriere della Sera Magazine, as well as shown in exhibits in Europe and the U.S. His work has also been shown in numerous advertising, fund raising and awareness campaigns for various social (Terre des hommes, UniCOOP) and academic institutions such as Cornell University and Sarah Lawrence College. He is a founding member of the Terra Project photo collective and is represented by Grazia Neri.

About the Photograph:

“This work on the Latin-American community in New York had a very slow start. It took me several weeks to get this close to someone, to be invited in their home. It wasn’t a matter of shyness. I simply did not feel right asking as I could tell they did not feel inviting. I often see this happening, trust building all in a sudden, when you don’t expect it. I was supposed to fly to New Orleans that weekend, and I had not yet accessed the private circle of friends of any of the workers I had met. That Friday night, a snowstorm reached NYC and the next day my flight from La Guardia was postponed for three days. That’s how I found myself in Yorkers early in the morning, and how I was invited the next day for a Dominican and Mexican lunch. I missed something in New Orleans, I gained memories and closeness in Yonkers, this is one of the several outcomes of changing plans.”

Every day at 6 a.m., in rain or snow, thousands of immigrants from Mexico, Peru, Guatemala, El Salvador and other parts of Latin America gather at corners (called esquinas, paradas or palitos) hoping to be offered contingent work in construction, landscaping, or other fields. New York City’s suburbs are an increasingly important destination for immigrant workers from American countries south of the United States, who are too often perceived as a source of cheap and easily exploitable labor. However, the daily wait for work takes place not only in Yonkers and Westchester County, but throughout the United States.

Day laborers are a diverse group which might include workers in possession of valid visas, but mainly consists of ‘illegal aliens’ who entered the country without the required documents and need to live ‘in the shadow’ in a society that they work for. Transnational migration by often desperately poor people searching for work is largely a result of global “free trade” policies championed by the current and previous Washington administrations. These policies have left many nations of the global south unable to support their own people, causing a torrent of northward migration. The same policies have contributed to the demise of unionized industries that provided stable employment and a path to the middle class for the post-World War II generation in the U.S. As a result of these circumstances, many day laborers are employed in undesirable or dangerous jobs and are frequently exploited by employers who fail to pay agreed upon wages. A lack of resources, such as a Workers’ Center, as well as problems with police harassment, medical care, housing and normalization of immigration status, interferes with their ability to seek redress for these concerns.

]]> http://vervephoto.wordpress.com/2008/07/02/rocco-rorandelli/feed/ Geoffrey Hiller http://vervephoto.wordpress.com/2008/07/01/nicole-tung/ http://vervephoto.wordpress.com/2008/07/01/nicole-tung/#comments Tue, 01 Jul 2008 07:05:43 +0000 Geoffrey Hiller http://vervephoto.wordpress.com/?p=326

Albanians at border crossing between Kosovo and Serbia. 2008

Originally from Hong Kong, Nicole Tung is now based in New York where she is in her third year at New York University, double majoring in Journalism and History. She intends to go into TV broadcast and documentary, and is currently interning at ABC News, contributing to Humanus, NYU’s Human Rights Journal, and attempting the freelance life on the side. Recently, Nicole was awarded the NYU DURF Grant which supported her trip to go back to Kosovo in December 2007.

About the Photograph:

“These Albanians are on their way to an enclave which is located in Serbian territory, and each time they want to go between Kosovo and Serbia, they have to cross a border checkpoint. The enclave they live in is called the Presevo Valley– dominated by Albanians, but legally under the Serbs. I feel like this photo is representative of the Albanians there. A month before Kosovo was set to declare its independence from Serbia, the former province underwent a subtle transition to prepare itself for the long-awaited day. Kosovo spent eight years under UN administration, following the war in 1999 in which NATO intervened on the Albanians’ behalf to drive out Yugoslav forces. Life there is marked by frequent water and power outages, and many socio-economic problems, and while Serbs remained uncertain over their future, Kosovar Albanians were confident that they would have their own country within the first few months of 2008.”

Workers in Howrah, India making manhole covers for Con Edison. 2007

Adam Huggins (b. 1981, Canada) became interested in photography in 2000. Since then he has been traveling and taking pictures that document society and the world we live in. His photography has been exhibited at : Centre Pompidou, Paris, La Triennale di Milano, The Shanghai Art Museum, and Shiodomeitalia Creative Center in Tokyo. He has worked with numerous publications including: The New York Times, ELLE, Der Spiegel, COLORS, and the International Herald Tribune. In late 2004 he witnessed the devastation caused by the South Asian Tsunami to numerous fishing communities along the southern coast of India. The theme of fishing developed in his latest exhibited work.

About the Photograph:

In late 2007 The New York Times published Adams story and excellent multimedia piece about how New York City’s ubiquitous manhole covers are made at a foundry in India and soon after, it became a widely debated topic of conversation in numerous newspapers’ commentary and opinion pages around the world. The photo-essay drew attention to the alarming lack of safety protections in place for the Indian workers that endure extremely hazardous working conditions in order to produce manhole covers for New York and other municipalities throughout the United States, calling for State legislatures and prompting Con Edison, one of the private utilities companies that purchases these items, to rewrite their future international contracts to include safety requirements. He was subsequently awarded a Certificate of Special Merit at the 2007 Human Rights Press Awards in Hong Kong for this body of work.

Iquitos, Peru, Amazonas 2007

Mads Nissen (Denmark, b 1979) has worked on photographic projects about the food crisis in Niger, a children’s home in Ghana, Revolutionary Carnival in Cuba and daily life in the tallest building in Denmark. Two recent works include a story about overpopulation in Manila and a personal voyage into the Amazon rain forest. He graduated from The Danish School of Journalism. In 2004-2006 he was staff photographer at the Danish national newspaper Dagbladet Politiken. His awards include: Winner of the Best Danish Press Photo of the Year and POYi: Issue Reporting Picture Story/ Award Of Excellence both in 2007. His clients include: Newsweek, Stern and several NGO’s including Care International. He is currently based in Shanghai, China and is represented by Getty Images.

About the Photograph:

The houses in the shantytown of Belen Bajo in Peru are built on rafts or tall poles because of the ever changing water levels of the Amazon, which floods the area by several meters for four months every year. On its long journey from the Peruvian Andes to its mouth in the Atlantic, the Amazon takes up an area as large as that of Australia. It is the largest river in the world and within the rain forest are 40,000 species of plants and over 30 million kinds of insects.

]]> http://vervephoto.wordpress.com/2008/06/27/mads-nissen/feed/ Geoffrey Hiller http://vervephoto.wordpress.com/2008/06/26/cedric-gerbehaye/ http://vervephoto.wordpress.com/2008/06/26/cedric-gerbehaye/#comments Thu, 26 Jun 2008 07:05:20 +0000 Geoffrey Hiller http://vervephoto.wordpress.com/?p=146

Morning prayer for the soldiers of the CNDP. Congo, 2007

Cédric Gerbehaye (Belgian b.1977) has been working as a photojournalist since graduating in 2003 from l’Institut des Hautes Etudes des Communications Sociales in Brussels. He began photographing in Indonesia, and made his first story on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in 2002. He later covered Kurdish issues in Turkey and Iraq. In 2007, he was selected for the World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass and began documenting the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The same year he received the second prize in the young reporter category at the Bayeux award for war correspondents. His work has appeared in publications such as Le Vif/l’Express, Internazionale, Colors, TIME.com, Newsweek and Le Monde 2. Gerbehaye is represented with Agency VU in Paris.

About the Photograph:

After nearly a decade of war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the major consequences of the conflict has been massive attendance of Congolese to the Pentecostal churches. The success of these churches is due to the fact that they propose easy solutions to the problems of every day life in a country where economic and social life has been deeply injured. These churches are inspired by the American evangelicalism and TV evangelists. The solutions proposed by the unscrupulous pastors are mainly based on promises of material and immaterial prosperity - money, employment, marriage for single people, children for those who can’t have children- and the hope for miracles and healing. The blessing is given after a session of exorcism in order to drive out the devil and his demons. Today, half the population of Kinshasa is believed to attend one of the 8,000 churches of the capital.

Kisses from Rhode Island and China

Holly Wilmeth was born and raised in Guatemala. As the daughter of a farmer, she spent half her time in the city and the other half in the dense jungles and agricultural landscapes of Guatemala. A freelance photographer based in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, she holds a degree in Political Science and Languages. She has traveled to over 45 countries as a cultural observer and avid hiker, living with nomad families in the Tibetan mountains as well as remote corners of East Asia and the far north of Mongolia. Her work has been published in National Geographic Adventure, Houston Chronicle, CARE, USAID, PBX, Christian Science Monitor and Time Magazine.

About the Photograph:

“The kiss series started with one picture of Russell Monk blowing a kiss that I sent to Peter Dennen at Aurora Photo and then to Susan Welchman at National Geographic. They were all a huge influence and motivator for the series. I did this because of the light subject as opposed to the other stories I always tend to work on. I knew I would also be traveling to over 13 countries in three months so it would be something I could shoot on the side. They are beautiful close-up shots of people from all over the world and different ethnicity’s.” Holly’s words about the project echo my exact same reasons for selecting this series.

From the series “Divided Lebanon.” Beruit, 2008

Award-winning photojournalist, Kate Brooks aged 27, of Polaris Images, began working as a photographer in the former Soviet Union while documenting systematic child abuse in state-run institutions. The photographs formed the visual core of the Human Rights Watch report, “Abandoned by the State: Cruelty and Neglect in Russian Orphanages.” Following 9/11 she moved to Pakistan in order to cover the impact of U.S foreign policy both there and in Afghanistan. Since the invasion of Iraq, Brooks has worked extensively in the Middle East. Her clients include Smithsonian, The New York Times Magazine, Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report and UNICEF. She is currently based in Lebanon.

About the Photograph:

Lebanon on the Brink: Hezbollah fighters carried out attacks on Mount Lebanon in predominantly Druse areas two days after Druze leader, Walid Joumblat’s, Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) members killed eight Hezbollah fighters upon entering the Druze area of Ras el-Jaba to set up a checkpoint. Residents in Shweifat suffered significant damage to their property and several people were killed in the fighting. Fadi Al Suki was killed in the fighting. His wife holds his hand before burial.

One Year After Katrina, New Orleans. 2006

Victor J. Blue is a San Francisco based photojournalist. He has worked in Central America since 2001, concentrating on social conflict in Guatemala, as well as photographing stories in Mexico, El Salvador, and Honduras. In the US he has documented news stories and social issues including Hurricane Katrina and it’s legacy in New Orleans, prison overcrowding in California, and the lives of illegal immigrants. His photographs have appeared in Time, Newsweek, Le Monde, the San Francisco Chronicle and on the Discovery Channel. His work has been exhibited in solo and group shows at the Powerhouse Gallery in New York City and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. In 2008 he was awarded a first place in the NPPA Best of Photojournalism contest and an award of excellence in the SFBAPPA News Photography competition. He is currently a staff photographer at The Record in Stockton California.

About the Photograph:

“I was in New Orleans in August of 2006, a year after the storm, on an assignment about a health clinic. When I wasn’t shooting that story I got out and photographed in the neighborhoods, I wanted to capture something of the feeling in the city. The recovery was still painfully slow, much of the New Orleans was still empty. Life seemed to be coming back in fits. I ran into this second line procession making it’s way through a neighborhood, and I followed along. It was incredibly hot, the dancers and musicians were covered in sweat. As they danced and laughed and sang and played, they projected a kind of haunted, macabre joy. Their city had been destroyed, they had survived, now they had been forgotten, and now they were going to dance through the ruins. They marched, dipping and turning under parasols in starched white shirts and pressed slacks, while the band moaned and shouted, stopping every so often so the gathered could sing out the song’s refrain: “Won’t you stand, stand by me.”