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.”

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 (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 (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 (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.

Isabelle Eshraghi (b.1964, Iran) re-discovered her birth place in 1996 when she returned to photograph Isfahan’s women in order to explore a way of life that could have been her own. This work received the 1997 Kodak Critic’s Prize. In 1999 she was awarded the  “Villa Médicis Hors les Murs/AFAA” for her photographic work on “Being twenty in Tehran”. Her work has been published in Libération, Le Monde, Photo Magazine, Le Figaro Magazine, L’Equipe Magazine, Marie-Claire, The Independent Magazine and The New Yorker. Isabelle lives in Paris and is represented by Agence Vu.

About the Photograph:

“Usually I work in the Middle East, on Muslim Women. This time it was really exciting for me to spend one night in the Grand Luxe Bal at the Crillon Hotel in Paris. Charlotte 17 (in the middle of the image) was a perfect subject, cool and natural. Her mother, Rachel Johnson was the writer for The Sunday Times Magazine. This image was taken backstage. I didn’t change anything from the reality. Just had to ask Charlotte to stand up more straight, same as all the teenagers, she was seating with a arched back, even while wearing a princess dress.”

William B. Plowman (b. 1969, USA) is represented by REDUX and has covered stories in Latin America, Africa, Central Asia and the United States. William’s photographs can be seen in the world’s leading news & NGO publications including: le Figaro, Der Spiegel, Newsweek, Time, The Financial Times,  CNN, MSF and Reporters Without Borders among others. He is the weekly contributing photographer for NBC’s political talk show Meet the Press and his work is featured in the film Ghosts of Cite Soleil documenting the 2004 war in Haiti. His work has been recognized by the Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar, POYi and the Gordon Parks Photography Competition. William is currently based in Washington, D.C. and working on a long-term project in Gary, Indiana.

About the Photograph:

“I made this photograph very early in my career in 2002. I had been researching white supremacy groups in the United States for a few months when I came across a brief mention of an event to be held on a farm in Osceloa, Indiana. It was billed as a sort of summit within the racial separatist and white supremacist communities. A three day event where leaders and supporters from around the country like the Ku Klux Klan, White Aryan Resistance (WAR) The National Socialists Party, The Outlaw Hammerskins, Blood & Honor, Aryan Nations and others would gather to meet, set goals and coordinate future events. I spent about 45 minutes on the phone with the organizer and explained my intentions as a documentary photographer. He was very skeptical, as you would imagine. In the end I was the only journalist allowed on the farm, where I pitched my tent and would ultimately photograph for three days. While I’m very interested in this moment, this photograph, for my own reasons, I’ve always liked that it allows the viewer to bring their own experience to bear in its analysis.”

Joshua Cogan (b. 1984, United States) is a photographer and anthropologist whose work focuses on documenting vanishing cultures, and those in transition.  He has also used technology and traditional storytelling for exploring social issues with photography and new media. In addition to his personal work on Diaspora Judaism in India, Ethiopia and Israel, Joshua has pioneered a number of innovative projects with ad agencies and NGO’s alike. He has won an Emmy in New Approaches to Storytelling for his collaboration with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting; Live Hope Love, a revelatory look at the silenced voices of HIV-positive Jamaicans enduring the stigmas of their society. His work has been published in the New Yorker, VQR, GQ, Washington Post, and the New York Times among others.

About the Photograph:

“Sometimes there is a experience that changes the whole story, and allows you to understand the purpose of the story you might be “trying” to tell. The picture is from Cochin, India in the state of Kerala. I had gone there to explore the community of Jews that had settled there as spice traders around the time of King Solomon. The members of the community had become quite small in number and I was struggling with how to tell the story of the remaining members and the impact the community had on the area.  I began to look for remnants of material culture, and I found them. Abandoned Synagogues, grown over Mikvehs and old pieces of Judaica scattered about curio shops. It was at  the Jewish Graveyard that I met four young men playing cards along the wall. They took an interest in me, and began to ask me questions about the project. I told them what I was up to and they assured me that they had something interesting to show me. It was Friday night, and I had been desperate to spend a sabbath with the Jewish Community, and spent most of the day asking them if there would be the required number of Jew’s for a service in the synagogue that night. Often it would require travelers and tourists to fulfill the needed ten, and it seemed to me that this was a very important part of the story.”

“I told the young men I would come with them, but only if the there would be no service that night. I ran back to the shul and saw from the dim lights that indeed there would be no service. And so I wandered back to where the men were playing and they led me to a grave that was far outside the walls and inside one of the chawl villages. Once there I saw this grave, it had Hebrew script but had essentially been “Hindu-ized” painted with bright colors, a stupa added to the top, and candle burnish and marigolds covered it. This was different than the way Jewish graves are generally treated and I immediately was fascinated by what I was observing, I asked my guides, but they could provide little context. It was then the these young men, of both Hindu and Muslim faith came over to begin lighting candles. When I asked them why…the simply replied “Shabbat”. About a week later I took an Israeli friend to translate that writing on the grave for me. It was a holy man named Avram Motah, a Kabbalist from somewhere in the middle east that had traveled to Cochin in the 16th century. It was revealed that he was considered such a pious man, that he has become a symbol to all faith communities of the island.”

Lindsay Mackenzie (b.1984, Canada) is a freelance photo and multimedia journalist from Vancouver, Canada, currently based between Tunisia and rural Catalonia. After completing a BA in Geography in 2005 she received a Watson Fellowship — a one-year grant for independent study and travel. Lindsay completed an MA in Journalism in 2011 and spent the last two years covering the Arab Spring and transitions in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen. She works regularly for The National and has also had work published in The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Globe and Mail, El Pais and elsewhere. In 2012 Lindsay was named a Emerging Photographer by the Magenta Foundation and received an honorable mention in the General News category from the News Photographers Association of Canada (NPAC). Lindsay currently contributes to Milan-based LUZ photo.

About the Photograph:

“This photo was made during elections in Algeria in May 2012. Shorty after the Tunisian Revolution in January 2011, I moved to be based in Tunis and followed the course of the Arab Spring there and in Egypt and Yemen. Being based in Tunisia, Algeria was always close, and yet far away. It was fascinating to me how during a time of so much regional change it managed to stay the same. I finally had the opportunity go there in May 2012, when Algeria held legislative elections and the government was eager to show that it was being more open to journalists. After five trips to the Algerian Embassy in Tunis, I received a 15-day visa and permission to cover the elections in Algiers.”

“The visit to Algeria was fascinating, but the elections turned out to be a non-event – especially for a photographer. Most people took the extra day off to go to the beach. The polling stations were nearly empty; a person or family trickled in every 10 or 15 minutes. It was the exact opposite of the first free Tunisia elections that I’d covered a few months earlier, with so much energy and anticipation. At one of the last polling places I visited, this family walked in – it looked like a grandmother, mother and daughter. They were waiting for a while for the grandmother inside the polling booth on the right to vote, and seemed to forget that I was there. The young girl was bored and began to play with the curtain of the adjacent empty polling booth, and I managed to get this image before the sound of my camera made them notice me again. I like the frills of the girl’s dress and her white tights peaking out from behind the curtain, making what would have otherwise been a dull photo lighter and more interesting.”

Matt Mills McKnight (b.1980, USA) graduated from the Journalism Department at San Francisco State University with a degree in Photojournalism, and currently lives in Seattle, where he is a photo editor and freelance documentary photographer. His work has appeared with The Wall Street Journal, NBC News, The New York Times, Stern, High Country News, Southern Poverty Law Center, Wired.com, Associated Press, Reuters, NPR and many others. Before moving to Seattle, Matt was living in a small northern Idaho town working on personal projects related to fringe right-wing culture in the region. He continues to travel throughout the American West and beyond for assignments and personal work. He is represented by Redux Pictures.

About the Photograph:

“After spending about six months of attending meetings and training events with members of the 21st battalion of the Light Foot Militia, I was invited to photograph a weekend-long training session on public land near Priest River, Idaho. When I arrived to photograph them I found they had also included children in the event, an effort to share their staunch constitutionalist values and beliefs with a younger generation. ‘We’re trying to build a sense of community, not just the guys but the families also,’ said Jeff Stankiewicz, Commanding Officer of the Light Foot Militia, of opening  training sessions to families. ‘Other groups won’t do that, but we’re trying to prepare our families. Schools don’t teach our kids this stuff so we have to teach them.’ Brandy Vanderzander from Couer d’Alene, Idaho, sits around the campfire with Josiah Hoyt after a night of camping in the forest. Vanderzander’s boyfriend and Josiah’s father, Cody Hoyt, is an active member of the militia. Josiah struggled with sickness from allergies and a general fear of guns & loud noises throughout the weekend, but his family and the militia insisted he learn their ways by being present.”