David Butow July 17, 2009

Bangalore, India 2008

David Butow (b. 1964, United States) has been a photographer since his high school days growing up in Dallas. After graduating from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in Government he moved to California where he worked for a few years as a newspaper photographer before starting his current work as a freelance magazine photographer.  David specializes in news, social issues and travel photography, and has covered assignments from Baghdad to Shanghai. He is a member of Redux pictures and was a contract photographer with US News and World Report for over 10 years. He’s won various awards from World Press Photo, POY, and Communication Arts among others. As a photographer working in the journalistic field he hopes his craft contributes to an understanding of the impact of public policy on ordinary people, social evolutions, and the connections that exist between people around the world.

About The Photograph:

“This picture was taken in Bangalore, India in 2008 when I was on an assignment about Americans who go to overseas hospitals to save money on elective surgeries. One evening, after I’d finished shooting at the hospital, I took my camera as I wandered around some neighborhoods, including this park in the middle of the bustling city. These guys were just hanging around. I’m not going to speculate what they were doing, and it doesn’t really matter anyway. Having spent most of my career working as a photojournalist, where the point is to present a clear message about what’s happening in the picture, I’ve lately been drawn to scenes that are more ambiguous. Even in the context of taking pictures to go with a assignment, I like to find some complexity or mystery that makes the viewers project some of their own ideas about what’s happening. These pictures don’t often get published with the original story, but I think sometimes they’re more true to life.”

Dhiraj Singh July 8, 2009

Pushkar Camel Fair in Rajasthan, India

Mumbai-based photojournalist, Dhiraj Singh, (b. 1980, India) is a graphic designer by profession. He turned to photography to explore the world around him. His work has been published in Newsweek, Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, L’Espresso, Respekt, The National Post, The Age and others. Dhiraj recently won the third place in  the ‘war and disaster’ category at the China International Press Photo Award-2009 and third place in Spot News at “The Asia Media Award” which was held in conjunction with IFRA’s Publish Asia 2008. His work has  been exhibited at Global Gallery in Sydney, Australia and The National Maritime Museum in Finland. His pictures of the Mumbai terror attacks in 2008 were also part of a group exhibition titled, ‘Bearing Witness’ held in Mumbai in 2009.

About the Photograph:

“A woman walks past a make-shift photo studio at the Pushkar camel fair, held each year in the desert state of Rajasthan. What struck me about the picture was the beautifully painted screen depicting a palace in the background while this woman walked past oblivious to the decorated opulence. Perhaps she was deliberately choosing not to even glance at the dream sequence, perhaps she saw it everyday and it no longer fascinated her, perhaps to live in such a palace was her secret desire…the questions tumbled one upon the other in my head as I saw real life intersect with ‘reel’ life before me…one India crossing paths with another India, a slice of time my shutter caught. It would be amiss of me if I didn’t give credit to photographer Raghu Rai for his unintentional contribution to this image. The ornate screen was the backdrop that Raghu Rai had especially made for the project he was working on and I was simply standing there admiring the photographer at work. While Rai went to talk to someone nearby, I saw this woman pass by and simply pressed the shutter.”

Ambroise Tézenas June 26, 2009

Mumbai, India 5 am, 2006

Ambroise Tézenas (b. 1972, France)  graduated from the Applied Arts School of Vevey, Switerland in 1994. First based in London and then in Paris, his work appears in various publications such as The New York Time Magazine, The Independent Magazine, Newsweek and Le Monde. From 2002, Ambroise Tézenas has essentially devoted his time to the creation of a personal work on landscapes. In 2004, he co-founded Think Pictures, an independent photography agency. He  photographed in Beijing from 2001 to 2005, witnessing the changes taking place before the Olympics, later published as a book that won the Leica European Publisher’s Award for Photography in 2006. His photographs are represented by Galerie Philippe Chaume in Paris.

About the Photograph:

“This photograph was taken at the time I had finished a project on Beijing and had spent quite a few nights walking in the Chinese Capital.  I went to Mumbai for a week not for a particular story but to experience night time elsewhere. I rarely do that as I am usually on assignments or working on a specific  project. I had been to India a few times before but it was my first time  in Mumbai. It was  two o’clock in the morning and I was walking in South Mumbai. It was very peaceful. It  was my first night there, when I saw a taxi driver sleeping in his car with the blue light on. The exposure was about 30 seconds.  I shot it on 4×5 film. The man didn’t wake up. I kept walking till 5 am. Experiencing the silence of megalopolis is therapy for me.”

Danny Ghitis and Celia Tobin July 9, 2008

Danny Ghitis and Celia Tobin, both 25, are documentary photographers and multimedia producers who believe in journalism as a catalyst for social change. They met at the University of Florida where they recently earned their journalism degrees. After completing various newspaper internships, they traveled to India in 2007 to collaborate on social issue stories, including a project on Indian public health care through a burn ward in Varanasi. Though they value pursuing individual freelance projects, they look forward to combining their efforts again in the future. Between them, they have been recognized by the Hearst Photojournalism Awards, the Northern Short Course, College Photographer of the Year, Associated Press and NPPA clip contests. They will soon be based out of New York City.

About the Photograph:

Dr. A.K. Pradan moves on to the next patient after briefly checking 13-year-old Chandni Gupta (in bed) as her mother, Suroj, looks for more answers to her questions. With the hospital understaffed and overcrowded, Pradan moves quickly in order to see approximately 150 patients in various wards. Though his specialization is plastic surgery, he works to cover other specialist staff vacancies, such as neurology. While India’s private health care improves, government spending on public health is among the lowest in the world: about $4 a year per person. Shri Shiv Prasad hospital in the ancient city of Varanasi is overcrowded and short on resources, like most government-run medical facilities in India. Every day, poor families from surrounding villages come seeking care for relatives that have suffered severe burns. Most victims are women burned in kitchen accidents. Others are victims of dowry-related violence.

Adam Huggins June 30, 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.

Adam Ferguson June 11, 2008

Outside a brothel in Manipur, India. 2007

Adam Ferguson was born in Australia in 1978 and graduated from Griffith University with a Bachelor of Photography in 2003. In 2004 he was awarded a Peace Scholarship from Griffith and travelled to South East Asia to document Peace Art Project Cambodia, a European Union public awareness campaign aimed at curbing small arms. After working for regional newspapers in Australia and Mexico, he moved to Paris in 2006 and interned with VII Photo Agency. In 2007 he moved to New Delhi, India, where he is currently based as a freelance photojournalist. Adam’s work has been published in Time Magazine, Newsweek, The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, The Chicago Tribune, Bloomberg News, Courrier International, The Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian.

About the Photograph:

With the ‘Golden Triangle’ stretching between Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and China, a porus Indian border leaves India’s northeastern states like Manipur vulnerable to an illegal heroin trade. Ongoing tribal insurgencies, corruption and a disregard for India’s northeastern states from New Delhi, render communities like Churandchanpur in Manipur politically volatile and economically stifled. High unemployment and minimal opportunity cause a high number of youth to turn to drugs to escape poverty. But with Myanmar as a rogue neighbor, and corruption making the stifling of the heroin trade almost impossible, heroin trafficking goes on and little hope is left for any action to stop the free flow of heroin that devastates lives in India’s volatile northeast.