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.
Isabelle Eshraghi May 2, 2013
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in France.Tags: France
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Debutantes Ball at Hotel Crillon, Paris 2011
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.”
Verve Photo- The New Breed of Documentary Photographers 