Carlos Spottorno August 29, 2013
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in Spain.Tags: Spain
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From the project “The PIGS”. Jerez, Spain 2012
Carlos Spottorno (b.1971, Hungry) was raised in Rome, Paris and Madrid. He began his career as an art director and switched to photography in 2001. Since then Carlos has combined long term documentary projects with both editorial and commercial assignments. He has received awards from World Press Photo in 2003, YIPPA in 2011, American Photography 24, 26 and 27 and was a finalist for a Visa d’Or in 2008, the European Publishers Award in 2009 and 2013, and RM Photobook Award in 2012. His photographs have been published in National Geographic España, El País Semanal, D Magazine and Marie Claire France among others. Carlos has published four books: History Seekers (Blur Ediciones), China Western (La Fabrica), Philosophia Naturalis (self published) and La Hora del Recreo – Break Time (Lünwerg). He is featured with Reportage by Getty.
About the Photograph:
“A cow stands on a sidewalk of a newly built dormitory suburb on the outskirts of Jerez, a city that illustrates everything that went wrong in Spain: rapid growth based on seemingly limitless borrowing, which produced a glut of houses and office space that nobody wants, right where the city abruptly ends. This mid-sized city of 212,000 people owes one billion euros; second only to Madrid. Unemployment in Jerez is around 34 percent. I find this image particularly disturbing. Wild or farm animals in an urban context are always a sign that something is not going as it should. That cow seems to be lost; with its neck streched, as if it was looking for the way back to the farm. All that garbage right on the plants… this is truly the frontier where an artificial city clashes with the countryside. Those boxy buildings, the empty street… all that shows exactly what happened: they bought the land from a farmer. They built in a rush, but they went bankrupt before selling everything they built. Now nobody is taking care of anything.”
Maddie McGarvey August 26, 2013
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in Ohio University, United States.Tags: Ohio University, United States
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From story about Lyme Disease, Vermont 2013
Maddie McGarvey (b. 1990, United States) graduated from Ohio University’s School of Visual Communication with a degree in photojournalism in 2012. Maddie has interned for the San Francisco Chronicle and was a staff photographer at the Burlington Free Press in Vermont until August of 2013. She is now a freelance photographer based in Columbus, Ohio. Maddie was the recipient of the LUCEO Student Project Award and the James R. Gordon Ohio Understanding Award in 2011. She has been recognized by College Photographer of the Year, Hearst, and was runner-up Ohio Student Photographer of the Year in 2011. She was nominated for the Joop Swart Master Class in 2013 and attended the Eddie Adams Workshop in 2011. She has been published in Once Magazine, AARP Bulletin, The Washington Post, CNN.com, Education Week, USA Today and The Today Show.
About the Photograph:
“This is a photo of Greg Soll, a vegetable farmer in Vermont who was afflicted with Lyme Disease. One tick bite seriously affected the way he lived and worked for a long time. Farmers are used to putting in 14-18 hour days and suddenly he was constantly exhausted and couldn’t even use his right arm. He had to fight with doctors to even give him a Lyme test and unfortunately this has become a norm. More and more farmers are contracting Lyme disease and less doctors will diagnose and treat it. I spent the day with Greg while he farmed. While things are mostly back to normal for him, he still gets tired easily and has to take breaks often. But because farming is his way of sustaining himself and making a living, he fights through the pain and exhaustion to get his work done.”
Tommaso Protti August 22, 2013
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in Turkey.Tags: Turkey
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From the project about Kurds in Turkey. Mardin, Anatolia 2012
Tommaso Protti (1986, Italy) grew up in Rome and is currently based in London. His interest in social problems led him to getting a degree in Political Science and then into photography. He worked as an assistant to Francesco Zizola and received an MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at the London College of Communication. His stories document social, political and environmental issues. Tommaso’s work has been widely exhibited in Italy and the UK. He received a Lucie Award and two first prizes at the Fotoleggendo and Portfolio Italia. Tommaso is a contributing photographer with Le Monde and The New York Times, and a member of Reportage by Getty Images Emerging Talent.
About the Photograph:
“This photograph is part of a long-term project that aims to identify how social, political and economic factors have contributed to alienating the Kurdish minority in Turkey, and to capture the social fabric of the region and Kurdish struggle to obtain full recognition of their cultural identity. The photo was made inside a primary school in Mardin, one of the largest cities in the southeastern Anatolia region where the Kurdish population is predominant.”
“I wanted to raise questions about the issue of the Kurdish language and the fact that it has not yet been fully recognized and authorized to be taught in Turkey. The language challenged the national myth that all citizens of Turkey are ethnic Turks. So it was treated as a crime against the state. Repression and forced assimilation were so brutal that many Kurds in Turkey no longer speak Kurdish fluently. When I saw the portrait of Musafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder father of the Turkish Republic, inside the school I immediately thought that it could symbolize in a picture the strength of the Turkish State and its strict control over the young Kurdish generations. The rest was a patient aesthetic research of how to combine all the elements available to me, and the wait to place everything in a spontaneous way.”
Farzana Wahidy August 19, 2013
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in Afghanistan.Tags: Afghanistan
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From a story on Women in Afghanistan. Jawzjan Province 2010
Editor’s note: Farzana is one of the photographers featured in ‘Frame by Frame’, a documentary film project that follows four Afghan photographers to explore the recent revolution of local photojournalism in Afghanistan. It looks like a worthy project now up on Kickstarter.
Farzana Wahidy (b.1984, Afghanistan) grew up in Kandahar and moved to Kabul at the age of six. After the Taliban came to power and prohibited the education of women, she secretly attended an underground school located in an apartment with 300 other girls. When the Taliban were defeated, Farzana continued her education, completing high school, then enrolled in a two-year program sponsored by AINA Photojournalism Institute. In 2004, she began working part-time as a photojournalist for Agence-France Presse, becoming the first female Afghan photojournalist to work for an international wire service. Her work has been published in The Sunday Times, and Le Monde.
About the Photograph:
“This photo was made in a rural area of northern Afghanistan where a number of Afghan women who are not able to work outside of their homes are busy weaving carpets. They start learning to weave at a very early age when they are still children and continue until they can hardly see or even sit any more. Some of these women not only use hashish themselves but also give it to their kids to fall asleep so they aren’t bothered by them while they are working.”
Sébastien Van Malleghem August 15, 2013
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in Belgium.Tags: Belgium
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Paifve Prison. Liège, Belgium 2011
Sébastien Van Malleghem (b. 1986, Belgium) studied photography in Brussels from 2006 to 2009. For four years he followed police officers and their interaction with the public in Belgium. Sébastien went to Libya in 2012 to cover the ruins of power after the death of Gaddafi. His work has been published in The New York Time Lens Blog, La letter de la Photographie Le Soir (be), Le Vif l’express (be) among others. His first monograph POLICE was published in Yellow Now Edition. Sébastien won the Foto Folio Review Award in Les Rencontres d’Arles , the Young Talent Artist Prize at the Belgium National Collection RTBF/ Canvas Collectie awards and the third prize at the European Month of Photography in Berlin.
About the Photograph:
“This photo was taken in one of the largest prisons for mentally ill criminals. The two prisoners in the courtyard of the prison are on their way to work duty. It reminded me of a prison camp during World War II. The prison administers psychiatric help to the inmates but most of their illnesses are not curable. Most of them don’t know when they will be released. They receive medication three times a day to calm down. The prison guards are kind with the inmates and most of the time have a friendly relationship with them but because of their illness they can suddenly change and become really aggressive and dangerous. In general there is a good atmosphere inside of the prison but also something really sad. There are only a few people outside who want to understand them because of their incarceration. This photo is part of a series I’m currently working on about the idea of justice in Belgium and in Europe.”
Go Takayama August 12, 2013
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in China.Tags: China, Kyrgyzstan
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Kyrgyz- Chinese family. One Year Death Anniversary of their Child. Xinjiang, China 2012
Go Takayama (b.1982, Japan) grew up in Japan and spent most of his twenties in U.S.A. Over the past three years, he has been pursuing his own ethnic passion working on several personal projects in China. Go received a BA in visual communication and political science in 2008 from Ohio University. He attended Truth With a Camera Workshop (2007), American Diversity Project (2008), Missouri Photo Workshop (2009), Angkor Photo Workshop (2010), and the Eddie Adams Workshop (2011). He received Best of American Society of Media Photographer in 2012. His work has appeared in Prestige Hong Kong, ElleMEN, Aera, Casa Brutus and the Wall Street Journal.
About the photograph:
“This photograph was taken on the first day I met an ethnic Kyrgyz Chinese family, now the subject of my first series of The Edge, about the resettlement and urbanizing community as a result of the completion of the Kayi Expressway in Xinjiang Autonomous region of China. The parents of the family are retired nomads. Now only three out of six of their children carry on a nomadic life up in the mountains. When I arrived and saw their mud-and-thatch house, the family was having the first annual anniversary for their lost son, who died of poor health at only six years of age. The family members and their relatives were visiting the lost son’s grave as they cleaned and prepared a meal. The Kyrgyz Chinese are one of the Islamic minorities in China and transforming generations from nomadic herdsmen to fixed community residents. This is an on-going project to observe the changes imposed as their new town urbanizes after China’s completion of the world’s largest highway network.”
Annie Flanagan August 8, 2013
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in United States.Tags: United States
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Purple Orchid Lady. Monroe, New York 2012
Annie Flanagan (b. 1986, United States) graduated from Ohio University’s Visual Communication program in 2009, Annie took to exploring the world around her and documenting it along the way. Her work has been recognized by CPOY (Silver, Spot News), The Alexia Foundation for World Peace and Cultural Understanding Student Grant (Award of Excellence). This past July she began graduate school at S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.
About the Photograph:
“I met Sam last summer at the racetrack in Brewerton, NY. He was in the pit with his family, racing against his son, grandsons and great-granddaughter. ‘I do it because I love the speed,’ he told me, ‘Speed has been my life since I was little.’ Sam drove his first car at seven and began racing when he was 18. Now at 83 he is still racing. That summer he was recovering from the loss of his wife Doris, who passed away that December. Her favorite color was purple, so most things in his home have tints of purple to them. She named his race car the The Purple Orchid Lady, decorating his car with a painting of a pin-up girl. On this afternoon, Sam had just finished spending a day fixing up his car with his son Billy. He came out of the garage and sat down to drink coffee and watch the storm roll in.”
Philipp Engelhorn August 5, 2013
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in South Africa.Tags: South Africa
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Cape Town, South Africa 2011
Philipp Engelhorn (b.1968, Germany) is a travel and documentary photographer. After living in New York for six years and working as a photo assistant for Russell James, Sheila Metzner and Patrick Demachelier he relocated to Hong Kong in 2002 to start his own career. Philipp freelances for OUTSIDE, Men’s Journal, Wall Street Journal, New York Times , The Herald Tribune, Travel & Leisure, Conde Nast Traveller, Newsweek, Time, Der Spiegel, Financial Times, Forbes, Fortune, Greenpeace, Grands Reportages, Geo Saison, among others.
About the Photograph:
“I shot this image in Cape Town while working on a feature story about the notorious number gangs (26/27/28). It was hard to get access to the gang members, so the whole story took me two months to complete. Most of my time was spend in Manenberg and Gugulethu, some of the toughest Townships outside Cape Town. Known simply as Joker (a member of #28) but christened Monty this well-muscled 27 year old former convict lives and hustles for work on the streets of Cape Town. A prison sentence of six years on twenty-four separate charges including assault, drug use and selling, robbery, arms possessions, etc. saw Joker emerge a member of the 28s. He is most proud of the impressive 28 tattoos that adorns his body, and the line: Dead is a holiday with no return on his chest.”
Susana Girón August 1, 2013
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in Turkey.Tags: Turkey
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Refugees in Istanbul, Turkey 2012
Susana Girón (b.1975, Spain) received her Master’s degree in Physical Education. Years later she graduated in Photography and Visual Arts at the University Miguel Hernandez in Elche. She received the Fototraballo International Grant and also was awarded in the International Photography Awards Competition IPA 2012 with two Honorable Mentions. Her images have been published in GEO, Le Figaro, ABC, EIKON Magazine, El País Digital, Art Magazine and Basel Zeitung. Susana has published two books: Legados: Generaciones en tránsito (Artual 2010) and Faith, Passion, Destiny (Nortempo 2012). She is represented by Polaris Images.
About the Photograph:
“This picture of Alwande is part of a project about Iraqi refugees in Istanbul. She divorced her husband in Iraq and was forced to leave her country and go to Turkey after receiving several death threats. Her husband, her family and the society rejected her for being divorced and a single mother with two kids. She is journalist and worked in Teheran for local newspapers focused on women rights. After she arrived in Istanbul she waited to cross the Greek border and reach the United Kingdom with all her savings – 1.500 €.- after years of work: She was evicted after being unable to pay her rent. Alwande has no legal papers. Her children were oblivious to the drama their mother was going through. I tried to seek asylum for her at a Catholic church and later tried to contact her several times but didn’t receive any response.”
Verve Photo- The New Breed of Documentary Photographers 