Linda Dorigo November 12, 2012
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in Iran.Tags: Iran
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Iranian Christian Community, Pataver, Iran 2011
Linda Dorigo (b. 1983, Italy) is a freelance photojournalist based in Beirut. She worked as a photo assistant in a fashion and advertising studio in Lisbon before returning to Italy, where she started working as journalist. She is mostly focused on the female world and its creative force, starting from Iranian managers to the old and new generation of Saharawi refugees, passing through the rights of Lebanese women. In 2010 she realized a short film “Safar- e sabz” — Green Journey — about the meaning of the color green for Iranian people. Her work has been published in Marie Claire Italy, East and Der Spiegel.
About the Photograph:
“I shot this picture inside an old cowshed that the Christian community of Pataver turned into a church. All of the community came to celebrate St. Marie’s day. The Islamic Republic of Iran recognizes religious freedom for Christians but they are in fact a hidden minority. I traveled through Iran living with people and friends, sleeping in churches, sharing their food and their fears. These people carry a strong faith — they dream of a world without borders, without political and religious impositions. I’m a man first of all, one of them told me in his home in Tehran — then, I can be Christian, Iranian or Muslim— all of us belong to the same God”.
“There is something special in their loneliness and spiritual detachment. You can feel the energy coming from nature which paints their honest dialogue with the divine. I gained their trust sitting in silent respect, invisible, becoming the person to whom they could confide hopes, gestures, illusions, prayers. One day a man who converted to Christianity sat in front of me: ‘Can I read you the Bible?” – he asked. He took off his glasses and opened the holy book hidden among the pots and pans in the kitchen. I was waiting to hear some passages, but he just said one word: ‘Eshq’ which means love.”
Paul Taggart November 9, 2012
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in Lebanon.Tags: Lebanon
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Hezbollah Rally, Lebanon 2007
Paul Taggart (b.1980, United States) was one of the few unembedded western journalists to cover the month-long battle and siege of Najaf, Iraq, in 2004 between the Mahdi Militia and the coalition forces. Other prominent news stories Paul has covered include Benazir Bhutto’s return to Pakistan in 2007, the dual bombing of her convoy after leaving the airport, the 2004 tsunami in Banda Aceh, the 2005 famine in Niger and the 2006 war in Lebanon, the 2010 Earthquake in Haiti, and the 2011 Tsunami in Japan. Paul’s work has appeared in Newsweek, The New York Times, US News and World Report, Boston Globe, National Geographic Adventure, and the Times of London. Paul also shoots video for Bloomberg News, independent documentaries and commercials and is the co-founder of Lantern Fish Media in New York.
About the Photograph:
“The photograph was taken in Lebanon on Jan. 30, 2007. I had been living in Beirut since 2006 and had photographed the month long conflict with Israel in the summer of 2006. A tension was still apparent in the country a year later and Hassan Nasrallah had given very few public speeches since the end of the conflict. This image shows the crowds of thousands that filled the streets in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon. Ashura is a holy day in Shiite Islam commemorating the death of Imam Hussein in 680 in Iraq. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah ended the event with a public speech after the march.”
Philipp Spalek November 7, 2012
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in Egypt.Tags: Egypt
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Tannery Worker. Cairo, Egypt 2010
Philipp Spalek (b. 1984, Germany) finished his masters in Middle Eastern Studies and Modern History in Germany in 2012. He had his first serious encounter with photography in 2010 when he worked as a press photographer for the Egyptian newspaper Al-Shorouk in Cairo. There he learned to speak fluent Arabic and feels addicted to the country since. His work has been published in Zenith, SpiegelOnline, Brand Eins & ZeitOnline. Over the last year he devoted his time to a project about the situation of Egyptian Copts after the revolution, which was awarded a first prize in the Reportage Category at Kolga Photo Festival in Georgia and won the Canon ProfiFoto Award in Germany. He is based in Berlin and Cairo
About the Photograph:
“I still remember that people used to move away from us in the Metro after we returned from taking pictures in the tanneries. Our smell really was obnoxious. But among those staring were people with nice leather jackets or leather handbags. They all seemed to have accusing looks on their faces. It was strange, but this made me want to go back even more and document the working conditions of those, who are not seen, but provide the luxury of our daily lives. When I first entered the tanner’s district, hidden behind Cairo’s old city walls, I was at the same time fascinated by the friendliness of the people and shocked by their working conditions. People were working in a knee deep soup of skin leftovers and smelling flesh. Young men were carrying skin on their head through dark cellars. Children were dragging skin through the burning heat. Transport was organized with horse carts. I felt like having arrived in a time bubble. Some of the tanneries haven’t modernized their technology for decades or even a century. Workers only rely on their muscle power and don’t earn more than a couple of pounds a day”
Andrej Balco November 5, 2012
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in Brazil.Tags: Brazil
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From the Project about Domésticas in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2007
Andrej Balco (b.1973, Slovakia) received his Master’s degree in photography at the Institute of Creative Photography in the Czech Republic. His work has been exhibited at the Prague House of Photography, The Leica Gallery, Prague, The Festival of Photography in Lodz, Poland as well as in England, Australia, Holland, Finland, Brazil and Japan. Andrej is a winner of the PhotoDocument.sk: grant and Changing Faces of the international program of IPRN. He is a co-founder and member of Sputnik Photos collective. His work is distributed worldwide by the Anzenberger Agency.
About the Photograph:
“This photo is part of the series Domésticas that I made through the residential Changing Faces/ IPRN program. The idea behind the project was to show the coexistence of two different social classes connected by work and explore how they interact and complement each other. The phenomenon of domestic labor is a natural part of Brazilian society that has persisted since colonial times. I portrayed the masters and their servants in the opulent villas, but also in the simple flats whose area does not exceed 30 square meters. The selected image is of my meeting with Anita Prisco and her lifelong servant Matilde in Anita’s house. Matilda’s service started when she was twenty and over the years has become a respected member of the host family.”
John Minchillo November 2, 2012
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in Greece.Tags: Greece
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Sudanese Refugees, Patras Greece 2010
John Minchillo (b. 1985, United States) received his bachelors degrees in English Literature and Philosophy, Politics, and Law from Binghamton University. A lifelong passion for storytelling led him to print journalism with local newspapers. Shortly afterwards he began photographing his stories and found his voice in imagery. He has attended the Eddie Adams Workshop Barnstorm 24, and is regularly published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, TIME Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, The Denver Post, USA Today, Newsweek, and many others. He lives in New York City freelances with the Associated Press.
About the Photograph:
“I wanted to tell the story of refugees in the EU when my colleague suggested Patras, a port city in Greece known for harboring massive shipping vessels. Greece is the middle man for dealing with refugees in the EU. Official protocol states all illegal immigrants found in the EU must be deported to the original country of entry. Greece, with its land border with Turkey, is the main thoroughfare. With nowhere to go, and Greece’s economy in free fall, these refugees found themselves living in abandoned rail yards.”
“I tried to make a photo that shows these men, stuck in circumstances wildly beyond their control, as more than some forgotten, cursed people. They want to be better men and husbands, live better, and achieve. Many speak several languages. Some are teachers, others mechanics, many businessmen. Their families are far away. They left home in search of opportunity to be caught in a socio-political nightmare with no escape, to home or anywhere else. They try for years to covertly board massive shipping vessels behind barbed wire and fences, often risking their lives by climbing up hundred-foot high docking cables, in hopes of making it to the Netherlands for a chance at a new life. And in the process they are caught by authorities, beaten, jailed, and released into the cycle again. No matter the crushing poverty, disdain from locals, and the inability to work legally, they maintain a place to wash, eat, sleep, and take time for a simple things, like a haircut. They maintain powerful but quiet dignity. I believe in my heart that they are no different from me, and despite living in a vermin infested rail yard, with comfortable looking homes overlooking their difficult state of affairs, they keep hope alive.”
Mark Hartman October 31, 2012
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in Panama.Tags: Panama
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Casco Viejo, Panama City 2009
Mark Hartman (b. 1981, United States) studied photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology. His work has been published in Esquire, Spin, Monocle, Men’s Fitness, Penquin Books and the Village Voice. Mark’s personal photography has been featured in several blogs and magazines including The British Photography Journal and CNN. In 2012, Mark was included in PDN’s 30. He is currently based in New York City.
About the Photograph:
“This image was shot in Panama while photographing a personal project. I saw some kids jumping off this abandoned building in Casco Viejo and wanted to get a better look so I managed to break into the building with my Hasselblad and tripod and find my way to the kids. During my time in Panama, I was constantly meditating on how Panama is geographically separated from South and North America, and how so much of Panamas culture, rich folklore and history has been increasingly compromised by American influence. In this picture you can see the new skyscrapers in the background and to me it alludes to what is in store for Panama’s future. Panama city has become more and more developed over the past few years much to a lot of Panamanian’s disgust. This photo really speaks to me on the transience. I see it as a historic document because the building has since been knocked down.”
Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert October 29, 2012
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in Japan.Tags: Japan
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Anti-nuclear protest. Tokyo, Japan 2011
Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert (b. 1969, Scotland) received the gift of a camera on his 13th birthday. A few years later he subsequently became a UK based freelance photographer for editorial, corporate and NGO clients. His work has appeared in TIME, National Geographic, Italian Geo, Le Figaro, Der Spiegel, The Guardian, The Sunday Times, and many others. For the past 12 years Jeremy has been one of the principal photographers for Greenpeace International. For the past nine years he was based in Tokyo but has recently relocated to Scotland. His assignments have taken him to over 40 countries and his personal and commissioned work has been widely published and exhibited in Europe, USA, and beyond. Jeremy is one of the three founding members of Document Scotland, a collective aimed at promoting documentary photography within Scotland.
About the Photograph:
“It was another anti-nuclear protest in Tokyo against TEPCO- the owners of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant which suffered multiple explosions and meltdowns in the aftermath of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. The TEPCO plant operators had through various investigations, panels and inquiries, been found to have been negligent in their disaster response and as such the nuclear disaster was put down to being a man made catastrophe and not a direct result of the earthquake or tsunami, although they obviously played their part. The anti-nuclear demonstrations were frequent in Tokyo at this time but sadly were usually small in number of participants, but I attended as many as I could, to show my support but also to continue documenting what I thought was still an important story. The nuclear legacy of the Fukushima disaster will remain for a long time, and it was important that the protests be seen and heard.” (more…)
Alejandro Kirchuk October 26, 2012
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in Argentina.Tags: Argentina
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From his series on Alzheimer’s disease, “Never Let You Go” Buenos Aires, Argentina 2009
Alejandro Kirchuk (b.1987, Argentina) graduated from the Asociación de Reporteros Gráficos de la República Argentina (ARGRA) in Buenos Aires. His work has also been recognized by POYi, Ian Parry Scholarship, Magnum Expression Award, Terry O’Neill Award, PhotoEspaña, Save the Children and the Lumix Foto Festival. Alejandro’s photographs have been published in: The New York Times Magazine, The Sunday Times Magazine and The Guardian Weekend Magazine. He is a fellow at the National Endowment for Arts in Argentina, working on a long-term project about football as a social phenomenon in Argentina. In 2012 he won the First Prize at the World Press Photo contest in the Daily Life Stories category for his project about Alzheimer’s disease.
About the Photograph:
“This photograph was one of the first pictures I made from this project. When I started to photograph my grandparents, it had been three years since she had been diagnosed. Even though my grandmother was already affected by Alzheimer’s disease, she could move and walk, mainly with the help of my grandfather, who in that moment started to feel the consequences of taking care of his wife by himself. This is the only picture from my project ‘Never Let You Go‘ in which my grandmother is moving, as well as it’s the only one in which they are having direct physical contact. Alzheimer’s disease is a very complex illness. It doesn’t only affect the patient; the most affected is the caretaker, not only physically, but also emotionally— slowly losing the person with who you shared all your life. They were married for more than sixty years. She passed away in July 2011. As it can feel from the picture, my grandfather was always very proud of taking care of his wife, but he was also exhausted.”
Misha Friedman October 24, 2012
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in Ukraine.Tags: Ukraine
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Coal Miners, Eastern Ukraine 2010
Misha Friedman (b. 1978, Moldova) received his masters from the London School of Economics in 2000. From 2005-2010 he worked for Médecins Sans Frontières documenting the humanitarian crisis in Northern Uganda, urban violence in Nigeria, Kala Azar in India, and civil war in Darfur. His recent projects deal with corruption in Russia, the tuberculosis epidemic in the former Soviet Union and illegal migration into the EU through Ukraine. Misha’s works have been recognized by: POYi, PDN’s 30, Critical Mass Top 50 and the Forward Thinking Museum — Artist of the year. His work has recently been published in: Le Monde Magazine, New York Times, Le Figaro and Human Rights Watch. Misha is represented by Cosmos Photo in Europe and is based in New York.
About the Photograph:
“Inspired by German and French Romanticism, this ongoing project from Ukraine is my attempt to show how Nature and Man have learned to live within the industrial complex. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, much of Eastern Ukraine ended up ruined. Many mines and massive factories are lying abandoned, people are unemployed or earn just enough to survive and nature is taking over in full force. For decades this land was a symbol of Soviet rationalism and victory over nature, but it did not take long for all of that to crumble, leaving behind ruined lives. I like this image because to a certain extent it goes against how third-world coal miners are normally presented: perpetually unhappy and miserable, forgetting that most of the time they have other emotions. Here, for instance, we enjoyed a good joke and some seriously poisonous moonshine.”
Lexey Swall October 22, 2012
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in Haiti.Tags: Haiti
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Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Ville-Bonheur, Haiti, 2010
Lexey Swall (b. 1977, USA) has been a photojournalist for the past ten years. She recently quit her staff job at the Naples (Fla.) Daily News to form GRAIN, a photography collective, with fellow documentary photographers, Greg Kahn and Tristan Spinski. Lexey grew up in Bakersfield, California, an oil and agriculture town at the bottom of the San Joaquin Valley known for country music and dust storms. She studied photojournalism and women’s studies at San Jose State University. She has garnered awards from POYi and NPPA Best of Photojournalism competitions, including an honorable mention for the 2006 Photographer of the Year (small markets) in BOP.
About the Photograph:
“This photo was taken in July 2010 during the annual pilgrimage to Saut d’Eau in Ville-Bonheur, Haiti. It was seven months after the magnitude-7.0 earthquake that killed more than 300,000 people and left about one million Haitians homeless. Every year, Haitians flock to Saut d’Eau to be blessed under the sacred waterfall and worship in the town church. The church was filled to capacity during each of the Catholic masses held throughout this particular day. I was waiting to enter the church – crushed between dozens of people behind me pushing to try to enter and hundreds who were trying to exit. The police tried to control the flow through the doors so no one was injured. I had other images that I shot while holding my camera above my head to try to show the density of crowd. But, this image, to me, feels more like I felt in that moment. It was cramped. There was no such thing as personal space. I can’t count how many photos I’ve seen come out of Haiti where people are in lines pushing against one another. I finally understood what it felt like to be in that situation. I didn’t know at the time that the man in this photo looked at me when I photographed him. But, when I saw it later, I felt it made this photo even more authentic to the moment. There is an intimacy with making eye contact.”
Massimiliano Clausi October 19, 2012
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in India.Tags: India
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Christian community in Orissa, India 2008
Massimiliano Clausi (b.1979, Italy) is a freelance photojournalist represented by Laif agency. He attended the Danish School of Journalism in 2006 and the same year he was awarded the Canon Young Photographers Scholarship. Since then Massimiliano’s work has been published in TIME, Newsweek and Courier International. He has also partnered with Action Aid, Terre Des Hommes, Amnesty International and UNICEF in promoting their campaigns and raising awareness around human rights issues. He has been a finalist for the Anthropographia Award and a nominated photographer at UNICEF POY in 2011. Massimiliano is based in Genoa and Milan.
About the Photograph:
“This photo was taken in Bhubaneshwar, in the state of Orissa, India, in 2008. I was covering the aftermath of a violent onslaught on the local Christian community by the radical Hindus. I had already visited the affected villages, witnessing the destruction they left behind. The broken houses, the burnt churches and obliterated huts of the poor. I had also listened to the many accounts of rape, murders and miraculous escapes by shocked displaced families. Finally I came to this small refugee camp in the capital, Bhubaneshwar, where a few Lutheran families had been brought in the first days of the assault. Mass was being said in a small classroom of a primary school building that was turned into a dormitory. No one really took notice when I stepped into the room, they were so deeply absorbed in prayer. The audience were sitting on the bare floor and I walked towards the very middle of the room were I stood standing. That was the time when the man on the left side of the picture raised his hands to the sky as if pleading for help from above. I took the picture and thought bitterly that nobody had been listening so far.”
Mackenzie Reiss October 17, 2012
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in Ireland.Tags: Ireland
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Avilla Park, a Traveller neighborhood on the outskirts of Dublin, 2010
Mackenzie Reiss (b. 1989, United States) got her first job as a reporter at 17, and has been hooked on visual story-telling ever since. Mackenzie studied photojournalism at Syracuse University, where she spent a semester abroad in London and Ireland to further her education in photography. The self-ascribed travel junkie has been to Ireland, South Africa, Serbia and Kosovo pursuing her dream of bringing awareness to social and humanitarian issues. Her work has been recognized by the National Press Photographer’s Association, College Photographer of the Year, the Alexia Foundation for World Peace, and the Hearst Journalism Awards Program.
About the Photograph:
“This image was taken during the first of many trips to Dublin. I first came to the city on a school trip, where we visited a Traveller’s rights center called Pavee Point. Initially, I just wanted to interview a Traveller named Michael Collins for a paper I was writing. Roughly half-an-hour into our chat, he asked if I wanted to see Avilla Park- a Traveller neighborhood on the outskirts of Dublin. He drove us there in a big white van, circling the neighborhood itself and pointing out the cracks in the stucco walls, the ethnic slurs graffitied on playground structures, and the general degradation of the place.”
“I noticed a lot of children playing in the streets, and pulled my camera out of my bag. I wanted to capture the paradox of Avilla Park: youthful faces among such a sad, gray environment. At first they were quite inquisitive, asking who I was, where I was from, etc. But when the novelty of “the American” wore off, they went back to their games and that’s when I shot this frame. I played a lot with windows in this series, and the idea of being on the outside, looking in, and vice versa. Although discrimination against the Travellers isn’t nearly as bad as it was, say 50 years ago, they are still isolated and looked down upon by the greater Irish community. I wanted to show that isolation through symbolism and mood, further emphasized by the black and white processing.”
Pauline Beugnies October 15, 2012
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in Egypt.Tags: Egypt
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Iftar, Cairo 2011
Pauline Beugnies (b. 1982, Belgium) studied journalism at the Institut des Hautes Etudes des Communications Sociales in Brussels, where she took her first step in documentary photography. Her work has been published in Le Monde Magazine, Telerama, Liberation, L’Express, The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Soir, among others. She was awarded a grant from the Foundation de la Vocation (Belgium) in 2007 and was one of the recipients of the Open National Photography Prize in 2010. Her work has been shown at the Photography Museum in Charleroi, Belgium. She is currently based in Cairo.
About the Photograph:
“I took this photo of a young girl seen at Iftar, organised by the Muslim Brotherhood in Medinat Nasr during Ramadan. The sisters attended the call to prayer that marks sundown. They had just eaten a date and drunk some water before prayers and breaking fast. In post-revolutionary Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood represents the main organized opposition force and, judging by the first results in the general election, the future party in power. Having been severely oppressed during Mubarak’s regime, they have now stepped into the limelight. Women are present too, in the heart of the organization, and are active in the Brotherhood’s three pillars : preaching, social work and politics through the Brotherhood’s new Justice and Freedom party. Agents of the Egyptian revolution in their own right, they want to take part in the emergence of a modern Islamic society.”
Alvaro Deprit October 12, 2012
Posted by Geoffrey Hiller in Spain.Tags: Spain
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From the project “Dreaming Leone”. Almeria, Spain 2011
Alvaro Deprit (b.1977, Spain) has been living in Italy since 2004 and divides his time between Rome and Istanbul and is particularly interested in Turkish culture and its modernization, changes in post-Soviet South Caucasus, and immigration in Europe. Alvaro has exhibited his photos in Rome, Barcelona, London and New York. His clients and publications include: Newsweek, Internazionale, Vanity Fair, Viva Magazine, El Periodico, Yo Dona, Glamour, Sette, Altari, L’Espresso among others. In 2012 he was selected for “PHotoEspaña Descubrimientos” and won the “PHotoEspaña OjodePez Human Values Award”.
About the Photograph:
“This photograph is part of a work about the world of Western films made in the south of Spain. The restaurant is located in the square where they filmed the final duel of the movie “For a Few Dollars More”. I waited for the moment in which the frame of the film coincided with the image of the painting of the wall. In the 70s and 80s, the Tabernas desert near Almeria became the Hollywood of Westerns. It was here that legendary filmmaker Sergio Leone made movies like “Once Upon a Time in the West”, “For a Fistful of Dollars”, and “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”. In the 90s, filmmakers stopped making movies in Almeria mainly because the conditions were no longer affordable. The film sets were turned into fairgrounds or were abandoned, and the people who worked and lived around the cinema circuit, such as stuntmen and extras, dedicated themselves to doing Western performances to attract tourists. The economic crisis in Spain has also affected this industry, which is yearning for the glory days of Western movies.”
Verve Photo- The New Breed of Documentary Photographers 