Featuring Various Artists

Featuring: Yuyang Liu and Souvid Datta

For a second year, ChinaFile and Magnum Foundation have partnered to administer the Abigail Cohen Fellowship in Documentary Photography. This year we are showcasing the work of Yuyang Liu and Souvid Datta.

The works look at migrant labor and environmental pollution, both of which pose serious challenges to China’s future and impact its relations with the rest of the world.

Related Programming:
Reporting Inside the Great Firewall: Photographers on Covering China

Featuring Dougie Wallace / INSTITUTE

Blackpool,  a Northern English town once the granddaddy of the seaside resorts. It has now an unenviable reputation for its stag and hen parties. A dirty great whorl of debauchery, licentiousness, laughter, vomit, furry handcuffs, fancy dress and drunken oblivion. Turned every weekend into the heart of social darkness. Marauding packs of brides and grooms, close friends and family, on a mission to consume dangerous, liver-crushing levels of alcohol. This, their rite of passage acted out on the last night of freedom, before the conventions and responsibilities of marital life, mortgage, children.

Once a fun diversion from the industrial heartlands – a bit like Las Vegas with a Victorian twist – is a town that has a palpable and genuine energy of its own. The promenade offers up its gala of grotesque and carny seediness; a whole Golden Mile of pubs and bars for swollen bodies to crawl through flashing scary, carrot coloured midriff flesh. The unbridled hedonism is magnified by an inter-pack competitiveness that manifests itself in drinking games, fights or sex in the toilets! Its twisted and ghoulish, and it’s hard not to laugh.

Dougie Wallace has captured a town heaving with everything from bunnygirls to banana men. Girls dressed in togas, all matching gold handbags and neatly-done hair, giving it the ‘when in Rome’ treatment, devil girls, pink ladies, Brownies, guys in drag, stuffed into nuns’ and nurses’ outfits, wearing salacious T-shirts with ‘Johnny’s Last Night of Freedom’ or ‘Up the Anus Ashley’ – each group with the same singular objective, to get as ‘fucked up’ as possible.

Featuring Lotte Bronsgeest, Daniëlle Celie, Aras Gökten, Arantxa Gonlag, Esther Hessing, Pim Huijsmans, Mascha Joustra, Carla Kogelman, Dagmar Kolatschny, Alexander Krack, Leonardo Magrelli, Misha Pipercic, Katharina Pöhlmann, Alice Smeets, Evert Smit, Sebastian Steveniers, Julie van der Vaart, Lydia Weijers, Christian Werner, Aleksander Willemse

The International Photo Festival Leiden offers a yearly stage to new photographers and aims to promote and support recently graduated European photographers. For the festival twenty photographers are selected by a professional jury and given a first chance at an international career in a picturesque open-air exhibition which is free to the public.

The 3rd edition of the festival is held from October 10 – 31 in the beautiful city of Leiden, the Netherlands. Besides being known for one of the oldest Universities in Europe and the birthplace of Rembrandt van Rijn, Leiden is also the city that gave refuge to the Pilgrim Fathers before they sailed on the Mayflower to the New Continent.

Featuring: Diego Bendezu, Angelina D-auguste, Meg Farrell, Alex Jiang, Holly Jo Schnaudigel, Jordan Tiberio, Tudor Vasilescu, and Erin Yamagata

Thirty students in the Bachelors of Fine Arts Photography Program exhibited their senior thesis projects, representing the culmination of their studies at The Fashion Institute of Technology in May, 2015 as part of the annual Art and Design Graduating Students Exhibition.  The 30 Collective explored diverse subjects, employing various techniques and styles through new and traditional photographic practices. Examining themes such as identity, memory and perceived realities, the exhibition challenged and provoked the viewer to question their preconceptions. The different photographic techniques employed, as well as the myriad themes explored by the students, is a reminder that photography still remains a major medium of expression and perspective.

Featuring three photographers who use Instagram to share the important stories of underrepresented communities around the world

At Getty Images, we believe that images have the power to move the world, and that photography is a compelling tool for telling social, political and cultural stories. That is why we are proud to announce, in collaboration with Instagram, the inaugural Getty Images Instagram Grant.

The purpose of this grant is to support photographers using Instagram to document stories from underrepresented communities around the world. We recognize that Instagram has introduced new opportunities for emerging voices, outside the mainstream media, to create and share projects of social importance. This grant provides financial support and mentorship to amplify their impact.

A total of three grants of $10,000 each will be awarded. Winners will not only receive a cash grant, they will also have the opportunity for mentorship with an award-winning Getty Images photographers.

Featuring: Edoardo Delille and Gabriele Galimberti

In Rio de Janeiro, sports are life and life is not a spectator sport. Little playing fields steal back space from the asphalt and traffic circles, defying cars and buildings alike. They creep in amongst the steep and winding streets and are sketched into the golden sands that have made this city immortal. Rain forests and granitic cliffs are a testing ground, where distinctions of gender, race or religion cease to exist. The differences between high and low are made level. Kids from the favelas that cling to the hillsides come down into the city, losing themselves among the upper-crust bourgeoisie well-heeled from Ipanema and Leblon. A surfboard, a soccer ball or a skateboard is all it takes to make them indistinguishable. Social background doesn’t matter for the players of the Flamengo basketball team portrayed in one of these pictures; difference sit sinks while when the girls from the Brazil national synchronized swimming team, Brazil national champions, float over the twirl in the water. Sports blend favela boys in love with football, bikers rolling down the seaside and surfers resting on the beach, as those shown in these images. Call it the miracle of motion – motion that changes perspectives and revolutionizes viewpoints, as in these photos, which provide a portrait of a city and its inhabitants as they have never been seen before.

Featuring: Lynn Johnson

“I got blown up.” That’s what they say. “I was right there in the blast seat.” 
Blast force—the signature injury of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan—creates a pressure so powerful it can be seen before it is heard or felt. Soldiers remember confusion, deafness, slowdown, the feeling of being squashed. Positive and negative pressure waves roll through the body, shattering nerve pathways. And the soldier is never the same. They say they feel “crazy:” hyper-vigilant, sleepless, suicidal. They have language and hearing problems, memory loss and migraines. They anger easily. They abuse alcohol and drugs. Wives and lovers leave them, and their children fear them. Soldiers long for a missing arm, leg, eye—a visible wound that would command respect and understanding.
The veterans in these photographs—Aaron, Bo, Chris, Perry, Tiffany and Maj. Jeff Hall—found help at the National Intrepid Center of Excellence, a Department of Defense institute that serves some of the 360,000 men and women damaged by blast force injuries. In addition to receiving sophisticated imaging and care from physicians and therapists, soldiers make masks. Making art cracks open the trauma and then knits the brain. The masks, like MRIs of their psyches, make the scars of blast force visible, a first step to healing.

Featuring: Andrea Bakacs, Federico Ciamei, Ramsay de Give, Brooke DiDonato, Mediha DiMartino, Yurko Dyachyshyn, Jon Feinstein, Fiona Filipidis, Sophie Gamand, Kari Herer, Winky Lewis, Kevin McCollum, Emma McEvoy, Ruairidh McGlynn, Yiğithan Özden, Liam Sinnott, Elizabeth Stowe, Kate Sweeney, Hajdu Tamas, Meg Wachter, Sarah Wilmer, and Thomas Wilson

Winning images run the gamut from a pit bull wearing a floral crown to birds swarming above an abandoned farm house in rural Texas.

While the theme of the show is lighthearted, the process was an experiment, as we gave control of the exhibition over to the crowd. Some of the most obvious questions/concerns we had were: Would the submitters with the most Instagram followers win? Are there certain “styles” of photography that will be more popular over others? Would the exhibition be filled with cats?

Featuring Daniel Berehulak

Mr. Berehulak was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for feature photography earlier this year for his coverage of the Ebola outbreak for The New York Times.

“This award makes me think of all the people that shared their lives with me so that I was able to document this ghastly and horrible virus,” Mr. Berehulak said after winning the Pulitzer award. “It preys on our humanity — on everything that makes us human. People can’t hold their loved ones in their last dying moments because that’s when the virus is the most potent.”

David Furst, the Times’s international picture editor, said he decided to send Mr. Berehulak to West Africa because he knew Mr. Berehulak would dig in. For Mr. Berehulak, the decision was simple, despite the dangers, because, he said, the virus was “affecting all of mankind.”

To cover the story, he had to take many precautions, often encasing himself from head to toe in protective gear.

Featuring Liz Arenberg, Mia Berg, Nicholas Calcott, Sean Carroll, Maureen Drennan, Sara Fox, Sara Macel, Minta Maria, Tim Melideo, and Charlotte Strode

A group of ten Brooklyn artists explore the theme of ‘Constructed Identities’ through their interaction with the world around them and how the environment and culture shapes how they see themselves.

Featuring Karel Kravik

I grew up in the small industrial town of Sillamäe in Soviet Estonia. I have very few pictures of my childhood, mostly staged, taken during the moments I don’t remember nor care about. So I created my own very personal version of childhood pictures with my kids, from bits and pieces I remember and find important. These are the moments that brought butterflies to my stomach or shivers on my back. All the struggles, urges, dreams, and desires. Moments that have defined much of my later life and who I am now.

It’s strange to look back now and see how the dots connect, almost like there was some kind of grand narrative, a fate, if you will. But you can only understand it when looking back, never forward. It’s impossible to project the connections into the future.

I also realize that memories are not absolute, they’re being influenced by later experiences, they are changing with us whether we want it or not. This series does not pretend to be truthful in all aspects, but rather my best understanding and interpretation of what I remember. In some awkward way making these photos might have influenced my memories they’re supposed to save. I’m okay with that, the circle is never round.

Featuring: Josephine Herrick Project Participants, Josephine Herrick Project Teaching Photographers, and Josephine Herrick

This exhibition features photography by JHP program participants from 18 community partnerships, JHP teaching photographers, and by JHP’s founder Josephine Herrick. Highlighted work is by youth in the Step Up program, at the McSilver Institute on Poverty Policy and Research at NYU.

Featuring: Mike Bailey-Gates, Dana Davenport, Juniper Flemming, Logan Jackson, Zak Krevitt, Ken Lavey, Molly Matalon, Signe Pierce, Tim Shutsky, Jake Sigl, and Ian Stoner

Each artist invited to participate in this show uses the photographic medium as a platform of power to address topics of identity – gender, sexuality, and the body, to name a few. Many of these artists create visual images strongly tied to their own personal lives, generally relating to the body. At its base level, this project looks at how we express ourselves through art to manage our own attitudes towards more relevant identity issues we face in 2015.

Featuring: Alexandra Bourassa, Michael Difeo, Arash Fewzee, Benjamin Freedman, Elizabeth Harnarine,  Annaleena Keso, Fernanda Kock, Alex Kwok, Kyle Meyer, Varvara Mikushkina, Cecilia Mezulic, Charles Park, Sebastian Perinotti, CHR!S REEL, Rowena Rubio, Teddie Sun, Steve Xiao, and Mengting Zhou

Shared value is a management strategy to measure business value by identifying and addressing social problems that intersect with their business. In the case of the contemporary life of images, students from the Parsons MFA Photography Program are working together to identify ways in which the value of their photographs change as they are seen and circulated through exhibitions, networks, and systems of exchange.

Featuring Jeff Sheng

For 13 years, American artist Jeff Sheng has been photographing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) student athletes in the United States and Canada as part of a photo and exhibition series called FEARLESS. Between 2003-2015, Sheng photographed over 200 of such athletes, and exhibited the project in more than 60 venues that have traditionally not hosted art exhibitions, such as university athletic facilities, college student centers, and the headquarters of companies such as Nike and ESPN. The series was just published as a personal memoir and photography book with an afterword essay by retired NBA basketball player Jason Collins. Photoville will be the first New York exhibition of Sheng’s FEARLESS project that introduces the work to a broader art world audience.  In this exhibition, the artist acknowledges the multiple forms that photography can take, particularly activist inspired work that can have deep societal significance in one context, but then also viewed as “art” in another.

Featuring Various or Unknown City Appointed Photographers

The NYC Municipal Archives invites you to explore a hundred-year history of the Brooklyn waterfront through photographs dating from 1870 to 1974.  Beginning with the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, through a period of intense activity as the center of the city’s maritime-based economy, these images provide us with a fascinating and conversation-provoking view of a radically-changed cityscape. Selected from the largest repository of NYC digitized images in the world, the pictures tell a story of a place now known as Brooklyn Bridge Park.  These unique prints, many produced from vintage large format glass-plate negatives, are a key element in visualizing the transition from industrial chaos to urban oasis.

The photographs have been chosen from some of our most significant collections including the Depression-era WPA Federal Writers’ and Art projects (1935-1943) and the City’s Department of Bridges (1901-1939).  Our collection of historic images simultaneously shares both NYC history and one of the most culturally impactful technological advancements in history:  the camera.  Without images, it is almost impossible to visualize the complex layers of Brooklyn and New York City as a whole.

Featuring: The Global EyeEm Community & You

Featuring Various Artists

We do it all the time. In a subway car. On a bus. In a movie theater. Standing in line to order a caramel frappuccino. Waiting for our number to be called at the DMV. And on the ferry.

We look around and wonder to ourselves, “Who are these people?’

This exhibition offers a glimpse into the wide range of everyday people who interact with New York’s East River Ferry, on any given day. It just so happens that this day was Wednesday, August 26th, 2015.

Whether they’re commuters, foreign or domestic tourists, nanny’s with strollers, or individuals just killing the day, these people momentarily become the heartbeat of this leading transportation alternative, in the greatest city in the world. With their plans for the upcoming day in mind (along with mobile devices, a map, and possibly a beverage in hand), they often exchange only a fleeting glance with those around them. It goes no further than that. It doesn’t really need to. That would be like crossing some unwritten line of privacy.

The collection you see here dives a little deeper into just who uses this river and rides this ferry from day-to-day…on any day. Press the shutter. Freeze the action. Ask a question.

In observing and learning more about the people we pass by on a daily basis, we’re reminded that most people’s human experiences are anything but ordinary…as are they themselves.

Featuring Lynn Savarese

The New York’s New Abolitionists, a campaign launched by the New York State Anti-Trafficking Coalition in 2013, seeks to raise awareness around human trafficking and modern-day slavery by recognizing and honoring those who are actively involved in the effort to combat these scourges and provide services to victims, as well as prominent figures willing to lend their stature and take a public stand to condemn trafficking and enslavement.

Although its ranks continue to grow, as of today the New Abolitionist community consists of over 150 individuals representing a broad and diverse cross-section of New York, including:

• Trafficking survivors who are now brave advocates working to eradicate trafficking
• Political leaders – including Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Senators Schumer and Gillibrand, Congresswoman Maloney, Mayors Dinkins and Bloomberg, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, and Manhattan DA Cy Vance
• Icons from the art /entertainment world – including Tina Fey, Seth Meyers, Mamie Gummer, Marlo Thomas and Mercedes Ruel
• Other community leaders – including religious leaders of different faiths, the president of the Ford Foundation, and Gloria Steinem

Through their participation in the campaign, our New Abolitionists help bring much needed attention and relief to the thousands of enslaved women and children in New York.

Featuring: Luceo

Featuring: Jenny Boot, Paul Breuker, Gitte Brugman, Cleo Campert, Fieke van Dieren, Ton Dirven, Nelske Elzer, Aloys Ginjaar, Anton Havelaar, Rudi Huisman, Jasper Juinen, Mariska Karto, Wim Koen, Carla Kogelman, Margaret Lansink, Elmer van der Marel, Marinka Masséus, Ilvy Njiokiktjien, Imke Panhuijzen, Lilian van Rooij, Maartje Roos, Patricia Steur, Tina van Turnhout, Astrid Verhoef, Edgar Verhoeven, Edel Verzijl, Jac Weerts, and Bastiaan Woudt

Dutch photography has traditionally been widely appreciated in genres like documentary, portrait, and landscape photography. Characteristics often mentioned are a solid style with a focus on everyday life and social commitment with a sense of irony. These features have not only shaped the image of Dutch photography, but have also contributed to the image of Dutch culture in general.

The culture of the image has evolved dramatically, especially in the last ten years. The communication of images has amplified due to the internet, social media, smartphones, and new digital possibilities. This change gave way to a new generation of photography. Photographers, now more than ever, enjoy the freedom to shape reality and the culture in which they live in a new and individual fashion.

Now is the time for an exhibition consisting of the contemporary photography of The Netherlands: Face the Dutch.

Photographs by Graham MacIndoe, Interviews by Susan Stellin

American Exile is a series of photographs and interviews documenting the stories of immigrants who have been ordered deported from the United States, as well as their family members – often, American citizens – who suffer the consequences of the harsh punishment of exile. The catalyst for this project was the five months Graham spent in immigration detention in 2010, facing deportation because of a misdemeanor conviction – despite living in the U.S. as a legal permanent resident since 1999. After winning his case, he and Susan began gathering stories of families caught up in deportation proceedings, including asylum seekers, green card holders, and immigrants trapped in the bureaucracy of adjusting a visa. Our goal is to show the wide range of people affected when someone is deported, including spouses and children who remain in the U.S., forever separated from a parent or partner living in exile. This project is supported by a 2014 fellowship from the Alicia Patterson Foundation.

Featuring: Alejandro Cegarra, Amanda Mustard, Andrew B. Myers, Anna Beeke, Annalisa Natali Murri, Antoine Bruy, Benjamin McMahon, Christaan Felber, Clarissa Bonet, Dina Oganova, Erin O’Keefe, Jennilee Marigomen, Jonno Rattman, Katrina Tang, Keith Yahrling, Malin Fezehai, Maurizio Di Iorio, McNair Evans, Michael Clinard, Molly Lamb, Pascal Shirley, Paul Colangelo, Peter Bohler, Philip Montgomery, Rus Anson, Ryan Lowry, Sara Macel, Sara Naomi Lewkowicz, Sarker Protick, and Yeong-Ung Yang

Each year since 1999, the editors of PDN have selected 30 emerging photographers who represent a variety of styles and genres and have demonstrated a distinctive vision, creativity, and versatility. This year, the editors reviewed the work of more than 300 photographers from around the world. To be considered, the photographers must have been shooting on their own professionally for five years or less. Most were nominated by photo editors, art directors, curators, educators, and fellow photographers around the world, and some were invited by editors based on work seen in promotions, portfolio reviews, or photo contests.

Profiles on each of the 2015 PDN’s 30 photographers are featured in PDN’s April 2015 issue. Thanks to support of the PDN’s 30 sponsors, PDN will also hosts six panel discussions on career strategies for emerging photographers at photo schools, workshops, and festivals around the U.S. throughout the year.

Related Programming:
PDN’s 30: Advice for Emerging Photographers from Emerging Photographers

Featuring Juried Winners Collection

American Illustration-American Photography (AI-AP), producers of the leading juried annuals in North America, announces its 4th annual competition to honor the best work being created today in or about Latin America. AI-AP, well-known for 34 years as a respected resource for art directors, designers, photo editors, art buyers and publishers, presents established, emerging and student Latino illustrators and photographers to the North American market – and vice versa – in a global, multi-cultural exchange of art and ideas.

Featuring Rita Leistner

In 2011, Rita Leistner embedded with U.S. Marines in Afghanistan as a team member of the experimental social media initiative Basetrack, which used social media and smartphones to report on the war. That experience was the jumping off point for her book, Looking for Marshall McLuhan in Afghanistan, which Leistner wrote as a reaction to the clash of technologies playing out in the theatres of war and beyond, inspired by Marshall McLuhan’s most famous aphorism—”The medium is the message.”

This exhibition is an extension of a key concept of the book: that the retro apps in smartphones are a symptom of our yearning for historical permanence and human connection in an increasingly digitized, remote-controlled world.

Leistner teams-up with Canadian Master Printer Bob Carnie, assisted by Paulette Michayluk, to create a series of monotypes in palladium with applied pigment—the most permanent color process known.

The experience of the exhibition, which also includes text panels from the book and a series of “didactic panels” that illustrate the process from smartphone to palladium, is like walking through Leistner’s own journey of process and discovery about communication, photography, technology, and war.

Related Programming

The Virtual and the Physical: Responses to Photography in the Digital Age

Featuring: Sabrina Cardenales, Billie Jean Hill, Brenda Ann Kenneally, Breyanna King, Terri Mason, James Miles, Jessica Schubart, Chantell Secore, Matthew Allan Solomon, Robert Stocklas Jr., Dana Marie Wells, Elliott Wells, Anne Marie Wood, and Heather Redcross

Since 2004, Kenneally has made still photographs, filmed videos, lead participatory scrapbooks workshops, and collected ephemera from an extended family of young people as they have come of age on one block in North Troy, New York. Troy’s rich history as a prototype for the Industrialization of America has become an integral character in the work and driven Kennelly’s obsession with connecting our past to its legacy. Kenneally’s ongoing dedication to her North Troy neighborhood is sustained by the core belief that individual stories pointedly reflect the social policies of their day and that if history is to be recorded accurately, we must constantly reinsert them selves back into the America narrative. The Upstate Girls: Unraveling Collar City History Project honors the idea that telling ones own story in a deeply personal way can be the strongest political action an individual can take.

Related Programming:
The American Dream: Documenting Economic Inequality in America

Featuring Debi Cornwall

Thirteen years after the first prisoners arrived at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba (“Gitmo”), over 100 men remain held indefinitely, almost half cleared for release years ago. Over three visits in the last year, I explored America’s offshore exercise of power in the post-9/11 era. 

”Gitmo at Home, Gitmo at Play” looks at the grim absurdity of daily life there through the residential and leisure spaces of prisoners and military personnel. For some, Gitmo is a tropical paradise, the “best-kept secret in the military.” The performance of American normalcy is pervasive here, from McDonald’s to minigolf. Prisoners’ and guards’ experiences can never be equated. Still, these two groups have something in common: life is defined by routine, order, and tedium. Everyone, it seems, is counting the days until they can go home. Of course, the detainees do not know if this day will ever come.

Gitmo on Sale investigates the role of commerce in the exercise of military power at Guantánamo Bay, by way of gift shop souvenirs.

Related Programming:
Influencing Policy and Social Change through Photography

Featuring Misha Friedman

Being gay in Russia is lonely and dangerous. Homophobic rhetoric is encouraged by the state. Violence and discrimination are tolerated. Although homosexuality was decriminalized in Russia more than 20 years ago, it remained classified as a mental disorder until 1999. Recently, homophobia has become more virulent.

According to a recent official poll, 80% of respondents opposed gay marriage. 41% said they support discrimination based on sexual orientation. 20% consider gay people dangerous and said they should be “isolated from society.” Only 3% said LGBT people should be able to raise children.

An amendment to Russia’s Child Protection law passed in June 2013 criminalizes what it calls “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minors.” Its ambiguity and selective use effectively make it illegal for any kind of gay event to take place or to even mention acceptance of homosexuality in public.

With a significant increase in hate crimes, hundreds of LGBT Russians are asking for asylum in the United States.

Photographer Misha Friedman documents how members of the LGBT community live under these conditions. They are prisoners in their own homes, hiding their identities, afraid to live a full life while looking for hope elsewhere.

Featuring: Rebecca Arthur, Mike Berlin, Bryan Denton, Rose DeSiano, Myles Golden, Lindsay He, Moogy Seungwoo Kim, Diane Meyer, Nicole Motta, Lorie Novak, Karl Peterson, Alice Proujansky, Hank Willis Thomas, and Deborah Willis

An exhibition of 14 photo- based projects by New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts Department of Photography & Imaging faculty, alumni, and students.  The works re-stage birth, death, war, beauty, the land, identity, family, and history. Memory is central to the practice of making images that create tension between conceptualizing past moments through the photographer’s lens.

Related Programming:
Photography Restaged

Featuring: Rami Abouemira, Saida Blair, Ashley Bordoy, Jason Bravo, Austin Canales, Kayla Cerda, Sindra DeJesus, Sterling Diaz, Nia Gordon, Danny Martinez, Rashawn Meeks, Nora Molina, Christian Ogando, Kamal Robinson,Christian Rodriguez, Allyssa Rubino, Malike Sidibe, Irvin Vega, and Henry Zapata

Technology drives every aspect of the photo industry and in the hands of a young mind we find inspiring results. Digital photography becomes an empowering tool to a teenager. It allows them to have an artistic voice at an age they are learning to find themselves. They are able to explore their world with a camera in hand and develop meaningful relationships with their subjects. The Photoville venue will showcase the award winning photography portfolios our students have created to show a raw, unfiltered look of their world.

Featuring Chris Bartlett

Photographer Chris Bartlett and journalist Delphine Schrank, author of The Rebel of Rangoon; A Tale of Defiance and Deliverance in Burma (Nation Books, July 2015), combine the ineffable image with the poetry of language to convey the hidden and very human experience of dissidence: of a social movement, until now largely closed from the eyes of the world, whose members dared across five decades of brutally repressive military rule to wrest their country back and deliver it to freedom and democracy.

Between 1962 and 2011, Burma/Myanmar had been under the jackboot of successive military rulers. Since then, a new parliamentary system has cracked apart a measure of political space. We will show not only the heartbreaking beauty of the country but also the passion and sense of duty that have driven people out of conventional lives and into the often solitary, always risky, and ever-evolving struggle for their rights. Despite constant risk of torture, beatings, arrest, intimidation – and even if they knew they wouldn’t see the fruits of their efforts in their lifetimes – we ask: what does it take to stand up to authoritarian rule?

Featuring: Amanda Berg, Noah Hendler, Kate Joyce, Emma Raynes, Amanda Van Scoyoc, and Sarah Stacke

Recent Duke University graduates – socially motivated young adults with documentary interests and experience – began collaborating with international nongovernmental organizations in 1995 as Hart Fellows, and their work became the catalyst for the Lewis Hine Documentary Fellows program launched in 2002 at the Center for Documentary Studies. The Hine program has connected the talents of young documentarians with the resources and needs of organizations serving women, youth, and their communities in fifteen countries around the world. The goals of the Hine program are to increase the number of committed documentarians in the humanitarian field and to explore the potential of documentary work to be used as a tool for policy reform, abroad as well as in the United States.

As Hine Fellows work with youth and families, they often develop projects that are collaborative in their approach. Fellows give the tools of their trade back to local participants, asking them to document issues central to their daily lives. Fellows then connect these materials with their own projects, creating works that are not just about, but also by, the people with whom they engage. For children and adolescents in particular, participating in documentary work ensures their fundamental right to join in broader conversations that affect their lives.

Featuring: Omar Imam and Natalie Naccache

In the spring of 2011, Syria erupted. What was initially a positive move for democracy and popular reform on the heels of the Arab Spring soon became a fragmented struggle for power that continues to cause unprecedented violence and destruction. A recent UNHRC report estimates there are 3,984,393 registered Syrian refugees living everywhere from Lebanon to Turkey to Egypt. There are countless more who are unregistered, drifting in forced exile and unable to return to the home they grew up in. Even as feelings of estrangement and isolation grow with every passing day, there still hangs a hope of reclamation. Natalie Naccache and Omar Imam’s stories are not about the statistics or the politics, but about the individuals caught in between. These stories reveal the struggle of the internal landscape for those who have lost their native ones, the constant uncertainty of exile, the memories that we carry with us, and the hopes that keep us alive.

Featuring Various Artists

Roads & Kingdoms presents “Talking Photography”, an audio-visual incarnation of the award-winning online magazine’s weekly interviews with photojournalists from across the world. We have picked out three diverse photographers whose projects have been published in our publication and whose work resonates with our ethos: to combine travel with journalism. A selection of three photo essays are presented inside the container, where audio clips from conversations between the photographers and Roads & Kingdoms’ Director of Photography, Pauline Eiferman, are also being played. These clips, which touch on the back story of the work, provide both storytelling and educational elements to the photography.

Featuring: Mari Bastashevski & Mark Curran

Curran filmed in the new financial district of Zuidas on the southern periphery of the Dutch capital – a global centre for algorithmic trading. Adapted from a text by Brett Scott, a former trader, the film, Algorithmic Surrealism, questions the hegemony of HFT and how the extinction of human reason in Market decisions will perpetuate more extreme power relations of minority wealth in globalised capitalist systems. The Netherlands is also pivotal in the global Shadow Banking system, therefore, the installation soundscape is generated through the transformation of data using an algorithm to identify the application of the words, market’ and/or ‘markets’ from public speeches by the Dutch Minister for Finance, Jeroen Dijsselbloem. The installation incorporates a 3D visualisation of this soundscape – The Economy Of Appearances – representing the functioning of financial capital through the conduit of the nation state. With his project, Curran raises the market from its state of abstraction and demonstrates that the market is a real and intrusive force that is paramount in shaping our lives.

This installation was commissioned by Noorderlicht in collaboration with the British North East Photography Network (NEPN) at the University of Sunderland (Great Britain)



Mari Bastashevski – It’s Nothing Personal (2015)
 
The installation, IT’S NOTHING PERSONAL, is set in the space between what global surveillance firms promote in their self-representation, and what the testimonies of those directly affected by these technologies disclose.

In the past decade, the industry that satisfies governments’ demand for surveillance of mass communications has skyrocketed, and it is one of today’s most rapidly burgeoning markets. A variety of products sold include ready-to-use monitoring centers that are able to silently access, process, and store years of electronic communications of entire countries.

While most of these products are undetectable by design, those who sell them have developed a strong corporate image. Branding concepts applied in promotional materials emphasise protection against vague but potent threats. Access to intimate details of correspondence is presented as impersonal data, petabytes stored and packets inspected.

The detached technical jargon and sanitized clip-art aesthetic work to obscure a deep-rooted partiality. Communication surveillance is a fundamental part of law enforcement operations meant to benefit those it vows to protect, in as much as it is a weapon for preserving power by infringing on the privacy of those who oppose it.
This installation was commissioned by Noorderlicht in collaboration with the Festival Photoreporter in Saint-Brieuc (France).

Featuring: Amy Lombard, Chris and Jonathan Schoonover, James Robertson, Josh Wool, Leo Martinez, Mustafah Abdulaziz, Natalie McComas, Nirav Patel, Nour El Refai, and Yumna Al-Arashi

Featuring: Various Artists

As a result, we have curated a unique selection highlighting key Creative, News, Sport, Entertainment, and Archive imagery illustrating our photographic heritage through award winning images shot over the past two decades, together with a selection from the Hulton Archive’s unsurpassed historical collection, thus spanning the birth of photography to the present day.

Featuring Stephanie Sinclair

Award-winning photographer Stephanie Sinclair first stumbled upon the issue of child marriage more than a decade ago while on assignment in Afghanistan, and she’s been committed to documenting it worldwide ever since. In every community, she has encountered activists—mothers, fathers, village elders, and even other children—who oppose the practice and want to see change. These images could not have been captured without their collaboration and their courage to stand up to harmful traditions.

As a non-profit organization providing visual evidence of the human rights challenges faced by women and girls around the world, Too Young to Wed calls on governments to make it a foreign policy priority to end child marriage and many of the ills associated with the practice: poverty, hunger, gender inequality, child and maternal mortality, lack of education, and the spread of HIV/AIDS. It is imperative that we end this practice impacting one girl every two seconds—or 142 million girls over the next decade.

We invite you, the viewer, to find your own courage to take this journey with us and help to bring an end to child marriage in our lifetime.

Related Programming:
Influencing Policy and Social Change through Photography

Featuring Glenna Gordon

Tale is one of a small but significant group of women in Northern Nigeria writing books called Littattafan soyayya, which in the Hausa language translates as “love literature.” These stories are somewhere in between morality tales and romance novels. Many of the novels are about escape, and fantasies of a better life, as well as advice for how to live as a good Muslim and a good wife. They’re read by women and girls in Northern Nigeria and across the Sahel. The stories of kidnapped schoolgirls and acts of terrorism at the hands of Islamist group Boko Haram might be the only stories that people around the world know about Northern Nigeria, but they’re certainly not the only stories about Hausa women.

Featuring: Dustina Sherbine, Daniel Naman, Molly Flores, Skyler Maggiore, Carly Moreno, Daniel Bracken, Brittany Petronella, Gianna Sergovich, Grace Tyson, Christopher Postlewaite

“Age of Uncertainty” features the work of current and recent alumni from Purchase College’s BFA and MFA departments. The selected works represent how these emerging artists use lens-based media to engage with contemporary issues and questions of our time. As the binary reasoning of our past becomes complicated by the nuances of today, these young artists investigate the shifting lines of the public and private. They grapple with the personal and political. Inwardly, they question trust, issues of exploitation and decency. Outwardly, their keen introspection of capital and labor makes them slippery targets and savvy practitioners of a kind of comic appropriation. As the applications of “photography” expand, so too does their use of the medium. The work in this exhibition exemplifies the pluralism of thought and approach as is practiced in the larger body of artists working at Purchase College.

Featuring: Paolo Ciregia, Giles Clarke, Glenna Gordon, Talia Herman, Mario Kaiser, Andrew Renneisen, Katia Repina, Joseph Rodriguez, Marieke van der Velden, Patrick Willocq, and Theo Zierock

Insider. Outsider. We tend to think of them as polar opposites. Like right and wrong. Rich and poor. Black and white. But the labels we covet and stick onto others are nothing if not a reflection of perspective.

Pushing through the boundaries of identity and belonging are a collective of drag queens deep in a California forest, Pigmy mothers in the Congo, a budding porn star in Spain, and voodoo practitioners in Senegal. People on the inside protest against forces on the outside—racism, incarceration, pollution, societal norms—or maybe they’re actually on the outside fighting to get in. The lands forbidden to some are homes to others. In keeping with Narratively’s thematic online publishing model, we invite you to step inside and explore these worlds.

Featuring Peace Corps Volunteers

Vantage illustrates the vibrancy of the Peace Corps experience through the mood and color of photography. A series of vignettes – captured from the perspective of Peace Corps Volunteers – offers an intimate look into community integration as a tenet of serving overseas, from singing along at a Mongolian picnic to repairing a car in Moldova. During their 27 months of service, Volunteers live, work and learn in host countries at the economic level of their neighbors. The Peace Corps is a lifelong vocation that thrives on cultural exchange both overseas and at home, which is conveyed through the images and purpose of our exhibit.

Featuring Ellen Kok

“Try, Try, Never Die, HOOAH!”

Many students of Fall Mountain Regional High School in Langdon, New Hampshire, begin class with that yell every day, sometimes delivering it in military uniform. They are cadets in the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, JROTC, a US Army-sponsored program.

By teaching them military values Americans admire – service, honor, skill and leadership – JROTC tries to improve the students’ self-esteem and give them a better grip on life. The class offers camaraderie and the structure, direction, and security that are often missing at home. But many students are also from families with a military tradition, and some intend to join the Armed Forces.

Curious about the place of the military in American culture, for over two years Dutch photographer and writer Ellen Kok followed the cadets, their parents – several of whom are retired or active duty soldiers – and their two teachers – veterans who saw action in Lebanon, Iraq and Somalia.

What do marching in formation, doing push-ups, shining uniform buttons, firing air rifles and addressing each other with “Sergeant” or “Captain” do for young people? Does it help them to cope with the challenges life throws at them, at home and in school?