Photojournalism Now: Friday Round Up - 29th September, 2017

This week on Photojournalism Now: Friday Round Up - the plight of the Rohingya with Anastasia Taylor-Lind in Bangladesh, Milton Rogovin's The Forgotten Ones, plus the Australian Photobook Awards are now open for entries and get your photobook reviewed in Sydney.


News:
What's really happening to the Rohingya

Photojournalist Anastasia Taylor-Lind is in Bangladesh working with Human Rights Watch right now covering the heartbreaking story of the Rohingya. I saw one of her photos last week, a portrait of a young woman, Hasina, who shared her horrific story. It made me cold with fury and sick from the inconceivable cruelty. I wanted to share this story with you, and a link to an Op Ed in the Washington Post - The Burmese military is committing crimes against humanity - penned by Human Rights Watch's Peter Bouckaert. This is genocide and the world needs to know what is going on. Get the story out. Please share.

(C) Anastasia Taylor-Lind

This is from Anastasia's post: "Hasina (above) is a soft-spoken 20-year-old Rohingya woman from Rakhine State in Burma. She asked us to use her picture and tell her story so the world knows what is happening there.

Her village, Tula Toli, was attacked in late August by the Burmese army on a rampage of killing and arson after Rohingya militants carried out coordinated strikes on police posts. The villagers ran when the soldiers came, but some were trapped on a river bank. Dozens, Hasina said, were murdered on the beach in front of her eyes, but the nightmare was only beginning.

The army forced Hasina and many other women to stand waist-deep in water and watch while soldiers dug a pit to burn the bodies of those they had killed. She tried to hide her infant daughter under her shawl, but a soldier noticed the baby, snatched her away and tossed her into the fire.
Hours later the soldiers took Hasina, her mother-in-law, sister-in-law and three other relatives, all children, to a nearby house. The soldiers tried to rape the women, knifing the mother-in-law to death when she resisted and beating Hasina and her sister-in-law unconscious. They beat the young children to death with spades.

When Hasina regained consciousness, she found herself inside the house. It was on fire, and she had been left locked inside by the soldiers. Her sister-in-law was alive, too. They managed to escape the flames, but with serious burns. Badly injured, they somehow made their way to Bangladesh. Both still have burn injuries. Hasina’s sister-in-law, who confirmed this horrible incident, showed us a big gash on the back of her head from when she had been beaten unconscious, and that a doctor had stitched.
Hasina insisted we take her picture and show her face to the world. For her, it is a brave act of defiance to those who sought to eliminate her and her family. Investigation by Peter N. Bouckaert and photo by Anastasia Taylor-Lind for a Human Rights Watch."

Photo Essay:
Milton Rogovin - The Forgotten Ones

In the course of researching for my PhD I come across various photographers who from time to time I will feature on Photojournalism Now. This week it's the work of American photographer Milton Rogovin, who passed away in 2011 just after his 101st birthday.

Over four decades, from 1970 to 2000, Rogovin documented the Lower West Side of Buffalo, New York, the city’s poorest area where he took portraits of those doing it tough. In his book The Forgotten Ones, Rogovin said, “Maybe my photos will encourage people to pay attention to these forgotten ones. That’s essentially why I’m doing it: we should pay attention to them and respect them. And to this extent, we (he and his wife Anne pictured below) feel that our photographs are successful”. 

Rogovin began his photography career in earnest at the age of 63. Prior to that he’d had a successful business as an optometrist, before he was accused of being a communist in the McCarthy era and called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1957. With his career as an optometrist in tatters, Rogovin picked up his camera and in 1958 he began photographing stories of social injustice. He earned a Master of Fine Arts and taught documentary photography at the University of Buffalo until 1974.

Throughout his photographic career he concentrated on the poor, believing that no one saw the “potential” he saw. Here are some of his images. 

Australian Photobook Awards and Reviews

Moments Pro, who sponsors the annual Australian and New Zealand Photobook Awards, is hosting a photobook review session at the Volume Another Art Book Fair in Sydney Saturday 14 October from 11am to 2pm. 

There are only 8 spots available. Reviewers include Kirsten Abbott from Thames & Hudson, award-winning photojournalist and artist Stephen Dupont, Diana Hill from Murdoch Books, documentary photography Lee Grant, Daniel Boetker-Smith form the Asia Pacific Photobook Archive and Ben Chadbond from Try Hard Editions. 

If you’re keen to have your book reviewed, you can sign up here.

Enter now for the Australian Photobook Awards.  Entries close 30 November.