Friday Round Up - 15 April, 2016

This week on Friday Round Up - Winners of Chris Hondros Award, inaugural Magnum Photography Awards, Grief and Glory at Magnet Melbourne and Donna Ferrato's unfailing commitment to expose domestic violence.


Awards:
Chris Hondros Award

(C) Bryan Denton

Award-winning freelance photographer Bryan Denton is the recipient of this year’s Chris Hondros Fund Award, which was established in honour of Getty Images photojournalist Chris Hondros who was killed in 2011 while on assignment in Libya. 

Denton is a regular contributor to the New York Times and has worked throughout the Middle East, Africa, South East Asia and Afghanistan. Iranian photographer Kiana Hayeri is the recipient of the award in the Emerging Photographer category. Both will use their awards to pursue longterm projects. 

(C) Kiana Hayeri

Magnum Photography Awards

Magnum co-founder Henri Cartier-Bresson

In 2017 Magnum Photos celebrates its 70th anniversary. In the lead to a year which will feature numerous events and exhibitions, the inaugural Magnum Photography Awards has been launched and is now accepting entries. Magnum has joined with LensCulture to present these awards. There will be 12 Winners and 20 Finalists from Documentary, Street, Portrait, Fine Art, Photojournalism and Open categories. In addition, the jury will select 7 photographers as "Jurors’ Picks” and award 5 "Student Spotlight” awards to young, up-and-coming talents. Enter here.


Exhibition: Melbourne

Grief and Glory - Victoria’s Unseen Anzac Photographic Treasures

Until 2 May
Magnet Galleries
Level 2
640 Bourke Street
Melbourne

Photographer & Activist:
Donna Ferrato - I Am Unbeatable

(C) Donna Ferrato

In 1982 American photographer Donna Ferrato took a photo assignment that changed her life. Shooting for Playboy Japan, Ferrato photographed the open marriage of a couple living in New Jersey. What she discovered wasn’t a happy-go-lucky lifestyle, but one of hidden domestic violence. 

More than 30 years later she is still fighting for the rights of women who are victims of domestic violence. Her series I Am Unbeatable celebrates those women who have left their abusers, but that’s only part of the story. Watch this incredible video on The Atlantic to learn more about her unrelenting commitment.

(C) Donna Ferrato

(C) Donna Ferrato


(C) Donna Ferrato


(C) Donna Ferrato

(C) Donna Ferrato

Friday Round Up - 26th February, 2016

This week on Friday Round Up - Daniella Zalcman wins the 2016 FotoEvidence Book Award, Stephen Dupont wins the POYi Best Photography Book Award and the Australian Photobook of the Year (Trade Category) for Generation AK: The Afghanistan Wars and Jordan Madge wins Australian Photobook of the Year in the self-publishing category. Plus the first solo show in US for Brian Griffin opens at Steven Kasher Gallery in New York and some interesting weekend reading on what's happening in the media.

Stephen Dupont Generation AK: The Afghanistan Wars wins 
POYi Best Photography Book Award and Australian Photobook of the Year (Trade)

Brian Griffin exhibition opens at Steven Kasher Gallery New York

Daniella Zalcman wins 2016 FotoEvidence Book Award for Signs of Your Identity

Book Awards:
It's been a busy few months judging book awards - first was the task of reviewing the entries for the 2016 FotoEvidence Book Award and earlier this month I was a judge for the Australian Photobook of the Year Awards, which were announced last night at the new gallery space for Photobook Melbourne.

FotoEvidence Book Award

It was an honour to be part of the jury for this important social justice photography award and I am delighted to share some of the images from the winner Daniella Zalcman's Signs of Your Identity project. 

Zalcman took a different visual approach for this narrative creating double exposure portraits, which I found highly engaging and accessible. In telling difficult, often complex stories, it is critical to draw the audience in and make them want to know more, to understand what is going on. I believe Zalcman achieved this with her project, which documents stories of indigenous Canadians who were placed in boarding schools run by the Anglican Church in order to force their assimilation into the dominant culture. 

In Signs of Your Identity Zalcman juxtaposes portraits of survivors who are still fighting to overcome the memories of their residential school experiences, with the sites where those schools once stood. In these portraits she also incorporates government documents that enforced strategic assimilation and points out that even today First Nations people struggle to access services that should be available to all Canadians.

The jury also selected four finalists who will be exhibited with Daniella Zalcman's project at the 2016 FotoEvidence Book Award Exhibit in New York in November when Signs of Your Identity will be released as book.

The finalists are:

Narciso Contreras for “Yemen: the Forgotten War”
Mario Cruz for “Talibes, Modern Day Slaves”
Hossein Fatemi for “An Iranian Journey”
Ingetje Tadros for “This is My Country”

Australian Photobook of the Year - Trade & Self-Publishing

Judging these awards involved reviewing physical copies of books that were printed as well as those that were hand constructed. There were a lot of different forms, styles, textures and concepts, which sparked lively debate as to what a photobook actually is. A conversation that continues. 

This year there were two categories for the Australian Photobook Awards presented by Momento Pro Sydney and Photobook Melbourne - trade and self-publishing. 

Winner - Trade Category

Stephen Dupont

Award-winning photojournalist Stephen Dupont was named as this year's winner in the Trade Category for his epic work, Generation AK: The Afghanistan Wars 1993-2012 published by Steidl. This heavy tome pays testament to Dupont's unfailing dedication and commitment to long form photojournalism. I'm looking forward to reviewing this book in the next Photojournalism Now: Book Review feature. Generation AK: The Afghanistan Wars 1993-2012 also won POYi Best Photography Book Award. 

Winner - Self-Publishing

Jordan Madge

A former Photography Studies College student, Jordan Madge won for his book Red Herring, which was a semi-fictional narrative centred on the disappearance of a young girl in Central Victoria (Australia) in 2009. The narrative in Red Herring is cleverly woven to build suspense and lead the reader on a journey that is at once a product of their imagination and also forensic. Visit Jordan's website here.

Exhibition: New York
Brian Griffin: Capitalist Realism 
Brian Griffin, Bureaucracy, London, 1987
Courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery, New York

Brian Griffin, Businessman, London, 1990 
Courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery, New York

Brian Griffin, London By Night #29, London, 1987 

Courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery, New York

This is the first solo exhibition in the USA of renowned British photographer Brian Griffin who is most well known for his work in the 1970s that focused on the worldwide disruption of globalisation.

To capture the heroes and victims of Thatcherism and globalisation, Griffin invented a new photographic style, Capitalist Realism, parodying Socialist Realism. In this style Griffin’s photographs embody the essence of the decade, modish white-collars, rock bands suited up in business-casual and tin lunch-pail toting masons. Inspired by the bureaucratic and claustrophobic world of Kafka, by the French filmmaker Jacques Tati and by German Expressionist cinema, Griffin turned the workplaces in which he photographed into stages and his subjects into actors.

Griffin was recognised early on as one of the key British photographers of the 70s and 80s with The Guardian claiming in 1989 that Griffin was “the photographer of the decade", a sentiment echoed by the British Journal of Photography in 2005 who said Griffin was “the most influential British portrait photographer of the last decades.” Ten years later the World Photography Organisation labelled Griffin one of Britain’s “most influential photographers".

Brian Griffin, Eric Foster, Steel Erector, Broadgate, City of London, 1987

Courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery, New York

Brian Griffin, Construction Time Again, Switzerland , 1983
Courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery, New York

Brian Griffin, A Broken Frame, England, 1982
Courtesy Steven Kasher Gallery, New York

In 1975, along with Martin Parr, Paul Graham, Graham Smith, Jo Spence and Victor Burgin, Griffin was included in the most important exhibition devoted to contemporary British photography: Young British Photographers at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford. Since that time he’s had numerous exhibitions and won multiple awards including the Freedom of the City of Arles award during the photo festival Les Rencontres d’Arles in 1987.

This exhibition features over 75 photographs, black and white and colour. If you’re in New York this is a must-see.

Until 9 April
Steven Kasher Gallery
515 W. 26th St., New York, NY 10001 

Weekend Reading:

Here are a few links to some interesting stories I've come across recently.

Next Step into Digital News Age by LA Times

BBC to Axe Television and Radio Divisions as Part of a Radical Management Overhaul

How BuzzFeed's Jonah Peretti is Building a 100-Year Media Company

Reddit Hires Twitter's Former News Manager as Head of Journalism and Media

Friday Round Up - 22 January, 2016

Welcome to the first Friday Round Up for 2016. Now in its fourth year, Friday Round Up has featured hundreds of photographers from around the world and showcased work that encapsulates the diversity of photojournalism today.

It’s always worthwhile to look back on the year that was before plunging into a new one so this week features highlights from 2015. Plus Head On Photo Awards are now open and Riga Photomonth calls for submissions.

The Year That Was - Photojournalism Now's 2015 Highlights

In no order of preference, the following selection is made from the numerous photo essays featured on the blog last year. 


Katie Orlinsky Bought and Sold in Nepal


Mary F. Calvert The Battle Within: Sexual Assault in America's Military

Chris Jordan Intolerable Beauty

Darcy Padilla The Julie Project

Sean Gallagher The Toxic Price of Leather

James Hosking Beautiful by Night

Paul Kitagaki Jr Japanese American Internment Survivors

Greg Kahn Cuba

Richard Ross Girls in Justice

Robin Hammond Where Love is Illegal

Arnau Bach Suburbia

Evgenia Arbugaeva Weatherman

Louise Whelan African/Australian

Emilio Fraile The Fate of Electronic Waste

Timothy Fadek Requiem for a Dive Bar

Magnus Wennman Where the Children Sleep

Stephen Mallon Next Stop Atlantic

Tom Hussey Reflections

Call for Entries:

Head On Photo Awards 2016

This year there are four award categories with a total prize pool of $50,000. Categories: portrait, landscape, mobile and students. The Awards are open to professional and emerging photographers, photojournalists and artists. Deadline is 28 February. Visit the website for more details.

Riga Photomonth
The second edition of Riga Photomonth will be held this year in Latvia in May. Organisers are calling for entries under the themes of Territories, Borders and Checkpoints. Deadline 1 February. To find out more visit the site here.