Photojournalism Now: women photographers

Showing posts with label women photographers. Show all posts

November 07, 2015

Friday Round Up - 6 November, 2015

This week on Friday Round Up three exhibitions feature, one in Melbourne and two in Paris. Next week I'll be posting from Paris Photo. Plus a preview to Greg Constantine's new book Nowhere People.

Exhibition:
Melbourne

John Williams - Taking a Camera for a Walk
My First 60 Years on the Streets

John Williams describes himself as “an historian who makes pictures and a picture maker who writes history…History can never be absolute fact, any more than photography tells truths or simply describes facts. The best the individual photographer/historian can hope for is to accumulate and interpret aspects of time and place. In his or her turn, the viewer-cum-reader brings to the image-cum-text a raft of accumulated beliefs and prejudices that enable the possibility of a whole new set of readings and interpretations beyond those imagined by the author”.

During the mid-70’s Williams, who was married to Australian photographer Ingeborg Tyssen, was the co-founder of The Photographers Gallery in South Yarra. His earliest work was captured in square format on a Rolleicord TLR and forms part of this exhibition.

This is the first exhibition of William’s work in Melbourne since his retrospective at the NGV in 1991 and he says “Treat these as an old man’s cry of alarm and sigh of resignation. Enough to say that I’m not finished yet with either the streets or the anti-landscapes to which they led me”.

Until 28 November
Artist Talk: Saturday 7 November

CF Gallery
409-429 Gore St
Fitzroy

Paris:

Who’s Afraid of Women Photographers
Musée de L’Orangerie and Musée D’Orsay
Until 24 January

A brilliant collection from some of the earliest female photographers and photojournalists.

Bishareen children Egypt 1914 Helen Messinger Murdoch

Self-portrait c1896 Frances Benjamin Johnston

New York c1940 Helen Levitt

President Roosevelt, 1904 Jessie Tarbox Beals

Trude and I masked, short skirts, 1891 Alice Austen

Vivien and Merlin 1874 Julia Margaret Cameron

We are Three Women. We are Three Million Women 1938 Barbara Morgan

Young Suffragettes 1909 Christina Broom

Magnum Photos and UNEP Exhibition

Above: (C) Paolo Pellegrin, eco-district France

In the lead to the COP21 climate summit in Paris this exhibition portrays the problems and some of the solutions for climate change. Commissioned by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) this group show features the work of ten Magnum photographers - Jonas Bendiksen, Michael Christopher Brown, Bieke Depoorter, Thomas Dworzak, Chien Chi Chang, Stuart Franklin, Sohrab Hura, Moises Saman, Paolo Pellegrin and Jerome Sessin.

Until 4 January, 2016
Musée de l'Homme
17 Place du Trocadéro et du 11 Novembre
Paris, 75116

Book Preview:
Greg Constantine - Nowhere People

Over the past decade Canadian-American photographer Greg Constantine has travelled to 18 countries documenting some of the 12 million people who live without citizenship. These stateless people live on the fringes, unable to officially work, receive aid or health care or education.

Constantine says his interest in statelessness was sparked when he was living in Tokyo in 2005. “One of the first stories I worked on as a photographer was North Korean refugees. Most of the North Korean refugees I met in South-east Asia were women giving birth to children in China. The children were not North Korean citizens, they were not considered Chinese citizens, and until they actually set foot on South Korean soil, they would not be considered citizens of South Korea either, so really these kids were stateless”.

Since then Constantine has worked with NGOs, and received grants from the likes of the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, Open Society and others to help fund this massive undertaking. This work forms the basis to his new book Nowhere People which was released this week and is available from nowherepeople.org and Amazon.com.

“The intention of the...books is not so much to chronicle my work. They're really designed to let these people tell their stories and let my photos weave in and out of their testimonies,” he concludes.

March 06, 2015

Friday Round Up - 6th March, 2015

"The story of women's struggle for equality belongs to no single feminist nor to any one organization but to the collective efforts of all who care about human rights" Gloria Steinem

This week Friday Round Up celebrates International Women’s Day (March 8) by featuring the work of a diverse group of female photographers – Darcy Padilla, Mary F. Calvert, Farzana Hossen, Katie Orlinsky, Stephanie Sinclair, Louise Whelan, Nicola Dracoulis, Fatemeh Behboudi, Viviane Dalles and Shiho Fukada. Plus Christina Brown who was the first UK press photographer at the turn of the last century.

Darcy Padilla
The Julie Project

Based in San Francisco, Darcy is a multi-award winner who after internships with the New York Times and Washington Post, chose the precarious life of a documentary photographer. More than 20 years on her commitment to what can only be considered a vocation is unwavering and best evidenced in her long term story The Julie Project which she began in 1993 and pursued for 21 years. In this story Darcy chronicles the life of single mother Julie Baird whom she met when Julie was living on the streets; a poverty stricken teenager, strung out on heroin, and suffering from AIDS. This story is not only the portrayal of one woman’s struggle with the hand dealt her, but also a profound commentary on the lives of those living on the margins.

Mary F. Calvert
The Battle Within: Sexual assault in America’s military
Part 1: The Hearings. Part 2: The Survivors

American Mary F. Calvert has invested years pursuing her story about sexual abuse in the US armed forces. The numbers cited are horrific – in the last year alone 26,000 women were raped and sexually assaulted in the American armed forces. Mary says “most military rape survivors are forced out of service and many are even compelled to continue working with their rapists”. Mary’s project is split into two parts – the Hearings (only one in ten cases reported goes to trial) and the Survivors, many suffer MST (Military Stress Trauma) – ‘depression, substance abuse, paranoia and feelings of isolation’. Suicide rates are also high.

Farzana Hossen
Lingering Scars

Based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Farzana’s photo essay “Lingering Scars” portrays women who have been horrifically scared from acid attacks and other horrendous acts of violence often perpetrated by their husbands and other male relatives. “There are scores of new acid attacks and burn victims arriving everyday at the hospital. In addition to disfigurement of the face and body, some have permanent loss of eyesight; some will never be able to eat with their mouth…In Bangladesh, reports of violence against women is on the rise…and is sanctioned by both society and the state…in the name of culture, tradition and religious practices, women are usually forced to live with their abusive spouse to maintain social norms”.

Katie Orlinsky
Bought and Sold in Nepal

A native of New York, photographer and cinematographer Katie Orlinsky focuses on contemporary social issues and her investigations have taken her all over the world. Her photo essay Bought and Sold in Nepal exposes the trafficking of women who are sold into servitude. In Nepal the social devaluation of women, coupled with endemic poverty, has seen tens of thousands of young girls and women smuggled from their homeland into India where they end up enslaved the red light districts of India’s teeming metropolises such as Mumbai.

Stephanie Sinclair
Too Young to Wed

In more than 50 countries millions of girls as young as six years old are still forced into marriage with adult men. These girls face a life of abuse and torment. Uneducated, marginalized and persecuted by the families into which they are married, child brides lose their chance to be children free to play and explore, they lose the opportunity to better themselves and are denied basic human rights. American photographer Stephanie Sinclair has made this story her life’s work and her powerful body of work allows these innocent young girls to have a voice.

Louise Whelan
African/Australians

This series of portraits is the next installment in a project that Sydney photographer Louise Whelan has been working on for several years; documenting the multiplicity of nationalities that make up the face of modern Australia. These portraits feature people from Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Liberia, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Sudan and South Sudan, encapsulating the diversity of Australia’s African migrant population.

In this series Louise has combined both her documentary practice as well as her fine art portraiture, creating real depth in the narrative. These portraits are rich, not only through Louise’s masterful use of colour, but in their celebration of the courage of those who have left behind everything they’ve known to make a new life.

Melbourne photographer Nicola Dracoulis’ exploration of nine young people living in Rio’s favelas is gripping. Shot in 2006 and 2013 in this series of portraits Nicola revisits the same people seven years apart capturing both the changes in individuals and their habitats.

In this poignant black and white photo essay, Iranian photographer Fatemeh Behboudi has photographed Iranian mothers who still mourn the loss of their beloved sons who never returned from the Iran Iraq war in the 1980s. She says many of these mothers believe they communicate with their sons in their dreams, so deep and ever present is their grief.

In 2012 while French social documentary photographer Viviane Dalles was in Australia she worked on several personal projects including this story of a young refugee, Farkhonda, who came to Australia with her family when she was ten years old. Twelve years later at the age of 22 years, Fakhonda completed her studies at University and planned her return to Afghanistan. Viviane documented her life in Australia and also visited Farkhonda in Kabul, where she is now employed with the Ministry for Foreign Affairs (Afghanistan) in Kabul and active in working to help her people.

Shiho Fukada
Japan’s Disposable Workers: Lost in Global Unemployment

Japanese photojournalist Shiho Fukada's work on Japan's Disposable Workers highlights the plight of those who work without security, in temporary jobs where they are considered "disposable". But this label extends beyond to the workforce to their personal lives where many live in isolation and poverty shunned by wider society. At a time when the economic models around the world are failing and governments and businesses have forgotten that people should come before money, this photo essay is a sobering reality and perhaps even more poignant given its setting - Japan - which has in the past been admired for its values, which are being lost to that country’s economic meltdown. Shiho is a Pulitzer Grantee.

Suffragette 1909

In a career that spanned 36 years, Christina Broom took around 40,000 photographs focusing on social issues such as the Suffragette processions as well as images of the First World War. She also covered general news stories.