Photojournalism Now

June 03, 2016

Friday Round Up - 3rd June, 2016

This week Barbara Davidson, Ryuichi Hirokawa and Look 3 Festival. Plus a reminder that Auckland Festival of Photography starts this weekend. To see Photojournalism Now's preview on the festival click here.

Photo Essay: Barbara Davidson

I greatly admire the work of Los Angeles Times photojournalist Barbara Davidson so it is always a pleasure to share her work on Photojournalism Now.

Her latest story is about girls as young as 12 years who have been saved from prostitution in Bihar, the poorest state in India.

Davidson again delivers an evocative visual essay that shows how one school near the India/Nepal border is working to give these girls a brighter future.

Many of these girls were destined to become prostitutes in makeshift brothels set up in the family home, or to be sold as sex slaves.

The school, which is funded by Apne Aap and the Bihar state government, “aims to break the bonds of caste and inequality”.

You can see more images and read the full story here.
(C) All images Barbara Davidson/Los Angeles Times

Back Story: Ryuichi Hirokawa

“Palestinians made me a photojournalist,” Ryuichi Hirokawa

Perhaps today he is best known as the founder of the magazine Days Japan, but as a young university graduate, Japanese photojournalist Ryuichi Hirokawa was enamoured with the idea of living in a kibbutz so in 1967 he travelled to Israel.

He was expecting to find paradise, but instead he arrived in a time of great turmoil and not long after the Six Day War erupted.

That trip was to shape Hirokawa’s future in a way he couldn’t anticipate.

Fascinated with the ruins of an old Palestinian village that he discovered near the kibbutz he was living in, Hirokawa inadvertently began to uncover the history of the Palestinian plight.

This story has occupied him for more 40 years resulting in an extensive body of work that includes photographs, the documentary film Palestine 1948 Nakba and oral histories.

Hirokawa made his name as a photojournalist with his coverage of the massacre in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in 1982 in Lebanon.

One of the first journalists to enter the camps, Hirokawa’s 8mm footage launched his career, but by that time he was already invested in the Palestinian story.

To date Hirokawa has researched and documented the histories of around 500 villages that have vanished.

He has also set up a charity, the Japanese Committee for the Children of Palestine, which raises funds to care for orphans and to build kindergartens.

Festivals:Look 3 - Charlottesville, USA

This is definitely a must-attend photography festival that brings together exhibitions and talks with some of the most interesting photographers working today. I haven't been to Look 3 before, but it is on my to do list. Here's a peek at what's in store this year.

Look 3 Featured Artists this year include Nick Brandt, Gabriella Iturbide, Yuri Kozyrev, Frans Lanting, Sheila Pree Bright, Christopher Morris and Ruddy Roye. There's a host of artists talks and "In Conversation" series also. Check out the website for the full programme, dates and venues.

Nick Brandt’s Inherit The Dust
Nick will also be "In Conversation" with legendary photography scholar Vicki Goldberg

Graciela Iturbide's Naturata

Frans Lanting's Encounters

Sheila Pree Bright's #1960Now

Christopher Morris's War Politics Fashion
Christopher will be "In Conversation" with MaryAnne Golon too

Ruddy Roye's When Living is a Protest

Alexia Foundation 25

Celebrating 25 years supporting documentary photographers, the Alexia Foundation presents works from Aaron Vincent Elkaim's Where the River Runs Through (recipient 2016 Alexia Grant) and Mary F. Calvert's Missing in Action: Homeless Women Veteran (recipient 2014 Alexia Women’s Initiative Grant).

May 27, 2016

Friday Round Up - 27th May, 2016

Exclusive to Photojournalism Now:

This week legendary photojournalist Tim Page returns to Photojournalism Now with "Afghanistan from the Air" a series of unpublished photographs accompanied by a story written by Tim about his time in that country.

In exclusive monthly installations, Tim will showcase images from his vast archive and share his experiences with Photojournalism Now's readers.

This is a fantastic opportunity for Tim to publish work that is beyond the scope of conflict photojournalism, the genre in which he made his name.

I'm delighted to be able to feature these images and excited about the installations to come.

Tim's archive is amazing.

Just wait and see!

Alison Stieven-Taylor
May 2016

Special Feature:

AFGHANISTAN FROM THE AIR

Words and Pictures: Tim Page

Afghanistan is a brutal place, the landscape as rugged as the folk that live on a land that is only 12% arable.

It is the collision and collusion of east and west and its mountains, the Hindu Kush rise up across its entirety.

In between are sparse bits of green clinging to riversides in gorges or dusty plains.

Now and then a broad lush valley appears between ranges where war has ravaged much of the countryside over the last 40 years.

This magical land is difficult to see from its beauteous aspect, you are obliged to see devastation and dislocation, the results of a series of massive wars that have reached this frontier twixt east and west.

Where Alexander and Buddhism coursed the same valleys.

Diverse is a desultory word.

After a couple of months at the UN mission in Kabul teaching 6 young Afghan photographers, I had got to know the mission brass who invited me along on their weekly inspection trips to far flung places out of reach on dodgy roads.

District and provincial capitals that few folk visited much less were able to photograph.

The Chief of Mission had his own MI 18 on permanent stand by.

Both crew and chopper were vintage the Soviet war of the 80’s, both having the vibe of being fuelled on vodka.

At least they knew this desolate land.

You had to presume the antique patched white painted former war bird was airworthy.

Luckily, there usually were no more than 10 of us, so lots of room for fuel.

Even so we stopped off to top up in Bamiyan, Kandahar and points in between.

How this 40-year-old lump of obsolete technology was able to claw its way up to 5,000 metres I do not know.

We crossed mountain saddles at 4k, below a landscape akin to the moon.

Landing out or auto-rotating would have been fatal.

Neither crew or UN personnel seemed to give it a second thought.

After a bit I got locked into the door seat with the best piece of plexiglass in the bird.

Every vista could be composed into a frame, beyond the abstract, a dreamscape of colour and geomorphology.

Impossible pastiches fluttered into view and receded.

Mountains so old and full of resources, they looked as though they were rusting.

The horizon was jagged, some of it snow capped; the higher we climbed you could see to Kyrgyzstan, almost Pakistan.

Ethereal and beyond captivating.

I couldn’t wait for future expeditions to shoot through the winter and the spring.

Then the Taliban assaulted a U.N. guesthouse killing 8 people (5 UN staff members, 2 Afghan security personnel, 1 Afghan civilian - 3 attackers also died) and thereby curtailing all the feel good in-country missions, including the mentoring programmes.

My gig was up.

I will remember the beauty of this remarkable place through these images.

The people are a separate homage - another essay.

May 20, 2016

Friday Round Up - 20th May, 2016

This week on Friday Round Up a preview to the 2016 Auckland Festival of Photography, which runs 2-24 June plus a look at the second edition of Photo London which is on this weekend. But first a photo essay on refugees from Central America.

Photo Essay:

Joseph Sorrentino - Walking to America

Currently featured on Social Documentary Network is this insightful and at times harrowing photo essay by Joseph Sorrentino who has been documenting Central American migrants travelling through Mexico since 2012. When he began this project Sorrentino says, "the vast majority rode the cargo trains known as La Bestia: The Beast. Despite facing a horrific journey—it’s estimated that 80% of refugees were attacked, 60% of women raped, people are killed falling off trains—virtually every train had hundreds of people clinging to it."

On returning to Mexico in 2015 Sorrentino discovered the trains virtually empty. "Police, immigration agents and even army units are now preventing people from riding La Bestia, sometimes using brutal methods. These include pulling people off trains with long hooks, using Tasers and even shooting refugees. People are taking even more dangerous routes and literally walking to America". This is the refugee crisis no one is talking about says Sorrentino.

"Shame" Russ Flatt

This annual festival in the magic habour city of Auckland on New Zealand's north island goes from strength to strength. This year more than 100 exhibitions and events provide visitors with an expansive programme that features both local and international artists working across photographic genres.

The 2016 theme is HOME, which Auckland Festival of Photography's (AFP) public participation director Julia Durkin says, "is a rich and complex one to explore. In Auckland we are having to grapple with regional growth, fading dreams of home ownership, migrant hopes and expectations, and refugees searching for new identity. These elements all feed into the ‘conversation’ that this year’s HOME content provides audiences”.

AFP's Signature series of exhibitions showcases 25 New Zealand-based photographers. There are also 18 Talking Culture events with presentations from leading experts from India, China, New Zealand, Singapore, USA and Australia.

"AFP has become the most significant visual arts event in the New Zealand winter calendar...and includes but goes beyond the major galleries, involving Auckland-based photographers in its extensive fringe programme of 44 exhibitions. AFP is also building a unique archive of the region thanks to the popular appeal of AFP’s annual Nikon Auckland Photo Day competition."

New works by this year's recipient of AFP's Annual Commission by Sacred Hill, Russ Flatt, will also be premiered on opening night at Silo6 in Wynyard Quarter along with an international line up, selected by New York-based curator Simone Douglas: USA-based artist collaborative Lin +Lam, and Australia-based Shan Turner-Carrol, Shoufay Derz and Eva Marosy-Weide as well as Anna Carey, Ian Strange and Sean Lowry.

Here's a peek at what's on show. For more information on the festival visit the AFP website. To find out more about each exhibition below click on the relevant link.

Ian Strange - HOME

Shan Turner-Carroll - HOME

Arthur Ou - HOME

Laurence Aberhart - Celebrating Wood

Kate van der Drift - Eventual Efflorescence

Sim Chi Yin - The Rat Tribe

Talking Cultures Series

Oh Soon Hwa

Raymond Sagapolutele

Wen Huang PhD, Chair of Jury 2014 and co-founder China International Press Photo

Europe refugees - Sergey Ponomarev - Russia - Picture of the Year CHIPP 2016 Freelance/The New York Times

Fair:
Photo London

The second edition of Photo London opened yesterday and is on until Sunday. L'Oeil de la Photographie previewed the Fair and you can read the full story here. But for now, here are some of the visual highlights.