As we welcome people to submit photographs to Portrait of Humanity, an initiative celebrating our…
Photojournalism
“You’re always looking for that time where everybody forgets you’re there and becomes themselves. Surprisingly, they do, sometimes to the detriment of what you knew about them,” says Eugene Richards, who has devoted his career to documenting social injustice in America, and injecting himself into intensely personal situations.
Richards’ style is up-close and unflinching, “ironically it’s the process of becoming as not there as you possibly can, if you hang around long enough people don’t care”, he says. Though his photography has been described as poetic and lyrical, he has never thought of himself as an artist. “I went in with some knowledge of photography, but mostly with the idea of providing information,” he says.
The creation of a dummy is an integral process for any photographer with aims on…
Only a small percentage of the 400 books that Ben Krewinkel has collected and featured on his website, Africa in the Photobook, are actually African. Many are historical publications, political pamphlets, or children’s books, written, photographed, and published by Europeans – including old colonial texts, which seem to obsess over hairstyles and traditions of scarification. Even the books by contemporary African photographers are mostly published in the West. As a collection that covers more than a century from 1897 to 2018, Africa in the Photobook follows the changing visual representations of the continent through the medium of the photobook – and soon it too will be transformed into a series of photobooks.
Krewinkel, a Dutch photographer, curator, and educator, is working with South African publishers Fourthwall Books on this series, and hopes to publish volume I by the end of 2019. Focusing on Africa under colonialism, it will include a long historical introduction, 40 case studies, and plenty of space to show large spreads from the books. Volume II will sketch a path from the beginnings of decolonisation in the 1950s to the late 1990s, marking the end of Apartheid and also the “re-evaluation of African photography”. Krewinkel then hopes to create a third volume, focusing on contemporary African photo books.
The life expectancy of transgender women in Brazil is just 35 years old. They are…
Born in Tehran, Iran, in 1988, Hashem Shakeri studied architecture in TAFE (New South Wales Technical and Further Education Commission of Australia), and started his professional photography career in 2010. In 2015 he was Commended in the Ian Parry Scholarship, and in 2017 his images were included in the Rencontres d’Arles exhibition Iran, Year 38, alongside work by photographers such as Abbas Kiarostami and Newsha Tavakolian.
Shakeri’s ongoing series on climate change in Sistan and Balouchestan looks at the effect of drought in the Iranian province, which is located in the southeast of the country, bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan. It has been suffering from drought for the last 18 years, which has created severe famine in a region once famed for its agriculture and forests. “Nowadays, the Sistan region has faced astonishing climate change, which has turned this wide area into an infertile desert empty of people,” writes Shakeri.
“We do not need to specifically just focus on changing stereotypes of what being African is through our visual storytelling; I think that’s an additional burden that other artists from other continents are not expected to subscribe to. I do think that through our visual storytelling, whatever theme we choose, and the quality of our work, we already do so much to challenge external perceptions of the African continent,” says Ngadi Smart, one of the image-makers whose work will feature in the exhibition Foreseen: New Narratives from the African Photojournalism Database.
It’s just one of the shows in the forthcoming Nuku Photo Festival Ghana, the first event of its kind in the country. Featuring exhibitions, a conference, a portfolio review, and networking events, Nuku Photo Festival Ghana aims to “create a space for artistic explorations and exchanges”, according to the festival founder Nii Obodai. “For this first edition, we have curated a diverse programme in cooperation with local and international partners that showcases the works of 50 both established and up-and-coming photographers and visual artists.”
“The ethics for me is the backbone of what we do. If we don’t follow strict ethics within our work, I think we are damaging the credibility of the whole of this profession,” says Bénédicte Kurzen, a photographer and member of the prestigious NOOR photography collective since 2012. Now she, and seven other NOOR photographers are putting her words into action, with three masterclasses offered free of charge to budding photojournalists.
Supported by Nikon Europe, the masterclasses are four days long, and each feature three tutors. Kurzen is teaming up with Sanne De Wilde and Francesco Zizola for the masterclass in Turin, held from 12-15 November; Tanya Habjouqa, Sebastian Liste and Kadir van Lohuizen are at the masterclass held in Budapest from 26-29 November; and Tanya Habjouqa, Jon Lowenstein and Léonard Pongo are at the masterclass held in Zürich from 03-06 December.
Bangladeshi photographer and Drik Gallery director Shahidul Alam has reportedly been denied bail by a court in Dhaka.
Various local media outlets, including United News of Bangladesh, The Daily Star, and Bangla Tribune, have all reported that Judge KM Imrul Kayes of Dhaka Metropolitan Session Judge’s Court passed the order on 11 September. Public Prosecutor Mohammad Abu Abdullah moved against the bail petition, while Barrister Sarah Hossain stood for Alam – who filed the bail petition through his lawyers on 28 August, asking for it to be granted as he is ill.
EyeEm is currently the world’s largest photography competition, and this year it welcomed a record…