Elodie Chrisment (FR): Pleasure Places Paris
Inge Morath Award Finalist, 2014

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“Nauseous smells do not proceed from the most disreputable worlds” Antoine d’Agatha, Le Désir du Monde.

At first a formal approach born from my passion for interstitial spaces, nonprogrammed architecture, which is used every day by thousands of men and women, builders by necessity. Beneath the Bois de Boulogne trees, it appears as improvised tents that you can have a glimpse from the street, fabric stretched between trees.

That’s where the first steps of architecture and construction occur, through those marginalized women deep in the woods, right by the walk paths used by normal people living in the very close capital. Continue reading Elodie Chrisment: Pleasure Places Paris →

Shannon Jensen (US): A Long Walk
Inge Morath Award Recipient, 2014

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Ongoing attacks by the Sudanese Armed Forces and supported militias have driven hundreds of thousands of refugees into South Sudan from their homes in the Sudanese border states of Blue Nile and South Kordofan, where conflict reignited in June 2011 between Khartoum and SPLA-North, the northern remnant of the southern liberation movement.

I was present at the border of Blue Nile during an influx of 30,000 men, women and children in June 2012. Many had never left the vicinity of their villages before shelling, aerial bombardments, and soldiers drove them away the previous September. For months, families traveled back and forth from the forest to the mountains, rarely spending more than a week in one place, until they finally made the long trek to South Sudan’s northern border. With them, they carried stories of grandparents left behind and brothers who never returned from fetching water; days in hiding and nights of walking; treasured possessions lost and herds of livestock stolen. Continue reading Shannon Jensen: A Long Walk →

Annie Flanagan (USA): Hey, Best Friend!

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On September 20, 2012 I met Nekqua; that night Brittney’s father was killed in a work related accident. The next day, when I met up with Nekqua outside of the South West Community center in Syracuse, she had finished all of her homework and was leaning against a fence wearing a near see-through, white, button up t-shirt, that was revealing her leopard print bra that matched her headband. In her left hand was a banana, in her right a brown paper bag. “What’s for lunch?” I asked. “Condoms” she replied, “I can’t be a godmother again, so, I have to drop off condoms at my best friend’s house.” Continue reading Annie Flanagan: Hey, Best Friend! →

Ioana Cirlig (Romania): Post-Industrial Romania

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Post-Industrial Romania is a long term study of deindustrialization and it’s effects in Romania. In over 40 years of communism Romania was heavily industrialized. Every town had a industrial center and people from all over the country were moved to urbanize the areas around mines and factories. Huge industrial centers were built in rural areas, changing the landscape completely. The factory workers and the miners were the country’s pride, idealized and portrayed as heroes. Mining areas were rich, people had the biggest salaries and there was never a lack of food in these places, not even in the late 80’s, the poorest time during Ceausescu’s regime. In 1989 there were 8 million people working in Romania, now

only 4 million are employed. Young people are migrating to Western Europe, mostly to Spain, Italy, Germany or France. After ’89, in the transition from communism to a market economy, almost all the industrial centers have been closed, leaving whole communities jobless. A black market for iron was created and the buildings quickly turned to ruins. Mono industrial communities suffer a severe depression after the loss of the central activity. Continue reading Ioana Cîrlig: Post-Industrial Romania →

Mimi Cherono Ng’ok (Kenya): Untitled

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‘Untitled’ is a collection of photographs taken between 2008 and 2013 when I returned to Kenya. Using analog photography I document occupied and empty spaces in relationship to myself, and those close to me; I map personal memory and intimacy from a Kenyan middle class perspective. Implying a visual diary, my photographs include the emotions attached to seeing a familiar place, friends and family and the associated nostalgia. Rather than a reconciliation, this series is an oscillation between shared narratives and a personal story. I attempt to define ‘home’ in an accumulative way, by shooting landscapes, architecture, family members, still life(s), self-portraits and domestic spaces, creating photographs intersecting experience, memory, fiction and nostalgia. Inspired by my daily surroundings, recollections of growing up middle class in Nairobi, and the experience of returning to what was once familiar and is now distant, my work functions as an exploratory dialogue between my country and I.

Juliette Lynch (USA): Carcinoma in Familia

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Her son was barely one; her daughter about to enter preschool. The water covered her body as she ran her fingers over her skin, to check again that what she felt was real. It was Saturday morning, Father’s Day, and a routine shower became a moment fixed in time as Rebecca felt the lump in her right breast. She didn’t tell her husband for three days.

The doctors told her it was carcinoma in situ and invasive ductal carcinoma. It was a rare, aggressive, genetic form of breast cancer. Stage 3. She would need a bilateral mastectomy, two types of chemo, radiation, and a lengthy list of drugs to follow. Recovery would take years. Continue reading Juliette Lynch: Carcinoma in Familia →

Ana Andrade (Mexico): Ñongos

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Ñongo (adj. Said of a situation or dealing: Insecure, uncertain, riddled with difficulties or obstacles). Term utilized by the inhabitants of the Tijuana river canalization in reference to the ephemeral refuge constructed with their own hands.

The canal, a location where the dividing line between Mexico and the United States begins, also known as “el bordo” given its location, is used by deportees as a waiting area before they try returning to the United States. The majority awaits resources from their family members to enlist the aid of a “pollero,” others wait for fog so they can try to cross on their own. Therefore, due to their desperation, the majority turns to drug pushing for a living and end up living at the river for years, some of them ‘till death. Continue reading Ana Andrade: Ñongos →