Gaia Squarci (Italy): Broken Screen

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“When you’re losing sight, the world starts to appear fragmented, like through a broken screen. Then you stop understanding where light comes from.” – Dale Layne

The blind live in a sighted world. They function in a system constructed on the rules of seeing. Many of them could once see, but after going blind they were forced to reinvent themselves, and their quality of life became deeply affected by disability law, support in the private sphere, and the level of awareness in the society around them. Continue reading Gaia Squarci: Broken Screen →

Maja Daniels (Sweden): Mady & Monette

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Through my interest in documenting the contemporary western world, I started considering the general lack of visual representations of issues related to older generations. As I found myself in this process, I met Mady and Monette.

Monette and Mady are identical twins. They have lived their whole life closely together and are, as they say, inseparable.

I first saw them on the streets of Paris and I was instantly fascinated by their identical outfits and synchronized corporal language. Quirky and beautiful, they stood out from any crowd. As I couldn’t quite believe my eyes, I remember thinking that they might not be real. When I approached them I was not surprised to discover that they often finish each other’s sentences and that they refer to themselves as “I” instead of “we”. Neither Mady nor Monette have married or had children and they always eat the same kind of food in identical portions. Continue reading Maja Daniels: Mady & Monette →

Anna Beeke (US): Sylvania

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Across cultures and centuries, the forest has occupied a unique place in our collective imagination. Good and evil, chaos and peace, beauty and terror: these fundamental oppositions of the forest’s liminal landscape are a metaphor for the human experience. It is no surprise, then, that myth and history are rich with stories of man venturing beyond the structured limits of civilization and into chaotic labyrinth of the woods. Following this tradition, I too went into the woods in search of adventure, transcendence, the unknown, and came back with a body of photographic work called Sylvania.

Sylvania is a composite “forest-land” of photographs comprising scenes from various and sundry American woodlands. Through images of both real and depicted nature, Sylvania examines the differing characteristics of these woods while also seeking the Forest Universal rooted in them all, exploring the physical presence of the forest in the contemporary world as well as its metaphoric presence in our collective imagination. Continue reading Anna Beeke: Sylvania →

Maddie McGarvey (US): Generation Lost

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I’ve been documenting the Castos for over three years. I was initially drawn to the family dynamic of grandparents taking over the role of parents. Lorrie and Lee Casto are currently raising their three grandchildren, Sonya, 12, Paige, 6, and Seth, 5. The children’s mother, Amber, tries to be a bigger part of their lives, but too much damage has been done. Amber let her boyfriends abuse Sonya for years and lived with her in shambles.

Sonya suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after all of the abuse she endured from her mother and her boyfriends. “He beat her so hard one day that his class ring was stamped into her face for a week,” Lorrie said. “I knew I had to get those kids away from her.” Continue reading Maddie McGarvey: Generation Lost →

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 →