Elizabeth Moreno (Mexico): Close to Earth

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This project documents a slice of the culture and life of the Baja California peninsula rancheros (in Mexico), focusing on the particular fusion between past and present that they experience today—a fragile equilibrium that is about to be broken by the forces of globalization.

The rancheros and their families live mainly of the land, sometimes hours away from the closest town or paved road. Descendants of Spanish settlers who were brought to the peninsula by the Jesuits in the late 1700s and the native inhabitants of the peninsula, these families have maintained their unique heritage and customs, which have been shaped by adapting to life in a rarely abundant and often inhospitable land, over centuries. Continue reading Elizabeth Moreno: Close to Earth →

Francesca Cao (Italy): The Lion of Central Asia

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Kazakhstan is the ninth country in the world for extension. Its history begins with the nomads in the steppe until the Russian invasion in 1890, which persists until the fall of the Soviet Union and the election of president Nazarbayev in 1991, who declares the Republic of Kazakhstan.

The first oil discovery is dated 1979, when Kazakhstan was part of the Soviet Union, but considered a giant desert for nuclear garbage. In the past twenty-eight years, everything changed for Kazakh people. The fall of the Soviet Union in fact had many hard consequences on the population, result of the country’s total dependence. From 1991 the main export becomes oil and in 2003 they are valuated more than 7 billion dollars, representing 65% of the total. Continue reading Francesca Cao: The Lion of Central Asia →

Chloe Dewe Mathews (UK): Caspian

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Languishing quietly between two great continents, the Caspian is the world’s largest inland sea. In 2010 I travelled to its edge, to the point where Asia dissolves into Europe. For centuries, surrounding powers have laid claim to the region; first the Ottomans, the Persians, the Mongols and most recently Soviet Russia. These Empires have ebbed and flowed, each one leaving its mark on this enigmatic landscape.

In the 10th Century, oil was discovered on the Caspian coast near Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, and has been exploited ever since. The boom of the late 90’s brought the current wave of prosperity to the area. However, Caspian crude oil is not only used conventionally as fuel: since long before mechanized extraction it has provided a curious health treatment. Continue reading Chloe Dewe Mathews: Caspian →

Anne Golaz (Finland): Hunting Games

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My approach to the “hunting games” began with a strong aesthetic fascination. Initially, I am not coming from the world of hunting and I am not part of the initiated people. But I wondered what could really signify this practice nowadays and further than the stereotypes? How to represent hunting in a modern society, where it is a very deeply contradicted subject? How to stage this universe without creating an expected and sterile polemic? The ambiguous admiration, with its repulsive part, that I felt for hunting was the main motor of my work. I choose to react as free as possible, mixing a documentary approach with suggested and sometimes ironical pictures. But especially creating some staged and theatrical photographs, with a dramatic and imposing atmosphere. Continue reading Anne Golaz: Hunting Games →

Katie Orlinsky (USA): Innocence Assassinated: Living in Mexico’s Drug War

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In 2006, newly elected Mexican President Felipe Calderon declared war on the drug cartels. His intension was to take a stand against the violence, corruption and drug trafficking that had been increasing since 2000. Seven decades of one-party rule in Mexico ended and shifted the balance of power amongst drug cartels and corrupt officials. But Calderon’s war on drug cartels has only made the situation worse. Mexico’s drug war is more than an armed conflict. It is a humanitarian crisis that has changed the lives of countless innocent people. The total drug war death toll has now reached over 30,000 people, and behind every murdered victim there is a family left to live with the consequences. Continue reading Katie Orlinsky: Innocence Assassinated →

Gauri Gill (India): Balika Mela, Lunkaransar, 2003/2010

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I have photographed in rural Rajasthan for twelve years now, in villages, homes and families that treated me as their own. Although I chose to work independently, over the years I developed a relationship with various NGOs (non governmental organisations), including Urmul Setu Sansthan, in Lunkaransar. They have a bare bones campus in what used to be a one-camel town, albeit one with a busy National Highway running through it: simple, white blocks laid out in sandy soil, one of them a guest house that I knew I could stay in whenever I passed through, and where I was asked to pay whatever I could afford at the particular time. The stark setting placed into relief the various individuals inhabiting the campus, drawn there either by a greater motivation or personal circumstance. We were all fugitives from the world at large, for varying lengths of time, along with our dreams and accompanying disenchantments; ideas, plans and schemes were constantly afoot. The overarching utopian idea at Urmul remained Gram Sewa, or ‘in the service of the village’. Continue reading Gauri Gill: Balika Mela, Lunkaransar, 2003/2010 →

Zhe Chen (China): Bees
Inge Morath Award Recipient, 2011

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They left their lives in the very wounds they had created for themselves.
– Virgil (Roman poet, 70BC – 19BC)

To jeopardize existence for existence itself: ‘Bees’ records a marginalized group of people in China, who, faced with chaos, violence, alienation and irredeemable loss in life, feel propelled to leave physical traces and markings on their bodies, in order to preserve and corroborate a pure and sensitive mind from within.

In 2010, having ‘The Bearable’ (a photo series documenting my own self-inflictions over the past 4 years) as my passport, I had the opportunity to develop a close relationship with some of these obstinate souls – the bees. During the process of exchanging secrets with them, I crossed paths with certain possibilities that were formerly untouched but towards which I had struggled greatly in my personal life. I’m struck by the unyielding actions and reactions that the bees carry on with while encountering sudden and acute emotional fluxes, and moved by the recurrent effort they make to recover themselves afterwards. No matter how different our lives seem to be, we undoubtedly share common psychological experiences. Continue reading Zhe Chen: Bees →

Isabelle Pateer (Netherlands): Unsettled

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The documentary series Unsettled focuses in a metaphoric way on the idea of “progress” in a case where living environment and heritage have to disappear because of industrial purposes. Within this project this international tendency is illustrated by focusing on the Belgian village Doel and the surrounding polder area. The place is threatened by vast expansions of the port of Antwerp and related nature compensation plans, which installs an artificial contrast between nature and culture.

Unsettled illustrates this actual case in an indirect way, exceeding a pure documentary approach. It shows portraits of young inhabitants alternated by landscapes which bare witness to the transformed state of the area. Leaving a sourish taste by contrasting the young with the local changes, they symbolize the international tendency of global political and economic shifts and the way they manifest themselves to the people and their surroundings. Continue reading Isabelle Pateer: Unsettled →

Helena Schaetzle (Germany): 9645 Kilometres Memory

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“History is alive as long as our memory is alive.”
Konstantin Isaakow, Moskau

Almost every person in Europe has part of their family history connected to World War II happenings. With the dying out of the last living witnesses of this time, we are entering an age of forgetting and overcoming our past. The aim of this project is not just to remind of that time and the remains still perceivable in today’s society, but also to close a circle of time with personal records and memories of still living witnesses in photographic and text form. Thus, to overcome prejudices and look beyond, seeing the personal experiences and memories rather than the memories and experiences of a certain nation.

In the Second World War, from 1939 to 1945 more than 50 million people were killed. Most of them were civilians or politically and racially persecuted people like Jews, homosexuals or Roma. The biggest loss happened on the Soviet side, where about 27 million people died. This was mainly caused by the cruel war strategy of the Germans, which showed in the way they treated prisoners of war or in the systematic execution of people by the SS. The “Generalplan Ost” put on to record the elimination and oppression of people from the East European states. But the high loss of Soviet people was also caused by the ruthless command of Stalin. Continue reading Helena Schaetzle: 9645 Kilometres Memory →