Projects
SLEEPING SOLDIERSTim Hetherington
From 2007 to 2008, Tim followed the deployment of a group of U.S. soldiers stationed in the remote Korengal valley in northeastern Afghanistan. The platoon founded an outpost on a rocky mountain outcrop. There was no road up to the outpost, and it took an hours walk to reach the valley floor. Everyone had this fear that they might be overrun in the night. During my time with them, 70% of the platoon was taking some kind of mood-enhancing or sleep-affecting medication, says Tim. Cut off and in an extreme situation, these men welcomed me into their lives. I worked, ate, and slept among them--slowly gaining their trust and access into their lives. These images are a result of that intimacy.
BACK ON THE BLOCK
Brenda Ann Kenneally
Back on the Block is a series of video-works from Brendas project The Raw File. During the seven years that Brenda lived on the border of Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, New York, she photographed, wrote about, and videoed the families on her block. Her reporting resulted in a book and web publication entitled Money, Power, Respect: Pictures of My Neighborhood. The years that followed the publication of Money, Power, Respect have been critical in the lives of the people it documented: children on the brink of adulthood and their parents, who are always dangerously close to the edge.
Later on, Brenda got the feeling that Money, Power, Respect served only to introduce her neighbors to the larger world, and that their real stories began after the publication of the book was well underway. I felt a responsibility to document the results of the stories I began to tell in the book, and the web has made possible the idea that publications no longer need to be finite, she says. The after-stories she captured were edited into a series of mini movies called Back on the Block. In a way, Back on the Block is Brendas report on the progress her chosen characters have made during the four years after their stories were first told.
WALL STREET: The Downward Spiral
Paolo Pellegrin / Magnum In Motion
During the month of October, 2008, Paolo Pellegrin was commissioned by Newsweek magazine to photograph the New York Stock Exchange and its surrounding streetsfrom the Opening Bell to the Closing Bell. He describes the outcome of his encounters on Wall Street as a collage of close-up faces with lost gazes, and quasi-abstract architecture.
Paolos images are layered with the voice of George Soros from an interview on PBS ?ill Moyers Journal. Soros, 78, is the chairman of Soros Fund Management and the author of The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means.
inmotion.magnumphotos.com/essay/downward-spiral
LIBERA ME
Alex Majoli / Magnum In Motion
Libera Me is an exploration of separation and loss, of human wandering between heaven and hell. This work was inspired by Pirandellos play Six Characters in Search of an Author. Pirandellos imaginary characters lead an existence of their own, irrespective of the will of the author who brought them to life. Libera Me incorporates the theme of reality turning into a play itself, and human beings ultimately becoming their own main dramatis personae.
inmotion.magnumphotos.com/essay/libera-me-0
LAST DAYS OF W
Alec Soth / Magnum In Motion
During these last days of the administration, what is the point of protest, satire or any other sort of rabble-rousing, Alec says about his self-published artist book printed on newsprint in 2008. In assembling this collection of pictures Ive made over the last eight years, Im not really trying to accomplish much at all. But as President Bush once said, One of the great things about books is, sometimes there are some fantastic pictures. In Last Days of W, Alecs images are paired with Bushisms, which refer to mispronunciations, and unconventional words and phrasings by George W. Bush.
inmotion.magnumphotos.com/essay/last-days-w
SILICON FOREST
Christopher Anderson / Magnum In Motion
In 1958, the USSR constructed a remote Siberian town, Akademgorodok (Academic City), where scientists were placed to advance Soviet scientific research. There, in a Siberian forest, top Soviet scientists worked on theoretical genetics, the Soviet space program, and the development of nuclear weapons directed at the United States. When the USSR crumbled in 1991, Akademgorodoks scientists redirected their skills at capitalism, by providing technical support to Western firms.
Christopher Anderson went to Silicon Forest to create the collective portrait of its people, denizens of what was once the intellectual heart of the USSR. Silicon Forest portrays how Akademgorodok exists today. The soundtrack of the essay is taken from current and Cold War-era shortwave radio transmissions, gleaned from the Conet Project collection.
inmotion.magnumphotos.com/essay/silicon-forest
ONE IN 8 MILLION
Todd Heisler / The New York Times
One in 8 Million is a collaboration between Todd Heisler and the New York Times. Starting in January 2009, the Times multimedia editorial team began presenting the lives of New Yorkers in a weekly multimedia series, One in 8 Million. Each week in 2009, NYTimes.com posted a new profile of one of the eight million people living in New York City, featuring stories of their passions and problems, relationships and routines, vocations and obsessions. Simple as it is, the idea is a lively example of how the online medium can be harnessed to create a new, constantly evolving category of stories.
The series combined traditional elements of great journalismfascinating characters, compelling storylines, transporting photographswith a new and striking multimedia interface that weaves together audio, images, and readers conversations.
LAVVOS AND REINDEER
Erika Larsen
Lavvos and Reindeer is a meditative documentary on life in Arctic regions. Erika says that she came to the Arctic on a search to understand the primal drive of the modern hunter by taking an inclusive look at an original hunter-gatherer nomadic society. To make the project work, she had to fully immerse herself in the environment she wanted to study; she now spends entire seasons in the area, living with a Sami family of reindeer owners and sharing their daily routine, with all its joys, worries, and hardships. These long-term encounters have afforded Erika a rare, insiders perspective on the beauty and power of this land.
THE BIG ISSUE
Samuel Bollendorff
In an investigation that takes us from one side of the Atlantic to the other, The Big Issue invites the Internet user to confront multiple factors of the obesity epidemic. How do our modern lifestyles contribute to the problem? What is the responsibility of the agri-business industry and of public powers?
Ultimately, this unique journey draws on critical skills of the Internet user by inviting him/her to take on the role of a journalist. It encourages the viewer to arrive at an opinion about obesity, about the fatality of this illness, and to consider the actions that will halt this international epidemic as quickly as possible.
honkytonk.fr/index.php/thebigissue
PERCEPTIONS: CHINA AND THE UNITED STATES
Ilkka Uimonen
Ilkka Uimonen's photographs were made during extensive travels over the past eight years in China and the United States. Through portraiture and landscape, Ilkka explores two different worlds of subtle, psychological moods and emotions. Both countries share a role in defining power and its symbols for an international audience. Yet in Ilkkas Perceptions, we find a visual language that speaks to issues of alienation, vulnerability, and a quest for meaning and identity. The cumulative effect of these "faded and fragmented" moments is the capacity and potency of the images to linger in viewers' imaginations. They very powerfully articulate place and personality on a universal stage, which, in the words of curator and photographer Paul Moakley, "defines a visual context that makes every subject valid. With an extraordinary sense of feeling, these shards of picturesblurs on a path, moments on the outskirts of towns, glimpses of facesall reveal to us that reality often resides in what goes unnoticed, what fades away at the end of the day."
JOURNEY TO THE END OF COAL
Samuel Bollendorff
Journey to the End of Coal tells the story of the sacrifice millions of Chinese coal miners make every day, risking their lives and spoiling their land to satisfy their countrys appetite for economic growth. This interactive film takes the viewer into Chinas Shanxi district, exploring the area, and visiting its major coal mines and administrative offices. In and around the coal mines, the viewer (and participator) gets the story first-hand from the mingong, rural migrants who travel their country looking for work. The film delves into how they survive in this valley of death and pollution, often referred to as the ocean of coal.
honkytonk.fr/index.php/webdoc
GLASS JARS
Alec Soth / Magnum Photos
The 'Glass Jars' investigates an unsolved crime of child abuse in small town Missouri unveiling through images, questions, and statements a perturbing view inside the dark tale. Soth's work leaves us with a stunning feeling of actually being at the places of the crime and in disturbing and ironic ways explores and clarifies a macabre event that takes the viewer beyond the limitations of media reports.
IRAQI PRAVDA
Yuri Kozyrev / NOOR
Iraqi Pravda is an exploration of the alternate truths that different news sources supplied while the devastating Iraqi conflicts of 2003-2008 played out. Yuri Kozyrevs 360-degree media collage juxtaposes his own photographs, cuts from Iraqi TV broadcasts, Iraqi citizens phone videos and phone photos.
During and after the war, news about Iraq was published all over the worldyet, subject as they were to an information blockade, Iraqi citizens never saw these publications. Instead they encountered Western journalists whose presence they only associated with occupiers. Operating alongside the international press and TV was the Iraqi local mass media. Because it had no censorship, its viewpoint felt surprisingly truthful. Yet it allowed no outside perspectives.
The advent of a third visual channel citizen journalism disseminated via the web and mobile phones underscored the reality of events as they were being reported in local media. Iraqis trust this source more than any others, feeling that its efficiency, its very lack of a medium, carries the truth. Jihad-video, among other things, is recorded on the streets and posted to YouTube. In effect, Iraqis preconceived notions were reinforced afresh by citizen journalismnot challenged.
Iraqi Pravda uncovers the process of how public opinion forms, both locally in Iraq and internationally in the West. Bringing together images shot by local citizens (phone video and photo), the local Iraqi mass media, and a Western photographer and storyteller, Iraqi Pravda questions the role of contemporary media and journalism as it operates within a modern conflict.
THE AFGHAN DIARIES
Henrik Kastenskov / Bombay Flying Club
The Afghan Diaries is a three-part documentary depicting two young Danish soldiers experiences of war. It covers one year in which the soldiers prepare for war, engage in close-quarter combat, and return back home for wars aftermath. Told as readings from their actual diaries, the documentary takes us from boot camp in the rural part of western Denmark, through the mounting excitement and anxiety leading up to the departure for Afghanistan, and once there, the baptism by fire, feelings of loss, and the anger of revenge that combat incurs. In the final chapter, the men are back in urban Copenhagen, trying to cope. Remorse, confusion, and a feeling of walls closing in complicate their efforts to come to terms with the status of war veterans at a very young age.
The stories of Ronni and Johannes amount to a classic tale of the loss of innocence, of young men coming of age, set against a backdrop of tragic slaughter in a land far away, in a war not well understood.
BLACK SEA OF CONCRETE
Rafal Milach
The first thing you notice is the concrete. Kilometers of grey blocks, sometimes painted with blue and yellow, the national colors of Ukraine. You can feel the Soviet past at once. It looks surreal and it doesnt match the beautiful landscape around it. Industrial zones and iron waste rusting by the sea are harsh evidence of the disruption of man and natures harmony; people have changed the landscape in a very brutal way. While the local people seem to respect the power of sea, at the same time they thoughtlessly devastate it. Yet, the sea always fights back to regain its natural shape and territory. The wired symbiosis makes this piece of land fascinating. I went to the Ukranian Black Sea coast to explore this mutual influence and the relationships between man and sea. Ukraine is a country in transition and for the last few years has been trying to shape a new identity. In my opinion so has the Black Sea coast.
This story is a part of Sputnik Photos ongoing, collective project about Ukraine. The project was commissioned by Altemus (altemus.org).
I AM A BULGARIAN
Boris Missirkov, Georgi Bogdanov, Martichka Bozhilova
I Am a Bulgarian is a short documentary video in a genre that the filmmakers call karaoke documentary. The piece has been produced as a part of 15, a film comprised of 15 shorts about the last 15 years of Bulgarian life by 15 acclaimed contemporary Bulgarian artists in film, theater, and visual art.
- Besides from Macedonia, many Bulgarians from Moldova, Romania, Ukraine, and the Western Outlands are applying for Bulgarian citizenship; how would you define thisis it a return to roots or rather an interest in European opportunities?
- Both. Probably for some of these Bulgarians the call of the homeland prevails, while for others, its the whisper of the European dream. I believe this is a wonderful combination. We can only be happy about this.
Excerpt from an interview with Bulgarian Vice President Angel Marin, 18-08-2006.
THE PHOTOBUS
Daniel Meadows
In 1973, Daniel bought an old double-decker bus, transformed it into a photo studio, and christened it the Free Photographic Omnibus. He and the bus then embarked on a trip throughout England, making portraits of people in towns and cities across the country, and distributing the photos among the models the next day for free. Over the course of 10,000 miles, he created a national portrait of the English.
Twenty-five years later, Daniel caught up with many of his models through local newspapers, and reshot them in the same environment. Thus, it became possible to depict the changes and constants of this collective character.
Daniel believes that the adventure continues, our journey serving as an exemplar for a contemporary value system which embraces the expectation that we should all participate in the conversation that mass media is becoming. There's a lot about participatory media on Photobus and a lot more about the stories that live in photographs.
SENIOR GROUP
Dmitry Markov
Senior Group is a story about orphan boys from a senior group at a boarding school where normal kids live together with backward children. The years spent here take a toll: the boys dont want to study or work, and believe that its more convenient to keep their heads low and play the fools so they may remain in care of the state.
Theres a jumble of reality and fantasy in their dusky heads. Almost none of them can write or read. They can be quite tough with others, yet keep on secretly loving their parents, many of whom are already dead. They skillfully manipulate others and steal things constantly, but they also would give away everything to those they trust and feel attached, without a moments hesitation. They all believe that theyll go back home and start living alone after theyre 18, despite the fact that their relatives mostly have lost themselves in drink or are locked up, and even the last iron heaters have been lifted from their homes (to sell as scrap metal).
MAZHNUM AND RAKHMA
Oksana Yushko
Mazhnum and Rakhma arrived in Moscow from Tadzhikistan, as millions of other migrants did, in search of a better life.
Now they work at an animal shelter not far from Moscow, and they seem to have found what they were looking for.
DYING VILLAGE
Andrey Liankevich
This project is a visual and audio expression of a big and very painful problem in Ukrainethat of villages dying out. About 300 villages disappear from the Ukrainian map every year. The subject gets illuminated through the stories of two sistersthe last residents of Kuzbej, a village deep in the Carpathian foothills. The piece exemplifies the skillful effect of citizen journalism and new media: an obvious problem, ignored by people in big cities, gains sharpness having been heard in the voices and seen through the eyes of real people.
This essay was commissioned by Altemus (altemus.org) as a part of a documentary project on modern Ukraine in its search for national identity.
COSMOS
Yulia Serdyukova
The Soviets epic drive to outer space validated and glorified the Soviet system, and propelled cosmonauts to the status of national heroes at a mythical level. The collapse of the Soviet Union put an end to the era of communist ideology, as well as the space program as it existed. Its cosmic debris scattered all over the former USSR and can be found in some very unexpected places. The Peaceful Space Exploration Museum was created in 1979 as part of the "Pereyaslav" National Reserve, 120 km from Kiev, Ukraine. The museum is located in a wooden church, circa 1833. Establishing the museum allowed the founder of the reserve to save the church from destruction by the Soviet authorities.
Galya and Natasha, the museums custodians, call it simply Cosmos. They unlock its doors on request from visitors: "You going to Cosmos? Hold on, I'll open it for you."
SOLITUDE
(In Russian, solitude and being alone and loneliness translate into the same word. As you follow this piece, it might be useful to consider which English word is appropriate for different aspects of this state of being)
Maria Ionova-Gribina
Solitude is a multimedia study of how the traits of being alone in an urban environment manifest. The work includes several stories about people whose names and personal details the artist chose not to reveal. By this means, the viewer is able to see, hear, feel, and add up aspects of solitude both particular and generalsigns known to everyone yet unique to each person.
Being alone is different for each person. For some its a habit of choice. Others feel lonely during certain hard times or for psychological reasons. Solitude can be forced and conscious, it can be a goal and a wish, and it can be about isolating oneself in periods of difficulty or struggle. As well, there is a type of loneliness experienced among others, when a person is full of concerns about people and things, but lacks proper feedback from the world, and feels no bond with anyone.
