Via NY Arts

The role of photojournalism today is to allow the viewer a up-close and somewhat personal look at subjects that are detached from the publics' everyday life, and to shed light on pressing issues. Visual language has become the main method of this intimate communication between subject and viewer, because words do not seem to be as effective or powerful anymore. This direct communication is extremely apparent at “Unbroken: Photography Subjects Speak Out,” a non-profit show at Denise Bibro Gallery in Chelsea.

The show is a collection of images from various projects done by the independent non-profit group Photovoice, whose outreach program sponsors training programs for people in need from underdeveloped nations around the globe (mainly children and minors) in photography and journalism. The projects of Photovoice incorporate the spirit and mind of the populations, allowing them to photograph themselves, determining the way they are depicted. This is a twist on traditional photojournalism, in the way that it is transforming the subject into the creator. These images serve as vehicles not only for knowledge, as many of the participants of Photovoice have aspirations of becoming professional photographers and journalists, but also for freedom, as many reside in refugee camps or nations where their basic freedoms have been taken away. The result is a collection of images that are not only aesthetically beautiful, but powerful and informative images of the world that is easily forgotten.

From the PhotoVoice web site:

Often seen only as subjects in photojournalism, Afghani and Vietnamese street kids from Kabul and Ho Chi Minh City, young Bhutanese refugees in Nepal and mentally and physically disabled students in Bogota, Colombia, use the medium of photography to “speak” about their lives. The result is a unique and powerful exhibition that captures the essence of hope, determination and the human will to survive. In Ho Chi Minh City, they sell lottery tickets. In Kabul, it's walnuts. In both cities, poverty has driven children to spend long days at dusty roadside tables to earn mere pennies. In Nepal, Bhutanese teens in packed refugee-camp classrooms have a near-perfect attendance – education is their only hope out of their transient circumstances. And in Bogotá, mentally and physically disabled students strive to present their vision in art and photography. The photographs in Unbroken have emerged from three PhotoVoice projects: Street Vision (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam), Bibin (Kabul, Afghanistan) and The Rose Class (UN run refugee camps in Nepal). A fourth project, linked to PhotoVoice, is a collaboration between students at K'ipay, a school for the mentally and physically disabled in Bogotá and New York artist, Anna Lise Jensen. There will also be an auction and exhibition of well-known photographers who support the organization.

DJ101 – Learn to be a disc jockey. Rekha, watch out!

Bhowmick's photography, all in black & white, clearly springs forth from somewhere deep within; not a knee-jerk reaction to what he just sees in front of him. The images in the gallery section of his site, especially Mirrors of Mumbai, are thought-provoking and sometimes tinged with irony. They also provide a very interesting and refreshing look at a bustling city that most tourists take for granted. The multiple reflections result in quirky juxtapositions of the classic clashing with the modern. With each image, the viewer is asked to look deeply by gently peeling away the onion skins of life. Some may make you even cry.

His email to me had the simplest and perhaps most striking mission statement I have read in years: “i'm a software professional and have a passion for photography.” Enuff said. Check out the rest of his portfolio here.

Via Aag News

The Censor Board of India recently banned Rakesh Sharma's internationally-acclaimed documentary – Final Solution. An online petition has been created by Anand Patwardhan to protest against the ban. The petition asks Central Government to intervene and revoke the ban immediately. As you may already know, under clause 6 and 9 of the Cinematograph Act, the Central Government is empowered to overturn any decision/ recommendation by the Censor Board.

People who have already signed the petition include Shabana Azmi, Nandita Das, Vijay Tendulkar, Shyam Benegal, Javed Akhtar, Aparna Sen, Karan Johar, Ashutosh Gowarikar, Farhan Akhtar, Rahul Bose, Vishal Bhardwaj, Mansoor Khan, Arundhati Nag, Sanjana Kapoor, MS Sathyu, Lekh Tandon, Dr Asghar Ali Engineer, Ram Puniyani, Yogendra Yadav, Sunil Khilnani, Harsh Kapoor and Teesta Setalvad among others.

Please extend your support by signing the petition online by clicking the following link Please forward the petition details to people in your mailing list asking them to sign and circulate the petition widely. Those who have seen the film – please add your comments!

Final Solution ( India; 2004; Digital Video format – miniDV; 209/148 minutes).

Final Solution is a study of the politics of hate. Set in Gujarat during the period Feb/March 2002 – July 2003, the film graphically documents the changing face of right-wing politics in India through a study of the 2002 genocide of Moslems in Gujarat. The film documents the Assembly elections held in Gujarat in late 2002 and records in detail the exploitation of the Godhra incident (in which 58 Hindus were burnt alive) by the right-wing propaganda machinery for electoral gains. It studies the situation after the storm and its impact on Hindus and Moslems – ghettoisation in cities and villages, segregation in schools, the call for economic boycott of Moslems and continuing acts of violence more than a year after the carnage.

Final Solution is anti-hate/ violence as “those who forget history are condemned to relive it.”

Awards:
Wolfgang Staudte award and Special Jury Award (Netpac), Berlin International film festival.
Humanitarian Award for Outstanding Documentary, HongKong International film festival.
Silver Dhow ( Best Doc category), Zanzibar International film festival
Special Jury Mention, Munich Dokfest.
Special Award instituted and given by NRIs for a Secular and Harmonious India (NRI-SAHI), NY-NJ, USA.

Via Reuben Abraham

We all want to make more than a buck, we want our work to mean something. But to connect with editors who make the final decisions on what will appear in their publications and who will produce that content is no easy feat. Laurel Touby of Mediabistro.com has begun a new service that proposes to connect freelancers to those editors. There is a fee, of course. But should it work, it could shake up the way the business of journalism is conducted. Perhaps now, the cream will indeed rise to the top.

Freelance journalism

Spike seeks copy
Aug 5th 2004 | NEW YORK
From The Economist print edition

A journalistic problem solved?

BEING a staff journalist is bad enough, with its brutal deadlines and brutal editors. As for being a freelance hack-well, a lucky few may be famous enough to pick and choose the best assignments and file at leisure, but most freelancers live a lonely life of constantly rejected story pitches in which brutalised copy counts as a triumph. And while there is many a newspaper or magazine editor who dreams of unearthing that freelance gem he truly believes is out there, most of the young (and not so young) hopefuls that phone constantly and fill his inbox cannot tell one end of a story from the other.

Thankfully, a solution to this wretched problem may now be at hand, thanks, inevitably, to the internet. After all, if the web can help two isolated hearts find love, or connect the owner of an unwanted garden gnome with someone keen to buy it, surely it can help an editor find the freelancer of his dreams-and vice versa.

Officially launched this week in New York, the Freelance Marketplace is an online forum where freelance journalists, photographers, illustrators and graphic designers can, they hope, network with editors. For a fee of
$14-19 a month or $149-175 a year, a freelancer can post a bio, details of his experience, and clips and other work samples. The site is not unlike dating websites such as Friendster and match.com, as the bios can
have a distinctly personal flavour. Some users have posted pictures of themselves, and one seemingly serious journalist has posted a picture of her dog.

Freelancers are ranked in terms of recent clippings and relevant experience. Most seem to be highly qualified-many of them are presumably the victims of recent cullings of staff jobs. Editors can search for contributors by region, experience and specialty. Ellen Piligian, a Detroit-based reporter, was approached to write a regional piece “out of the blue” by Seventeen Magazine soon after signing up.

The marketplace is the latest creation of Laurel Touby, a former reporter and (still) compulsive networker who, in the dotcom boom, founded Mediabistro, a website for media folk that now has 270,000 members and a much-used jobs bulletin board. Ms Touby, who says that Mediabistro made its first profit last year, expects 100,000 freelancers to join the site (www.mediabistro.com/fm) within two years. Her big challenge will be to get those brutal editors to take a look.

Copyright 2004 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

I am at the UNITY2004 convention in Washington, D.C. this week. 7000 journalists of all hues have assembled here.

My blog posts will be shorter than usual. I am standing in one of the great halls of the Washington Convention Center where the Job Fair is taking place. Two stacks of computers in the hall allow journalists to check emails and post stories. Will have a recap of what I have seen and done tomorrow.

Off to a party that is being thrown by ESPN.

Henri Cartier-Bresson is dead at 95.

Join Phil Borges, photographer Amanda Koster and the amazing children of Takaungu for an unforgettable workshop in digital storytelling. In this workshop our goal is to get past the “grab shot” and find a way to use our photography to creat images that tap into the spirit of those we photograph, while at the same time imparting meaningful skills to the communities we work in.

“We had an immediate connection with the children, and had access to their community in ways I never thought possible. It is such a gift to feel welcomed and connected to the people in a place you're visiting, and to combine travel, photography and volunteering.” Karen Church, Tibetan Children's Village Workshop, Dharamsala, India

Building effective commmunity relationships in remote and beautiful locations is the hallmark of Bridges workshops. The strength of Kenya's coastal history, its trading ports, its centuries-old Arab-Muslim influence, and its beaches make this Bridges workshop a rare chance to explore the rich landscape of the Kenyan Coast. You will work with internationally renowned photographers and students in the local community, taking your personal work to the next level while empowering a new generation of storytellers.

You will challenge your photographic skills in a new environment, develop familiarity with digital imaging at all levels, and build meaningful relationships with the communities you visit by engaging students in their own documentary work. Opportunities for remarkable image making will present themselves every day of this two-week workshop.

Dates: October 5-21, 2004
Cost: $3,475 includes workshop fee plus all in-country travel, lodging and most meals.
For more information click this, or call Kathy at (206) 275-3247

Via Mark Kramer

Online registration for this year's Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism at Harvard is now open.

Read The Narrative Journal to get a sense of what took place at last year's conference. It's always great to see a photojournalist included. This year Molly Bingham will be present. I hope I can take some time off of work to go check it out. Students should contact Mark Kramer (click on his name above) to see if they can register for a reduced price if they volunteer their time.

The conference gathers a thousand savvy, mid-career journalists (editors, reporters, book writers, radio and TV documentary-makers) who choose from among seventy-five keynotes, breakouts, panel discussions, readings and workshops that explore the narrative process, start to finish. We'll cover such topics as story selection, fieldwork and interviewing, processing reporting notes, drafting and redrafting, working with editors/writers, building narrative teams, coordinating with papers, attracting agents and publishers, ethics, sourcing and reconstruction, and related genres.

Our 45 speakers are among the most experienced writers, editors and teachers in the field, including dozens of Pulitzer and other prize-winners and finalists: Tracy Kidder*, author of “Mountains Beyond Mountains” and other books; Robert Coles*, Medal of Freedom recipient, and author of “Children in Crisis”; and Seymour Hersh*, New Yorker staff writer, as keynoters; joined by Marie Arana, editor of The Washington Post's BookWorld; Adam Hochschild, author of “King Leopold's Ghost” and other books; Molly Bingham, WorldPicture News Agency photojournalist and reporter; Stanley Nelson, award-winning filmmaker and MacArthur “genius”; Jon Franklin*, author of “Writing for Story”; Alma Guillermoprieto, freelancer, New Yorker writer, and MacArthur “genius”; Anne Hull, national correspondent for The Washington Post and four-time Pulitzer finalist; Jay Allison, independent radio journalist and five-time Peabody Award winner; Louise Kiernan*, enterprise reporter for the Chicago Tribune; Jack Hart, managing editor at The Oregonian and editor of two Pulitzer-winning pieces; Jacqui Banasyznski*, AME at The Seattle Times; Tom French*, narrative projects report at the St. Petersburg Times; Dan Barry*, About New York columnist for The New York Times; DeNeen Brown, Canada bureau chief for The Washington Post; and more. *denotes Pulitzer winners

Early registrants and groups of 8+ have lower fees. Our registrants come from most of the major dailies in the USA and Canada, such as The Boston Globe, The Miami Herald, The Washington Post, National Public Radio, The New York Times, ABC News, the Toronto Globe and Mail, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times, among many others, and from media in dozens of other nations as well. If this is for you, don't wait long. We sell out earlier each year.

Please forward this note to other interested reporters, editors, writers and film and radio folks, and also print it out and post it in your newsroom.

We hope to greet you in December.

Mark Kramer
Director and Writer-in-residence
Nieman Program on Narrative Journalism
Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University
Walter Lippmann House
1 Francis Ave.
Cambridge MA 02138

Blue Earth is looking for a new administrative assistant. The mission of Blue Earth is to support photographic projects that educate the public about endangered environments, threatened cultures, and social concerns. The administrative assistant will facilitate this mission by supporting and communicating with the the board, members, and the photographers primarily through email and web site posting. The primary functions of this job will take place in the administrative assistants home office. Below is the current job description.

If you are interested in applying for this job, please review the following information:

Application Requirements:

>interested in photography and humanitarian, environmental and social issues.
>ability to work alone at home effectively
>foresight
>non-profit experience
>experience with budgeting, writing, working with artists, communication skills, work with foundations/grants and the media, meeting minutes, membership and fundraising, and office management.
>exhibition and special event experience highly desirable

How to Apply: submit cover letter and resume to Blue Earth Alliance, P.O. Box 94388, Seattle WA 98124-6688 or email to kristin@blueearth.org

Deadline: September 1st

Blue Earth Alliance
“Photography that makes a difference”
206 725 4913
Kristin Ianniciello Admin. Assistant
kristin@blueearth.org

PLEASE NO PHONE CALLS

Detailed information about the job can be found here.