FotoFreo 2008 Projections (Details)
Details of each of the audio visual projections selected for FotoFreo 2008 are outlined below and arranged in alphabetical order according to surname.
For entries A-J click here
Simon Larbalestier (UK based in Bangkok)
The Khok Tamol community on the outskirts of Siem Reap, CambodiaThe Khok Tamol community is located on the outskirts of Siem Reap. Khok Tamol is a sanctuary for elderly Khmers, mainly women, who come here to live, pray and meditate. Their possessions are very few yet displayed with much care. Many have come here to escape the pressures of family life. Many will stay until the end of their natural lives. The community consists of a series of small one room concrete huts around a small temple pagoda. The daily routine is one of prayer and meditation, the preparation of food for themselves and the many stray dogs that have congregated here.
Over the last 20 years Simon Larbalestier’s photography has moved from album artwork for iconic rock bands such as the Pixies, through International design and advertising to a more documentary approach. Larbalestier graduated from the Royal College of Art, London in 1987. His current work involves several long term projects; the documenting of chronic disability in Cambodia involving the work of the Cambodia Trust. Children living with HIV in Thailand, supported by the Australian charity Born To Live. The daily struggle of Khmer and Thai nationals, especially the elderly, the underprivileged and the disabled, is also a recurring feature of his long term projects.
Larbalestier is represented by Anarchy Images in New York. He is based in Bangkok.
Robert McPherson (Norway working from Australia)
Kazakh NomadsFor centuries, the nomadic way of life was the norm in Mongolia. But now, one of the World’s last nomadic cultures is being transformed by government policies seeking to urbanize most of the population within the next two decades. The aim of this project is to document traditional nomadic lifestyle in Mongolia before it changes irrevocably. Kazakh Nomads make up 7 percent of the population of and are located in the Altai region of Western Mongolia.
Robert McPherson was born in Norway and studied for a Bachelor in Communications and Honours in documentary photography at Edith Cowan University between 2002 and 2006. He is currently working on a long term project on Kazakh nomads in Mongolia. Based in Norway.
Rafal Milach (Poland) Metaphor Images courtesy of Anzenberger
Young Russia
Of his current project about youth in contemporary (post Soviet) Russia, Rafal Milach says, “In 2004, I started long-term essay about Russia. Since my first visit, I realized that it’s impossible to comprehend this huge and complex country. I’ve decided to pick one narrow but important group. I focused on Russian generation grown up after the collapse of Soviet Union. For most of these people, USSR was a very early childhood. They are used to open borders and western pop culture flooding their homeland. For 2 years, I have been exploring the daily life of young people all over the country with the special focus on Siberia. I tried to cover as many situations as possible. I registered correction camps for juveniles, cadet’s schools, exclusive nightclubs and many ordinary daily scenes. During my Russian trip I’ve seen many positive things. I’ve also experienced situations showing that the transformation chaos is still very strong with little hope for change.
I live in the country that belonged to former Soviet block and experienced the transition over a dozen years ago. That’s why I decided to observe young Russians in this transformation time.”Rafal Milach was born in 1978 in Gliwice, Poland. He is now based in Warsaw. Rafal attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice, where he received a Masters of Fine Art degree in 2002. He also earned a Bachelor degree of Photography from the Institute for Creative Photography (ITF) in Opava, Czech Republic in 2003. In 2004 Rafal was invited to take part in training for emerging photojournalists form Eastern and Central Europe organized by prestigious agency VII in France. In 2006 he was selected for a KulturKontakt Austria scholarship. Rafal is a regular contributor to Polish magazines such as Przekroj, Newsweek Poland, Polityka, DF magazine of Gazeta Wyborcza. His works were published in international publications such as Courrier International, Le Monde Economie, Photo (France), Shots Directory 2006, Guardian Weekend magazine (UK), DNA magazine of Diario de Noticias (Portugal) Sestdiena magazine (Latvia) and ST/A/R magazine (Austria). His work has been exhibited in Poland, Austria, Spain, Germany, Japan and is in the permanent collection of the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Art, in Kiyosato Japan. In addition, Rafal’s work has earned him numerous national and international awards such as the Polish Press Photo Awards, the Mio Photo Award (Japan), WBK Press Photo Awards, Grand Press Photo and Newsweek Poland Photo Awards. A book called “The Grey” was published in 2002. It was the result of long-term essay about Upper Silesia, one of the most industrialized and ecologically devastated regions of Poland and Europe.
Kosuke Okahara (Japan)
Dancing at the bottom – ColombiaThis is the story of people who are working at the very bottom of the drug business in Columbia. They include coca farmers in the jungle, drug dealers and addicts on the streets, prisoners who are serving time for offenses related to drugs, and a drug mule who is about to smuggle heroin in his stomach to the United States simply for money to live. These people are always exposed and vulnerable. They risk their lives for small amounts of money and are often considered to be disposable.
Kosuke Okahara is represented by Agence VU’ and has photographed war, poverty, drugs and beauty across Asia, Africa and South America. His work has been published in Time.com, Newsweek Japan, PHOTO, Coyote, Playboy Japan and many other publications. He is the winner of the Ueno Hikoma photography award and NPPA Best of Journalism and exhibited at Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, and the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand. He refers to his style as documenting “ibasyo”, a Japanese word meaning “the physical and emotional space in which people exist.”
Trent Parke (Australia) Magnum Photos
Coming SoonComing Soon continues Trent Parke’s exploration of urban spaces in colour. In these works he has focused on the line of urban development that snakes its way along the coast of Australia. Parke's subjects negotiate a proliferation of high-rises, take-away shops, faded signs and electricity wires. In 2006 he was awarded the ABN AMRO emerging artist award for work from this series.
Trent Parke is the only Australian photographer to be represented by Magnum Photos. He works primarily as a street photographer. Minutes to Midnight, the collection of photographs from his 90000km journey around was awarded the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography. He has also won World Press Photo Awards in 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2005. Parke has published two books, Dream/Life in 1999, and The Seventh Wave with Narelle Autio in 2000. His work has been exhibited widely. In 2006 the National Gallery of Australia acquired Parke's entire Minutes to Midnight exhibition.
Martine Perret (France based in East Timor)
M O N U C - Peacekeepers in action in the Eastern Part of the Democratic Rebublic of Congo September 2006 - April 2007Following the dangerous work of United Nations peacekeepers in the Congo- covering the presidential election of Joseph Kabila; negotiations with armed groups for the Demobilisation, Disarmament and Reintegration of ex-combatants (DDR ); and clashes and evacuations in Kinshasa between Government forces and guards of former Vice-president and defeated rival Jean-Pierre Bemba. Over three hundred people lost their lives during this time.
Martine Perret began her professional career in photography in 1999 in Sydney as a freelance photographer. She moved to Timor-Leste in 2003 for work before joining the United Nations mission to Burundi in 2004. She is currently working as UNMIT photographer to cover peacekeeping activities in Timor-Leste.
Jack Picone (Australia based in Bangkok)
Human Rights, Human Wrongs – Caught in the Crossfire
Jack Picone’s anti-war statement, Human Rights, Human Wrongs, Caught in the Crossfire, spans eight countries and eight wars. His AV, a tapestry, testifies to the futility of war. Picone, goes behind the ‘bang bang’ and documents the plight of ordinary people (mostly women and children) caught up in the extraordinary violence of conflict and the toll it exacts.
Jack Picone covered eight wars in the 1990’s. The decade was spent in Yugoslavia, Somalia, Rwanda, Palestine, Liberia and Soviet Central Asia. Over the last fifteen years his images have featured regularly in Time, Life, Liberation, Stern, Granta, and others. He has also documented events for NGO’s such as CARE, MSF and ACTIONAID. Jack has exhibited his work in many countries including America, Spain, UK and twice at ‘Visa Pour L’image’. He is the recipient of significant international photography awards, including the World Press Photo, Amsterdam; Photographer of the Year, USA and the Fifty Crows Award for documentary photography.
Tony Reddrop (Australia)
Whanau GatheringTony Reddrop’s photo essay, Whanau Gathering, is an intimate and contemplative photodocumentary that follows his own extended family, related to each other by Maori ancestry. It is a universal narrative about belonging and what family means to us all.
Tony Reddrop has for the past eight years have been documenting social issues and events in Australia. These have included human rights convergences, S-11 Crown Casino, Woomera / Baxter Detention Centre protests, Pauline Hansen protest rally, the Arak War peace rallies, also long term documentation of the plight of the homeless and disadvantaged. More recently he has also been working on a series on Vietnam War Veterans in Australia, New Zealand, and Vietnam. His work is held in the National Library of Australia Canberra, the State Library of Victoria, and private collections.
Martin Reeves (UK based in Thailand)
I m a g e s f r o m t h e H i d d e n R e a l mFine-art photographer/film maker Martin Reeves celebrates twenty-one years under Asia’s spell with images taken in lost cities and hidden realms from around the region. Being passionate about photography, Reeves uses a specialist film medium to try to portray Asia how he envisions it – in an enchanted and mysterious way.
Martin Reeves’ quest began in India in 1986 when he set out with a few rolls of infrared black & white film. Since then he has traveled in Burma, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, the Philippines, Malaysia and China. In September 2006, while on a state visit, four of Reeves’ photos of Angkor were chosen by HRH Norodom Sihamoni, the King of Cambodia, as gifts that were presented to the government of the Czech Republic. He was involved in the book 9 Days In The Kingdom, a tribute to His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s eightieth birthday, and last year published his large-format book Angkor: Into The Hidden Realm.
Alessandra Sanguinetti (USA) Magnum Photos
The Adventures of Guille and Belinda and the Enigmatic Meaning of their DreamsIn the farmlands near Buenos Aires, Argentina, Alessandra Sanguinetti produced a series of photographs entitled On the Sixth Day that centered on the symbiotic relationship between the farmers, their animals, and the land. While working on this series she first met Guille and Belinda whose families lived and worked on these farms. The two cousins were ten and nine years old when she began to photograph them, seeking to portray the psychological and physical transformations of these girls as they matured into adults. As opposed to a more traditional documentary narrative of these two girls growing up in this rural environment, she instead focused on the desires and dreams of their active imaginations. The resulting series of images, presented here under the title “The Adventures of Guille and Belinda and the Enigmatic Meaning of Their Dreams”, represents not only an elaborate collaboration between photographer and subject but also an intimate relationship cultivated over a five-year period.
Alessandra Sanguinetti, with Magnum Photos, was born in New York, 1968, brought up in Argentina from 1970 until 2003, and is currently based in New York. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship and has a Hasselblad Foundation grant. Her book, On the Sixth Day, was published by Nazraeli Press in January 2006. She has photographed for The New York Times Magazine, LIFE, Newsweek, and The New York Magazine.
Jacob Aue Sobol (Denmark) Magnum Photos
SabineIn 1999, after studying at Fatamorgana, the Danish School of Art Photography, Jacob Sobol decided to visit a settlement of 150 people, called Tiniteqilaaq on the barren east coast of Greenland. Over the next two and a half years he mainly lived in the township with his girlfriend Sabine and her family, living the life of a fisherman and hunter. In 2004 the book Sabine was published. In photographs and narratives it depicts his encounter with Sabine and life on the east coast of Greenland.
Born in Copenhagen, Jacob Aue Sobol was admitted to Fatamorgana, the Danish School of Documentary and Art Photography, where he developed the photographic idiom that runs through his pictures of Greenland. The book Sabine was nominated for Deutche Börse Photography Prize 2005. His story of the daily life of the Guatemalan indigenous family Gomez-Brito, won the First Prize Award, Daily Life Stories, World Press Photo 2006. Jacob is currently working on a new book project in Tokyo to be published in 2008. His photographs are represented in the Royal Library’s National collection of photography and the National Arts Foundation in Denmark. Has been living in Tokyo since 2006.
Jan-Joseph Stok (Holland) Metaphor Images
Congo
It has been one of the deadliest conflicts on Earth. Four million people have died in the DR Congo in 8 years. Millions of refugees live without proper health care, safe water or education. The villages are constantly attacked, looted and women are raped. More than 1 million people are HIV positive.
Jan-Joseph Stok was born in Tilburg, the Netherlands in 1978. In 2004, he was the first international student to follow a semester course in photojournalism at the Danish school of Journalism in Aarhus, Denmark. He also completed an internship at Politiken, Denmark’s national newspaper during this time. In January 2006, Stok was awarded “Best Photojournalist Under 30 of the Year” in the Netherlands. These days, Stok spends most of his time abroad on assignments in Africa for international NGO’s and magazines.
Mikhael Subotsky (South Africa) Magnum Photos
Beaufort WestBeaufort West is a transit town. Situated at the intersection of two of the busiest national roadways, it serves as a food and overnight stop for travelers of all kinds. Every day, the town's population doubles with those who pass through it.
Twelve years after the transition to a democratic government, policies have failed to address the conditions of poverty and segregation that characterize cities like Beaufort West and many others. Whilst the lives of people living here and on the outskirts remain bleak, these conditions are repeated throughout different parts of South Africa. Many of the social dynamics that scar this country converge and reveal themselves in small town settings like Beaufort West.Mikhael Subotsky was born in 1981 in Cape Town, South Africa. He is the winner of 2007 Young Photographer Award at Perpignan, The 2007 KLM Paul Huf Award, The Special Jururs Award at the 2005 Vies Recontres Africaines de la Photographie in Bamako and the 2005 F25 Award for Concerned Photography. His work on crime and incarceration in South Africa has been widely acclaimed and exhibited in numerous galleries and museums worldwide. His prints are held in the permanent collections of the South African National Gallery (Cape Town), The Johannesburg Art Gallery, and the Museum of Modern Art (New York).
Guy Vinciguerra (Australia)
Silk Road StoriesSilk Road Stories is Vinciguerra’s current project. This long term project captures images of people and places along the old Silk Road which runs from modern day Xian (terracotta warriors) in China to Rome. This projection shows images from Xinjiang autonomous province in China. Xinjiang contains one sixth of the land mass of China and is located in the extreme north western part of China adjacent to Kazakhstan and Tibet. Most of the images were taken in the towns of Kashgar, Turpan and Urumqi and the Karakoram Highway that connects China to Pakistan.
Guy Vinciguerra is a Perth based photographer who has photographed extensively in the USA, Indonesia, Japan, China, Italy and his home town of Perth. Vinciguerra has published two books of his photographs, Crossing The Line, documenting social and urban changes within the city of Perth and Cosplay, a celebration of Tokyo’s youth sub-culture. Over the last ten years Vinciguerra has had several sell-out solo exhibitions in Perth and his works are held in many collections both in Australia, the USA and Europe.
Ami Vitale (USA based in India)
Kashmir“I wandered briefly into the poetry of Kashmir in November of 2001 and could not let go. Whether sipping saffron tea in the warmth of a Kashmiri home or trudging through the delicately etched landscape, this place filled me with affection. After one visit, I could see that all is not what it seemed. Srinagar, the summer capital of Kashmir, once bustled with life and laughter. Now it lies neglected and pockmarked with craters. Hotels had been turned into barracks, guns poked out behind broken glass windows and netting protected the bleary eyed soldiers from the frequent grenade attacks. The language of this magnificent culture had degenerated into a dialogue of mourning.” Ami Vitale
Ami Vitale is an independent journalist based in New Delhi, India and is available for assignment. Her photographs and stories from events in Europe, the Middle East and Africa have appeared in publications including Time, Newsweek, U.S. News, World Report, The Guardian and the New York Times among others. She has received many awards and Grants including Canon Female Photojournalist Grant and Magazine Photographer of the Year.
Bohdan Warchomij (Australia) Metaphor Images
Abandoned: A History of Chornobyl
The nuclear pact between the International Atomic Energy Agency and the World Health Organisation has perpetuated the falsehood that there is no damage to humanity from the uranium by products that the nuclear industry produces. Human DNA is our most precious patrimony. The children at the Znamienka Children’s home and Lviv’s Chernobyl Children’s Hospital have been abandoned to suffer in silence. These victims of radiation and genetic defects are the inheritance and legacy of Chernobyl.
Born in Germany, Bohdan Warchomij has worked in Eastern Europe and Australia since 2004 as a freelance photojournalist. He covered the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004 for The Times in London, The Sunday Telegraph, The Guardian and The Globe and Mail in Canada. The images were exhibited in Fremantle as part of FotoFreo 2006, and in the same year a book called Portrait of a Revolution was published in Perth by Backpackbooks.
Munem Wasif (Bangladesh)
Old Dhaka-Belonging
Robert McPherson (Australia/Norway) Metaphor Images
Kazakh Nomads
Tom Williams (Australia)
D.F. (Federal District) Mexico City
In 2006 Mexico City had a population of 23 million people. There were over a million homeless children. The traffic produced some of the highest levels of pollution on Earth. Andre Manuel Lopez Obrador declared himself “legitimate” president of the republic after losing a very close (some say fraudulent) election. And the Santa Muerte or “Saint of Death” cult was emerging from obscurity and attracting thousands of new followers. These photographs were shot all over the metropolis in late 2006 and early 2007 and form a portrait of Mexico City at a crucial time in its history.
Tom Williams is an Australian photojournalist and documentary photographer. His work has been exhibited and published around Australia and in North and Central America. His series on the Mexican cult, 'La Santa Muerte', is part of the sixth Leica/CCPDocumentary Photography Award travelling exhibition.
Lisa Wiltse (Australia) Fairfax
Dhaka, BangladeshBangladesh is home to 147 million people and one of the most densely populated and impoverished countries in the world. More than 80 percent of the population lives on less than a dollar a day. The country is in dire need of the world’s attention, yet is rarely in the international media’s spotlight. This is an exploration into the threat of climate change and the effect it has having on the capital city of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Millions more Bangladeshis are forced to leave the country side due to rising sea levels and flooding, and pour into an already overburdened third world city buckling from the lack of infrastructure and overpopulation.
Lisa Wiltse began her career freelancing and generating self-funded projects focusing on humanitarian issues in Central America, Uganda, India, and most recently a long term project in Dhaka, Bangladesh, documenting climate refugees surviving in the crumbling city long after the international media has moved on. As a staff photographer for the Sydney Morning Herald, her work has been awarded several honors including first prize at PX3 Prix de la Photographie, the Paris Oxfam Humanitarian award, the Gordon Parks International Photography contest, and the Australian Walkley Award in the daily life/feature category.
For entries A-J click here
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