Metro Collective

(© Bill Crandall)

So Viktor Yushchenko, the disfigured hero of the Orange Revolution, is officially out. The next Ukrainian president will be decided in a runoff on Feb. 7 between Yushchenko foes Viktor Yanukovich and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Both support improving ties to Russia.

From a recent Spiegel Online article:

The images [of the Orange Revolution in Kiev] were reminiscent of Prague in 1968, Gdansk in 1980 and Leipzig in 1989. Russia, which had never overcome the loss of Ukraine, a country of 46 million people, was in shock. Europe, on the other hand, was filled with optimism.

And the color orange? It isn’t even being used in the current election campaign.

How disappointing, but maybe not surprising. The vibe back in 2004-5 when I was in Kiev for a week was so positive and hopeful (despite being out in the Ukrainian cold all night every night, sleeping during the day in the artist studio belonging to the father-of-a-friend-of-a-friend). Here’s a set of images looking back at when everything seemed possible.

At least my young daughter uses the little orange ‘Yushchenko, Tak!’ scarf I bought on the street there. A quaint antique now.

(© Bill Crandall)

Bill Crandall has photographed Thievery Corporation since their beginnings in the mid-90s, including the cover art for the group’s first two CDs, Sounds from the Thievery Hi-Fi and The Mirror Conspiracy.

Tomorrow Bill will be part of an exhibition/reception marking the start of TC’s five-night concert series at the 930 Club in Washington. If you’re in the area the festivities will be at DC’s Bar Rouge — 1315 16th St., NW.

(Connections Across a Human Planet screenshot © Gabriela Bulisova/Photojournale.com)

“Connections Across a Human Planet” illustrates the common truths that connect the human experience and is represented by photographers from around the world. The book is drawn from an edited anthology of photo documentary and photojournalism stories published on Photojournale’s website.

The narrative of Connections follows the concept of cradle to grave; childhood, education / school, adolescence, work, home, ritual, religion, celebration, sport, art, conflict, aging, sickness, death, mourning and remembrance. It’s an emotional and human journey of images drawn the documentary stories, captured moments or situations from every continent.

The book features photographs from Metro’s Gabriela Bulisova with a foreword by award winning photographer Ami Vitale.

Hardcover or softcover can be purchased from blurb.

Michael Bonfigli photographed a feature on controlling gun violence for the Christian Science Monitor — from the streets of Baltimore.

(”Carnival Queens” 2007 © Scott Dalton)

Congratulations to Scott Dalton recipient of the 2010 Carol Crow Memorial fellowship from the Houston Center for Photography. He will be awarded $2,000 and will have a solo exhibition at HCP from May 7 – June 20, 2010.

(image © Eros Hoagland for the N.Y. Times)

“I think about it all now. About the cross of Saint George and the green-eyed villager’s accusation of crusade. Two cultures colliding in a timeless land.” –– Eros Hoagland

Check out the N.Y. Times blog “At War - Notes from the Front Lines” to read Eros’ harrowing and insightful article Stations of the Cross chronicling some of his last days in Helmand province as he wrapped up a three month stint in Afghanistan this past August.

(image © daniel cima)

Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Haiti and their families and friends around the world. Certainly, it seems that Haiti will never be the same.

MetroCollective’s Daniel Cima has traveled to Haiti many times over the years and was recently there exploring the country’s raw mysticism. Here is a selection from Cima’s powerful and provocative new series on Voodoo.

And above, a photograph from Cima’s award-winning work on the spiritual cleansing at Saut d’Eau, an annual ritual that brings healing and hope to Haitians.

Cima also recently received an Honorable Mention from the Prix de la Photographie/Px3 for his work in Haiti documenting the tragic struggle of children with Hydrocephalus.

UPDATE: The American Red Cross, through an effort backed by the U.S. State Department, has set up a system by which you can make a $10 donation to support American Red Cross relief efforts in Haiti by texting/SMS the word ‘Haiti’ to 90999.

Bill Crandall will be part of the Never Records art exhibition/installation in NY, opening this Friday 1/15 in the former Tower Records space. Here’s the Village Voice blurb, and the event website.

Daniel Cima will be on assignment in India from January 10 until February 15.

(all images © scott dalton)

Congratulations to Scott Dalton, whose book project “Macondo: Journeys in García Márquez’s Colombia” was selected as a PhotoLucida Critical Mass top 50 finalist; the ongoing project was also nominated for this year’s Santa Fe Prize and was a Best of Photojournalism 3rd place Portrait winner in 2007.

Begun in 2006, and photographed on 6×6 format color negative film, Macondo is a beautiful and touching body of work. Inspired by Marquez’s magical realism, these photographs are a lyrical portrait of a Columbia that Dalton calls home, which he has grown to know intimately over the years.

Artist Statement:

“Macondo: Journeys in García Márquez’s Colombia” is a documentary photo project that explores the people and places that inspired the work of Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez, author of “One Hundred Years of Solitude.”

García Márquez has consistently said that his characters and stories, although embellished, are based on real people and events and that every town along the Colombian coast contains an aspect of Macondo. With this in mind, I have set out to discover for myself what survives of Macondo in today’s Colombia.

More of Dalton’s poignant and enigmatic Columbia work can be seen at: www.DaltonFoto.com

With an eerie return to Virginia Tech where he covered the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings, Hector Emanuel has photographs in the Time Magazine photo-essay on Major Nidal Hasan’s roots in Virginia.

Michael Bonfigli is off to Honduras this week to cover the nation’s upcoming elections for the Christian Science Monitor.

Michael Robinson Chavez has a nice photo-essay (which appears to be medium-format and film) documenting the economic downturn on the L.A. Times website.

Robert Knoth’s books Certificate No. 000358 with writer Antoinette de Jong is “a poignant and infuriating indictment of the Nuclear Age… on the human devastation in Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Belarus, the Urals and Siberia” and Hira Mandi from the red-light district of Lahore, Pakistan, which peers into the secret and illicit world of the Hijras are now available in the U.S.

Had a great photo event (dubbed ‘Outernational’) last night with fellow members of Metro Collective. It was part of FotoweekDC, we took over the upstairs space at Local 16, a bar/restaurant on U Street in Washington.

I was frankly a bit surprised (pleasantly) by the turnout, we must have had nearly 100 people there, many standing throughout. The four DC-based members of Metro showed multimedia slideshows of our documentary work and had short discussion between segments, with our friend Andre Kravchenko from Mondano as host. Simple format of course, but it was amazing how good the vibe was and how engaged people were. We used the word Outernational (nicked with permission from our pals over at Thievery Corporation) to convey a sense of beyond borders, embracing what is out there beyond the line of sight.

The whole thing worked on many levels. I think it’s an encouraging model that deals with the question of how to bring photography to people in fresh ways. In this case, you had the cinematic experience of the photos combined with the living-room intimacy of the setting. Unfortunately, that’s a novel concept here in DC, though in many ways it’s the perfect city for such gatherings, there are a lot of internationally-minded people here who are also quite visually literate.

I felt like people were ’surprised to be surprised’ by the photography; everyone is saturated with images these days, and maybe becoming a bit numb. But this showed if you present good work in the right way, still photography can really pack a resonant punch.

Continuing with our Outernational ‘tour’ (thinking branding now), we hope to do more such events, including one we’re planning for next month geared for students and an open-air rooftop thing next year when the weather permits. Hopefully we can work out a way for our international members to attend as well. Stay tuned!

Compiling more than ten years of work in Eastern Europe, Bill Crandall has published “East”, a beautiful little magazine containing a select group of images from Belarus, Kiev, Kosovo, Serbia, Poland, Prague, and Romania.   

For those of you in the DC area, Bill will be showing East this Sunday night, October 4th, at Marvin. The show starts at 8 and there will be free magazines for a lucky twenty people. Check it out, it’s sure to be a good time.

Hector Emanuel 2002

Robert Knoth 2005 (who also placed second in 1999, “People In The News” category).

World Press Photo has launched their online archive. Going back to 1955 the website covers over 50 years of award-winning images, and features around 10,000 photographs. Each photo contains full caption information and category placement. It’s a veritable who’s who of photographers and virtual what’s what of the last half century–it is a history lesson in and of itself, but be careful, it’s also a black hole, sucking your time away as you click and click. and click. and click.

Eros has a nice spread in the September 7 issue of TIME Magazine article “How Crime Pays for the Taliban”.    Check out the photo-essay on TIME’s website.

J carrier has placed third in the International Photography Awards for his editorial photo-essay “Paradise Lost: Sudan”

Check out the IPA winners gallery to see all of this years great work.

Recently in Italy to photograph a wedding, I had the chance to wander around the streets of Florence and Rome — the recent series of steamy sex scandals may finally take down Silvio Berlusconi but it seems that the country’s young couples have taken his lead and aren’t at all gun shy about making out in public… ahh Italia!

“I decided to hold on to a naive and childish perspective. A photographic history filled with fences, flowers and other symbols, to point out the essence of the phenomenon.”

Bevis Fusha has a photo-essay and short interview in the World Press Photo magazine Enter highlighting his work documenting blood feuds for the organisation Children Today in his native Albania.

To see more of this work check out the MetroCollective feature Tyl.

Image courtesy Mother Jones

Photographs from Eros Hoagland’s long term project “Narco-Land” which focuses on the violent and brutal drug war along the U.S./Mexico Border appear in the July/August issue of Mother Jones Magazine.

And if you’ve got a spare second, Mother Jones also has some interesting photo-essays online that are prime for a peep.

Michael Robinson Chavez will be giving a lecture on August 20th titled Photographing a Shrinking World at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles, where he will discuss “why he undertook certain assignments, how he was able to gain access and his process of telling stories through image making.”

The lecture is a part of the Iris Nights series which also includes lectures from some of the top photographers in the industry including Susan Meiselas, Dan Winters, David Burnett, and Teru Kuwayama. Lectures are free but on a first come first serve basis with online registration.

Also worth checking out at the Annenberg Space: Pictures of the Year International — on exhibit through November.

Following the solo exhibition of Bill Crandall’s “East” project at Galeria Zoya in Warsaw last year, the Polish art periodical Working Title ran a nice feature of images from the show.

Michael Robinson Chavez has a great multi-media feature on the L.A. Times website, “Promise and Peril in South L.A.”,   an in-depth series of essays documenting how life has and sometimes hasn’t changed in one of America’s most notorious neighborhoods.

Michael is currently en route to India to lead the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop “Storytelling with Heart and Power” in Manali, India.

Images from “Promise and Peril in South L.A.” by Michael Robinson Chavez featured in The L.A. Times

It’s nice to see that the newspapers that are surviving are doing so in style and are still willing to dedicate time and energy to meaningful in-depth stories.

“Dorobanti, Romania - 2008″   Bill Crandall

“Kenya: Election Aftermath”   J Carrier

Bill Crandall and J Carrier were selected for exhibition in the Foto8 Summer Show at HOST Gallery in London, England.

From Foto8’s website:   ”The 2009 Summer Show saw an overwhelming response, with over 2300 images entered from 44 different countries, including Bangladesh, Iran, Mexico, Thailand and Turkey. For one month, the Summer Show provides London’s greatest spectacle of photography with over 100 images on display….”

The opening exhibition and party is on Friday July 24th.   Stop by if you’re in the neighborhood and check out all the great work.

Posters depicting “Barack Hussein Obama” wearing a keffiyeh, the trademark attire of Yassir Arafat, late leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, with the words “anti-semitic jew-hater” were hung around the city of Jerusalem shortly after President Obama’s Cairo speech to the muslim world. In his speech, President Obama pressured Israel to end its controversial settlement expansion and to engage in new peace talks with the Palestinians. Hard-line Israeli conservatives are now adjusting to the sometimes uncomfortable realities of the new Obama administration.

“Olmert’s Lament” by Kevin Peraino, from the June 22 issue of Newsweek.

To read more about J’s shoot with the former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and to see additional photographs check out “Postcards from the Field.“

J Carrier is now based in Jerusalem covering the Middle East and Africa. Visit his site Postcards from the Field to view the multi-media essay “This Maze of Shadows”

J Carrier had three photographs nominated in the NY Photo Awards and his image “Darfur, Paradise Lost” — published last year in the National Geographic Book Visions of Paradise — was awarded an Honorable Mention.

Bevis Fusha

Link to Time Magazine

link to interview

Link to the movie

Link to contest website

Hector Emanuel receives second place from POYi for his portrait series done on the Republic of Lakotah: Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota.

Michael Robinson Chavez receives an Award of Excellence from POYi in the Newspaper Photographer of the Year category.

by J Carrier

Deep in the interior of Africa in the dense jungles of Cameroon, where scientists have determined that HIV originated, jumping from chimps to humans possibly more than a century ago, the Global Viral Forecast team of Dr. Nathan Wolfe are searching for the newest viral threats with the hope of stopping the next global disease pandemic before it’s too late.

Be sure to check out this month’s Men’s Journal and my photographs featured in “The Virus Hunter”, by Tom Clynes, and click here to view a small gallery of images shot on assignment in Cameroon.

[click full-screen icon for best viewing]

by Bill Crandall

After Obama won in the Iowa caucus, proving he could win white votes, I went on record (with my wife anyway), saying he could and would go all the way. I admit things got pretty tense along the way, with HRC hanging on and coming back like the monster in some horror movie. Just when you think it’s dead, and you’re hugging each other with tears of relief that it’s finally all over, the monster lurches up yet again. I’m not calling Clinton a monster (though I may have, back during the campaign), I’m just… saying. The last thing we needed was a Clinton restoration, and Obama seemed the (im)perfect antidote to, well, just about everything.

So count me among those who thought his inauguration was a truly profound, historic moment, for all the obvious reasons that don’t need restating here. I braved the cold and the nearly two-million-strong crowd to be on the Mall when he was sworn in. But I didn’t feel particularly compelled to photograph there, along with every other owner of a camera on the planet. It was enough to be there.

Just like on election night itself; when the result came in, I was too happy and dumbfounded to shoot, I wanted just to be in the moment. I mean, I shot a little and not particularly well. But one photographer friend said she saw me walking around the throngs at 14th and U Streets (where forty years earlier riots were decimating whole blocks after MLK was shot) with what she called a goofy ‘perma-grin’ on my face.

What I did want to capture in some way was what Washington DC, my hometown, would be like during the Obama Daze. Not the DC of the Mall, monuments, and tourists. The other, real DC, where the children and grandchildren of the great migration from the south still live, often in de facto segregation from (or collision with) white, rapidly gentrifying DC. In a predominantly black city becoming home to the first black president, and where so many issues boil down to race if you scratch deep enough, checking DC’s (quickening) pulse at the grass roots seemed like a more interesting choice.

So I spent part of Martin Luther King Day - in a nice piece of karma, the day before Obama’s inauguration - and part of Inauguration Day just beyond the crowds, on the urban fringe around downtown, looking around Dupont Circle and gentrifying fault lines like Columbia Heights and U Street, for a bit of the neighborhood vibe.

© Daniel Cima

Daniel Cima’s Waterfall of Hope series, from Saut d’Eau in Haiti, won first prize in the Prix de la Photographie, Paris (Px3) “Water” competition. Winning photographs will be exhibited in Paris and published in the Px3 Annual Book.

View from Galeria Zoya, Warsaw, 2008

by Bill Crandall

(Click post title to see image larger)

by J Carrier

“what? who? they’ve announced it??? shit.” and my phone rings – NY. my editor on the line, “are they reacting?” “did they just announce it?” i ask again. “yeah, they just announced it” “shit…uh, yeah, let me get into this” I say, not really knowing what that means, but knowing that I couldn’t really grasp what I was hearing “they announced it” and what I was seeing; about 25 kenyans watching a tiny t.v. not reacting at all. “aarrhhh” come on people! (they did get excited when jesse jackson was shown on the screen) and me thinking, man, why isn’t this west africa, nigeria or something, some bias against east africans as being boring slipping out. but this IS western kenya, closer to western africa, and it was only that it was going to take a bit, some time to settle in. in a country where everything happens slowly except death and pickpocketing… why rush to excitement.

slow to begin, the idlers, the boda-boda bicycle boys, and street kids realized they had received an answer to all those requests for “hope” and poured into the street, chanting “o-bama, o-bama” emphasis on the “o”, singing songs celebrating his ancestors village of kogelo. after them i went, chasing the joyous through the streets, now sweating with my vest and scarf in the mid-morning sun, jumping into a passing mini-bus caught up in the jam for a stretch and then backwards onto a motorcycle like i’m shooting the tour de france. winding the neighborhoods of town, as celebrants amassed along the edges of the road, to chant and smile and revel in the election of kenya’s native son.

i can’t help but miss being in the states for this unbelievably historic moment. i can’t think about what’s happened without tears. i can’t fully yet understand what it means, and yet to be here, in kenya, where it means so much i do feel is appropriate for me, having been away for so long, now a representative of my country, a citizen in a new world.

full post here

Bill Crandall is part of the International Center for Journalists’ silent auction and exhibit called The Power of Elections, showing at the Paley Center for Media in NY from October 1 through November 5. Bidding on the auction prints ends on November 12 at the ICFJ Awards Dinner in Washington.

The bidding page for Bill’s Orange Revolution print is here.

From 16 Sept - 4 Oct, Bill Crandall will have a solo exhibition at ZOYA Gallery in Warsaw, Poland. The show, titled East, is a ten-year body of work comprised of images from Belarus, Prague, Warsaw, Kosovo, Serbia, and Kiev. The opening is Tuesday 16 September at 7pm.

Michael Robinson Chavez has a number of photos in LA Times’ online coverage of the conflict in Georgia.

by J Carrier

I don’t think I’ve ever photographed someone as nice as Martin Lel. Especially considering that he’s got a lot on his mind, or should I say, under his feet — winning marathons and all. 10 out of the last 13. And those three he didn’t win? He placed second and third of course. Readily agreeing to a portrait session on short notice during his intense pre-Olympic training schedule we decided to shoot in the Ngong hills of Kenya, made famous by the book Out of Africa, where he sometimes trains. On the day of the shoot I tracked him down on his mobile and we arranged to meet at a gas station restaurant. In his plaid button down and baggy brown corduroys you wouldn’t have recognized him as one of the the top marathon runners in the world; only his blindingly new Nikes gave him away as something more than ordinary; those, and maybe the black Mercedes he was riding in. 


Lel is the leading gold medal contender in this years Olympic marathon and is known for his explosive nail-biting finishes. He finished second in the 2002 Venice marathon, his first marathon, despite stopping several times to tie his shoes. He will race against his friend, fellow Kenyan medal contender Robert Cheruyiot and the American hopeful Ryan Hall in what will surely be the race to watch of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Sunday, August 24th (Saturday 23rd 7:30pm EDT).

by Bill Crandall

This just in to the Metro archive - a recent series called Portrait of an Artist, about Belarusian artist Zoya Lucevich. Click on ‘view slideshow’ for the best viewing.

I met Zoya and her (then) husband Pete Pavlov in Minsk last fall. They’re among the counterculture royalty there, she as an established artist related to Belarus’ early 20th-century poet, Yanka Kupala. Pete as one of the country’s top rock musicians, as guitarist for NRM and as a solo artist. (There are a couple of photos of Zoya and Pete mixed into my updated Belarus series here.)

A friend and I have a little nonprofit and decided to bring Zoya to the US this past spring (she’s known in Europe but it was her first time here). We found her free studio space courtesy of A. Salon in Takoma Park, where she created an impressive new body of work in about a month. We got her an exhibition at the United Nations and a couple of smaller shows in DC. Art sales from the project will help establish arts programs for young people in Chernobyl-affected areas.

Zoya is a unique soul and an amazing person. Her work and personality reflect both her old-world roots and a playful modernism. I hung out with her in DC and NY and tried to capture a quiet, non-literal sense of her as an artist, and as a person taking in and channelling all kinds of new impressions.

Photographs by J Carrier

“Take a trip to Bhubaneswar, India and witness the circus act surrounding Budhia Singh, the prodigy who ran 40 miles at age 4.”

From the article “Wonder Boy” in the August 2008 issue of Runner’s World Magazine.

Here are some pics of Robert Knoth and his exhibition at Fotopub Slovenia. A few more are here on the Foto8 site.

The Wild Wild West Africa, by J Carrier

Headed off again to that wild west African city of Lagos! My nerves steeled. My shutter finger itchy. The place is completely off the chain; all insanity and madness, it makes Nairobi look like smallville. With cars on top of cars on top of people on top of stray dogs, the lame, the sick, the handicapped, the hawkers and touts, on overpass over underpass all beeping and bleeped out. 8 million people pushed up against the Gulf of Guinea, off the edge and into the lagoon. It’s a difficult place to work, but that makes the rewards potentially that much greater and I’m eager to see what I can create this time around.