woman paper visa 29

woman paper édition 29 COVER

Cultures photo

NATALIE KEYSSAR

visa

Angela Ponce Romero

Darcy Paidilla / Agence Vu' winner of the Canon Female Photojournalist Award 2016 supported

by ELLE Magazine VISA edition 29

Darcy Padilla

womAn paper visa

Angela Ponce Romero Winner of the Humanitarian Visa d’or award – International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) 2017 Women following their murdered relatives to the cemetery. Ayacucho, Peru, 2016.

VISA edition 29

natalie keyssar

cover story

March 6th, 2014.

Caracas, Venezuela. A National Police officer behind a riot shield is pushed backwards by a crush of demonstrators during the March of the Empty Pots, which coincided with International Women’s Day.

sylvie

grumbach

Si le festival Visa pour l’image est un temple du photojournalisme, alors Sylvie Grumbach en est la reine – indétrônable, et arrivée avant toutes les beautés qui feront tourner la tête des plus durs.

Ceux qui connaissent le festival des débuts, quand les projections étaient annoncées par un haut-parleur accroché sur une 4L dans les rues de Perpignan, le savent.

Elle est l’attachée de presse du festival et la directrice de 2e BUREAU. L’idée de la 4L, c’était elle.

Elle en a eu beaucoup d’autres depuis.

Avant toute apparition au Café de la Poste, le fidèle pèlerin vient la saluer.

C’est une tradition, même si aujourd’hui, dans l’affluence du festival, nous sommes finalement de moins en moins nombreux à respecter la coutume.

Il faut dire que malgré une certaine pudeur, Sylvie possède une aura incontestable. Elle observe plus qu’elle ne parade et ne se livre pas facilement.

Il faut du temps pour la rencontrer. Les festivaliers les plus attentifs connaissent sa silhouette. Sous les projecteurs du Campo Santo, elle organise le sitting des premiers rangs de façon presque militaire, comme pour un défilé de mode. Oui, absolument, parce qu’elle vient de là.

« Je suis carrément née dans la mode. » L’histoire du prêt-àporter s’est écrite sous ses yeux : les stylistes sont devenus des créateurs, les marchés de province se sont transformés en magasins, puis en maisons de couture. Aujourd’hui, elle s’agace des rédactrices de mode qui associent le début de la mode aux premiers défilés de Jean Paul Gaultier, celui-là même qu’elle voyait se pavaner dans les couloirs du Palace au début des années 80.

Son grand-père, CerfDavid Mendès France, possédait une maison de confection où l’on fabriquait des manteaux.

Lorsque Didier Grumbach, le frère aîné de Sylvie, entre dans l’affaire, il s’adresse aux griffes de luxe. La maison Mendès déniche de jeunes couturiers talentueux et met le savoirfaire de la confection à leur service. Quand on l’accuse parfois de jeunisme, Didier répond : « Tant qu’un créateur fait avancer le costume, il a sa place. » Il devance son temps. Il s’associe à Pierre Bergé et Yves Saint Laurent, alors assistant chez Dior, pour créer Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche. Nous sommes en 1966, Sylvie n’a pas vingt ans et vit le phénomène du prêtà-porter aux premières loges.

L’audace paye et la Maison Rive Gauche est un succès. Les enseignes se multiplient et font descendre la mode dans les rues parisiennes.

Plus tard, Didier lance Créateur et Industrie avec Andrée Putman (alors styliste chez Prisunic, encore loin de devenir architecte et conceptrice d’espaces).

Le résultat de la production apportera la reconnaissance à des noms tels Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Issey Miyake, Claude Montana ou encore Thierry Mugler, et se vendra derrière une imposante vitrine de la rue de Rennes. C’est

Colette avant l’heure. À l’époque, Colette tient une boutique dans le Sentier.

Sylvie n’est jamais bien loin. Elle fait ses armes dans d’autres maisons, notamment chez Woolmark. Elle s’occupe d’abord de la presse : « Je réclamais les vêtements, je travaillais la nuit au studio, on faisait les photos, et le lendemain, on les envoyait à la presse en faisant valoir que tel look était confectionné avec de la laine Woolmark. » Elle travaille ensuite au style, au dessin des looks. Lorsqu’on lui demande de piger les magazines de mode pour les tableaux d’inspiration, elle comprend qu’on attend d’elle qu’elle fasse de la copie. Elle claque la porte.

Elle est alors accueillie par un ami de son frère qui développe du textile pour automobile. Sylvie promeut la marque dans les salons automobiles d’Europe, tandis que l’ami développe parallèlement son tissu pour petite culotte « éphémère » : des petites culottes en chapelet vendues chez Prisunic.

Surprenant, non ? Sylvie est sur tous les coups innovants et assure la presse, comme on dit. « Ma famille me pensait styliste, mais quand j’ai rejoint la Maison Mendès, je suis devenue attachée de presse avant que la profession n’existe vraiment. C’était alors dix métiers en un : suivre les essayages, les castings, aider à la production des défilés qui avaient lieu dans les maisons de couture. » Sylvie est donc l’attachée de presse de Valentino, une filiale de Mendès, quand elle descend les marches du très chic restaurant parisien Le Sept, rue Sainte-Anne conçu par Fabrice Emaer, avec boîte de nuit au sous-sol.

« La musique était géniale ! Les seules qui osaient descendre sur la minuscule piste de danse étaient les filles de Warhol. On était tranquilles. » La fête commence. Et comme elle sort tous les soirs, la nuit devient son métier.

Le 1er mars 1978, Le Palace imaginé par le même Fabrice Emaer ouvre ses portes rue du Faubourg-Montmartre, faisant trembler Castel et Régine.

Sylvie est l’attachée de presse du lieu et membre du premier cercle de Fabrice au sein d’une équipe des plus éclectiques.

Fabrice sait emprunter à l’originalité de chacun, des personnalités très différentes qui ont toutes emmené des clients différents au Palace. « Fabrice venait de nulle part », raconte Sylvie. « Il a fabriqué une utopie et l’a réalisée. Il s’est fait un sublime théâtre et il le partageait. C’est là que je me suis libérée. » Dans ce théâtre restauré jusqu’aux dorures d’origine, Fabrice Emaer lui transmet l’art de recevoir, la passion du partage, le goût de l’autre, de la fête.

Surtout de la fête.

Encore un visionnaire sur sa route.

Le Palace incarne la révolution de la nuit des années 80 : ses trois lasers, ses physionomistes mythiques, son long couloir, sa piste de danse sans possibilité de s’asseoir, et des DJ avant que l’appellation n’existe communément. C’est avant tout un symbole de liberté où tout le monde a sa chance. L’interdit y est prohibé et on croit à la gratuité. L’entrée, pour ceux qui la payent, est de 50 francs. Le champagne est en open bar. Chaque membre de l’équipe est un « metteur en fête » dévoué à sa tâche. « Fabrice exigeait des réunions d’équipe tous les jours, et nous étions là tous les soirs », se rappelle

Sylvie. Travailler la nuit, ça se prépare le jour. Le Palace reste un théâtre : la nuit, on organise des ballets, des concerts, des avantpremières de films, des fêtes en tout genre, du moment que tout le monde s’amuse.

Fabrice donne sa chance aux artistes et toute une génération passe par Le Palace. Prince y fait sa première scène française, les barmen portent des costumes signés Thierry Mugler, un jeune qui monte.

Il y a aussi Pierre et Gilles, Paolo Calia, Kenzo, Gérard Garouste, Jean-Paul Goude, Grace Jones, Andy Warhol, Karl Lagerfeld, Frédéric Mitterrand qui vient de racheter la salle de cinéma L’Olympic, et tant d’autres. Au balcon fumoir, on croise aussi François Fillon, Jack Lang… Le Palace n’est pas une boîte de nuit, c’est un lieu culturel.

consommer – pour la plupart des éclairés un peu fous ou des prophètes extravagants.

Quand Fabrice disparaît, rien ne va plus au Palace et Sylvie s’en va du jour au lendemain. Les jobs qu’on lui propose ne conviennent pas et elle crée 2e BUREAU, une équipe d’attachés de presse qui accompagne les projets de ses clients depuis le deuxième étage du 13 rue d’Aboukir, non loin de la place des Victoires : un bel espace traversé de lumière, tout près du Sentier et des lieux emblématiques chers à Fabrice Emaer.

D’ailleurs, son portrait, avec un sourire éclatant dessiné au pastel, trône sur les murs de la patronne. « Le bureau » se veut la deuxième maison de ses clients où l’art de recevoir est un devoir.

Un bureau distingué, confortable pour ceux qui y travaillent et ceux qui y passent. À la nuit tombée, tous se mélangent.

que je savais faire pour organiser le festival. Ça me plaisait et je pouvais glisser des “c’est pas comme ça qu’on fait.” » En effet, derrière le rideau, Visa ce sont des milliers de festivaliers, des billets d’avion, des chambres d’hôtel, des taxis, des accréditations, des conférences de presse, l’agenda quotidien, les rendez-vous avec les journalistes, et bien sûr une bonne part d’imprévus, le tout mené à l’aide d’un talkiewalkie qui hurle souvent de mémorables colères à une fidèle équipe à toute épreuve.

2e BUREAU est une tribu de « personnalités » à qui Sylvie a laissé leur chance sans critère ni principe préétabli, la porte étant ouverte à celui qui sait s’inventer. Elle donne le ton et impose naturellement le respect – certains la vouvoieront pour toujours – et ce avec élégance, « un mot qui se perd. L’élégance Les premiers clients sont est d’une manière d’être, les amis rencontrés sous de faire confiance à sa personnalité, sans se les lasers du Palace. mentir. Ça va beaucoup Frédéric Mitterrand la avec l’intérieur des prend par le bras pour personnes. » Ici, rien monter les marches de Cannes. Quelques éditions à voir avec une beauté plastique dictée par la plus tard, 2e BUREAU mode, l’essentiel est propose un vestiaire ailleurs… « Le regard de créateurs dans les des autres suivra », hôtels de la Croisette. poursuit-elle sans Les festivaliers du approfondir… Sylvie finit off peuvent désormais rarement ses phrases et s’habiller avec style. le fond de sa pensée Simultanément, la photo reste parfois une énigme de mode explose avec pour son interlocuteur.

Guy Bourdin, Vogue, Cela fait partie de son etc. Jean-Paul Goude charme. revient en France avec son légendaire album Elle est à l’aise dans photo Jungle Fever. le mélange des genres 2e BUREAU assure la et sait entremêler les promotion du livre et Sylvie devient son agent. vies avec intuition ou discernement. Appelons Suivront Helmut Newton ça un sixième sens. et Max Vadukul. Puis Elle s’est forgé un c’est la création du nom. « Tout ceci est premier Festival de la l’expérience d’une photographie de mode à vie, ni plus ni moins.

Trouville. À ce momentRien n’était destiné. là, « le bureau » se D’ailleurs, je ne me suis partage avec Perpignan, où Visa pour l’image est jamais considérée comme un chef d’entreprise. » lancé. « À Visa, je me L’organisation du travail suis servie de tout ce

se conçoit ainsi :« 50 % du temps à me faire plaisir, 50 % à me faire chier, mais pas plus. » La directrice du « bureau » qui a invité des générations à goûter un certain art de la vie n’est peut-être pas la plus raisonnée des chefs d’entreprise, mais elle est tellement plus.

Son histoire s’assemble autrement sur les murs de ses appartements, avec un patchwork de photographies de photojournalisme, mais pas que : « J’ai regardé une autre photo avec Visa. » Elle a des amis chers dans le cercle de Perpignan qu’elle soutient mordicus lorsqu’ils font bouger les lignes d’une profession qu’on dit morte depuis des années. Parmi des photos légendaires et d’autres moins, c’est Venus à laquelle Sylvie fait spontanément référence.

Venus est une icône de Visa pour l’image.

Exposée dans les premières éditions, elle a marqué les esprits.

Venus est une jeune sansabri atteinte par le Sida que le photographe Scott Thode a suivie pendant des années. Sur la photo, on la voit pieds nus dans un mouvement d’explosion de vie, les vêtements mouillés par une bouche d’incendie de New York.

Un hymne à la vie.

woman paper woman paper Alain Pacadis crée la chronique « Night Clubbing » dans les colonnes de Libération, où il prône la jouissance de l’instant. La presse s’empare du phénomène, à tel point que la télé y organise une soirée de réveillon du Nouvel An en direct.

Fabrice Emaer défraye parfois la chronique.

En mai 1980, lors de la célébration de son anniversaire, il est sur scène et chante « La Vie en rose » de tout son cœur quand il s’interrompt soudain pour inviter à voter François Mitterrand. Dans la boîte, un ange passe et secoue les loges occupées par les clients les plus fortunés. La moitié de la salle se vide en quelques instants. « Je n’ai connu que des caractères, des visionnaires. » Avec Didier, Andrée et Fabrice en tête, Sylvie a un faible pour ceux qui ont du génie, mais aussi une certaine manière d’aimer la vie, de la

Marie Sumalla

scott thode Venus

the problem with photojournalism and Africa Why African photographers don’t get to tell African photo stories in Western media.

Whenever “Africa” is in the headline of mainstream US and European media sources, especially those that are highly regarded, I wince. I know the storyline is going to suffused by disappointment and resignation about Africa failing, once again. While the rest of the world and its modern inhabitants are technologising and digitising, happily going about wearing jeans and T-shirts, there goes Africa, backwards into some apocalyptic, scarred past, wearing embarrassing tribal garb.

Sometimes, these media outlets allow Africa to come to the present, but of course, in dubious ways: embedded in the flow of “Islamic” terror-narratives: Nigeria and Boko Haram, Libya and its violent insurgents, Somalia and its troublesome “Islamic fundamentalists” raiding Kenyan universities.

Nigeria, South Africa - but also that these photographers do not produce work that is “professional” enough for agencies to hire them.

‘Uncomfortable conversations’ Richardson offered some insight into continuing problems that locally based photographers face getting international news agencies’ attention. What emerges as a solution is the need for young photographers to get international exposure, where, according to acclaimed photographer Akintunde Akinleye, they may also “learn the ethical standards of the industry”. The takeaway: unless international news agencies based in North America and Europe such as the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse pick your work, you are a nobody.

Yet, it is these very agencies that contribute to problematic views that simplify Africa into a repetitive trope.

Africa remains a monolithic space of violence and poverty uncomplicated by global politics and military action, because the images and narratives chosen by powerful news agencies and newspapers continue to speak to foundational myths that Europe (and white ex-colonists and plantation owners in America) manufactured about Africa, in order to better ease their conquest and exploitation of a regionally, politically and socially complex, dynamic continental shelf.

If the construction of the African as child-like, or not quite human, who has little agency or intellect, aided the colonial project, today, the narrative continues to aid the construction of the European self as civilised, maintaining the African and Africa as the location of savagery, helplessness, and devastation.

It also creates Europe as a desirable location that those who have no agency and have done little to better themselves attempt to infiltrate - much to Europe’s chagrin.

conversations.”

And when it comes to payment, there are further “uncomfortable” discrepancies that international agencies never reveal: “When we do get assignments, they want to pay us less because we are from the country; but for a foreign photographer, they will not blink to pay an arm and a leg,” adds Muluneh.

In Richardson’s piece, the prevailing view is that even though top photo agencies are looking for local photographers to “offset costs”, the Africans do not compare to western photographers.

Alice Gabriner, Time magazine’s international photo editor, expressed disappointment with African photographers (note, again, an entire continent’s photographers are lumped together), because they lack “completed bodies of work”. But photography training institutions - producing photographers with “complete” bodies of work that have received international acclaim and awards - have mushroomed in the past 10 years.

Muluneh’s own focus is on developing internal networks: to be “independent and to create our own platforms … and institutions … to be self-sustainable and to be able to compete in the international market.”

Besides Muluneh’s DFA, which also runs AddisFoto Festival, there is Market Photo Workshop in South Africa, The Nlele Institute in Nigeria, The Nest Collective in Kenya, among others. Despite the existence of photographers and journalists from African localities, they are not the go-to people that agencies based in the geopolitical West seek out.

The New York Times’ reporters-in-Africa, Nicholas Kristoff and Jeffrey Gettleman, or R W Johnson, the London Review of Book’s go-to fave on South Africa, spin a good Africa story, seemingly with little self-critique, and with little thought to consequences. The ideologies behind the image narratives and stories in English language news sources are presented matter-of-factly, with little resistance from alternative media in the US and Europe; although they often contain deeply problematic perspectives of significant issues, they are trotted out on a regular basis, whenever there is a “crisis” involving Africa.

the fact that photo narratives reference prevailing problematic, and often racist, views; even those with expensive educations that taught them to be critical, those who hold influential photo-editing positions at the world’s most powerful news companies, still subscribe to these views, consciously or unconsciously.

For instance, only months before publishing “Who is Telling Africa’s Stories,” The New York Times published a photo essay with the troubling headline “Stepping Over the Dead on a Migrant Boat” by Rick Gladstone and Aris Messinis. The story focused on African migrants who had crossed the Mediterranean in an attempt to reach Europe, but ended up dying in a capsizing boat. The photo essay appears, at first, to highlight the migrants’ plight. However, the way in which they are portrayed, along with the provocative headline, made their desperate attempts to reach safety appear callous and inhuman (because what civilised person would step over the dead?).

The survivors who scrambled to get to safety are depicted as broken humans, at best, or those with unformed psyches that permit acts of barbarity that the Western “we” would never consider.

Photo-narratives such as “Stepping Over the Dead” bring up many familiar, and troubling, tropes common to the prevailing narratives about Africa. They teach a new generation of readers to view the African as an “other” to be pitied or feared.

woman paper It’s as though the editorial board is shaking its collective head with an exasperated sigh, and showing us, with a lavish, full-colour photograph, exactly why they are frustrated with the entire continent.

Sometimes, though, I’m just confused. For instance, the influential New York Times recently published an article titled “Who Is Telling Africa’s Stories”, covering efforts to develop photojournalism in various African countries.

The writer, Whitney Richardson, a photo editor for the paper, provided some contradicting points: Happy news about the growing number of talented photographers coming out of photography training institutes and collectives based in countries with divergent histories and presents Ethiopia, Kenya,

Aida Muluneh, Ethiopian-born artist, documentary photographer, and the founder of Desta for Africa (DFA) - a creative consultancy that curates exhibitions and pursues cultural projects with local and international institutions emphasises: “Photography continues to play a key role in how we are seen, not just as Africans, but as black people from every corner of the world. Stereotypes and prejudice are incited by images, and if it’s used, yet again, to undermine those of us who are truly doing the difficult work, then we need to have some uncomfortable

Conscious and unconscious tropes

If we ask a photojournalist or a photo editor how old narratives constructed in order to aid slavery, exploitation, and colonisation, as well as current efforts to extract resources, continue to inflect themselves into how we conceive of Africa and Africans today, in current photo spreads, we’d draw blank stares, or be the recipient of hostile, defensive responses. That lack of critique is partly owing to

These arresting images - constructed mostly by flown-in photojournalists, with the help of their photo editors - grab our attention; the best draw the fundamentals of their aesthetic from European masters, referencing visual cliches that Western-educated audiences can identify and latch on to. They continue and reinforce colonial mythologies, fashioning the “us” of the geopolitical West as “civilised”, defining and distinguishing the enlightened European self from the dark, savage Africa.

When the same newspaper prints a story about the struggle that African photographers face getting their work published, with little critique of their own involvement in presenting an insistently racist vision of Africa and Africans that simply masquerades as compassion, it’s easy to end up with a little schizophrenia.

How can African photographers hope to get work or recognition without reproducing expected stereotypes? Can they do so without the accompaniment of writing that exposes European or US governments’ interference and military

presence - as in the case of Somalia, Mali, CAR, Djibouti, and Chad - or destabilisation efforts and military campaigns - as in the case of Libya?

Instead of leading the story with the dearth of Africa-based agencies, and offering the need to get recognition in North America and Europe - itself a problematic solution, available mostly to those who are already from middle and upper-class families who are well-connected enough to navigate visa and immigration regimes, not to mention galleries and art world sharks - why not offer better solutions? Photographs have traditionally been regarded as “evidence”, or even as providers of indisputable “truth”. And there is little doubt that the present generation reads the world almost exclusively through images. In this age, where images play a significant role in how we read the world, photographs that accompany news stories have even more influence.

But the practice of reading, in which we currently engage, is undergirded by consumer practices; it is carried out with little critical ability, and with little historical understanding about how and why readers’ image repertories, and their thought processes are influenced by material cultures - including photography - that aided violent, imperial histories. But because photography is seen as a “truth-telling” medium that reveals without bias, audiences and photographers themselves are unaware of how the narratives they help create continue to be inflected with the same stories that enabled Europe’s construction of the African as a savage or helpless, the “other” needing the disciplinary forces of Western civilisation to tame and aid their unruly bodies and psyches into modernity.

When Muluneh was recently interviewed by a local radio station, she was asked how she was able to photograph “the good” things about Ethiopia, “as well as the bad”.

Muluneh explained to her interviewer that the “bad is the easiest thing to document”.

Perhaps that’s something The New York Times’ photographers need to hear in a critical skills workshop.

M Neelika Jayawardane M Neelika Jayawardane is a Associate Professor of English at the State University of New York-Oswego, and an Honorary Research Associate at the Centre for Indian Studies in Africa (CISA), University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa). She was a senior editor and contributor to the online magazine, Africa is a Country, from 2010 to 2016. Her writing is featured in Transitions, Contemporary And, Art South Africa, Contemporary Practices: Visual Art from the Middle East, and Research in African Literatures. She writes about and collaborates with visual artists.

This article was first published on line in the “opinion” section on Al Jazeera English.

the new quarterly about Africa, arts, critical thoughts / somethingweafricansgot.com

malin fezehai

An Eritrean coffee ritual in Neve Shaanan, a neighborhood in Tel Aviv that has become the center of social life for African asylum seekers

malin fezehai African Refugees in Israel

The government and some media call them “infiltrators,” a word that for most Israelis evokes Palestinians illegally crossing into Israel to launch attacks, painting them as a threat. A law passed in 2013 requires male African asylum seekers already in Israel to be detained automatically and indefinitely in the open detention center, Holot, in the Negev desert. Detainees are allowed to wander the desert between three obligatory check-ins every day, and they must also remain in Holot overnight. If they miss a check-in, they can be transferred to the nearby prison. Their only alternative is to accept a sum of $3,500 to return to their country of origin, or a third country, usually Uganda or Rwanda, often without proper documentation to stay.

In August, 2015, the Supreme Court of Israel reduced the maximum length of detention to one

year, prompting the release of around 1,000 detainees to an uncertain future. Only days before that, the government had preemptively broadened its criteria for summonses to Holot and barred the newly released men from entering Tel Aviv and Eilat, where most of them live and work.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once warned that the arrival of African people poses a demographic risk to Israel: “If we don’t stop their entry, the problem that currently stands at 60,000 could grow to 600,000, and that threatens our existence as a Jewish and democratic state.” With the Israeli-Palestinian divide growing ever wider, my project follows the quiet struggle of African asylum seekers trying to rebuild a life in the midst of it.

Malin Fezehai

Mutasim Ali, an asylum-seeker from Sudan is leaving his home to appear in district court in Tel Aviv, Israel. He is appealing his “invitation” to Holot detention center.

Israel’s policy toward African asylum seekers is to pressure them to self-deport or, as the former Minister of the Interior Eli Yishai put it, to “make their lives miserable” until they give up and let the government deport them.

About 60,000 African asylum seekers have entered Israel since 2005, most of them Muslims from the Darfur region of Sudan, and Orthodox Christians from Eritrea; today that number is closer to 45,000.

woman paper

A little girl watched as Israeli immigration police officers raided a graduation party for a Sudanese asylum seeker in Tel Aviv.

Mutasim Ali, a 28-year-old asylum seeker from Sudan, stands outside Holot. He appealed the official “invitation” to the detention center but was confined there for just over a year until his release this summer.

rahima gambo

For the students of Shehu Sanda Kyarimi, the story began one unassuming morning four years ago when six Boko Haram gunmen stormed their Maiduguri high school firing bullets in every direction. After a string of attacks on schools and universities and the highly publicized abduction of hundreds of girls from the town of Chibok, officials closed public schools for two years.

Now they are back in these schools picking up the pieces of an education interrupted. They are wearing the same uniforms, sleeping in the same dorm rooms, yet they have changed.

1

2

As students in northeastern Nigeria remember their experiences living at the forefront of the Boko Haram conflict, their stories often sound like a dark folktale somewhere between the real and the imagined. The act of remembering a past traumatic experience doesn’t fit neatly into a timeframe. Each retelling creates a third space, an alternate reality that is timeless and unresolved.

3

The students photographed here often have stories to tell about the killed, injured and abducted. But beyond this contemporary conflict, the project explores the school site as a concept embedded in Nigerian history symbolizing the colonial encounter and reflects on the idea of a collective memory that connects the student body and the idealization of an education system that is falling apart.

Education is Forbidden is a deeply layered mixed media engagement about the aftermath of conflict, the nature of memory and the echoes and consequences of colonial education in northeastern Nigeria. The project was supported by a grant by the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF). It project is due to be published as a book by Fourthwall Books in 2018.

woman paper 1 The 19-year-old pictured here wanted her face hidden. She was one of the surviving students of the Shehu Sanda Kyarimi school shooting. She was shot in the leg as she tried to escape.

Maiduguri, Nigeria, 2016.

4

2 Zara, 18, a student of Shehu Sanda Kyarimi school, at home. She remembers how Boko Haram members would regularly terrorize her class. Maiduguri, Nigeria, 2016.

3 Adamawa State University students in a lecture hall. The town of Mubi was attacked by Boko Haram in 2014, causing students to flee from the campus. Many had to walk miles across the border to Cameroon. One year later, students are still traumatized by their ordeal.

Mubi, Nigeria, 2015. Overlaid is an illustration from the children’s textbook, Primary Mathematics for Nigerian Schools, Pupil’s Book 5 with Answers, published by Heinemann Educational Books Nigeria PLC for the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council, Second Edition, 1989, Ibadan, Nigeria.

4 Three students from Shehu Sanda Kyarimi government school. During the height of the insurgency it was feared that some students were Boko Haram members. Officials described secondary school students as both victims and perpetrators. Maiduguri, Nigeria, 2016.

mozambique june 1975

dominique issermann serge july

mussa mbiki

Dominique Issermann and Serge July happened to be in Mozambique that day of June 1975 when FRELIMO took control of the country.

Full story in something we Africans got magazine issue 2.

daphné anglès alice gabriner nina alvarez michèle warnet maral deghati maria turchenkova kristel eerdekens

Woman stanley greene remembering

Lors d’une de nos dernières discussions à Amsterdam, je disais à Stanley que j’avais désormais un regret dans ma vie : celui de ne pas l’avoir connu plus tôt.

Cette année, Visa aura un goût triste pour toutes celles et ceux qui ont pris l’habitude de venir finir l’été sous le soleil de Perpignan. Pour la première fois depuis de nombreuses années, Stanley Greene, journaliste, photographe, poète et membre fondateur de l’agence NOOR, ne sera pas à Perpignan. Une exposition de son travail réalisée par son ami Jean-François Leroy sera montrée et vue par des milliers de personnes, des professionnels de l’industrie, des lycéens, des femmes et des hommes, mais Stanley, lui, ne sera pas là. Il est parti, forcément trop tôt et nous

en sommes tristes. C’est Visa que lui et ses ami-e-s et collègues de NOOR ont choisi il y a dix ans pour lancer leur agence. Dix ans plus tard, NOOR est toujours là, tentant d’apporter de la lumière sur notre monde, et gardant en tête et inévitablement dans le cœur les mots de Stanley : « Certaines choses ont simplement besoin d’être vues. » Pour cette seconde édition de visa paper, nous avons décidé de rendre hommage à Stanley Greene en sollicitant quelques-unes des femmes qu’il a eu la chance de rencontrer au cours de sa longue carrière aux quatre coins du globe.

Pour mieux comprendre sa démarche, son approche du monde, de la photographie et de la vie, ces femmes qui l’ont connu sur le terrain, dans une rédaction, pendant un reportage, nous racontent Stanley par une anecdote, un souvenir, un sourire, un regard de femme sur un homme amoureux des femmes.

Clément Saccomani

Germany, Berlin, November 1989 Kisses to All, Stanley Greene / NOOR

maral deghati 400 More Miles Before I Sleep

Stanley Greene is like poetry. He’s living rhythm, lyrical, and totally legend... He is not bound to the concepts of time. A day with Stanley is a soul-expanding voyage. He walks, strolls, visits streets of days gone by in Paris or beyond.

Woman stanley greene Darfur, Western Darfur, December 2008 A boy in a refugee camp living in western Darfur.

Stanley Greene / NOOR

alice gabriner The first time I saw— and heard—Stanley Greene, he was standing at the back of the small room in Hôtel Pams, Perpignan, in 1994. I don’t remember the theme of the panel discussion, but it was heated, and Mary Ellen Mark was there—no, this wasn’t a dream—and everyone was upset about the state of the business.

Last year he told me that coming to the festival meant so much to him. He’d fallen in love in Perpignan—it sounded like a lot

of times. Yet, he wasn’t cavalier about those women or relationships. Stanley was the real deal—so romantic and idealistic with unknown layers and contradictions, some of which I only learned about after he died.

Growing up relatively wealthy in Brooklyn, a pop culture television addict, who loved The Mary Tyler Moore Show. I looked back through his pictures on Noor’s website, reminded that he didn’t cover events: as an outsider, he lived them. There is always an intimacy there. Like one minute before or after he pressed the shutter, he was drinking, having a good time with the people in the pictures, in a room, somewhere in the Caucasus. There was a war, and people with guns, but

at the same time they were just living life and Stanley was among them. Watching his work unfold over all these years, I always wondered—how did Stanley get inside the Russian White House when it was under siege? How did he end up in Fallujah on the same day they were burning and stringing up the bodies of Americans?

He had a unique eye, his own style. A modern-day Hemingway, deeply entrenched in the world, but with sensitivity and soul. I think of him impassioned, fervently pleading about something happening somewhere. He wanted to go, he had to be there, and then he asked for Jamie’s number.

I imagine the camera was just a way for him to live an interesting life—and allowed him to

spend time with revolutionaries, freedom fighters, ideologues, and underdogs. Stanley Greene will be so missed at the Café de la Poste and beyond.

Alice Gabriner

It doesn’t really matter where you are with him because his stories always take you all around the world—at least once. He’ll share pure emotion and life experiences, tales of women, photography, conflict, war, politics and music, all intertwined into one big love song. Immaculately and identically dressed for all occasions—no matter what the occasion, he arrives with the appropriated charms, and always with the manners and whims. You could paint him and he’d pass for a portrait of a musketeer, with an added dash of modern and urban symbolism. He is like a painting.

Stanley wears his stories in passion and style, and incorporates notions of culture from near and far, adapting to every situation and making the most of it—passionately. As a child and student of art, he constantly explored creative expressions from drama to visual arts. A born bohemian, he has always been on the road.

Using the camera to communicate with the world, Stanley, like the emblematic of nineteenth-century French literary culture figure of the flâneur—the stroller, the passionate wanderer—has always been essentially timeless; he removes himself from the world while he stands astride its heart. Stanley communicates with intelligent emotion, capturing very human, very raw and universal moments in his photographs. Living with and fully observing his subjects, friends, and general passing world in every condition of the human experience, Stanley has created modern day archetypes and symbolism to relay his thoughts

and feelings about his/our current reality through a poetic visual language anyone can read.

To define his photography, I’d like to say he is an anti-Salgado. Stanley perfectly plays the balance between aesthetics and politics in the way he calls us to admire and accept the poetic beauty in even the darkest moments.

“In war, the dark is on nobody’s side, in love the dark confirms that we are together.” -John Berger

Paris, May 2016

This text was a short introduction to an exhibition that never took place. A heartfelt word to a true friend and respected colleague, I printed it out and gave it to Stanley Greene at another visit to the hospital. After a long silence, he said: “It is beautiful.” And then we laughed at how the newspapermen would dismiss this poetic ode.

It was just over a year ago, when he was back to living in Paris, where distant memories of past lives caught up with him. He was in the thick of the illness, through treatments and trials, battling on. In the last few years Stanley reclaimed his life-

long belongings scattered worldwide and worked on his archives, with such silent resilience. He would call or write letters to friends and colleagues late into the night, sharing deep thoughts and caring words… or to ask for one more favor. Now that I look back, I know he was minutely preparing his last dance, and gently whispering his goodbyes.

Amsterdam, August 2017 Maral Deghati

michèle warnet La faille

C’est un petit livre.

Presque un cahier. Et vers la fin de ce cahier se trouve cette photo de Stanley : une vitre brisée qui continue à me captiver par la complexité et la profondeur que cache son apparente simplicité.

Les photos de Stanley sont ainsi. Elles fascinent par leurs multiples niveaux de lecture qui s’étendent audelà de ce qu’on y voit en réalité. Sombres, denses et vertigineuses. L’œil s’y trouve comme au bord d’un abîme dans lequel il ne peut s’empêcher de plonger.

France, Paris, October 1997 Mr. Gheldman, shown now with his mother’s portrait, will be a witness at the trial of Maurice Papon.

Stanley Greene / NOOR

the start of my unceasing admiration and friendship for him.

daphné anglès Stanley He showed up with perfect punctuality. Emerging from the late morning glare at this café terrace in Perpignan, dressed in black from his leather boots to his woolen beret, he was an arresting sight. “Hi, Stanley”, he said in a raspy voice. We all shook hands—I was with Nancy Buirski, The New York Times’ foreign picture editor—and he sat down. Then he reached into his knapsack (also black leather), delicately extracted a pile of small prints with his ring-laden fingers and set them before us on the table. With no further small talk, he went straight to the point and started to talk.

Stanley had just returned from Chechnya and what he had witnessed there needed to be reported to the rest of the world. As Nancy and I pored over the images, he spoke with an acute sense of urgency and outrage. His vivid descriptions, the dizzying multitude of facts he related and the extraordinarily powerful images he had taken suddenly brought the plight of the Chechen people to life. This was in 1995, my first meeting with Stanley Greene and

Over the years we never lost touch. He would stop over at my home for dinner in between assignments and show me his latest work. He never ran dry of story ideas, they gripped him and didn’t let go until he’d been out there reporting and shooting. He’d commit to a story with passionate honesty, whatever the risks involved.

In 1998, he shot an assignment for The New York Times Magazine on Dzerzhinsk, the most polluted town in Russia, where toxic waste had been dumped for years by local factories and authorities showed a complete lack of concern for the population’s health. To shoot his pictures, Stanley waded through the poisonous air, over the dead soil and into the toxic water. The landscapes he shot exuded the noxious and stifling atmosphere of the place.

I’ve never ceased to be deeply moved by his work. His photographs were a reflection of his deepest self. His inner turmoil, his memories, his feelings, his demons, his intimate wounds connected him to people who experienced suffering. In that sense, he felt a deep empathy for those he photographed.

His energy was fuelled by a boiling, unremitting outrage at any kind of oppression or restriction of freedom imposed on others.

His moral compass was set right.

He also had a light that shone from the inside—maybe a search

for absolute purity, or simply a search for redeeming humanity.

He would dive head-on into darkness—wars, death, suffering—and always extract something pure and beautiful from it. The deeper the darkness, the brighter the light he would find. His life was a balancing act; he lived, worked and loved on that high ridge on the edge of darkness.

When he was in Paris, I sometimes gave him assignments for other sections of The New York Times.

I took him on an interview with Georges Gheldman, a French Jew who was 11 in 1942 when his parents were rounded up at the Vél d’Hiv in Paris and sent to Auschwitz, never to return. Gheldman had become a formidable bear of a man with a sharp blue gaze, a powerful presence and a booming laugh. A sexologist by profession and a freemason by conviction, he lived in a modest flat in a remote suburb of Paris and had a million stories to tell. Stanley sat quietly through the interview, listening, taking in the man and the situation. He shot just one roll of color film. They hardly spoke— Stanley’s French always remained sketchy—but in the end his grainy portrait perfectly captured at once the man’s tragic loss and his extraordinary vitality.

Another time, the Travel section needed photographs of the basilique de Saint-Denis, a magnificent gothic church north of Paris where France’s monarchs were traditionally given a final resting place. I knew that it was a stretch to send Stanley, a war photographer, on a mission

to show places in an attractive, peaceful light. But I didn’t want postcard-like pictures and I was interested in discovering what Paris looked like through his eyes. I got what I had bargained for. In Stanley’s pictures, the church nave was dark and haunted.

Unsettling chapters of history that had unfolded here lingered and echoed under the high vaulted arches. Yet the soft, blue-green light flowing through the ancient stained-glass windows bathed the scene in an aura of redemption.

The pictures were meaningful and stunning.

As for all true artists, his life and his work were inseparable.

What he saw, what he showed, was what he was.

Daphné Anglès The New York Times

Il ne s’agit pas que d’une vitre brisée. Concrètement, c’est celle de la chambre d’une petite maison à Aleksandrovsk-Sakhalinski, une ville de l’île de Sakhaline à l’est de la Russie. C’est là qu’Anton Tchekhov a rédigé ses notes de voyages à la fin du 19e siècle, détaillant les affreuses conditions de vie des bagnards présents sur cette île, mais aussi de tous les oubliés de la Russie tsariste qu’il venait de traverser. En 2013, Stanley a suivi les pas du dramaturge en parcourant, comme lui plus d’un siècle auparavant, une Russie glaciale et désenchantée. Bien loin des mythes orientaux et des radars médiatiques, il a photographié et documenté une réalité humaine prise dans un quotidien fait d’attentes et de difficultés.

L’ouvrage est en fait le catalogue de l’exposition à laquelle ce travail a donné lieu à Bratislava en Slovaquie entre fin 2016 et début 2017. Intitulé Voyage aux confins de l’empire russe, il est écrit en slovaque et en anglais, et reprend les tirages exposés dans un editing resserré à une trentaine de photographies – un choix où l’on perçoit tellement l’œil et la main de Stanley.

Woman stanley greene Bien sûr, tout ce qui concerne Stanley Greene s’éclaire à présent sous une lueur différente. Tout prend un sens amplifié, tout devient signe et un rien une clé. Pour comprendre, ou du moins essayer quand on en sait finalement si peu. Tout renvoie inexorablement à l’absence et au mystère insondable d’une personnalité. Et quelle personnalité.

De cette série magique et énigmatique, une foule de messages affleure. Pour moi, elle dit beaucoup de lui. Évidemment, les photos parlent toujours du photographe, mais là, on confine au testament. Ce que j’y vois aujourd’hui, ce sont les doutes et les questions qui ont jalonné son parcours, autant de thèmes sur lesquels Stanley n’a jamais craint de s’exprimer, dévoilant ses interrogations d’homme et de photographe.

Russia, Aleksandrovsk-Sakhalinsky, July 2013 Window of Chekhov’s room inside the Chekhov Museum in Aleksandrovsk-Sakhalinsky.

Stanley Greene / NOOR

Au fil des pages, ses photographies en portent les marques. Je vois dans celle qu’il a prise de la mer l’expression de la dureté d’un monde hostile pour celui qui s’est frotté aux conflits avec son seul boîtier le séparant des balles et des atrocités ; les bébés et les femmes, belles et brouillées, parlent du regret de n’avoir pas eu d’enfant et de la solitude des hommes qui, comme lui, n’ont pu faire rimer « l’ascenseur émotionnel perpétuel » des reportages en zones de guerre avec une vie affective stable, comme il l’écrit dans le catalogue ; et enfin, celle de ce foulard rouge, poussiéreux et piétiné, dit beaucoup de la douleur des femmes sacrifiées et des vies effacées par la furie des humains.

Et puis il y a cette vitre brisée qui clôt presque l’ouvrage. Les salissures y recréent un paysage, à moins que ce ne soit une

biologie vue au microscope, avec des formes dans les coulures et des ramifications dans les toiles d’araignée. Il y a surtout cette faille, grosse et sombre, qui la traverse de part en part. Elle s’enfle en son centre, comme une veine, comme un torrent, comme une plaie ouverte.

Plus je la regarde, plus j’ai le sentiment de faire face aux blessures de l’âme, à un autoportrait. Rares sont les photos d’une fenêtre qui, comme celle-ci, ne montre aucun ciel, aucun horizon. Elle est de celle qui n’existe que dans le cœur des êtres. C’est peu de dire que Stanley faisait corps avec son œuvre. Ses photos étaient parfois des cris.

Ce livre, c’est lui qui me l’a donné. Il venait d’être imprimé, je crois. Je n’oublierai pas son arrivée, ce soir-là, devant une terrasse de café. J’étais médusée

par sa haute stature, lourde du cuir de son manteau et du métal des bagues à tête de mort qu’il portait à chaque doigt. Je ne le savais pas, mais je n’allais jamais avoir l’occasion de le revoir.

De ce moment niché au creux de l’hiver parisien, il reste les mots d’une longue conversation dont les paroles se sont révélées crépusculaires. Le timbre de la voix qui les portait est gravé dans mes tympans. Il suffit d’en entendre une note pour le reconnaître entre mille.

Reste un petit livre, presque un cahier. Trente photographies.

Une vie en raccourci.

Michèle Warnet

Iraq, Fallujah, 2004 Bodies of the first killed Americans private contractors, also known as mercenaries. Stanley Greene / NOOR

Russia, Chechnya, January 2003 Ak i-Yurt camp, home to several hundreds of Chechen refugees, has been closed to outsiders for several weeks. No journalists or aid workers had been able to go in for a while. Today it no longer exists. On January 6th, 2003, the day of Orthodox Christmas, Russian soldiers invaded the camp and flattened everything– tents, shacks made of plastic and cardboard, and mud-brick houses. There is very little information about what has been happening to the refugees who have been pushed back across the border. Stanley Greene / NOOR

kristel eerdekens My take on Stanley Greene and assignments…

Life sometimes seemed like one big assignment for Stanley, at least from a few perspectives and moments I shared with him. He developed stories important to him and then kept knocking on doors in order to find a way to photograph them. With passion he would explain to editors, friends or strangers why it was important, hoping someone would help him do it.

It’s true, he was very happy when Kathy Ryan called and asked him to cover a story on Chechnya after the war was over for The New York Times Magazine, or when one day he was asked to take photographs to accompany a story on the Caspian Sea and the pipelines. The journalist had worked separately and we now were on our

own to get a portrait of President Aliev of Azerbaijan and really worked hard to get access again. Stanley made me make a thousand phone calls as he had to have that picture. Something less simply did not seem an option. He got it.

Not surprisingly we ended up in various situations as well, with police or military looking curiously at this large Black man, wearing as much jewels as cameras, for sure an exotic sight in Russia, “but was he dangerous…” you could hear them thinking.

They did not take many chances and often we ended up with the higher ranks quickly, and in those situations I would translate as accurately as I possibly could and Stanley always talked us out of those situations.

Something between humbleness and pretending not to understand what was wrong did the trick.

The border area between Armenia and Azerbaijan was one of those moments on an assignment. Everyone was tense, daily shooting across the fields and borders was part of the routine, very young soldiers with helmets too big for their heads and guns slung across

Woman stanley greene

their skinny shoulders… walking alongside geese… it was also part of the Caspian story. Stanley captured much more than the original brief during these assignments, his eyes always seeing and the camera never packed away. At night they would all come out and be thoroughly cleaned and dusted, adjustments to the packing were made, film marked, notes taken, the story further woven…

In the end such assignments were not all that frequent; work did not just fall onto Stanley’s breakfast plate. Never did I hear him complain about this though.

He continued his fight to concoct his own stories. It seemed his inner engine propelled him forward all the way till the very end on his last trip to Russia in January 2017, 100 years after the Russian Revolution, history... and love.

Stanley always had stories he wanted to tell with his photographs, but rarely did they come without words. He had his notebooks too, carefully keeping track of his voice.

Assignments were a means to an end. They would pay the rent and

Dunkin’ Donuts in the morning on those happy days in Moscow, but not only: they would also confirm Stanley in his work and embolden him to face another day with the grace and passion so typical of him, even when things were hard.

Oh yes, he could be very demanding and pushy as well, towards himself most of all!

“You are only as good as your last picture,” he kept on saying to himself!

A Chechen friend recently told me she felt Stanley had done more for Chechnya than any UN Security Council ever managed, through his striking images and passionate plight for the people suffering through war, something he went on documenting all over the world.

Not assignments made this happen.

It was your life which you turned into one big assignment to document humanity, witness of your time.

With love Kristel

bénédicte kurzen

Hey Stan, You know that picture?

The one with the dead bodies of those American soldiers on the floor?

This picture, I knew it even before I saw it weeks later you shot it.

Remember that evening?

You came back from Fallujah and stormed into Jerome’s office at the Palestine Hotel. I don’t know if this was the first time I met you, but this is the first time I listened carefully to one of your many stories. I always laughed so much, when you were telling me that my red hair was too outstanding for a photographer and that we had to blend in. Damn! How you, a Black American, jeweled, and so tall, did

you enter that crowd and just raised your camera?

I won’t have my answer from you anymore, but I know this was an act of faith, and photography was your religion.

Now I can rely on my memory to make you live. Your absence is so, still abrasive, you know? It will pass eventually and sometimes I wish it won’t, as you planted in me a seed that has grown and will keep growing: the passion, the mission, the dedication. You said that if my boyfriend was trying to prevent me

from going to the field, I had to leave him, because this is what I was meant to do… no matter how charming, funny he was, no matter how much I loved him. Fuckupation!

Among all our moments, my favorite is when you would lean a bit so I could see your eyes framed between the tinted glasses and the hat I gave you and you loved to wear, and the little, rare wrinkles you had when you smiled.

That was one of your disguise and it wasn’t. At that moment, I knew I had a piece of your truth, as there was a lot of survival, hiding, and revealing in you. You knew how to use seduction, oh yes you did, seduction and theatre, Stan! But what you gave us what

so genuine and animated with such a true flame… who could resist?

No one could fake it. And happened what happened, you became a photographer the day you realized you did not have the talent of a Jimmy Hendrix, and I know you know that you actually became Stanley Greene.

See you later. I love you.

Bénédicte Kurzen / NOOR

Russia, Chechnya, Grozny, winter of 1996/1997 Asya, portrait of a woman Now 22 with the face of an angel, she was carried off and raped at the age of 14. A man entered the family house while she was alone, threw a bag over her head, and hurriedly put her in the car where his accomplices were waiting. He kept her for a few days. He married her. Chechen traditions allow a man to kidnap the woman he wants to marry, with or without her consent. After the birth of their child, her husband became jealous, drinking and beating her. She escaped to her sister in Grozny. She decided to become a nurse. After graduating from nursing school she met her second husband. She became a fighting nurse.

Stanley Greene / NOOR

nina alvarez

I kind of couldn’t stand Stanley the first few times we met… At first it was those shades.

Then he always had a comment about my shoes…

“Are those Prada? They look like Prada… Anyway, they’re beautiful… but your toenails… they ought to be red.”

That Stanley got on my nerves.

And then the kibbutz was shut down. It was a building in an industrial, Orthodox Jewish section of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, occupied by photographers (Alex Majoli, Paolo Pellegrin, Kadir van Lohuizen, Chris Anderson, Tim Hetherington, Robert Clarke, and Stanley of course) and artists of every ilk… it was a dorm of brilliant people. In 2007, the New York City Fire Department shut it down after their discovery of an illegal matzo factory in the basement. It was Martin Luther King Day and sub zero degrees, when Stanley went back to save Zelina, a beautiful large print of his famous image of the Chechen rebel whose child had been killed by the Russians.

Zelina peers out the window, her eyes searching for something lost, her skin softened by dew and raindrops, and Stanley is carrying her to safety, at the back of my rented U-Haul truck.

Stanley and Zelina proceeded to couch surf for the next few days. I had offered a corner in my small apartment. He demurred…

Woman stanley greene

he only really liked my shoes, but the woman in them, ehhh, not so much. But a week later, the couches had run out—occupied by other kibbutz refugees. And so he ended up on my Harlem couch for a week, with an intern in tow. After a week, we kicked out the intern and bought an airbed.

Stanley stayed for six months.

The good thing was that although Stanley had shown up with a broken heart from a blown-up relationship… he also came with an endless number of DVDs…

We watched a lot of movies—war movies, westerns, dramas. But the real bonding came with binge watching: Law & Order, Prime Suspect (seven seasons), The Wire (five seasons), and of course, 24 (like eight seasons)… and those were 24 episodes each! By 4:45am we were bleary-eyed, nodding in and out… but fired up! And no, we could not wait until later to find out what happened next. No discipline whatsoever… We just devoured that Jack Bauer and his fight against world evil—which were usually in the form of brown people.

“Trust me, YOU DO NOT WANT TO GO DOWN THIS ROAD WITH ME. DROP THE COFFEE!

We don’t have time!

You’ve just got to trust me!”

I’d like to say those words peppered just our morning-after banter—but it became part of our mutual lexicon… and part of the oft-quoted Stanley repertoire. He was quotable, that Stanley, and even if some of it was from Jack Bauer or Doc Holliday, he got to own them.

Owning it—that’s what Stanley sought. He was not content with merely covering a story—he had to own it, in the way that would allow him to get to the very essence of a place, a person—their story. He had to be where no one else wanted to be or dared to be—or cared to be. And usually those places were not necessarily in the news, or they were in the news a lot, but he believed something else was there and he was intent on finding it. His passion was rare, all consuming, and demanding—of himself, of his

friends, his neighbors, his girlfriends, his family—the one he inherited and the one he chose.

When the Williamsburg kibbutz allowed the residents to come back, my place felt eerily quiet, a lot like my Skype and email are today. But he left me Asya in a black and white print. Standing fierce in her headscarf, striped shirt and patterned jacket, she is posing with her rifle, staring down the barrel of Stanley’s lens. Man, he loved this woman!

Later he let me have a small work print of another rebel with a rifle, which was never celebrated like Asya’s portrait. This one is of a girl, not a badass yet, but clearly on her way, if she lived long enough. Both are a glance away above my desk, reminding me of the strength and sacrifice of these women, and the righteousness of their struggle. And they remind me of Stanley and how singularly devoted he was to their story.

Stanley Greene was an unusual man. A gifted man. A complicated man. I learned from him about being human and all the complications that entails. We lived as roommates; we became friends, traveled and worked together.

Finally we were family. And like family tends to do… he drove me and other friends who loved him… crazy. (In fairness, I am pretty sure I drove him crazy, too) He was never going to hang up his cameras, no matter how sick he was or how awful he felt. When the first battle with Hepatitis C was lost, he turned his attention to that thing that always gave him purpose. What we called denial, he called survival.

Even though I suspected he might go before my own time was up— and he was sure tempting fate in Syria and Ukraine in the past few years—I just told myself he wouldn’t. He always came back from the brink, and I counted on him pulling that off forever.

After he died, I re-read many emails, as we tend to do to feel connected, to feel that person’s soul, to relive our life together. In his last New Year greeting to me, my partner Geoffrey and my daughter, he wrote, “I am crawling from the rabbit hole back into the light… You will be kept very close…” I read it now with such a heavy heart, remembering what a tough year 2016 was for him and what a joyous one it was

as well with the arrival of my daughter Alíx Lucia. He was so happy for me—truly happier than anyone. He was there every step of the way, checking on me, even though his own life was thrown into chaos with the cancer making its own announcement. On our last visit together, he made pictures of us as we greeted each other, with Alíx in my arms, as if that might be the only way he would remember that moment.

Stanley had an enormous capacity for love. He was a good brother to me—and a complicated one too.

He would disappear at times—in Ukraine, Sudan, Nigeria, Russia, Syria... (for once, I wish he’d gone someplace simple, like the Bahamas)—and make me nuts when the silence went a bit too long.

But in the midst of his drive to get the story no one else would get—and tangled up in his romantic chaos—he would eventually show up and all would be ok again.

He was so consumed by a need to be out there, on a rampage against the most brutal dictators and mind-bending injustice, that he was always risking another personal loss. And there were several. He knew there would be consequences, in his relationships, in his health, for his life. But as many times as we discussed it, he couldn’t quite explain what compelled him to choose to stay in the roughest of places over the comfort of being in the arms of the one you love. It didn’t serve him well personally, for what relationship can endure such a test again and again? But it resulted in an immeasurable contribution to humankind.

For that part, we can all be grateful.

Nina Alvarez

tanya habjouqa mayalen de castelbajac alice martins cansu yıldıran lynsey addario charlotte schmitz tasneem alsultan solmaz daryani maria abi-habib alexandra r. howland

womAn middle east / Cloé Kerhoas directed by

tanya Habjouqa From the series Fragile Monsters: Arab Body Building, Jordan, 2009 Tanya Habjouqa / NOOR

This year has been pretty tough for all of us. The polemics that shook the profession, the questioning, the feeling of helplessness sometimes, of injustice… It is tempting to complain and to wallow in it. I am sometimes a pessimist person and I felt the weariness slowly appear.

But then, I had the chance to exchange with talented women during the creation process of visa paper. And I have to say that it really hit me, it was a wakeup call for me.

While I was losing motivation, these women were transforming the obstacles into an energy capable of generating value for photography. Some of them are originally from the Middle East, others chose to work and live there and all of them have decided to turn the negative aspects into a positive one: telling stories.

The weight of the patriarchal society? The difficulty of making their voice heard? Disappointments, disillusionment?

Male domination in photography industry? Yes, they all felt the effects at some point and it remains their daily reality.

But despite everything, I see a great deal of enjoyment, and optimism among them. They keep their chin up, they don’t give up. Giving up not even seems an option for them. I’m astonished by their energy.

Passion. It is all about passion. Only true dedication can keep you alive in this profession, especially when you are a woman. They all share this consuming passion. It’s refreshing to exchange with people that put everything into it. It’s also interesting to note that many of them have deeply probed their personal identity. It is certainly symptomatic of women’s place in the Middle East.

They are sometimes obliged to go through this stage to escape the burden of traditions and then be able to document the lives of others.

Of course, the process is not the same for those who chose to work in the Middle East but were born in Europe or in the United States, myself included. I am French; I’ve been living in Turkey for almost three years.

The women’s rights and their freedom in the public sphere have considerably deteriorated in a very short amount of time.

I already feel the influence of these changes on me. The type of clothing I wear is not the

same, as is my way of speaking, my sensitivity to things, and my vision of men. It has shaken and shattered my vision of the world and my daily life.

The country, the geography where you are born or where you chose to work influence you, mark you, run through you. This makes the work of these photographers and journalists stronger, singular and their sincerity is never to be questioned.

It is time to give more importance to the photographers who document their own country, their own culture and identity.

In Africa, in the Middle East, in South America and elsewhere.

Of course, the vision of those who chose to live or to work in another country than their homeland is also very important. The problem is the imbalance of the representation. We are far from equity.

So “no, nothing new,” we all know this (at least I hope). But we tend to forget these parameters when it comes to work with photographers, to find them assignments and to represent them fairly.

Before I let you discover how inspiring these women are, I wanted to thank them. Thanks to the photographers but also to the journalist and the video reporter who, by sharing their experiences and opinions about photography and their work, help the photography industry to

question itself a bit more.

Their passion is stronger than anything and makes me think that what the famous choreographer Martha Graham said about dancers is also valid for photographers: “Great dancers are not great because of their technique; they are great because of their passion.”

Cloé Kerhoas

Cloé Kerhoas is coordinator & photo editor at Agence Le Journal since 2015. She worked as exhibition coordinator at Le Mémorial de Caen and in other museums before starting a freelance carrer at Le Journal. Based in Istanbul, Le Journal is a collective of photographers, videographers & multimedia producers strongly committed to pursue an understanding of the world through photography and other mediums. Cloé currently lives in Istanbul, Turkey.

alexandra r. howland Alexandra R. Howland is a young British American artist and photographer based in Istanbul.

Howland’s work is driven by the idea of making visible our world’s most forgotten places through challenging visual standards within her work.

Two years ago, I was living in Los Angeles with a career as a Fine Art painter. I was in the midst of preparing for an upcoming exhibition, which means I hadn’t left my studio in days and was probably high of fumes from the paint when I came across Cynthia Ozick’s essay Public Intellectuals for the first time. In it she writes, “It is not sufficient to have beautiful thoughts while the barbarians rage on.”

I was surrounded by art, beauty, culture, education, conversation; and yet it was the unyielding ambivalence and ignorance of my environment that I could not stand. I was unable to escape a certain bubble of Americana that my previous choices had enveloped me in. I felt the pull to shift the lack of awareness around me, to find a way to change the interests of my peers to a more global understanding. I believed that photography would take me—and thus my audience—from bystander to active participant. I wanted to create a work that would do more than hang in a gallery, that would make people stop, see, and

WOMAN middle east watched a father burying his face in the cloth that wrapped his daughter’s body. I have seen the top-half of a teenage boy left crawling in the middle of the street. I have witnessed a soldier breaking down as he watched his father emerge from the rubble of a newly liberated neighborhood.

As it turns out, and as we all know, this is quite the task.

I knew that I possessed the strength to transition to documentary photography, and I knew that I had both the creative approach and skill set to change careers. I did not know that two years later I would be on a rooftop in Al-Zenjili, West Mosul, embedded with the Iraqi Army, ISIS snipers holding a hospital 300 meters away, and my biggest concern would be falling asleep before the guy next to me starts to snore. I did not know that it would be hotter than I could ever imagine; sweat and dirt would cover every inch of my body; my hair would smell like rotting flesh; the sound of mortars would be constant and closer by the moment; and that the soldier to my left would still be taking advantage of my colleague’s 3G to watch porn for the fourth hour straight.

For the past six months I have been working on a project to make evident the cultures, situations, and people, not through individual moments and stories, but through presenting a full picture of what it means to really be here. The 88 kilometers of Mosul Road have become the point of transition from the relative normalcy of Erbil to the chaos prevailing on the Mosul frontline and I have documented each kilometer of it. Starting from the Citadel in the center of Erbil to al-Nuri Mosque: the man sitting outside his store front smoking a cigarette, local markets coming to life after a year of war, a city flattened by airstrikes, this stretch of landscape has been collaged together in a single, un-curated, panoramic image that attempts to draw the viewer into the reality of living in a place affected by war. You see that they carry on, seemingly unfazed at times, in their destroyed neighborhoods. The juxtaposition of normal life in a place of chaos seems impossible, but it is a familiar reality here.

What I have learned since moving to Iraq is that there are oddities of working in a war zone that make this job impossible to understand. The fact that being in a war zone does not mean being in war, that the space between good and bad is a shade of grey I had never seen before, that life continues right next to an active frontline. There have been moments that will never leave me—moments frozen in time; I have

This work has both challenged my confidence and demanded a deeper level of dedication than I knew I possessed. As I am pulled into the immediacy of producing a photo essay for publication, I have to force myself to retract, to remain focused. I want to challenge how we as photographers can expand on the visual standards we are accustomed to and challenge our viewers to step further outside their perambulations.

have interest in a life outside their own.

In my attempt to escape what often feels like suspended reality, I frequently place myself into a chaos that is not my own.

I feel calm within this chaos. As though my mind can finally escape itself and work towards its larger purpose. Through this process, I have witnessed the extremes within our nature as humans. I have worked to understand them, to turn the chaos in front of me into something approachable. The impact of this on the public is something I will question ad infinitum. The impact on me has been immeasurable and irrevocable.

Cloé Kerhoas: As a (woman) photographer, are you hopeful about your future in this “photography industry”? What are your fears, hopes and expectations for your future?

Alexandra R. Howland: I think I have written about 50 different responses to this question by now. Trying to put into words the impossibility of continuing to be a photographer given the current state of the industry, let alone as a female photographer within it, while not sounding too pessimistic… it’s quite the challenge to be honest.

I’ll say this:

I am hopeful for my career as a female photographer because there is nothing else I will dedicate my life to, so I have made the decision to be ‘hopeful’. This hopefulness translates into a determined creativity to work outside the industry standards, to separate myself from the normalcies of photojournalism because there is very little stability within that industry.

Alexandra R. Howland

maria abi-habib

Maria Abi-Habib is a Middle East correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, focused on terrorism issues and jihadist groups such as Al-Qaeda and Islamic State. She has been based in Beirut since 2013 and previously reported out of Kabul, Afghanistan, for WSJ starting in 2010.

As a writer, I asked her to share her reflections about the importance of photography in journalism, and how she works with photojournalists on the field.

Journalism is rapidly shifting and attention spans are getting shorter.

This has created difficult challenges that may be insurmountable for quality print journalism, as telling a story with fewer words means less impactful reporting and a dent in our core mission: thoroughly grabbing readers to transport them to difficult places and bring a piece of the world to their homes, wherever they may be located. their homes, wherever they may be located.

But what may be one of print journalism’s biggest challenges may be photojournalism’s greatest oppor-

36°21’21.72”N 43°17’20.52”E. Iraqi soldiers stand at their post along the stretch of Mosul Road as IDP’s flee from the battle against ISIS. - 2017

tunity. How can a reporter explain the devastation that has befallen Mosul, the ethnic or religious rivalries that still engulf much of the world or the impact that climate change deniers like President Donald Trump’s policies will have on future generations when we’re being asked to write shorter stories? Through photo essays, the very roots of great journalism’s “show don’t tell” ethos, the most instantaneous way to grab a reader in the era of short attention spans and mindless reading, as our audiences flip between Twitter, Facebook and online newspapers for information.

One of the most positive trends in modern-day reporting has been the rise of photojournalist as photo-essayist in traditional newspapers. Writers and photographers think differently and it’s important for publications to start untethering the two. Oftentimes as a writer I feel guilty when a photographer is assigned to one of my stories—many times, the story I’m pursuing is just not visual enough and the photographer sits around, their skills not put to maximum use. Is it really worth it to put a photojournalist on assignment for a day or three when an editor will only use one photo? Or when the newswires have taken identical photos of a general assignment, such as the fall of Mosul in Iraq?

Some writers think visually but many others don’t, pursuing scoops instead of colorful features, perhaps out of fear that readers’ attention spans are ever-shrinking and everyone wants a “holy shit” moment, a sit on the edge of your seat, blockbuster scoop. And this is why it’s so fascinating and im-

portant to see photo-features, the pictures speaking for themselves with chunky captions for context.

It sometimes seems as though photographers are pursuing the flowery features writers were encouraged to do in the past, to reveal the world to readers, before the medium began languishing.

Although it’s encouraging to see photographers being sent out to pursue their own stories in publications that are traditionally more print-oriented, I worry photographers aren’t being given enough time to thoroughly execute their work. While we can all sympathize with news organizations, and budget concerns for photographers working in dangerous places, the pressure of time can mean corners are cut when it comes to safety.

This combined with the rise of editors who haven’t ever worked on a frontline can be a deadly equation.

I’ve seen editors without experience in the field (and from various publications) demand photographers pursue the impossible, only heaping on more pressure and likely to increase the risky behavior that leads to grave errors, and photojournalists worried they’ll never be hired again unless they fulfill the request.

So, we come to what we all know, but somehow lost along the way: quality work demands quality pay and the time investment to excel.

Lastly, my main concern is how much the space has shrunk in journalism to allow new talent to emerge, especially in photojournalism. The photojournalist is becoming a near extinct species in journalism because of the loss of mentors that can guide up-and-coming reporters,

especially photographers who take some of the biggest risks in the business to get close enough to take that great shot. We all had someone guiding us in some way when we first started our careers, an editor or a seasoned colleague. And in print, this still exists, to an extent, although we’re all being asked to do more with less so it can be difficult to find the time to be a mentor. But with photo, how can a new generation emerge when there are only maybe a few dozen photojournalists with steady work to learn from?

Maria Abi-Habib, from Beirut

Alice Martins is a freelance photojournalist covering humanitarian crisis and armed conflicts in the Middle East. She is currently based in Iraq, covering the ongoing war in Syria since mid-2012, and the war against ISIS in Iraq since 2014.

In 2004, I worked on my first photo-documentary project when I lived in Southern Africa. But it was only in early 2012 that I arrived in the Middle East with the purpose of dedicating myself to my career as a photojournalist covering armed conflict and its aftermath. I have since been focusing on the conflicts in Syria and Iraq.

Over the course of these five years, I have observed many changes in the places I visited, and saw how important it is to follow these stories for a long period of time, first to my own understanding, but ultimately to create a body of work that can attempt to offer a broader perspective and serve as valuable documentation of these events.

In this relatively short time I have spent in the Middle East, I have seen the work of journalists covering the conflict in Syria change drastically when the Islamic State militant group began kidnapping and executing foreign

journalists. Places where I had been working before were no longer accessible. From the start, the war in Syria was a very dangerous environment for any journalist to work in. In Aleppo, especially, covering the hardest hit areas meant standing side by side with the civilians who were being targeted by indiscriminate artillery and air bombardment. But when the kidnappings became systematic, the risk became too high to take, in part because it put locals who worked as drivers and translators as direct targets to criminals looking to kidnap foreigners.

My work in Iraq has been following the conflict between Islamic State militants and Iraqi security forces, and the resulting civilian displacement. It is very different from my work in Syria, where I was on the weaker side, being targeted by war planes. Here, journalists watch airstrikes from a distance and try to make out what is happening there by speaking to those who manage to escape, or by visit-

ing the site in the aftermath. I recently visited Mosul’s old city to follow the workers of the civil defense. In times of peace, their work is mostly to put out fires.

But in times of war, they are also in charge of rescuing civilians trapped in the rubble of buildings that collapsed after being hit by airstrikes. Now, weeks after the battle for the city of Mosul officially ended, their work is limited to collecting the remains of those who died and whose bodies lay decomposing under the rubble.

Alice Martins

WOMAN middle A man, blindfolded and handcuffed, kneels on the ground between two members of the Iraqi security forces after being accused of having links to the Islamic State group and being detained. Mosul, Iraq, November 2016

Perhaps there is a distinction between my interest in photography and my interest in witnessing war. But to me it seems to be all connected to my fascination for human beings and my desire to understand them. It is through photography that I find ways to observe, register and share what I believe are examples of humanity at its worse and at its best. In war it is possible to find these extremes. There are those who kill, and those who risk their lives to save others. Often they can be the same person in different circumstances.

The body of three-year-old girl lies covered by a blood-stained blanket at a clinic in Qayyarah. She was killed while fleeing Islamic State captivity alongside her family when an improvised explosive device planted by IS militants was detonated. Qayyarah, Iraq, October 2016

alice martins

A humvee part of an Iraqi army convoy drives through an area contaminated by smoke from oil wells set alight by Islamic State militants as they fled Iraqi security forces in Qayyarah.

Iraq, October 2016

WOMAN middle east

Soldiers with the 173rd battle company, on a battalion-wide mission in the Korengal valley. Afghanistan, 2007

Pakistani Taliban fighters near the border of Afghanistan, July 2008. Lynsey Addario for the NYT

Afghan women, Afghanistan, 2009

WOMAN middle east WOMAN middle east lynsey addario

Lynsey Addario is an American photojournalist.

She has spent her career photographing the human toll of conflict, especially on women, from Afghanistan to Libya, Cuba to Iraq, and India to Israel. She was shooting the last days of Kaddafi’s reign in Libya when she was taken hostage. She then wrote a memoir, It’s what I do, and continues to document the human crisis from all around the world.

Cloé Kerhoas: You have an astonishing career; you are travelling all around the world and covering a lot of issues. Is there something you would have liked to work on or to do but could not (yet) accomplish?

Lynsey Addario: The list is endless: I always feel like I am not doing enough, and when I am working on one story, I feel like I should be working on ten others. I have spent most of my career working overseas: in the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, and I do think it is an interesting time to start looking at stories in my own country, the United States. There is so much to cover there, from the (lack of) healthcare to racism to the immigration to drugs, and I have only begun working in the US this year. This isn’t to say I don’t want to work overseas anymore, but I think it would be interesting to start exploring issues at home and abroad.

CK: Is there something you wish you had done differently? You wrote the book It’s what I do: how did you come up with this idea (to write a book)? What has this book brought to you?

LA: I don’t really believe in regret, or in wishing I had done something differently. I believe that all of life’s experiences—both personal and professional—help make me stronger and wiser, even if I fail, or if they weren’t what I had hoped. I think it’s important to always look ahead, to look at the current events and happenings

in any given geographic location, and to try to focus on stories that will educate and enlighten people, and possibly dispel misconceptions.

Writing a book was part of the larger journalistic and creative journey for me: at the time, writing was how I preferred to express myself. After surviving my kidnapping in Libya, I was approached by various literary agents in the US with offers to write a memoir about my experiences on the frontline.

As one of few female photojournalists working consistently in war zones over the past 16 years, I was repeatedly told I had a unique perspective.

Initially, I wasn’t convinced—it felt like it would be a very narcissistic process to write a memoir at 37 years old—I couldn’t imagine my life would be compelling enough to spend years working on a book. But I did have years’ worth of written journals, and did feel like I needed some time to stand back and evaluate all the neardeath experiences I had survived in the previous decade, alone. One month after being released from captivity, Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros were killed in Libya, and their deaths sent me into a tailspin that I hadn’t experienced before. And at that point, I decided I needed to process the trauma I hadn’t really dealt with, and spend some time with my thoughts. I began to look over my journals, and seri-

ously contemplate writing a book.

And then I met my literary agent, Amanda Urban, who convinced me the book was necessary, and would be great. And then I met my editor, Ann Godoff, at Penguin in New York, and she was equally enthusiastic, and offered me a book deal. So, everything fell into place in early 2012.

CK: What is the hardest aspect of your job as a photojournalist? Have you ever contemplated to give up, to drop everything?

LA: The hardest aspect of my job is the never-ending struggle to create some balance between professional demands, and trying to have some semblance of a personal life.

For many years, I lived out of my suitcase, and stopped in Istanbul or Mexico City, or India just to do laundry and have a few days’ rest. I didn’t mind that my entire life was based on assignments. Now, at 43, I am trying to ensure I have some time for my family, and it is extremely difficult to balance the unpredictability of assignments with the demands of being a mother. I’ve never considered giving up my work. At most, I have had to re-evaluate how much I work, and how often I am away from home, because it has consequences.

CK: On another hand, what drives you and motivates you the most as a photojournalist?

LA: I still believe in the fundamental importance and necessity of journalism, of the dissemination of information, of educating people through images and the stories we tell, and of providing a voice to people who don’t have a platform.

It is a great honor for me to be able to walk in and out of people’s lives, and try to convey their stories and messages in some of the greatest publications, like The New York Times, Time Magazine, and National Geographic.

CK: What are the projects/issues you are working on or you are planning to work on?

LA: I am currently working on three long-term stories: Finding home, where I am following three Syrian refugee families and their newborn babies through the asylum process for Time Magazine, a US-based story for National Geographic magazine, and a story in Belgium for The New York Times.

CK: What would be your advice to the new generation of photojournalists, or to photographers willing to work as photojournalists?

LA: Figure out the stories you want to tell, and get out there and shoot! You have to be proactive, and diligent and dedicated, but it’s worth it.

WOMAN middle east

mayalen de castelbajac

Mayalen de Castelbajac is a French video reporter who covered the Ebola virus epidemic in Guinea, the earthquake in Nepal, the Crimea conflict and worked on social and political issues in Europe, India and South Africa. She moved in Turkey in 2015, just before the coup attempt. Since then, she has mainly worked about this country for the Franco-German TV channel Arte.

Working as a video journalist in Turkey is like treading a tightrope. A rope that stretches between the authorities and the characters we film. A thread that sometimes stretches up to a breaking point.

In this climate of generalized repression, working as a video journalist—which means to film people, and tell a story through visuals rather than strictly narrative means—is an exercise that requires a fair amount of agility and patience.

The camera has always been my primary means of expression.

For me, this means filming people, giving them a voice, allowing them to tell their stories.

And yet my job has never been as difficult to perform as it is now. “No thanks, I do not wish to speak in front of the camera of a foreign journalist; it’s too risky, you see. I’m sorry, please, don’t call me anymore.”

These are the sentences I hear every time I begin an investigation. To me, this reaction is symptomatic of this “new” Turkey, following the failed coup d’état of July 15th, a Turkey marked by an ongoing series of purges, and the tracking of opponents. In short, a Turkey where one lives in constant fear. “Teşekkürler,

sorry”, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

I sometimes find myself loathing this camera of mine that sits in the entrance of my flat in Istanbul. What an idiot! Why not revert to the old school pen and notebook instead? And yet to me, the image is like a hard drug.

Like a lover one tries to forget, but which one cannot help but call. The production of each news report is a complicated, stressful, and exhausting adventure. Yet each time, this painful delivery is forgotten. A new idea arises, and I’m ready to go, to start again.

The image, over and over again.

To tell a story through images is my daily challenge. When a sequence is difficult to obtain, I have to find ingenious ways to overcome obstacles—this person refuses to be filmed; too many policemen in front of this building; this house must not be recognized... My challenge is to use the picture itself as a means to explain the situation. In such complicated circumstances, the mobile phone, more discreet than my camera, is often my best ally.

More and more, I compose my shots in a photographic manner. To me, the image is to a certain extent a window on reality, a composed picture of reality which, if possible, can do without an explanatory text. Of course, most of the time I produce short reports for news television, which means that each shot counts, there’s no room for squandering. Here, a Syrian child is watching a cartoon in a living room. He is far away. Far from Aleppo, his native town,

which he fled. There, the biggest shopping street in Istanbul, and on the highest facade, a portrait of the unmissable, ubiquitous Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The 10-meter high banner overlooks a shadowy flood of people, anonymous silhouettes caught in an increasingly difficult and morose daily life. While working in Turkey, I have had to unlearn some of the implicit rules that govern the narrative of TV information in general. I don’t have much choice anyway, and it’s better this way.

I have never claimed to “have an eye”, as they say, let alone to be a born photographer. Nevertheless, for as far as I can remember, photojournalists have influenced me. Their works have accompanied me throughout my adolescence, and to this day remain essential references helping me improve my own practice. James Nachtwey was particularly important to me. His work literally knocked me down when I was still a young girl, a farmer’s daughter in the French south-western countryside. I met him years later while covering the death of Nelson Mandela in South Africa, my first news report ever. A perfect sign of destiny, some might say.

More recently, the story that moved and shook me the most in terms of image was Syria: Children on the Frontline by Marcel Mettelsiefen, a trained photographer. His images are beautifully composed pictures, and yet he never exalts the horrors of war.

The latter are simply exposed as they are, in their bare truth.

An increasing number of photographers choose to engage with the video camera, generally with successful results. The opposite is less obvious. Why? I do not really know. It is difficult enough to earn a stable position, let alone to make a living in each of these professions, that many are reluctant to experiment new ways of working. One thing is certain however, many cameramen secretly or openly admire the work of photojournalists. In recent years, the photographic image has pervaded our daily lives, if only on social networks. Today, everyone can look at the work of such and such a photographer in just a few clicks. And it has become common media practice to edit photographs with music, but without comment. Finding new ways of telling a story is an absolute necessity.

In my experience, Turkey is my biggest challenge as an image-focused reporter. The responsibility to remain present no matter what, to keep trying, to keep digging, and do the best I can is a daily burden, but I have never felt as confident in my vocation as I do now. Let’s see where this will lead me. Inshallah, mashallah.

Mayalen de Castelbajac

WOMA middl video stills from Mayalen’s Arte reportages, Turkey, 2016-2017

tasneem alSultan The bride’s parents are from Palestine, making this wedding different than typical segregated weddings.

WOMAN middle east

Ouhood, scuba diving in Red Sea port of Jeddah: “We women often joke that we can’t drive, but we can dive.” -

tasneem alsultan

Tasneem Alsultan was born in the US and educated in England, before returning to Saudi Arabia for her undergraduate studies. Her Master’s focused on the ethnographic study of Saudi women abroad. She now documents topics on human rights with a focus on gender and social issues in Saudi.

I’ve asked Tasneem to talk about her recent project Saudi Tales of Love based on women sharing complex marriage theories and experiences.

For the last 12 years, I blamed my marriage on my parents. I repeatedly questioned how they allowed me to marry at the age of 17, and why they never supported my need for a divorce later on. They always argued that they never encouraged me to marry so young, and that their objecting the divorce was for the sake of the kids. I didn’t understand them. I felt

left alone. But I was inspired by the empowered cross section of Saudi women who opened up their lives to me, and I finally faced my diary. So I delved into the dairies I wrote from the age of ten to sixteen. Funny enough, I wrote in that personal journal till a few weeks before my marriage. I wrote how worried my parents were. And how my father was very skeptical of this young man.

I was sixteen when my ex-husband proposed, and my pages were filled with stories of my teenage angst against my mother. I saw how I used the escape from her motherly love to fall in the arms of a man I didn’t know... Hence, I wanted to be Shahrazad in One Thousand and One Nights. A storyteller of other’s misfortunes and romantic endings.

For my project, I followed the stories of a widow, a happily married woman, two divorcées, and a young child—to name a few. I also delved into the many gems I shot from my wedding photography business in Saudi (with permission from my clients). I see the irony in being a divorced wedding photographer. But nevertheless,

it was through these stories and from reading my own diary that the project as a whole gave me a sense of closure.

Cloé Kérhoas: As a freelancer who works in Saudi and Middle East, what is the biggest challenge you are facing?

Tasneem Alsultan: The biggest challenge for me is to represent Saudi and the rest of the Middle East in a manner that is honest, respectful, and meaningful. Sadly, we as viewers have become desensitized to images of the Middle East people portrayed as victims or villains, so I try to widen the spectrum and fill in for the in-between.

CK: Do you think the media are treating Saudi and Middle East in an exhaustive way? Or is the media representation of the Middle East generally biased or altered?

TA: I don’t think it’s intentionally biased. Nor do I think that it’s intentionally insincere. But I do think that we’ve been portrayed through a very limited

lens. And this narrative hasn’t been beneficial to the people it portrays. I always ask myself if the people I photograph agree with the story I’m attaching to them.

And if they disagree, well... then I’ve done something wrong. Even people I don’t agree with need to share their own voice, not mine.

Unfortunately both local and international media have removed the human factor, creating a disconnection with the viewers, and don’t really question the reasoning behind the Middle East’s wars and poverty.

“I married my college classmate. Sharing two children and a happy marriage, we finally bought our dream house. The day after signing the lease, he died in a motorcycle accident. Then, my father died. I was legally required to have a male guardian. I now wait for my son to turn 16 to take that role. Until then, my step brother whom I have never met decides on my behalf.”

This project began as a personal venture. With my marriage at the age of 17, and being a mother of two at 21, I knew I would surface in some way as a character exploring concepts of love and marriage in Saudi.

But my teenage diary seemed to be a redline that I resisted bringing into the story. But my teenage diary seemed to be a redline that I resisted bringing into the story

CK: In your opinion what can the media or editors do to change that?

TA: We should start asking what the end goal is. Why is one topic (region, person, etc.) covered more than another? Also, investment in time and having a personal connection with the subject you’re photographing make a big difference. Women can gain more intimate access than men. It’s rare to see male photographers give a sensitive and tender voice in the same

Raneen and Hisham were both previously married and divorced. Now married to each other, they say: “We didn’t believe in love, and were too cynical. We also thought of marriage as a duty. After we stopped searching for the one, that’s when we met each other.”

manner a female photographer can, yet we still don’t see enough publications assigning women.

CK: What issues motivate and affect you the most?

TA: Social and gender issues in the Middle East are what I am mostly motivated to cover. I am interested in these stories because they are moving, and in some way representative of undercurrents in today’s society. There are also human stories that the media too often lump in one big group, and these individual human stories challenge that.

I’m currently multitasking between local stories in Saudi Arabia and the rest

of the Arab Gulf countries. Hopefully I will complete the Saudi Tales of Love project and start to try and make a book out of it. I’m also working with my oneyear grant from the German publication Stern in covering many inspiring young Arab artists that are using their talents to quietly push social, religious and political boundaries.

CK: Are you optimistic about your future as a photographer?

TA: Yes. I think people are being positively responsive to photography, especially with the free platforms and social media. Having access to images has perhaps given some form of education

to all of us. The photographers and the average person will no longer be spoonfed by the media, because there’s plenty of access to make sure you can get the information. I don’t see free platforms as competition; I see it as a push for me to strive to be better at a skill that I want to be paid for.

I mean, what better way than to wake up to do a work you actually enjoy, and just give it your best? If someone out there did better, it means I need to work harder and invest more of my time...

solmaz daryani

WOMAN middle east

Solmaz Daryani is an Iranian freelance and selftaught photographer. Her series The Eyes of Earth is an investigation into the environmental and human impact of the drying of Lake Urmia in Iran.

Solmaz decided to write about this project closely linked to her personal story.

My visual storytelling explores the relationship between documentary and fictional storytelling, and the diversity of lifestyles and relationship between people and their environment through personal narratives by identifying locations, characters and scenes.

I believe that the relationships between places and past events offer human identity and memories a reservoir of pain and joy, connecting the chain of time between past and future. Places of birth, beliefs, ethnical roots, and most other characteristics all constitute a part of my identity.

If the drying up of Lake Urmia is only the elimination of a blue spot on Iran and Earth maps, for me (and people who live there) it means losing a part of our identity and memories.

Lake Urmia is located in the

northwest of Iran, between West and East Azerbaijan. It was the biggest salt lake in the Middle East and the sixth-largest saltwater lake on Earth. As a tourist destination in northwestern Iran, Lake Urmia’s shores bustled with restaurants and hotels.

In the last twenty years, the lake has shrunk substantially; it now only contains five percent of the amount of water it did two decades ago.

Many factors have contributed to its disappearance. In 2008, a nine-mile causeway between Urmia and Tabriz was built, effectively slicing Lake Urmia in half. 65 percent of the decline came from climate change, while 25 percent was due to dams and another 10 percent from a decrease in precipitation.

My extensive family on my mother’s side were born and lived in “Sharafkhane port”, a touristic village located on the north coast of Lake Urmia in Iran. My grandfather had a motel near the coast. He lived on renting the rooms to the tourists who came to Lake Urmia.

The disappearance of the lake endangers the ecosystem of all surrounding areas, as well as the agriculture and tourism sectors.

It will increase the frequency of salt storms, which will have serious consequences for health including respiratory and eye diseases.

As the lake dried up and agriculture waned, my grandparent’s garden dried up as well, and their motel is now ruined and deserted…

- As a (woman) photographer, are you hopeful about your future in this “photography industry”? What are you fears, hopes and expectations for your future?

Solmaz Daryani: First of all, I would say that photojournalism is stronger than it ever has been and the world is whelmed with very good images. I believe in the power of information and telling stories through photography is a very strong way to do that. There are more stories from every corner of the world than ever, the range of possibilities is enormous and we are now able

to hear different voices from different places. I’m just wondering how I can find my place and create a different, effective and true voice.

For me, the major issue as a woman photographer is the lack of representation in or out of my country (Iran). There are very few opportunities for unknown photographers to present their work. My biggest wish is gender equality, especially in my own country. It is hard to live as a freelancer, and it’s even harder in my country. Even when you find a project you’re passionate about, really care about, most of the time it’s hard to find clients who are interested in it. I believe that “success” as a woman photographer means that the projects I care about are sustainable and can have an impact on social evolution. I hope that, in an undoubtedly male-dominated industry and country, I will be able to tell and shoot the stories I care about.

Photos from Solmaz’s project The Eyes of Earth, investigating the environmental and human impact of the drying of Lake Urmia in Iran

charlotte schmitz Charlotte Schmitz was born near Cologne in 1988. She studied photojournalism and documentary photography. “Charlotte has developed very consistent and original work about the issues that affect her as a young contemporary woman,” says Cristina de Middel about her. “She is building a very interesting narrative using compelling images to convey a deliberately personal approach.

Her work brings a breath of fresh air to the classic way of exposing contemporary issues.”

She speaks about her project Çok güzelim, çok güzel (I am so beautiful, so beautiful)

“Çok güzelim, çok güzel” was the first sentence I learned in Turkish. I did not just learn how to dance traditionally to Turkish Roma music with gold around my neck and wrists, but also the meaning of the words that I repeated over and over: “I am so beautiful, so beautiful.”

It always arouses great joy amongst women and I quickly realized that this sentence has a more profound meaning in Balat (an Istanbul popular district) than just the original pop song.

I discovered this beautiful neighborhood a few years before moving there in summer 2014 and immediately decided to live there.

My aim was to learn Turkish and live in this colorful place, and to find out more about the lives behind the curtains. Not being able to look into the houses, but being certainly watched on the streets from inside, aroused my curiosity for living there. There

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Photos from Charlotte’s project Çok güzelim, çok güzel, exploring the daily life of Istanbul’s popular district Balat. Turkey, 2016

I found many new families to whom I am still bound like a daughter or sister. But I must admit: I learned as well the value of having curtains myself.

Limited in the beginning to some words and phrases of Turkish pop songs, I was more of an observer.

Home visits in Turkey last long hours full of good food, tea, and cigarettes and dancing. I had plenty of time to understand traditions and celebrations. For me, connecting to and understanding a culture start with learning the language. Aside from facilitating social interactions and providing greater access to the community, language also allows greater insight into the dynamics and behaviors of people.

The traditions became part of me and I never felt like an outsider in Turkey, even if the country is a very socially split society. Because I lived in Balat and belonged to both worlds, I developed a personal insight about conservative and religious structures, which helped me a lot in my journalistic work as well, as the traditional nature of Balat was the base from where I started to understand Turkish mentality and culture. I always shared my views and liberal lifestyle with my friends and never made a secret about my view on the politics they fully support. I faced little to no social pressure, as after all when talking about those sensitive issues, I was perceived as a foreigner.

Showing my pictures for the first time in Balat was very important to me. It was a form of giving back to all families and friends, and to bridge in a society that seems to have lost the ability to communicate. By turning the four floors of my house into an exhibition space where I could invite all my friends, my aim was to bring together people who normally live in different worlds.

My friend Cemre Yeşil, who is an artist herself and curated my pictures for the exhibition, perfectly explains the essence of my work in her essay Beauty is the Promise of Happiness. Following is an excerpt of it: “In-between the lives that seem to be orientated towards partner search, marriage and having children, despite not actually touching the lives that she has, we better understand what Charlotte sees through her sense of touch—which can be considered an instance for the pleasure that we receive through the things we ourselves cannot touch physically. Worthy of the name Balat, derived from the Greek word palation meaning ‘palace’— weddings and celebrations that take place here are of massive importance. These effulgent occasions are for the girls and young women to showcase and display themselves as well as to escape from the monotonous everyday life connected to the household. While men are in public spaces, women tend to stay in private. Char-

lotte focuses on the private, therefore the women—which recalls the political argument used as a slogan of second-wave feminism in the late 1960s: ‘The private is political.’ Charlotte’s photographs underscore the connection between her personal experience and larger socio-political issues that refer to any power relationships within a house. Moreover, ‘Çok güzelim, çok güzel’ (I am so beautiful, so beautiful) becomes a photographic politicization of beauty through the politics of housework, marriage, motherhood, childhood, friendship, puberty, sexuality, family, celebrations, traditions, short-lived pop songs, and perhaps Balat itself.

This central district on the historic peninsula that used to be deeply associated with non-Muslim settlements, Jewish and Greek in particular, has been one of the very first stops for every amateur (from Latin amare, amatorem; meaning ‘lover’) photographer of Istanbul. This is due to its old, authentic and colorful texture, which today is still inhabited by a multicultural society including traditional Turkish, Kurdish, and Roman families. However, not many of the photographers have been interested in, or were able to get into the ‘private’ within the conservative and patriarchal structures of current local families.

Her body of work not only reinforces the conception that the

private is political, it also reveals something crucial about beauty: ‘The private is beautiful!’—regardless of surrounding obstacles.

The intimacy and strong bond between the women that are depicted in her project are perhaps a testimony to the aspect that ‘The private is beautiful’. Thus, it is not only in interpersonal relationships that we find intimacy; it is there in how young girls dance to pop songs with noteworthy lyrics, on the screens of cell phones, in the bottom of Turkish coffee cups, in their gold, in their pink and even in their cropped out faces that we are not allowed to see.”

WOMAN middle east cansu yıldıran

Photos from Cansu’s projects, looking for her roots in her homeland. Turkey, 2016

Cansu Yıldıran is a 20-year-old Turkish photographer. She lives and works in Istanbul, where she explores the gender issues and confronts the patriarchal system through stories strongly linked to her personal life.

About her project Dispossessed:

I was a child when I realized that I did not have an identity.

This search of mine, amongst that of gender, space, belief roles, in time turned into an escape… I did not want to belong to a specific identity anyway.

It would be enough just to have a room of my own.

However, everything changed when I travelled to Trabzon, a Turkish city where my mother was from— and when I discovered the Kusmer Highlands.

I would later learn that there was a reason why we did not have a home here, in my mother’s homeland. The reason that we were going there as guests every summer since I was a child was that while men could own property in this highland village, women did not have this right. Since I learned about this, I realized

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that what I was running away from was a point of belonging and not belonging, a light, a “thing”; it was the starting point of my story Dispossessed.

At this point, as the daughter of a woman who did not have a room of her own in the village that my roots went back to, I was looking for my own identity in the time and space that I owned in the city. I was trying to escape within the identity I was imprisoned in.

My search began in my Highland village, then in the corners of my home for the voice of myself, of my mother and of the Highland women.

- How does the geographical area where you live influence your work?

Cansu Yıldıran: The world and the geography where I live are in mutation. The migration issue and the other consequences of the war in Syria turned to global issues, and the Middle East balance is changing. It is neither the first nor the last major crisis in human history. When I tried to

find out and study the reasons of these conflicts, I noticed that, most of the time, they come from men, or male gods. In contrast, almost all the wars where goddesses and women are involved are defensive battles. These reasons pushed me into questioning gender issues in my own family and country.

Apart from that, I’m also interested by the people who live discreetly in society, those who live and pass slowly close to us.

- As your country (Turkey) is going through a difficult time, how do you manage to work?

CY: Usually it is hard to work as a woman in Turkey, as hard as in the other Middle East countries, but I don’t really care where the male-dominated society places me or my family. I’m generally doing my work in opposition to this society. I’m closely focusing on women issues, from my childhood village to Istanbul, where I live now. Because I think it represents me. It also brings many problems that I have to face. But I believe that women can decide only by themselves

what to create. Their destiny is mostly in their hands. I mostly work alone, but one day I really would like to work as part of a collective or group of people.

I’m only 20 years old and we, as young photographers in Turkey, have limited resources and scope for action.

- Considering the situation in Turkey, how can you make your work visible?

- Are you hopeful about your future as a photographer?

CY: It is hard to be a woman storyteller in Turkey, especially if you try to speak about women issues.

First of all, I live in a patriarchal system, in a male-dominated society. I try not to look at things that way, but in the end I always feel their breath.

They say, “You cannot do this or that.”

But I run. Whatever they say or think, I run.

I do my best to tell stories. It is hard to make my work visible in my country. I devote most of my time to the creation and production of stories. Then I’m spending time on portfolio reviews; there are few options in Turkey, but I want my works to be seen and understood by people.

Everywhere is gray for me now, and so are humans.

CY: I think the world experiences a very difficult time and it’s not going to be a fine place to live in. There are fewer birds in the sky; it is getting harder to see stars from cities. People look at each other with hate. Tension is rising. I don’t see flowers when I walk in the streets.

The famous Turkish author Yaşar Kemal said, “Human being is the creator of hope from hopeless things.” I believe it is true and I want to witness hopelessness to show hope. Hopefully I can continue to tell the stories of the Turkish LGBT community struggles, of gentrification issues, and from a more personal point of view, to work on my family’s roots.

High school students enjoy a field trip on the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Gaza.

Occupied Palestinian Territories, Gaza, June 2013 - From the Occupied Pleasures” project

‘Hala’, 19, a Syrian refugee divorced from her husband after only 25 days, had been forced to marry her abusive cousin after her father was killed. She feels she is slowly dying inside the apartment. Jordan, 2014. From Tomorrow there will be apricots project

Coptic Egyptian priest at Dead Sea day before the December bombing of Coptic church in Cairo (2016).

From The Un/Holy Land project

tanya habjouqa Tanya Habjouqa is a photographer, journalist and educator. Based in East Jerusalem, Habjouqa is half-Texan, half-Jordanian. Her practice links social documentary, collaborative portraiture and participant observation. Her principal interests include gender, representations of otherness, dispossession and human rights, with a particular concern for ever-shifting sociopolitical dynamics in the Middle East.

Growing up between Jordan and Texas left me as the constant outsider in many ways. I had an addiction to narrative and framing at an early age, as I would witness such distinctly different perception and framing of events like the ‘91 Gulf War. Later, I studied anthropology, and then earned an MA in political communications and Mideast politics. My dissertation covered narratives of resistance and suffering, between Israel and Lebanon. I feel a deep responsibility when I create work and send it

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out into the world. How am I framing the people whose story I tell? Will they recognize themselves in it? Am I being respectful? Simultaneously, am I being critical? Am I telling this in a way that can capture the attention of the “West” and give them a second look?

Every storyteller has their inspiration, and names and titles really thrill me. The title of a song, poem, proverb, or even a catchphrase can send me down a rabbit hole of ideas. I get a lot of inspiration from cinema, and Palestinian director Elia Suleiman’s Divine Intervention is one of my favorites. The cryptic, dark humor allows a release over happenings you cannot control. Humor is a main stay of my approach to

the Middle East. One photo book changed my life: “Bored Couples”

by Martin Parr. I was in midst of identity crisis, scrambling between art photography program and journalism. One day in my art professor’s office, I spotted this book and was gripped. It was humorous, dark, awful and loving commentary on the state of humanity. On relationships. It was a simultaneous work of ethnography, anthropology, and comedy. This was liberating for me.

enthralled. There was such tenderness to the competitors, fragility. This is an alternate view of the super-sized contestants within the 17th annual Arab Body Building Championship, revealing surprisingly emotional and insecure moments among the men. On the photo (opening photo of Middle East pages) we can see the former Egyptian champion. When he received second place, he hurled himself onto the carpet and let out agonized cries.

“Visa Paper” selected four diverse images from four different projects, time period, style. What connects them is an interplay on gender dynamics, subtle sarcasm and sense of whimsey.

“Occupied Pleasures” straddles passive and active meanings: to be occupied under Israel, and to occupy oneself, joyfully and defiantly, in pastime and simple pleasures. The project is an attempted reminder that not everyone has equal rights, and to what degrees Palestinians under occupation will strive for a glimpse of normality. This was also a personal project. While I am not Palestinian, my husband and two

“Fragile Monsters” began as a news assignment, one that I initially was not thrilled to take, spending a hot summer day indoors with “greased up” oversized men.

However, once I arrived, I was

children are, and I wanted to impart imagery of the society I knew and respected, to reflect in media something my children would recognize. This project influenced me in my own approach to parenting as well. Recently, entering an Israeli land border, my five year old and myself were being subjected to excess, repeated bag checks. (My daughter is a Palestinian citizen of Israeli and I have residency). My daughter asked why they were checking the bag again, and I said in loud clear voice “Because they feel they have to be afraid from us” I saw the lady checking blanche, and my comment hit its mark. How I teach my daughter to define herself as a Palestinian and to celebrate the richness of her culture, and explain the world around her. It is an act of resistance to some degree.

My new project, “Sacred Space Oddity: The Un/Holy Land” is first time I am building a documentary

project directly addressing Israelis and Palestinians, exploring political and social dynamic together. To stay relevant, must be inspired and open to change.

Winning the Magnum Foundation grant “On Religion” was a perfect opportunity to change things up. We are creating a new space to re-engage myth around rigid boundaries ascribed to Faith, Secularity, Religion, and Politics. We are aiming to create sensation of a Robert Altman ensemble film like Nashville or Fellini’s Amorcord. A road trip discovering the land and the people.

“Tomorrow there will be Apricots” is poetic, dark, and collaborative investigation into the lives of Syrian refugees in Jordan from 2012 to 2017. It explores the Syrian women in Jordan’s refugee camps and urban centers, remain in an acute cycle of poverty, isolation, and anxiety as they wait.

The mothers and daughters felt too vulnerable to show their faces, but found release telling their stories, and finally, performing them, using the oppressive curtains blocking their view as a stage. And while this project is mainly about women, the men are

always a part of it. Tragically, heroically, and disappointedly.

In conclusion, with my work, I hope to contribute to, and change the global conversation about representation of the Middle East. I can narrate. And as I have gotten more experience in photography, I realize in my personal work, I can choose the terms.

Tanya Habjouqa / NOOR

un nouvel engagement #Dysturb est une initiative d’éducation citoyenne lancée il y a trois ans par un groupe de photojournalistes. D’abord en mode guérilla, puis avec des soutiens institutionnels, #Dysturb a recouvert les rues de reportages du monde entier, est intervenu dans des écoles et universités pour discuter avec les élèves des problématiques d’aujourd’hui et de la façon dont elles sont abordées

zohra bensemra

Amy toensing

isadora kosofsky

Isadora Kosofsky Vinny (13) during a visit with his mother, Eve. “Mom, just get me out! Just get me out, Mom!” Bernalillo County Juvenile Detention Center, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2012.

VISA edition 29

Un journal de 32 pages, le nouveau projet du collectif, s’inscrit dans cette dynamique. L’idée est simple : multiplier les voix pour ouvrir les perspectives.

Conçu de manière thématique, ce premier numéro aborde la question du changement climatique, et décortique les causes et conséquences de la faillite environnementale à travers différents interlocuteurs : à l’expertise de deux journalistes spécialisés s’ajoutent les voix d’un bio-acousticien, d’un chercheur en études spatiales, d’un indigène, d’un architecte et d’un biologiste. Coté images, on y retrouve notamment Erika Larsen, Matilde Gattoni, Adrienne Surprenant, Christena Dowsett et Georgina Goodwin. #Dysturb a gardé le papier, l’indissociabilité de l’image et du texte, les photos en grand format et la multiplicité des voix pour servir un public d’amateurs de reportages, mais aussi de jeunes puisque le journal sera distribué gratuitement dans les écoles, les universités, ainsi que dans quelques magasins listés sur son site Internet et comptes de réseaux sociaux. Et pour ceux qui ne seraient pas sur place, #Dysturb propose de commander le journal pour 5 euros – une façon de soutenir l’association et de découvrir les goodies qu’ils viennent de sortir pour l’occasion.

La publication est lancée lors de cette 29e édition de Visa pour l’image.

Amy Toensing / National Geographic Magazine / National Geographic Creative VISA edition 29

dans le paysage médiatique.

En diffusant de manière démocratique des sujets évidents ou ignorés, #Dysturb est un complément de la presse traditionnelle, un laboratoire d’expérimentation de la matière informative. #Dysturb vient notamment de mener une campagne internationale contre les violences faites aux femmes – une opération lancée conjointement dans les rues de Horten en Norvège et de Ballarat en Australie. Résultat : vingt photographies affichées dans les rues des deux villes et complétées d’interviews avec les auteurs des reportages, dont Donna Ferrato et Tanya Habjouqa, toutes diffusées sous forme de « stories » sur Instagram et de vidéos sur le site.

Zohra Bensemra / Reuters Voting in the country’s first democratic elections for almost a quarter of a century. Al-Fashir, Northern Darfur, Sudan, April 11, 2010.

VISA edition 29

@dysturb, le journal

d i r ec t i o n a r t i st i q u e Œ i l p h oto rédaction en chef Anna-Alix Koffi rédactrice en chef Middle East cloé Ker hoas s éc r éta r i at de r é dactio n c l air e le b r eton graphisme Arnaud maillard contributeurs natalie keyssar rahima gambo marie sumalla malin fezehai neelika jayawardane stanley greene dominique issermann middle East by Cloé Kerhoas / alexandra R. Howland maria abi-habib tasneem alsultan mayalen de castelbajac lynsey Addario solmaz daryani alice martins cansu yildiran charlotte schmitz tanya habjouqa-NOOR woman & Stanley g r e e n e by C l é m e n t s ac c o m a n i / Daphné Anglès Alice Gabriner Kristel e e r d e k e n s m a r i a t u r c h e n ko va b é n é d i c t e ku r z e n - N O O R m i c h è l e warnet maral deghati nina alvarez

Cultures photo

réalisé et produit par OFF the wall pour Visa pour l'image sur une proposition d’anna-alix koffi