YESTERDAY, TODAY, TOMORROW – featuring the documentary photography of Stuart Klipper & Petronella Ytsma [Thursday April 30th 2009]

 

Courtesy of kah-bonn.de

The 10th annual Documentary Photography Symposium will feature the photography of Stuart Klipper and Petronella Ytsma.

Click here to find out more.

Snapshot – AN UNLIKELY WEAPON: THE EDDIE ADAMS STORY [2008] by Susan Morgan

1/500th of a second to get the shot…                               … a lifetime to forget it.

Image courtesy of nytimes.com

For a man who spent his life behind the camera, the tables have well and truly turned. It is Eddie Adams (June 12, 1933 – September 19, 2004), an American photojournalist who is the subject of Susan Morgan‘s latest documentary, An Unlikely Weapon: The Eddie Adams Story. Opening tonight in New York and narrated by  Keifer Sutherland, it has attracted the attention of film and photography enthusiasts alike.

During his prolific career Adams won a Pulitzer Prize for the image shown above (Nguyễn Ngọc Loan executing Nguyễn Văn Lém on February 1, 1968), and earned the admiration of a generation for his work documenting a total of 13 wars, 6 American presidents and every major film star over the last 50 years. History would be changed through his lens. 

Indeed the film has already earned itself two accolades, but it has some way to go if it is to compete with the 500 Adams earned in his lifetime!

To find out how you can see the whole film for yourself, click here.

Forget Me Not. (STILL HUMAN STILL HERE by Abbie Trayler-Smith at the Host Gallery, London: March 18 – April 4 2009).

As asylum seekers we have been punished twice, once back home and once here.

Courtesy of BAPLA.

I’ve just come back from Abbie Trayler-Smith‘s private view and two hours after seeing it, I am still in awe. Held at the Host Gallery off London’s Old Street, the gallery is home to the Still Human Still Here photographic exhibition, or at least for the next two weeks it is. Arriving at the gallery I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from a show offering an insight into the underground world of destitute asylum seekers.

A brief word from one of the organisers and then straight down to business. Alain, an asylum seeker from the Congo shared his horrific experiences with the bustling crowd, not that the exhibition needed to be brought to life. That said, hearing his tale only served to enhance the authenticity of what we were seeing.

Each image was as striking and as telling as the next. Beautifully curated, each asylum seeker had their own section detailing their personal journey to the UK – at last getting a taste, albeit momentary, of the humanity and even compassion Alain spoke of with such yearning and desperation.

Then came a brief plea from a really passionate lady named Diana, with lots of encouraging words, some more realistic than others – urging people to contact their MP, volunteer or write a cheque for £1million!

And so beyond the copious amounts of red wine flowing and the overly eccentric hairdos one inevitably encounters at such an event, lay a fantastically bold message: change is there for the taking. For once arty-farty-ness was eclipsed by something far less vain and far more important.

For a breathtaking cocktail of reality and creativity, why not head down to the Host Gallery?

[Portraits by Panos Pictures photographer Abbie Trayler-Smith of poverty-stricken asylum seekers in the UK from countries including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Iraq, Somalia and Zimbabwe. The exhibition is a collaboration between Amnesty International and the Refugee Council.]