When I started to work at Magnum in New York it took quite some time before I had my first "real" conversation with David Alan Harvey. Before that I only knew him from saying "Hello" when our paths crossed from time to time in the office. And frankly… I never really knew what to think about this man as a person. He often seemed to be one of the "untouchables" to me, a photographer who seemed to be very self-confident, a man who seemed to be very self-confident.
And because of my prejudices I made up my mind and looked at David as the "cool guy", as somebody who is a bit superficial.
But as I said already, these have been my prejudices and maybe my enviousness. One day David told me about the Hip-Hop story he has been working on for quite some time. He took me out for lunch and continued to tell me about the story. He was very open minded, generous with advice and simply a friendly guy that was good to hang out with.
And my new opinion about David Alan Harvey being a generous, inspiring, great and normal man to talk to continued to rise even more with time.
David has been a blogger since the beginning of 2007. Very, very quickly his blog - or better his four blogs (1, 2, 3, 4) - became some of the most popular photography blogs out there. Through his blogs he shares his thoughts, advice and his own insecurities with those of us who do not have the chance to hang out with him or attend one of the many workshops he teaches. To me, reading his blog on a regular basis, sitting on another continent, is almost like talking to him or like reading in a book about photography. But it's more than just reading on the web, his blog became a real communication platform, something I would like the Magnum Blog to become too.
In a post entitled "in flight magazines" from May 2007 David wrote in reference to the community building power of the net, "...those of you who are still reading now know exactly what i mean...look at us right here...pretty cool right??? how else could we be doing this?? nice for me because it helps me keep my thoughts "organized" and is becoming the same kind of "diary" of life i did as a 14 yr. old photographer....and hopefully, this is nice for you because i try to put myself "in here" only to the extent that it will be useful information for you...mostly to let you know that i have the same problems as you or have had the same problems as you or certainly will in the future have the same problems as you ....the only thing i really have to "offer" is my current experience in the publishing world... both magazines and books.... and my long term friendships with so so many people in this biz....and mostly with the shared experiences i live every time i teach a workshop....i believe my students will tell you...
if i can keep this audience, we can do some really amazing things....here i am dreaming again, but sometimes my dreams happen...actually, they usually happen!!! once i focus, i am on the case!!"
And he continues "...we use the net to "community build" and then take that to reality...to print..."
This was the first time David wrote about his idea to get his readers directly involved and to eventually lead this to "real life".
Your Assignment
Over the next months David concreted his idea and gave his readers an assignment to work on. An assignment where you are allowed to work on a project that you always wanted to work on. He challenged his readers to produce a body of work that will stand out, that he would want to randomly select and present it to his audience that consists of known and unknown photographers alike, of photo editors, industry professionals and so on.
I would suggest reading his posts "in flight magazines", "collaboration", "your work", "timing", "psyched", "your assignment", "flood gates" and last but not least "bold steps" to get a better understanding of what David Alan Harvey is asking and looking for.
Finally, on September 18th he made yet another big step. He writes: "i announce now, to the readers of this forum, the offering of a $5,000. (u.s. dollars) stipend/grant for one exceptional photographer to help support their personal work.....this will be based on the photographs being sent to me now....
the deadline for sending work will now be extended to november 15, 2007....this will be based entirely on work produced between july 15, 2007 and the closing date.....the stipend will be awarded by december 15, 2007...Merry Christmas!!"
The "David Alan Harvey Blog Grant" aside, reading his posts, taking part in the very active communication with him, working on "your assignment" and trying to give your best in this collaboration effort provides a great chance for you that you shouldn't miss.
David was selected by his Magnum colleagues to help and initiate a Magnum educational program that is in the working. Even if his blog activities are not directly related to the Magnum educational program, it shows that he was the right person to be selected for this. His effort in helping and supporting young photographers is a unselfish and noble thing. This one goes out to you David!
Except for a few rare occasions over the last thirty years John Vink arrives too late... Or does he? When he gets where he wants to be, the paroxysms of the crisis are gone. So are most of the media, on to another spot on Earth where violence and tension are mounting. John thinks it's starting to get interesting when no one is watching anymore...
In 1989 he spent one month in Cambodia. He came back in 1991. Then again in 1999. And in 2000 he stayed. More than six years later he is still there and hardly moves outside the Cambodian borders. He is somewhere else without having to travel.
A pawn in the cynical game of geopolitics, Cambodia was dragged into a war it initially didn?t belong to. It was left stunned and bloodless by the second genocide of the 20th century: an estimated 1,7 million people died during the 3 years, 8 months and 20 days of the Khmer Rouge regime. It was liberated/occupied by a foreign country for ten years and was ostracized by the West for that. After the 1991 Paris Peace Accords it was kept breathless by a civil war which lingered on until 1998 and by political unrest. Today it still has a heavy price to pay for its reconstruction in an unbridled market economy where literally everything, from governmental property to human dignity, seems to be for sale (Cambodia is ranked nr 151 out of 163 on the level of corruption according to Berlin based Transparency International)?
The destruction caused by all those years of turmoil was not only physical. It was moral as well. The very particular and intricate values which built Khmer society over the centuries were shattered by a constant urgency to survive. The country is far from having recovered the tissue of solidarity which binds a society and which provides protection to those weaker members of its community.
Khmer Chronicles proposes to give you a glimpse of that Cambodia. John Vink won't talk about himself right away but it'll tell you a lot about what he is interested in... And you can always ask him a question. Probably he'll answer...
These pictures were made during a local assignment for UNICEF.
Established in Cambodia since 1972, but interrupted by he Khmer Rouge regime ripping apart the country from 1975-79, UNICEF, today with a staff of about 140 people, has set up a widespread range of programmes in six provinces with its usual focus on children to support the government in rebuilding the country.
The country programme for 2006 to 2010 has a budget of 92,5 million$US which will be used for the Seth Koma (Child Rights in Khmer), the Child Survival, the Expanded Basic Education, the Child Protection, the HIV/AIDS Prevention and Care and the Advocacy and Social Mobilization programmes. These programmes cover an impressive array of topics ranging, among many others, from hand washing campaigns to the improvement of water quality or child-friendly classrooms, from dengue fever protection to supporting NGOs dealing with drug addiction or Buddhist monks doing HIV/AIDS prevention, from implementing a decent treatment of children caught up in the judiciary system to thorough immunization campaigns or avian influenza awareness campaigns.
The road ahead is still steep though, and several years of economic growth with double digits have by far not rendered the presence of UNICEF in Cambodia obsolete. In fact the rapid growth of the country and the ensuing increase in economic disparities among the population have made the presence of UNICEF and many other active international organizations in Cambodia even more indispensable.
It's been six years since the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. Our thoughts go out to the victims of the attacks in New York as well as to the victims of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Please watch the September 11 Magnum In Motion Essay with photographs from 18 Magnum photographers.
It's been a little over two months now that Magnum welcomed three new nominees into the circle of Magnum Photographers. Once a year, the photographers from Magnum travel to Paris, London or New York for their Annual General Meeting (AGM). The 2007 AGM took place at the end of June in New York City. One day of the AGM is reserved to look at submitted portfolios and to decide upon new nominees, associates and members.
I briefly e-mailed with them to find out about their motivation to join Magnum and how it felt to be notified of their acceptance. A more in depth look at our new nominees will follow in the future. Make sure to post your comments or questions, we will try to find responses and answers to them by our nominees.
"I love photography. it is not only a means to an end to me. I love the whole process: from the first idea, all the way to the final print. And sharing it.
I still see making a photograph as an extraordinary and magical act and those qualities make it very powerful.
I wanted to be part of a group of people that I believe still love photography, respect it, don't underestimate it, and think about why, and how they use it.
And who - needless to say - are also photographers I've long admired, many having inspired me since I was a child.
I got a glimpse of how Magnum works through meeting a few of it's members during the application process, and it seems each person receives from the agency as much as they give. Each one uses Magnum in a different way and all coincided it is a chaos, but a beautiful one.
I have to get to know the workings of it. It is all a bit abstract still. And since I'm used to working alone I have to learn how to be part of a group now.
But I do know I want to do something different from what I've been doing on my own in terms of producing. That is another reason i applied: To be surprised and challenged all over again."
On hearing about being accepted as a nominee:
"On the afternoon the voting took place I came home from a picnic in the park with Martin (my husband), my baby Catalina, and a group of friends. There was a message from Susan Meiselas welcoming me to Magnum. So I went right back out, soaking wet on the E train, and celebrated at the MoMA!"
"After having worked a number of years with personal documentary photography, I was looking for a group of photographers, whose aims and ideas I could identify with. Some of the Magnum members have been a great inspiration to me during the creation of my own personality as a photographer, and now that I feel I have developed my own language within photography, I decided to apply for Magnum.
A strong and passionate interest in people and the subjects and a will not to compromise are some of the qualities which has made Magnum an attractive place for me to become part of. It is a very exciting process for me, because I have always worked alone, and I am just getting to learn how photographers can be individuals and still work as a group to obtain common goals."
On hearing about being accepted as a nominee:
"I did not have some crazy reaction, because I was alone with the news, and it seemed a bit unreal. One of the members called me shortly after the decision was made. I was in NY myself to show my work to galleries and a few members before the voting. I received the phone call at a friend's house in Queens, when I was taking a nap on this couch filled with an enormous amount of cat hair. At first I wasn't sure if I was still a sleep or not....
Becoming a nominee at Magnum was a goal that I had aimed for, and now reaching it, at first I didn't know what to do with the news. Then I called my girlfriend in Tokyo, my twin brother in Bangkok and my mother in Copenhagen. The people who always supported me... And their reactions made me understand it was for real. Afterwards I went on a round trip to visit them and celebrate."
"Since I started working as a photographer, I have always been represented by galleries rather then by agencies. The freedom that this has allowed has, I think been very important to my work. I haven't had to do assignments in order to make a living or fund work. Instead, I have done this through print sales. This has great advantages in some terms as it allows me to spend almost all my time on long-term personal projects rather then 1-week assignments. I also very much like the exhibition as a form of getting work seen as I think it allows for a very particular and very special form of contemplation of images. In an exhibition, one looks at photographs in a very physical way due to the fact that one walks through an exhibition rather then paging through it. I have also organized exhibitions in interesting and varied locations such as Nelson Mandela's old cell in Pollsmoor Prison, the South African Constitutional Court, and the Italian Parliament. This is also very important to me in ensuring that the work can be seen by a wider audience then just those who attend the more elite commercial galleries and museums.
So, while I am very happy to continue working in this way, I also want my work to be seen as widely as possible in different contexts too. I chose to apply to Magnum because I was attracted to the idea of being a part of an organization with such a strong tradition of engaged photographic practice. It made sense to join an agency for editorial photography, and Magnum was the obvious choice, as it seemed to be the best one. I also share a deep affinity and respect for most of the Magnum photographers and feel attracted to the shared quality of social engagement that seems to define Magnum.
I was given the wrong date for the portfolio meeting in New York, so the physical portfolio that I had gone to some lengths to prepare never arrived on time. When I realized this, I thought, ah well, thats it - no chance now. But Magnum already had a disk of my work which I had sent a few months previously for the preliminary selection at the London office, and somehow I got chosen on the basis of that."
On hearing about being accepted as a nominee:
"I received emails from Martin Parr and Jim Goldberg, I smiled to myself, and was really quite surprised after the portfolio problem. I then carried on preparing for the assignment that I was about to start.
While I am obviously delighted and honored to be chosen for Magnum, I really don't see it as changing anything in the way I work, except hopefully to help me to produce better work and get that work seen. But I don't want to allow anything, especially not the new attention that my work is receiving with the nomination, to distract me from my focus on long-term, sustained, and engaged projects."
Vacation time is over and it seems like the last days of summer are coming. I am looking forward to a productive fall, summertime and the blog statistics showed that people have either been on vacation or prefered to spend their time out on the beach, in the mountains, hanging out in bars or at BBQs. Which I wish I could have done as well...
So here is a question to you - assuming your summer is over as well: What have you done last summer? Floating around on tubes?
Except for a few rare occasions over the last thirty years John Vink arrives too late... Or does he? When he gets where he wants to be, the paroxysms of the crisis are gone. So are most of the media, on to another spot on Earth where violence and tension are mounting. John thinks it's starting to get interesting when no one is watching anymore...
