Documentary Shooters

©Olivier Jobard

GO TO: http://mediastorm.org/0010.htm

This is an uplifting story of  “one man’s willingness to abandon everything – his family, his country, and his friends – in the hopes of finding a better life abroad.”

This Mediastorm produced slide show of Olivier Jobard’s masterful photo essay, follows Kingsley from his home in Cameroon,  through Africa and, eventually ending in the land of the “Holt Grail,” Europe.

The journey is not without its dangers and indignities for Kingsley, but another amamzing journey is Jobard’s herself.

East Side Stories/© Joseph Rodriquez

SEE: http://www.josephrodriguezphotography.com/index.php#a=0&at=0&mi=2&pt=1&pi=10000&s=0&p=5

Rodriquez goes where everyone else tries to stay away from: East LA.

This is a strong documentary of the gangs of East LA that goes beyond the dramatic into the intimacy of humans who live in a situation.

SEE: http://www.american-pictures.com/gallery/index.html

Note: Jacob Holdt’s photographs of hate and racism demonstrate the fact that the emphasis in documentary photography is on the word documentary. Sometimes Holdt’s images are a little soft focused or grainy or whatever else one considers technically “flawed(as were Hine’s, Riis’s and every other documentary photographer who was/is worth anything) ,” but, never does his work not deliver the goods: truth simply spoken.

Holdt used this camera

[ http://www.camerapedia.org/wiki/Canon_Dial_35 ]

to record over 20,000 images of “hate, racism and “white hate groups.”

He does not consider himself to be a “photographer,” but, rather, an observer, a participator, a witness. Check his site out. It is an incredibly disturbing -and eye opening- view of America. To my mind, Holdt presents a more thorough document than the two year event of Robert Frank and his Guggenheim sponsored “Americans.”

Here is presented Holdt’s Opus: a fairly unknown collection of his massive look at America’s underbelly.

Jacob Holdt’s Vagabond yearsArriving in America with only $40 for a short visit, a young Dane, Jacob Holdt ended up staying over five years, hitchhiking more than 100,000 miles throughout the USA.

SEE: http://www.nbpictures.com/site_home/movie.php

GO TO: Menu>Portfolio>Simon Norfolk>Portfolios

This is an arresting and strangely beautiful look at the eerie landscape left by war.

Norfolk, a trained photojournalist, turned away from the live action kind of document and approached the look of war by pointing himself at the aftermath of war as it manifests itself on the landscape. His work from Afghanistan and Iraq tells another story of war and, like all war photography is a combination of destruction, unbelievable moment and twisted beauty.

SEE: http://www.nbpictures.com/site_home/movie.php

GO TO: MENU>FEATURES>CURRENT AFFAIRS>IRAN’S YOUTH

This photo essay is of the youth of Iran. Kai Weidenhofer, who is a Middle East specialist gets to the truth of the matter: it’s a small planet, so what’s the big deal? Read the rest of this entry »