Archive for category Photography That Matters
A Documentary Survey Project From China
Posted by bruce in Documentary Photography, Photography That Matters, Photojournalism, Street Photography, The Human Condition on February 10, 2012
Altaf Qadri
Posted by bruce in Documentary Photography, Middle East, Photography That Matters, Photojournalism, Street Photography on December 28, 2011
Altaf Qadri, 35, is an award winning photographer.
Qadri, 35, won a World Press Photo award this year for his poignant photograph of relatives mourning over the body of a man killed in a shooting by Indian police in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
photography Altaf Qadri
Qadri, an Indian citizen, is a native of the Kashmiri city of Srinagar. He studied science at Kashmir University and worked as a computer engineer before taking a job as a staff photographer at a local Kashmiri newspaper in 2001.
CLICK ON THIS IMAGE FOR MORE Altaf Qadri: 
In 2003, he joined the European Press Photo Agency and covered the conflict in Kashmir. In 2008, he began working for The Associated Press in the Indian city of Amritsar. His work has appeared in magazines and newspapers around the world and has been exhibited in the United States, China, France and India.
André Cypriano Shoots The Other Venezuela
Posted by bruce in Conflict, Documentary Photography, Photography That Matters, Photojournalism, South America, Street Photography on December 9, 2011
From Shantytown by André Cypriano-©2011
André Cypriano takes us into the forbidden hills of Caracas Venezuela. He takes us into a strange land of oddly shaped houses, winding streets carved out of the hills, into a land so odd and so foreign that it must be myth but can only be reality. He notices, as all greart documnentarey phtography does, that ordinary reality, in some cases, is always more intense and mind-boggling than any fiction can be,
Cypriano takes us to Rochinha.
How he got there, who gave him access and what he encounters is worth serious viewing time. In the New York times Lens Blog post, below, wander with André.
He will take you on a journey you well not forget.
For more from André Cypriano, see:
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/in-brazil-finding-dignity-in-horror/
Ami Vitale; Beauty, Power, Life
Posted by bruce in Africa, Art, Children, Conflict, Documentary Photography, Middle East, News, Photography That Matters, Photojournalism, social displacement, South America, The Americas, The Human Condition on September 2, 2011
Hungary Baths by Amy Vitale©2011
From Ami Vitale’s website (http://www.amivitale.com):
Ami Vitale’s journey as a photojournalist has taken her to more than 75 countries. She has witnessed civil unrest, poverty, destruction of life, and unspeakable violence. But she has also experienced surreal beauty and the enduring power of the human spirit, and she is committed to highlighting the surprising and subtle similarities between cultures. Her photographs have been
exhibited around the world in museums and galleries and published in international magazines including National Geographic, Adventure, Geo, Newsweek, Time, Smithsonian. Her work has garnered multiple awards from prestigious organizations including World Press Photos, the Lowell Thomas Award for Travel Journalism, Lucie awards, the Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding Reporting, and the Magazine Photographer of the Year award, among many others.
Now based in Montana, Vitale is a contract photographer with National Geographic magazine and frequently gives workshops throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. She is also making a documentary film on migration in Bangladesh and writing a book about the stories behind the images.
Henri Still Kicks!
Posted by bruce in Documentary Photography, Photography That Matters, The Human Condition on July 2, 2011
Article posted courtesy of Huffington Post and Steve Ettlinger
Is Photojournalism Dead Yet?
by Steve Ettlinger
Born in the 1930?s, come of age in the 1950?s and 60?s, and pronounced near dead in the 1970?s and virtually buried by the closing of magazines/rise of the internet–you have to wonder how it is that some aspects of this wonderful world are still around. Read the rest of this entry »
T. Monk and W. Eugene: Cool
Posted by bruce in Documentary Photography, Jazz, Music, Photography That Matters on March 23, 2011
Thelonius Monk by W. Eugene Smith, uncropped
UPI Photo/Courtesy of the heirs of W. Eugene Smith and the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona
Cropped image by W. Eugene Smith
UPI Photo/Courtesy of the heirs of W. Eugene Smith and the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona
The 1964 Colombia LP Cover by W. Eugene Smith
SEE MONK VIDEOS Read the rest of this entry »
Venezuela Bans The Dead
Posted by bruce in Photography That Matters, South America, The Americas, War on November 23, 2010
Photograph by Marina Galperina / August 20, 2010
Editor’s Note: This piece is from Animal. ANIMAL (http://animalnewyork.com/)is a mix of underground culture, city-centric musings, and cultural epithets updated daily, providing compulsory reading for artists, writers, curators, creative peoples, (as well as editors, reporters, and brand people). In Venezuela, Huga Chavez can dictate no coverage with the stroke of the pen. In Mexico the Cartels can dictate no coverage with bullets and bombs. In the United States no coverage can be achieved by citing “Community Standards (if you select the right comunity to cite you can ban anything).”
Wherever you go Seeind and Speaking is under assault. Remember this: the First Ammendment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution).
Venezuela Bans Graphic Photojournalism in Time for Elections

Last Friday, a Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional ran a front page photo of dead bodies piled in a Caracas morgue to address the country’s security problems. Now, the courts ordered a 30 day ban on “violent, bloody or grotesque images” coinciding with the elections campaign period. Read the rest of this entry »
Andrea Bruce Shoots You In The Heart
Posted by bruce in Conflict, Documentary Photography, Middle East, Photography That Matters, social displacement, The Human Condition, War, Women on July 2, 2010
Ingushetia by Andrea Bruce
Andrea Bruce is a passionate, stylish, skilled documentary photography who’s images -in the best traditions of still photography- sear your soul and drive their point through your heart, restoring it instead of terminating it. She is the new breed of documentary photographer that blends all the skills of good journalism with all the skills of great graphic image-making and produces a coctail that is nothing less than photo alchemy.
Take a look: http://www.andreabruce.com
Ashley Gilbertson: Shrines and Conflicts
Posted by bruce in Conflict, Documentary Photography, Photography That Matters, social displacement on April 19, 2010
Contact Sheet of Ashley Gilbertson’s Conflict Photography
“He has a very good news sense and for me that’s really essential,”
says Cecilia Bohan, foreign picture editor for The New York Times.
“I need them [her photographers] to be my eyes and ears on the ground.”
Ashley Gilbertson is a VII photographer and one of the strongest Conflict Photographers working today. His recent work, done far from the battlefield but in the bedrooms of fallen soldiers, is one of the strongest testaments to the outright sadness about Loss that War induces, that this editor has ever seen.
For a sample of Mr. Gilbertson’s work:
- For a personal website:SEE: http://www.ashleygilbertson.com/index.php
- A piece from 2004 in Photo District News, SEE: http://www.ashleygilbertson.com/index.php
- For The Shrine Down The Hall, SEE: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/03/21/magazine/20100321-soliders-bedrooms-slideshow.html?hp
End of Labor Town: Dumping Ground of Old Men in Japan
Posted by bruce in Documentary Photography, Photography That Matters, social displacement on December 27, 2009
These are not the view of Japan that we normally see. Shiho Fukada shows us how some elderly people in Japan fare. It is not a story unique to Japan.
SEE http://www.socialdocumentary.net/exhibit/shiho_fukada/728
Pearl Harbor Brownie
Posted by bruce in Conflict, Documentary Photography, Photography That Matters on September 11, 2009
Evgen Bavcar: The Blind Photographer
Posted by bruce in Documentary Photography, Photography That Matters, The Human Condition on August 18, 2009
Self portrait by Evegen Bavcar
Photography has always been thought about as “another,” way of seeing.
And it is.
But, usually, we think about that as a person looking through the camera, seeing what’s there, and, through the magic of the camera and the film -or digital- capture process, one sees the world in different way.
More advanced photographers and appreciators of photography then allow for the transformative recognition of the quality and angle of light, of the Decisive Moment, of the power of distance to subject or, even, luck or magic.
It is this latter idea that infuses the work of Evgen Bavcar ((“E-oo-gen Ba-oo-char”), the Slovenian photographer is completely blind, completely eccentric and his images are totally wonderful. Read the rest of this entry »









