Dina Zhuk (Belarus):
Got a mark on a hand

Play Essay

“I don’t know, nothing happened and something happened at the same time. When did it all start? How? Failed to mention. (laughing) Yes, it could be like that from the very beginning. Like that – what do I mean? I don’t know. Do we really live bad? Like all the rest. Do I love? I think, yes. Yes, for a long time. We have been living together more than a year. Am I happy? (thinking) I was happy when it all started then we moved, began to live together, but for the last several months something unnatural began to happen. No, we don’t discuss that. Everything is so tangled, I can’t clear up a mess. One day I want to be with him, the next day I don’t. Yes, something is going on with him either. Painful? I got used, you know. Yesterday he took me so strong by the hand and began to kiss. I didn’t resist, but, you know, somewhere inside I felt myself comfortless, I wanted to tell him that I don’t want it. He? Aggressively? Here, got a mark on a hand. Why are we together? (silence)”.

I have been documenting the lives of young couples in Belarus. I was interested in people relationship of my age. First I just started to talk with them about their life and attitude to all spheres of their living. I began to come to their places, stayed for a night, had long talks, walked around, followed them. I spent a lot of time watching them in their habitual daily routine. As couples got used to me documenting, that became natural for all of us. That was my first experience going deep into my artistic studies. At first I found really happy couples living together but when I got deeper I realised that inside of some of them is a profound split, but the problem is not lying on the top, it is hidden somewhere where even couples themselves can not always find the roots. And they are struggling and trying to understand if they are happy in their relationship, if it is really what they were looking for. Is it still tender relationship or sometimes it has some forms of covert aggression or killing indifference?

• Dina Zhuk’s Web Site

Yang Zhou (China): Daytime Escape

Play Essay

Always, we have an unspeakable pitiful feeling towards an aged beauty. A writer could create huge amount of words for this vague sorrow, but in fact, what the sorrow implies is that old age is the opposite of everything we considered valuable: youth, power, beauty, etc. In our subconsciousness, we fear the process of aging. To me, this fear is more deeply rooted: my grandma’s an Alzheimer disease sufferer. She was well educated and worked as award-winning designers in fabric factories. I was shocked and frightened by how her mind had deteriorated. However, this fear towards old age inspired me to seek knowledge of it.

Therefore, summer 2010, I became frequenter of a sheltered home for the elderly people in London, interviewing and taking portraits of the residents there. During my shooting process, I was impressed by their calm and their willingness to accept it and change it into something productive. It made me feel ashamed when one of them said “Worrying about it won’t change anything, so it’s better to channel your energy into something else”. As one of them said, the elderly are very diverse. Therefore I began this project “Daytime Escape”, which takes a close look into a daytime caring centre for the elderly in a neighbourhood upon my returning to Shanghai, China.

Early in 1979, Shanghai became the first city in China to grow old. In the past 30 years, the aged population in Shanghai rised dramatically, and doubled the speed of the national average. In such context, daytime caring centres appear in some neighbourhood, which shares the young adults’ responsibility of taking care of the old parents without sending them into a nursery home. Somehow in the traditional Chinese view, sending parents to a nursery home is considered morally “wrong”. This particular daytime caring centre that I’ve documented is hosted by a local NGO and tries to use artistic activity to keep the attendants’ mind active. Since its opening in April, I tried to be there once a week, to make friends with the seniors there and to find the most suitable way of telling the story.

I was surprised that they expressed no objection to the camera: I was well accepted in the very first beginning. They longed to be visited by the younger generation. We didn’t talk much, but they returned every greeting with a smile. And they hugged each other, and hugged me. Before knowing them, I could not imagine that easterners would express feelings with hugs as well. Although insights of life or religion or politics do not appear in our conversation as with my previous sitters, I was still impressed by a lot of things. I was impressed by their colourful little towels, which made me think of kinder-gardens; I was impressed by the way they talked about the TV programmes of previous night—they talked like teenagers; I was impressed by the cheer and energetic atmosphere in the centre. Maybe this positive image is group hypnosis, a collective escape from the pains coming with the age. If it does make them happy, even if only for the daytime, it is a good thing.

• Yang Zhou’s Web Site

Aparna Jayakumar (India)

Play Essay

Goodbye Padmini: An Ode To Bombay’s Black-and-yellow Padmini Taxis

Bombay’s ubiquitous black and yellow taxi is an iconic image of the city. The 1100D, or the ‘Premier Padmini’ as it is called here, was originally manufactured in India between 1964 and 2000 by the Italian company, Fiat. The charm of the Padmini taxi is unique, with its disco-lights, over the top interiors, flowers and incense sticks, brightly coloured seat covers, zany taxi art and icons of various Gods, or Bollywood stars (or both side by side). There is much old-world romance associated with these sleek black and yellow wheels. They are an inextricable part of the Bombay experience.

Bombay’s taxis turned 100 in 2011. Motorized cabs replaced the horse-driven Victoria buggies in 1911 and have been serving the city ever since. But instead of celebrating, Bombay’s taxi drivers have had much to worry about. The number of taxis plying the streets is in steady decline. In 1997, Bombay had over 60,000 taxis to cater to a population of 8 million. Today Bombay’s population is well over 20 million but there are only around 40,000 cabs.

The black and yellow taxi is the primary source of living for thousands of immigrants from different parts of the country who come to Bombay in search of a better life. In 2008, the court ordered the “phasing out” of taxis older than 25 years. Several thousands of Padmini taxis have been destroyed ever since. The new transport minister of the state has indicated that the present fleet of black and yellow taxis be replaced by new, high-end cars, leaving many taxi drivers worried for their livelihood.

Through the taxis, I want to tell the story of Bombay (now Mumbai) – a city in flux, constantly moving, rapidly changing, ever ready to throw out the old and embrace the new. This kind of disparity exists in other cities of the world too, but it is at its most vulgar best in Mumbai.

• Aparna Jayakumar’s Web Site

Maria M. Litwa (Poland/Germany): Inside Geneva Camp

‘Inside Geneva Camp’ is a multimedia story about three young women who live in Geneva Camp in Dhaka. It’s the largest ghetto-like settlement for the Urdu speaking minority – locally known as ‘Biharis’ – in Bengali speaking nation of Bangladesh. A place where a huge number of this language minority lives since 40 years. Education and also marriage seem to be the only possibilities for women to escape from this stigmatized spot and to become integrated into the Bangladeshi society.

The enmeshment of the history of the ‘Bihari’ community and the personal statements of Rina (14, housewife), Shabnam (20, student) and Putul (24, teacher) allows an empathetic insight into the lives of those who still suffer from the consequences of the Partition of British India in 1947.

Those whose mother language is Urdu locally are called ‘Biharis’ as most of their grand-parents originate from the Indian state Bihar. After the partition of British India in 1947 the Urdu speaking muslims migrated to East Pakistan (today Bangladesh) and West Pakistan (today Pakistan). In India they were persecuted or even murdered because of their religion. However, when East Pakistan became the independent state of Bangladesh in December 1971, again they became a target. After the Pakistani Army evacuated the new-born Bangladesh, the Biharis were left behind. Bengalis saw them as traitors, and refused to accept them as Bangladeshis. They were placed in dozens of refugee camps across the country.

• Maria M. Litwa’s Web Site

Yen Nie Yong (Malaysia): Past Lives

Play Essay

We leave, thinking we don’t want to return but when we finally do, wish we’d never left. Moving to the city almost a decade ago, I thought I could always find my hometown as I’d left it.

But my visit last year dispelled the nostalgia.

Confronted by an acute sense of unfamiliarity with the former landscape of my past and its current inhabitants, I embarked on a journey to photograph towns and places that friends and strangers have called home in Malaysia.

These towns were once lively, bustling with economic activities and the symbol of wealth and glory.

But they have since faded.

The paint has chipped off the walls, if the buildings were still standing. In an old house, I saw a settee where a husband and wife sat here months ago, deliberating on whether or not they should sell the house they called home for the past twenty years. The traces of their discussion are marked by the way the cushions have been left behind; they didn’t take the settee he had made himself many years ago. I had walked on the road that my mother had walked on as a child. She worked as a babysitter at the age of nine, but says it wasn’t considered child labor and that “back then, it was also safe for children to walk alone.”

One day, my mother and I went to a traveling amusement park together, or ‘funfair’ to use the fondly remembered nomenclature of my childhood. It was empty. The sound of generators producing electricity to run these rides and the playful music still ring in my ears, but the absence of children’s laughter is more deafening.

I photographed these scenes, as though I am writing a eulogy to past lives.

• Yen Nie Yong’s Web Site

The Magnum Foundation and the Inge Morath Foundation announce the 12th annual Inge Morath Award. The annual award of $5,000 is given to a female photographer under the age of 30, to support the completion of a long-term documentary project. One award winner and up to two finalists are selected by a jury composed of Magnum photographers and the director of the Inge Morath Foundation.

Inge Morath was an Austrian-born photographer who was associated with Magnum Photos for nearly fifty years. After her death in 2002, the Inge Morath Foundation was established to manage Morath’s estate and facilitate the study and appreciation of her contribution to photography. Because Morath devoted much of her enthusiasm to encouraging women photographers, her colleagues at Magnum Photos established the Inge Morath Award in her honor. The award is now administered by the Magnum Foundation as part of its mission of supporting the next generation of socially-conscious documentary photographers, in cooperation with the Inge Morath Foundation.

Past winners of the Inge Morath Award include: Isadora Kosofsky (US, ’12), for Selections from “The Three” and “This Existence;” Zhe Chen (China, ’11) for Bees; Lurdes R. Basolí (Spain, ’10) for Caracas, The City of Lost Bullets and Claire Martin (Australia, ’10) for Selections from The Downtown East Side and Slab City; Emily Schiffer (US, ’09) for Cheyenne River; Kathryn Cook (US, ’08) for Memory Denied: Turkey and the Armenian Genocide; Olivia Arthur (UK, ’07) for The Middle Distance; Jessica Dimmock (US, ’06) for The Ninth Floor; Mimi Chakarova (US, ’06) for Sex Trafficking in Eastern Europe; Claudia Guadarrama (MX, ’05) for Before the Limit; and Ami Vitale (US, ’02), for Kashmir.

Deadline:

All submissions must be postmarked or delivered by April 30th, 2013.

Form of Submission:

- Your submission must be delivered as a PDF file. Quicktime, Powerpoint, and other formats will NOT be accepted.
- (How do I create a PDF with a Mac? How do I create a PDF with a PC?)
- The first page of your PDF should show your name and the title of your project. Each subsequent page should present a single photograph (unless groups of images are required) with caption (if relevant), using the full frame of the PDF page.
- Please do NOT format your PDF as a slideshow. Also, please do not password-protect your file.
- A folder containing individual image files (JPEGs) must accompany the PDF file.

Image Specifications:

- Your submission must include 40 – 60 photographs (1200 pixels on the longest side @ 150 DPI saved as a JPEG compression at 8 minimum).
- In the folder containing your individual images, please use numbered filenames indicating the image sequence, with the number coming first in the file name and then last name; for example: 01_Smith, 02_Smith, 03_Smith etc. (use only two digit numbers; 01, 02, 03, etc.).

Required Support Material:

- Project description. This should describe the project and how the Award will be used to complete work on the project.
- Curriculum Vitae (maximum three pages) including name, email address, telephone number, and mailing address.
- Photocopy or scan of ID clearly showing date of birth. All applicants must be under the age of 30 on April 30th, 2012 (in other words, if April 30th is your birthday, and you’re turning 30, then you’re no longer eligible to submit a proposal).

Digital Submission:

- If you wish to submit your files digitally, please compress your submission (PDF + folder of JPEGs) into ONE FILE (for example, using .zip or .rar) before sending.
- Digital files may be submitted to this address: https://dropbox.yousendit.com/ingemorath
- It is highly recommended that anyone submitting digitally contact the Inge Morath Foundation to confirm that your submission has been received. Please do so by email, not by phone. You will be notified when your submission is processed.

Submissions By Mail:

- Please label your CD with your name and contact information, and please test the CD to ensure that both it and all your files are functional.
- Submissions may be mailed to the address below:

Inge Morath Award
c/o Magnum Foundation
547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor
New York, NY 10001 USA

Return of Submissions:

Submissions that are not accompanied by a self-addressed stamped envelope will not be returned. Applicants waive any claims for loss of or damage to their submissions.

Announcement of Winner:

The winner of the Inge Morath Award will be announced on the web sites of the Magnum Foundation and the Inge Morath Foundation in July, 2013.

Fine Print:

All submissions must consist of work done solely by the submitting photographer.

Photographers represented by Magnum Photos and their immediate relatives are not eligible.

IM Award recipients and finalists grant the Magnum Foundation a license to reproduce, display and distribute their submissions solely in connection with the administration and judging of the Inge Morath Award, including on the Magnum Foundation website and the Inge Morath Foundation website.

IM Award recipients agree that any future publication, exhibition or display of the funded project shall credit the Inge Morath Award and the Magnum Foundation.

Upon completion of the funded project, a final (digital) copy must be provided to the Magnum Foundation. The Foundation, in furtherance of its charitable purposes, may, in the future, (1) display the project on its website and make it available for display on the website of the Inge Morath Foundation; and (2) publicly display the project (or excepts from it) in connection with exhibitions or promotional materials related to the Inge Morath Award. The Foundation will credit the artist as the author and copyright holder of her photographs.

IM Award recipients may be required to provide additional identifying information prior to receiving payment.

Further Information:

IM Foundation Contact Info

Alice Carfrae (UK): Tin Girls

Play Essay

It is said that in Sindhupalchok, Nepal, you can tell which household has sold a daughter, or lost a mother by looking at the rooftops of the villages. The ones with the newer corrugated tin as opposed to the traditional timber and slate indicate that there has been a sacrifice made. A selfless act to try and better the family’s situation. The unaffectionate nickname given to these women who gave their lives is ‘Tin Girls’.

Nepal is one of the major source countries for trafficked women in South Asia. An increasing number of women are being trafficked from Nepal to the middle east to work as domestic slaves. They are recruited by ‘agencies’ who promise an escape from the hardship they often face at home. Few are lucky and manage to make a meagre wage to send back home but most have their passports visas and belongings stripped from them on arrival and are forced into slavery. Most only return when they have become to sick to work because of exhaustion, pregnancy or STIs contracted through rape. These women are often overworked, routinely beaten, raped and tortured.

Despite this many of the women I talked to were preparing to leave to work again, they told me they had no choice. They wanted to go in the hope that this time they would be able to provide for their families so that their families would not have to endure the same hardship and the children could have an education and a better chance in life.

I travelled to Sindupalchowk in North-eastern Nepal, an area that is particularly heavily affected by human trafficking. During my time in Nepal, I stayed with the families of survivors of trafficking. I photographed and recorded interviews with a number of women who were willing to share their stories. Sharing their stories is important to these women as they hope it will help not only to break the social stigma surrounding trafficking but also prevent it from happening to others.

I hope that my photographs reflect the respect and admiration I have for these women and their family’s.

• Alice Carfrae’s Web Site

Eunice Adorno (Mexico): Flower Women

Play Essay

Flower women is an approach of the life stories of a group of Mennonite women who have allowed me to photograph intimate spaces and daily experiences within their community, Nuevo Ideal, in Durango, and The Onda Zacatecas. The images focus on the emotional bonds between these women and reveal peaceful and harmonious moments which lead us to perceive their lifestyles as more than simply conservative and rigid. 
Our dialogues was in Spanish, or the High and Low German they speak amongst themselves, or through signaled gestures. But the real communication is through feelings shared between the women and me, and framed inside the pictures – passions, friendships, secrets, pleasures, and amusements.

Bio:
Eunice is a photographer who lives and works in Mexico City. She began working as a photojournalist over ten years ago and now works on long-term photo documentary projects. In 2011, La Fábrica (Spain) published her book Las Mujeres Flores, a two-year project in which she documented Mennonite women in northern Mexico, the same project for which she received the Fernando Benítez National Culture Prize (Mexico) in 2010. In 2011 she was selected by World Press Photo for the Joop Swart Masterclass in Holland, the results of this collective masterclass were published as a book titled Next # 01.

The same year she was selected to be a part of the exhibition “Peso y levedad” (Lightness and weight) that was part of the Photo España festival in Madrid. The exhibition was curated by Rosina Cazali and Laura Terré and has been traveling internationally over the last year. Her work has been published in various national and international publications such as the New Yorker, the British Journal Photography (UK), Time magazine’s LightBox (USA), Ojo de Pez (Spain), GUP (Holland), Vice (International edition), Yo Dona (Spain), Gatopardo (Mexico), National Geographic Travel (Mexico) and Marie Claire (Mexico). She has exhibited collectively in Hannover, Madrid, Prague, Rio de Janeiro, Los Angeles and New York.

• Eunice Adorno’s Web Site

Maria Pleshkova (Russia): Days of War, a Pillow Book

Play Essay

‘War’ and ‘Waiting’ begin with the same letter. I’m not a soldier’s mother, neither am I a soldier’s wife. But I know what it feels like when the loved one goes to war. It happened to me – and war became a very personal matter. It became part of my life, of my thoughts and soul. For a while it dominated me. I spent my time waiting, worrying, counting days and hoping for the best. I couldn’t unglue myself from thinking about the conflict zone, I spent days following the news and photos. I began to have dreams about war. I wished I had been there. Every single day I was hoping to get a message from my friend saying that he was alive and well. Sometimes I felt it was the conflict zone – not my peaceful city – where real life was going on. I felt like a character in a play or simply a puppet. Everything around me seemed artificial. War was being fought out there. And everything was changing: the country and people in distant places, the global political situation… I was changing, too. Now it’s all over. But I think that war left a stigma on me, a kind of incurable deformity.

• Maria Pleshkova’s Web Site

Carlotta Zarattini (Italy): The White Building, A Mirror of Cambodia

Inge Morath Award Finalist, 2012

Play Essay

Families and businessmen, elderly and children, drug addicts and poets, all live in the same building, a unique microcosm of Cambodian society. The White Building mirrors Phnom Penh’s hidden soul. It throbs and hums like a hodgepodge construction, but carries a distinct flavor left since its construction in 1963, when it was supposed to host the athletes of the Southeast Asian Peninsular Games. Now a mixture between a slum and a sanctuary, its residents include poets and illiterates, newly-weds and mistresses. As sunlight shines through window slits and shadows are cast on its white walls, the people within learn to tell time. Life in the White Building remains a distinctly Cambodian narrative, plastered by graffiti and stories that reach into memories and dreams.

In the 1960s Cambodia saw a renaissance in architecture and the arts. Phnom Penh flourished. Amidst a positive outlook on the potential for a bright future, one of history’s darkest chapters was about to begin. The Khmer Rouge regime took power in 1970. Cambodia changed forever. During the following years, the country saw its colors fade. Eyes lost shimmer. Intellectuals and artists found their hands bound and mouths gagged. It is believed that 1.7 million people died during the Khmer Rouge regime. Many have been tortured, thousands starved to death. Years of violence and imprisonment shaped minds, leaving a legacy of collective shock.

After the fall of the regime in 1975, there was no government plan to deal with the psychological consequences of collective violence. In the uncertain post-conflict environment the White Building survived and became a place for many to restart their lives from. It offered protection in its offal, and its rooms were slowly repopulated. Every Cambodian is a war witness. However, the acts committed by the Khmer Rouge remain a taboo topic in Cambodia. In the White Building there is no need to verbalize history to see that it shapes the residents’ present. Today, the building hosts over two thousand people of all ages and from all walks of life. This patchwork of characters chooses silence as strategy to cope with their past.

Many memories are petrified within the White Building, untold and unshared. The stories the Building contains are an incredible resource, a unique and irreplaceable archive of Cambodia’s past and present, and a chance to raise awareness and allow understanding. To this day, Cambodian citizens struggle to break free from their indelible trauma – the White Building is a symbol of hope.

Collection of the remains of this piece of history is urgent. The destruction of the Building by the Cambodian government is imminent. The friction brought upon the inhabitants by the prospect of losing their homes, the weight of memories and their meaning are what I seek to document through photography and interviews.

I plan to explore the White Building’s inner space and immerse myself in its entanglement of identities. The older generation rarely shares stories, and Cambodians are born with a blind spot that hides core elements of their past. Underestimating the social aftermath of the Khmer Rouge’s genocide is a threat to the collective healing process. Institutional justice covers only one part of the compensation for loss. The other share is to be found at the grassroots level. I aim at redirecting the older generation’s experience to their youth and descendants, adding a chance to learn about past mistakes. The project I plan to complete in the White Building will record human interactions, social understanding of justice and unpublished testimonies, which will all lead to a deeper understanding of Cambodia’s conflicted history.

• Carlotta Zarattini’s Web Site