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Slide Show. Life in Crimea - Photographs by Arthur Bondar - Introduction by Sophie Pinkham [newyorker.com]
Arthur Bondar was born in the industrial city of Krivoy Rog,
Ukraine. After studying in his own town he studied at the National
Linguistic University and moved to Kiev in 2000, where he earned a
bachelors degree in English philology. He explored several career paths
before he found his way in photography.
Bondar is now a freelance photographer, shooting his own documentary
projects. He studied photography at New York University and was a
participant of the Eddie Adams Workshop and NOOR-Nikon Masterclass.
Bondar was awarded and granted the Magnum Emergency Fund, The
Documentary Project Fund, National Geographic Grant and the Best
Photographer of the Year in Ukraine. His work has been exhibited and
shown in Canada, USA, England, Germany, France, Belgium, Poland,
Lithuania, Romania, Turkey, Georgia, Russia and Ukraine. He is mentored
by Donald Weber. Source: viiphoto.com/arthur-bondar/
(newyorker.com) At a time when many journalists in post-Soviet states have turned their attention to the encroaching threat of Russia, the photographer Dina Oganova has continued to document life in her home country of Georgia. Inspired by the Georgian photographer Yuri Mechitov, Oganova began studying photography in Tbilisi, the nation’s capital. Oganova prefers her subjects to be strangers, and she told me that most Georgian people readily agree to be photographed. “They don’t understand that a photographer is a profession,” she says. “Everyone loves to see how I make the photos.”
Oganova, who is twenty-seven, has seen a lot of change in Georgia. “I was a child when the first war started here,” she told me, referring to the 1992–93 war in Abkhazia. “Of course, I didn’t understand during that period. We called it a civil war, but now I understand that it was war with Russia. It’s crazy, but I can’t go to Abkhazia because I have a Georgian passport. When we had the five days of war with Russia, in 2008, we lost South Ossetia. No one said that it was a war; everyone said that it was a conflict. But I can’t say that. When a lot of people die, when you lose your friends, it’s not just a conflict. It’s a war.”
Above is a selection from “I am Georgia,” an ongoing project that Oganova began in 2007.
All photographs by Dina Oganova. more here >>>
dikarka.ge/i-am-georgia
(newyorker.com) Winter Olympics in a subtropical resort. Surrounded by conflict zones. The most expensive Games ever. This is the idea being realized in Sochi.” So begins “An Atlas of War and Tourism in the Caucasus,” a photo book, published by Aperture, by the photographer Rob Hornstra and the writer Arnold van Bruggen, the final chapter of their long-term collaboration, The Sochi Project.
The two began the project in 2009, practicing what they call “slow journalism” to unearth the untold stories of Sochi, Russia, which will host the 2014 Winter Olympics. With the 2014 Games as their deadline, the pair sought to “provide a grassroots analysis of what’s going on in this region, an analysis not made by politicians and the usual talking heads, but by slowly composing a new image … by doing almost anthropological fieldwork,” van Bruggen said.
The project has been released in annual installments in a variety of formats, including photo books, newsprint “sketchbooks,” and an online interactive documentary project. “For me, storytelling is not about travelling or about telling a zillion stories,” Hornstra said. “For me, it is more about trying to really understand certain issues …. We recognize that there is not one single, simple answer. But we try to get as close as possible to the answer …. It is our ambition to tell these self-directed stories through our own self-published books. In that way we can control everything from beginning to end.”
Photographs from the book are currently on display at FotoMuseum, in Antwerp, through March 2, 2014, the first in a series of international exhibitions.
All photography by Rob Hornstra/courtesy Flatland Gallery.
