Money, Power & Sex: an African photo competitionMoney, Power & Sex: an African photo competition

(click to go to the competition website)

The Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) is launching an African photographic competition around the OpenForum called OPENPhoto that will be hosted by the four Open Society Africa Foundations in Cape Town from May 22-May 24, 2012.

The title of the OpenForum is

MONEY, SEX & POWER: The paradox of unequal growth.

The OPENPhoto award will recognize photographers based in Africa whose work highlights how inequality plays itself out within the parameters of MONEY, POWER and SEX.

The OPENPhoto Award aims to encourage analytical and critical thinking about society in Africa through the prism of inequality. We are looking for strong, interpretive documentary work that has a voice.

The winner and three runners-up, selected by an international jury, will be exhibited at the conference, as well as online. The photos will also be used in a special Openspace journal/book on inequality.

Winners will be announced on April 25, 2012.

Submission Requirements:

1. Submit a picture story of between 10 and 15 images.
2. The competition is open to professional and amateur photographers, 18 years or older.
3. The photographer must be Africa-based. (lives more than six months per year in Africa)
4. There is no entry fee.

            The photo essays should look at the implications of Africa’s booming economies but also deepening inequalities and how the race for African resources is playing itself out both socially and politically. We are interested in the impact of the emerging economic powers – particularly the BRICS – and how this is affecting Africa.

            The title of the conference  “Money, Power and Sex: The paradox of unequal growth” is your guide to subject matter and the type of work the jury will consider – although we are very open to your vision of the theme(s). The core topics of interest to theOpen Society Foundations are governance, democracy, human rights and rule of law.  

MONEY:  Africa is booming. Even the Economist – which in 1997 published its unfortunate Hopeless Continent edition – has acknowledged that Africa is on the rise with soaring economic growth rates and increasingly friendly investment climates. But in many countries, inequality is also soaring – with little evidence that the new-found is dripping down to those at the bottom. While there have been incremental gains for poor people, it is clear that overall the gap between those who have and those who do not have has grown in the last decade. 

The demand for Africa’s natural resources could be the springboard for sustainable socio-economic development. Thus far, the resource boom has resulted in healthy profits for a number of mining houses. And in countries with strong regulatory environments, such as South Africa and Botswana, this has had an effect on the overall economy. Yet in countries with little ability to regulate the extraction of resources, the benefits for communities have been more difficult to measure. Indeed, where political instability and minerals collide, there is often conflict. Given the diverse contexts in which private companies are operating, and given the many innovative models that have been developed across the continent for partnerships between communities and mines, the question is how to ensure that Africa’s long-awaited economic success translates into opportunities for ordinary people. The OpenForum seeks to deepen our understanding of the factors that will influence meaningful economic growth. In particular, there are five areas of focus for the discussions on Money: (a) ensuring Africa’s natural resources genuinely benefit its people through replicable models of company and state transparency, accountability and commitment to the welfare of local communities and the environment; (b) understanding the role of big business in supporting policy change and in influencing political processes; (c)  exploring the introduction of large-scale commercial models of agriculture and the effects that these have on patterns of rural poverty; (d) better understanding  effects of large-scale concessioning of land to private concerns in Europe, North America, Latin America and China; and, (e) the negotiation of ports, power supply, railways, and other important infrastructure.

POWER: For five decades, Africa has struggled to define its political identity. What democracy looks like on the continent, and what it should look like, have been subjects of contestation. Given the influence of former colonisers on the political systems of various countries, the advent of the BRICS countries provides an opportunity to reflect on what outsiders can and should do to influence African political systems, when they are shorn of the baggage of colonisation. The fact that Brazil, India and China present such diverse domestic human rights situations is worth considering. With a robust commitment to human rights at home and in global policy circles, Brazil could be a positive influence on the continent, but its private sector practices require interrogation. India, with its long-standing commitment to democracy and a booming economy could also be a positive lever of change, yet its significant challenges of poverty and inequality present questions about its own model of growth. Lastly, China, with its fast growing economy and increasing interest in the world has been the subject of much scholarly attention, but little policy focus.

In addition, the focus on Power will allow for an examination of the Arab Spring Uprisings. The key sub-themes within the Power discussion will look at (a) what the rise of the BRICS countries means for the African political economy and African politicians; (b) whether human rights and good governance – increasingly held up as pre-conditions for aid from Western countries in the last two decades – are likely to suffer as a result of increased economic and development assistance from the emerging powers; and (c) where the new thought leadership and activism will come from to address the political and economic inequalities that continue to plague the continent.

SEX: In the last two decades, the most successful social movement on the continent has been the women’s movement. Successes in policy and legislation have been significant. Yet, there have been real concerns about the extent to which the gains of this movement have been able to affect the lives of poor and marginalised women. Post the Beijing Conference, many donors have reduced support to women’s rights organisations, and in recent years the rise of religious fundamentalism has had a significant effect on women’s abilities to exercise their rights even where these rights exist in law. Furthermore, the global financial crisis has had an effect on women. At the same time, in the last two years in particular, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community has grown more confident. Like the women’s movement before it, the LGBTI sector has had to craft arguments about how African gay people – and the extent to which the rights they seek to realise – are embedded in traditional contexts. The sessions on Sex will therefore focus on the extent to which (a) the LGBTI movement (and other social movements) can learn and benefit from the gains of the women’s movement; and (b) new economic challenges intersect with the civil and political rights agendas that have traditionally been the domain of women’s groups and the LGBTI movement.

The Convener 

Greg Marinovich

is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer and co-author of The Bang Bang Club, a nonfiction book on South Africa’s transition to democracy. He has spent 25 years doing conflict, documentary and news photography around the globe. His photographs have appeared in top international publications such as Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian of London, among others. He is chair of the World Press Master Class nominating committee for Africa, and was a World Press Photo judge in 1994 and 2005.  In 2009 he was the recipient of the Nat Nakasa award for courageous journalism. Marinovich was Editor-In-Chief of the Twenty Ten project and responsible for managing over 100 African journalists’ work in all forms of media.

Currently, he is Editor-at-Large for IMaverick and Daily Maverick, doing freelance photography and making a film about the former militants in Thokoza township, South Africa, and writing a non-fiction book about an infamous murderer who just happened to be married to Marinovich’s mother.

The Judges

World renowned photo-journalist and social documentary photographer.

Alf Kumalo was born in 1930. He began his journalistic career at the newspaper Bantu World in the 1950s. He developed an interest in photography and set up a studio with the help of one of his teachers in 1952. 

In 1957 Kumalo began working as a photographer at the Golden City Post, a daily newspaper targeted at Black, Coloured and Indian readers. The publication closed down in 1971 and he went to the United States of America, where he freelanced for six and a half months.

When Kumalo returned he found a position at the Sunday Times, where he remained until 1977. During this period he photographed the Soweto Uprising, as well as Sophiatown and the Rivonia Trial. He was harassed, assaulted and even detained while capturing the moments that would later make him famous. He then joined the Drum staff as a picture editor, but left when an opportunity to work with boxer Muhammed Ali presented itself.

Kumalo returned to freelancing and then in 1980 he joined The Star newspaper. He presented his work in various exhibitions and published several photographic books. He recently opened a training facility for young photographers at his home in Soweto.

On 29 October 2004 Kumalo was awarded the Order of Ikhamanga in silver, one of the highest rewards that can be bestowed on a South African. He was honoured for his “fearless determination in capturing our country’s history – from political turmoil, transition, to the dawn of democracy.

Jodi Bieber

started working as a photographer leading up to and during South Africa’s first democratic elections. In 1996 she was chosen to participate in the World Press Masterclass held in Holland and started working on assignments for publications like the NYT Magazine. She also works for non-profit organizations like Medicins San Frontiers on special projects for booklets and exhibitions.

Over a ten-year period photographed youth living on the fringes of South African society. This work finally found itself a home in a book – “Between Dogs and Wolves – Growing up with South Africa”. It has been published and released in five countries in 2006.

Her photographic projects continue to be exhibited internationally. Her most recent body of work ‘Soweto’ was published in a book in May 2010.

Bieber’s most recent award being the premier World Press photo Award of 2010 She was also the winner of the Prix de le l’Union Europeene at the Recontres de Bamako Biennale Africaine de la Photographie, November 2009.

She has won 9 World Press awards, a 1st Place in Picture of the Year International 2009 and received numerous other accolades.

Boniface Mwangi

is an award winning Kenyan photographer. For five years he held a staff photography position at The Standard, the second largest Kenyan newspaper, taking on various assignments of increasing responsibility in a number of countries. He also worked as a freelancer for Bloomberg, the AFP, Reuters, the Boston Globe, and other media outlets. He holds a Diploma in Print Journalism from the East African School of Journalism. He has been recognized as a Magnum Photography Fellow, TED Fellow, and twice as the CNN Multichoice Africa Photojournalist of the Year, among other awards. He is currently an Acumen Fund East Africa Fellow, Class of 2012 and runs Pawa 254 a collaborative hub for creatives in Kenya.

Ricardo Mazalán

serves as photo editor for The Associated Press in Bogota, Colombia. Born in 1964, he studied at the University of Buenos Aires prior to joining AP in Bogotá in 1990. Since then, he has worked in dozens of counties all over the world.

In the mid-90s he documented civil wars and conflicts in Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi and Congo as AP chief photographer for East Africa. Sports events he has covered include Olympic Games and soccer World Cups. In South America he has worked on such stories as the drug wars and insurgency in Colombia, political unrest in Haiti and Venezuela, and some major natural disasters. 
 
He oversaw the AP regional coverage for Latin America and the Caribbean in 2005 and 2006. Ricardo has served a juror in several contests including twice on the World Press Photo. 

Yunghi Kim

is a photojournalist, born in Taegue, South Korea, but is a Korean-American who spent her formative years in New York. 
 
She has covered some of the biggest global news events in the last 30 years. The more memorable include; Somalia in 1992, the Rwandan Genocide 1994 and the resulting refugee crisis in 1996, South African elections of 1994, the fall of the Indonesian dictator Suharto in 1998, the war in Kosovo in 1999, the Iraq War in 2003, Afghanistan 2001 and 2005, and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. She is most proud of her documentation of the lives of former South Korean Comfort Women in 1996, who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese army during its occupation of Korea during World War II.  Her most recent project is Occupy Wall Street. 
 
She has covered many in-depth issue-driven stories where intimate storytelling, and giving a voice to her subjects through her lens remains her primary objective.  
She started her photojournalism career at The Patriot Ledger, a small newspaper in Quincy Massachusetts in 1984, and then went on to become a staff photographer for the Boston Globe in 1987. She was a member of Contact Press Images from 1995 to 2008. 
 
Her professional accolades include 4 World Press Photo Foundation Awards in Holland, Magazine Photographer of the Year by POYi  (one of two women ever to receive this), The Olivier Rebbot and The John Faber Awards from the Overseas Press Club, Visa D’Or for News from the Visa Pour L’image Festival in France, The White House Press Photographers, Boston Press Photographers Association, Communication in Arts and Society for News Design, recipient of Distinguished Alumni Award from Boston University. She has also served as a speaker at the Nieman Narrative Journalism Conference at Harvard University and was a runner up for the Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of Somalia in 1992.  
 
She has also worked on extensive magazine commissioned assignments. She has been published in Time, Newsweek, Business Week, U.S. News and World Report, LIFE, Forbes, Fortune, The Independent (London), Sports Illustrated, Texas Monthly, and Golf Magazine, People Magazine, and Vogue. 

David Dare Parker

is a Nikon-Walkley Award winning photographer, and has photographed for a multitude of national and international publications throughout the Middle East, Europe and Australasia. Publications include LeMonde, Stern, L’Express, Focus, Australian Geographic, The Bulletin, The New York Times and TIME Magazine. He was one of the co-founders of REPORTAGE, a Director of FotoFreo Photographic Festival, a Nikon-Walkley Advisory Board Member and is currently an Ambassador for Nikon Australia. He is represented by °SOUTH in Australia and OnAsia Images in Asia.

Munem Wasif

began his career as a feature photographer for the Daily Star newspaper, Bangladesh, after graduating from Pathshala.

A documentary photographer who has been represented by Agence Vu since 2008, his photographs have been published in Le Monde 2, the Sunday Times Magazine, the Guardian, Politiken, Io Donna, Mare, Du, Days Japan, L’espresso, Libération, Courier International, Photo, British Journal of Photography, Lens Culture, Photo District News and Zonezero.

Wasif was selected for the World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass in 2007. In 2008, he won the City of Perpignan Young Reporter’s Award at Visa pour l’image. That year, he also won the International Award for concerned photography, the F25 for under-25’s in the Fabrica awards. The following year, he was awarded the Prixpictet commission for his work on the water crisis of the northwest region of Bangladesh.

His work has been exhibited worldwide, including at the Musee de Elysee, and the Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland, the International Photography Biennial of the Islamic World in Iran, Tokoy Metropolitan Museum of Photography in Japan, the Kunsthal Museum and the Noordelight festival in the Netherlands, Angkor photo festival in Cambodia, London’s Whitechapel Gallery, Palais de Tokyo, Visa pour l’image in France, and at Chobi Mela, Bangladesh.

Wasif, who was born in Bangladesh in 1983, is now teaching documentary photography at Pathshala South Asian Media Academy.

Rankin

made his name in publishing, founding the seminal monthly magazine Dazed & Confused in 1992 – a platform for innovation for emerging stylists, designers, photographers and writers. The magazine went on to forge a distinctive mark in the arts and publishing spheres.

Rankin created landmark editorial and advertising campaigns, photographing everyone from the Queen of England to the Queen of Pop. His body of work features some of the most celebrated publications, biggest brands and pioneering charities, including Nike, Swatch, Dove, Pantene, Diageo, Women’s Aid, and Breakthrough Breast Cancer. He has shot covers for Elle, German Vogue, Harpers Bazaar, Esquire and GQ, and worked with Rolling Stone and Wonderland. His work has always endeavoured to question social norms and ideas of beauty. He has also made several films and started Collabor8te.

Rankin has published over 30 books, is regularly exhibited in galleries around the world, and has recently opened galleries in London and Los Angeles. Rankin’s images have become part of contemporary iconography, evidence of his frankness and passion for all aspects of modern culture, and its representation in the photographed image.

In November 2011, Rankin returned to magazine publishing with a fresh offering – The Hunger. A biannual fashion, culture and lifestyle magazine, The Hunger and its associated Hunger TV website – a video-based digital platform featuring in-depth interviews, fashion films, blogs, updates, and previews – marked Rankin’s return to the fashion world with an understanding that the future is not only printed but digital too. The Hunger is all about a creative passion and a raw talent that drives individuals forward in a quest for pushing the limits of creativity. Shooting almost every image in issue 1, The Hunger is both a personal creative feat and a launch pad for other talent to step into the breach. Issue 2 will be out in May 2012.

Rankin lives in London with his wife, Tuuli, and son, Lyle.

(click to go to the competition website)

The Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) is launching an African photographic competition around the OpenForum called OPENPhoto that will be hosted by the four Open Society Africa Foundations in Cape Town from May 22-May 24, 2012.

The title of the OpenForum is

MONEY, SEX & POWER: The paradox of unequal growth.

The OPENPhoto award will recognize photographers based in Africa whose work highlights how inequality plays itself out within the parameters of MONEY, POWER and SEX.

The OPENPhoto Award aims to encourage analytical and critical thinking about society in Africa through the prism of inequality. We are looking for strong, interpretive documentary work that has a voice.

The winner and three runners-up, selected by an international jury, will be exhibited at the conference, as well as online. The photos will also be used in a special Openspace journal/book on inequality.

Winners will be announced on April 25, 2012.

Submission Requirements:

1. Submit a picture story of between 10 and 15 images.
2. The competition is open to professional and amateur photographers, 18 years or older.
3. The photographer must be Africa-based. (lives more than six months per year in Africa)
4. There is no entry fee.

            The photo essays should look at the implications of Africa’s booming economies but also deepening inequalities and how the race for African resources is playing itself out both socially and politically. We are interested in the impact of the emerging economic powers – particularly the BRICS – and how this is affecting Africa.

            The title of the conference  “Money, Power and Sex: The paradox of unequal growth” is your guide to subject matter and the type of work the jury will consider – although we are very open to your vision of the theme(s). The core topics of interest to theOpen Society Foundations are governance, democracy, human rights and rule of law.  

MONEY:  Africa is booming. Even the Economist – which in 1997 published its unfortunate Hopeless Continent edition – has acknowledged that Africa is on the rise with soaring economic growth rates and increasingly friendly investment climates. But in many countries, inequality is also soaring – with little evidence that the new-found is dripping down to those at the bottom. While there have been incremental gains for poor people, it is clear that overall the gap between those who have and those who do not have has grown in the last decade. 

The demand for Africa’s natural resources could be the springboard for sustainable socio-economic development. Thus far, the resource boom has resulted in healthy profits for a number of mining houses. And in countries with strong regulatory environments, such as South Africa and Botswana, this has had an effect on the overall economy. Yet in countries with little ability to regulate the extraction of resources, the benefits for communities have been more difficult to measure. Indeed, where political instability and minerals collide, there is often conflict. Given the diverse contexts in which private companies are operating, and given the many innovative models that have been developed across the continent for partnerships between communities and mines, the question is how to ensure that Africa’s long-awaited economic success translates into opportunities for ordinary people. The OpenForum seeks to deepen our understanding of the factors that will influence meaningful economic growth. In particular, there are five areas of focus for the discussions on Money: (a) ensuring Africa’s natural resources genuinely benefit its people through replicable models of company and state transparency, accountability and commitment to the welfare of local communities and the environment; (b) understanding the role of big business in supporting policy change and in influencing political processes; (c)  exploring the introduction of large-scale commercial models of agriculture and the effects that these have on patterns of rural poverty; (d) better understanding  effects of large-scale concessioning of land to private concerns in Europe, North America, Latin America and China; and, (e) the negotiation of ports, power supply, railways, and other important infrastructure.

POWER: For five decades, Africa has struggled to define its political identity. What democracy looks like on the continent, and what it should look like, have been subjects of contestation. Given the influence of former colonisers on the political systems of various countries, the advent of the BRICS countries provides an opportunity to reflect on what outsiders can and should do to influence African political systems, when they are shorn of the baggage of colonisation. The fact that Brazil, India and China present such diverse domestic human rights situations is worth considering. With a robust commitment to human rights at home and in global policy circles, Brazil could be a positive influence on the continent, but its private sector practices require interrogation. India, with its long-standing commitment to democracy and a booming economy could also be a positive lever of change, yet its significant challenges of poverty and inequality present questions about its own model of growth. Lastly, China, with its fast growing economy and increasing interest in the world has been the subject of much scholarly attention, but little policy focus.

In addition, the focus on Power will allow for an examination of the Arab Spring Uprisings. The key sub-themes within the Power discussion will look at (a) what the rise of the BRICS countries means for the African political economy and African politicians; (b) whether human rights and good governance – increasingly held up as pre-conditions for aid from Western countries in the last two decades – are likely to suffer as a result of increased economic and development assistance from the emerging powers; and (c) where the new thought leadership and activism will come from to address the political and economic inequalities that continue to plague the continent.

SEX: In the last two decades, the most successful social movement on the continent has been the women’s movement. Successes in policy and legislation have been significant. Yet, there have been real concerns about the extent to which the gains of this movement have been able to affect the lives of poor and marginalised women. Post the Beijing Conference, many donors have reduced support to women’s rights organisations, and in recent years the rise of religious fundamentalism has had a significant effect on women’s abilities to exercise their rights even where these rights exist in law. Furthermore, the global financial crisis has had an effect on women. At the same time, in the last two years in particular, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community has grown more confident. Like the women’s movement before it, the LGBTI sector has had to craft arguments about how African gay people – and the extent to which the rights they seek to realise – are embedded in traditional contexts. The sessions on Sex will therefore focus on the extent to which (a) the LGBTI movement (and other social movements) can learn and benefit from the gains of the women’s movement; and (b) new economic challenges intersect with the civil and political rights agendas that have traditionally been the domain of women’s groups and the LGBTI movement.

The Convener 

Greg Marinovich

is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer and co-author of The Bang Bang Club, a nonfiction book on South Africa’s transition to democracy. He has spent 25 years doing conflict, documentary and news photography around the globe. His photographs have appeared in top international publications such as Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian of London, among others. He is chair of the World Press Master Class nominating committee for Africa, and was a World Press Photo judge in 1994 and 2005.  In 2009 he was the recipient of the Nat Nakasa award for courageous journalism. Marinovich was Editor-In-Chief of the Twenty Ten project and responsible for managing over 100 African journalists’ work in all forms of media.

Currently, he is Editor-at-Large for IMaverick and Daily Maverick, doing freelance photography and making a film about the former militants in Thokoza township, South Africa, and writing a non-fiction book about an infamous murderer who just happened to be married to Marinovich’s mother.

The Judges

World renowned photo-journalist and social documentary photographer.

Alf Kumalo was born in 1930. He began his journalistic career at the newspaper Bantu World in the 1950s. He developed an interest in photography and set up a studio with the help of one of his teachers in 1952. 

In 1957 Kumalo began working as a photographer at the Golden City Post, a daily newspaper targeted at Black, Coloured and Indian readers. The publication closed down in 1971 and he went to the United States of America, where he freelanced for six and a half months.

When Kumalo returned he found a position at the Sunday Times, where he remained until 1977. During this period he photographed the Soweto Uprising, as well as Sophiatown and the Rivonia Trial. He was harassed, assaulted and even detained while capturing the moments that would later make him famous. He then joined the Drum staff as a picture editor, but left when an opportunity to work with boxer Muhammed Ali presented itself.

Kumalo returned to freelancing and then in 1980 he joined The Star newspaper. He presented his work in various exhibitions and published several photographic books. He recently opened a training facility for young photographers at his home in Soweto.

On 29 October 2004 Kumalo was awarded the Order of Ikhamanga in silver, one of the highest rewards that can be bestowed on a South African. He was honoured for his “fearless determination in capturing our country’s history – from political turmoil, transition, to the dawn of democracy.

Jodi Bieber

started working as a photographer leading up to and during South Africa’s first democratic elections. In 1996 she was chosen to participate in the World Press Masterclass held in Holland and started working on assignments for publications like the NYT Magazine. She also works for non-profit organizations like Medicins San Frontiers on special projects for booklets and exhibitions.

Over a ten-year period photographed youth living on the fringes of South African society. This work finally found itself a home in a book – “Between Dogs and Wolves – Growing up with South Africa”. It has been published and released in five countries in 2006.

Her photographic projects continue to be exhibited internationally. Her most recent body of work ‘Soweto’ was published in a book in May 2010.

Bieber’s most recent award being the premier World Press photo Award of 2010 She was also the winner of the Prix de le l’Union Europeene at the Recontres de Bamako Biennale Africaine de la Photographie, November 2009.

She has won 9 World Press awards, a 1st Place in Picture of the Year International 2009 and received numerous other accolades.

Boniface Mwangi

is an award winning Kenyan photographer. For five years he held a staff photography position at The Standard, the second largest Kenyan newspaper, taking on various assignments of increasing responsibility in a number of countries. He also worked as a freelancer for Bloomberg, the AFP, Reuters, the Boston Globe, and other media outlets. He holds a Diploma in Print Journalism from the East African School of Journalism. He has been recognized as a Magnum Photography Fellow, TED Fellow, and twice as the CNN Multichoice Africa Photojournalist of the Year, among other awards. He is currently an Acumen Fund East Africa Fellow, Class of 2012 and runs Pawa 254 a collaborative hub for creatives in Kenya.

Ricardo Mazalán

serves as photo editor for The Associated Press in Bogota, Colombia. Born in 1964, he studied at the University of Buenos Aires prior to joining AP in Bogotá in 1990. Since then, he has worked in dozens of counties all over the world.

In the mid-90s he documented civil wars and conflicts in Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi and Congo as AP chief photographer for East Africa. Sports events he has covered include Olympic Games and soccer World Cups. In South America he has worked on such stories as the drug wars and insurgency in Colombia, political unrest in Haiti and Venezuela, and some major natural disasters. 
 
He oversaw the AP regional coverage for Latin America and the Caribbean in 2005 and 2006. Ricardo has served a juror in several contests including twice on the World Press Photo. 

Yunghi Kim

is a photojournalist, born in Taegue, South Korea, but is a Korean-American who spent her formative years in New York. 
 
She has covered some of the biggest global news events in the last 30 years. The more memorable include; Somalia in 1992, the Rwandan Genocide 1994 and the resulting refugee crisis in 1996, South African elections of 1994, the fall of the Indonesian dictator Suharto in 1998, the war in Kosovo in 1999, the Iraq War in 2003, Afghanistan 2001 and 2005, and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. She is most proud of her documentation of the lives of former South Korean Comfort Women in 1996, who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese army during its occupation of Korea during World War II.  Her most recent project is Occupy Wall Street. 
 
She has covered many in-depth issue-driven stories where intimate storytelling, and giving a voice to her subjects through her lens remains her primary objective.  
She started her photojournalism career at The Patriot Ledger, a small newspaper in Quincy Massachusetts in 1984, and then went on to become a staff photographer for the Boston Globe in 1987. She was a member of Contact Press Images from 1995 to 2008. 
 
Her professional accolades include 4 World Press Photo Foundation Awards in Holland, Magazine Photographer of the Year by POYi  (one of two women ever to receive this), The Olivier Rebbot and The John Faber Awards from the Overseas Press Club, Visa D’Or for News from the Visa Pour L’image Festival in France, The White House Press Photographers, Boston Press Photographers Association, Communication in Arts and Society for News Design, recipient of Distinguished Alumni Award from Boston University. She has also served as a speaker at the Nieman Narrative Journalism Conference at Harvard University and was a runner up for the Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of Somalia in 1992.  
 
She has also worked on extensive magazine commissioned assignments. She has been published in Time, Newsweek, Business Week, U.S. News and World Report, LIFE, Forbes, Fortune, The Independent (London), Sports Illustrated, Texas Monthly, and Golf Magazine, People Magazine, and Vogue. 

David Dare Parker

is a Nikon-Walkley Award winning photographer, and has photographed for a multitude of national and international publications throughout the Middle East, Europe and Australasia. Publications include LeMonde, Stern, L’Express, Focus, Australian Geographic, The Bulletin, The New York Times and TIME Magazine. He was one of the co-founders of REPORTAGE, a Director of FotoFreo Photographic Festival, a Nikon-Walkley Advisory Board Member and is currently an Ambassador for Nikon Australia. He is represented by °SOUTH in Australia and OnAsia Images in Asia.

Munem Wasif

began his career as a feature photographer for the Daily Star newspaper, Bangladesh, after graduating from Pathshala.

A documentary photographer who has been represented by Agence Vu since 2008, his photographs have been published in Le Monde 2, the Sunday Times Magazine, the Guardian, Politiken, Io Donna, Mare, Du, Days Japan, L’espresso, Libération, Courier International, Photo, British Journal of Photography, Lens Culture, Photo District News and Zonezero.

Wasif was selected for the World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass in 2007. In 2008, he won the City of Perpignan Young Reporter’s Award at Visa pour l’image. That year, he also won the International Award for concerned photography, the F25 for under-25’s in the Fabrica awards. The following year, he was awarded the Prixpictet commission for his work on the water crisis of the northwest region of Bangladesh.

His work has been exhibited worldwide, including at the Musee de Elysee, and the Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland, the International Photography Biennial of the Islamic World in Iran, Tokoy Metropolitan Museum of Photography in Japan, the Kunsthal Museum and the Noordelight festival in the Netherlands, Angkor photo festival in Cambodia, London’s Whitechapel Gallery, Palais de Tokyo, Visa pour l’image in France, and at Chobi Mela, Bangladesh.

Wasif, who was born in Bangladesh in 1983, is now teaching documentary photography at Pathshala South Asian Media Academy.

Rankin

made his name in publishing, founding the seminal monthly magazine Dazed & Confused in 1992 – a platform for innovation for emerging stylists, designers, photographers and writers. The magazine went on to forge a distinctive mark in the arts and publishing spheres.

Rankin created landmark editorial and advertising campaigns, photographing everyone from the Queen of England to the Queen of Pop. His body of work features some of the most celebrated publications, biggest brands and pioneering charities, including Nike, Swatch, Dove, Pantene, Diageo, Women’s Aid, and Breakthrough Breast Cancer. He has shot covers for Elle, German Vogue, Harpers Bazaar, Esquire and GQ, and worked with Rolling Stone and Wonderland. His work has always endeavoured to question social norms and ideas of beauty. He has also made several films and started Collabor8te.

Rankin has published over 30 books, is regularly exhibited in galleries around the world, and has recently opened galleries in London and Los Angeles. Rankin’s images have become part of contemporary iconography, evidence of his frankness and passion for all aspects of modern culture, and its representation in the photographed image.

In November 2011, Rankin returned to magazine publishing with a fresh offering – The Hunger. A biannual fashion, culture and lifestyle magazine, The Hunger and its associated Hunger TV website – a video-based digital platform featuring in-depth interviews, fashion films, blogs, updates, and previews – marked Rankin’s return to the fashion world with an understanding that the future is not only printed but digital too. The Hunger is all about a creative passion and a raw talent that drives individuals forward in a quest for pushing the limits of creativity. Shooting almost every image in issue 1, The Hunger is both a personal creative feat and a launch pad for other talent to step into the breach. Issue 2 will be out in May 2012.

Rankin lives in London with his wife, Tuuli, and son, Lyle.