ZEKE Magazine: Fall 2018

ZEKEFALL 2018 VOL.4/NO.2 

THE MAGAZINE OF GLOBAL DOCUMENTARY 

Published by Social Documentary Network 

$9.95 US/$10.95 CANADA 

FEATURED ARTICLES 

WHERE THE RIVER RUNS THROUGH 

THE EROSION OF THE AMAZON RAINFOREST 

Photographs by Aaron Vincent Elkaim 

RHYTHM OF THE SEASONS 

TRAVELING NORTH WITH THE LAST INUIT HUNTERS 

Photographs by Philippe Geslin 

LIFE AND WAR IN UKRAINE 

Photographs by Michele Cirillo, Aude Osnowycz, 

Jan Zychlinski 

1 / ZEKE FALL 2018

FALL 2018 VOL.4/NO.2 

$9.95 US/$10.95 CANADA 

2 | RHYTHM OF THE SEASONS 



Text by Tori Marlan 

Philippe Geslin 

18 | WHERE THE RIVER RUNS THROUGH 



Text by Enrique Gili 

36 | LIFE AND WAR IN UKRAINE 

Photographs by Michele Cirillo, Aude Osnowycz, 


Text by Glenn Ruga 

Aaron Vincent Elkaim 

30 | 

34 | 

Award Winners 

Interview with Reza 

by Caterina Clerici 

54 | 

Image in the Era of Post-Truth 

by Fred Ritchin 


58 | 

63 | 

Book Reviews 

What’s Hot 

Trending Photographers on SDN 

On the Cover 

Photograph by Aaron Vincent Elkaim 

from Where the River Runs Through: 

The Erosion of the Amazon Rainforest, 

featured in this issue of ZEKE. Elkaim is 

the winner of Social Documentary Network’s 

Call for Entries on Documentary 

in the Era of Post-Truth. 

Reza

ZEKE 

THE 

MAGAZINE OF 

GLOBAL DOCUMENTARY 


Dear ZEKE Readers: 

This issue of ZEKE is devoted to the exploration of post-truth. 

The abuse of truth is nothing new, and in itself would not lead 

to rebranding our era with this moniker. But combined with an 

internet filled with untruths that are swaying public opinion, 

mainstream media such as Fox News or RT (Russia Today) 

making up “facts,” and a new skepticism of science at a time when 

climate change is burning and flooding our planet, the bedrock belief in 

objectivity is on dangerously shaky ground. 

No event in recent history illustrates this better, and more 

dangerously, than the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the 

US Supreme Court following blistering and divisive testimony by 

Kavanaugh and his accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. Each is 100% 

certain about what happened or didn’t happen. How can this be? 

Either one of them is lying or one actually and erroneously believes their 

statement because of faulty memory. But they both cannot be right as 

much as 1+1 cannot equal 3. While I find Ford a credible witness, and 

Kavanaugh less so, facts were in short supply in this debate. 

Today it is too common for two sides of a debate to have 

diametrically opposed understanding of facts with each side being 

100% certain about being right. 

I first experienced this slippery slope on truth when in 1995 I 

traveled to Bosnia during the end of a genocidal war and listened 

to testimony of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Serbs, each of whom 

were convinced of the veracity of their narrative. In 1994, the 

Muslim residents of Sarajevo were 100% certain that it was the Serb 

nationalists who bombed the downtown marketplace killing 68 civilians 

and the Serbs were just as sure that it was the Bosnian government that 

did it in order to gain international support for their cause. Unlike the 

Kavanaugh hearings, facts were available and numerous international 

experts came to a unanimous conclusion that it was Serb nationalists 

perched on high ground above Sarajevo who did this heinous act. But it 

was an eye opener for me to hear first-hand Serb nationalists deny their 

involvement with “100%” certainty. 

I would hate to conclude that all truth is relative because I strongly 

believe in the rule of law based on evidence, science based on research, 

and that objective truth is essential for justice to prevail in this world. 

I am very grateful to the photographers in this issue of ZEKE for 

presenting truths about the themes they explore and also to Fred Ritchin 

for his essay on “Image in the Era of Post-Truth.” 

Glenn Ruga 

Executive Editor 

Ten Years of Telling Truth 

It was ten years ago this month that the Social 

Documentary Network (SDN) launched a website at 

the PhotoPlus Expo at the Jacob Javits Center in New 

York. A decade later, we have presented more than 

3,000 documentary exhibits by more than 2,000 

photographers from all parts of the world exploring 

hundreds of diverse themes. We have also have had 

gallery exhibitions in locations across the US and 

in Europe. We have hosted educational programs 

involving world renowned photographers. We continue 

to be a strong voice for documentary photography. 

And in 2015, we took a bold step to launch this 

magazine. 

In the ten years since we launched SDN, 

digital photography has made the truthfulness of 

a photograph more suspect than ever. In fact a 

photograph today is of little more use as evidence than 

an illustration. But an important concept behind SDN 

is that a documentary project is never about just one 

image. Rather it is about an investigation involving 

many images from many angles, often over a period 

of months or years. Quality documentary investigation 

often involves a deep commitment by the photographer 

to research the historical backgrounds and current 

political climate of their themes. In other instances, it 

involves capturing the personal stories of the subjects. 

In Fred Ritchin’s article in this issue, “Image 

in the Era of ‘Post-Truth’“ he makes the case that 

documentary photographers today are using a more 

conceptual approach because the obvious approach 

of just relying on photographic evidence is no longer 

credible. In recent years we have seen many of the 

photographers on SDN doing exactly this and we 

encourage more of this type of exploration. 

SDN is proud to be celebrating our tenth 

anniversary and ten years of telling truth. We want to 

thank and celebrate the thousands of photographers 

who trust us to present their stories to the world and 

we look forward to another decade of collaboration. 

ZEKE FALL 2018/ 1

RHYTHM OF THE 




SEASONS 

In 

the heart of Greenland, the world’s 

largest island, at the confluence of the 

bays of Melville and Baffin, are the last 

Inuit hunters. They still live to the rhythm of 

the seasons, the ice pack and the sea, the 

storms and the cold. They are looking for 

the presence of seals. Everything seems 

unresolved for these northern peoples 

living in the least populated land, where 

three quarters of the territory is covered by 

once permanent ice sheets and glaciers 

that are now beginning to melt due to 

climate change. 

Philippe Geslin is an ethnologist, anthropologist 

and photographer. “Each of my 

travels is a new beginning, an almost 

stubbornness. I am taking time, as a sensitive, 

curious and demanding vagabond 

to unfold the territories of beings and 

things, to reveal the backstage, to follow 

the meanders, to restore the sensible, the 

harmless. In these distant lands, it is in 

the imperceptible and the tenuous that we 

seize the universe.” Philippe uses photography 

as a mode of literary expression 

as he tries to give an accurate account of 

everyday life of small communities from the 

last hunter-gatherers of East Africa and the 

Maasai breeders in Tanzania to the last 

Inuit hunters in Greenland. 

“The Inuit here have so much to teach 

us—we who keep nature at a distance and 

pay the heavy price for it.” 

Iceberg in Nutaarmiut Bay, 

Upernavik District, northwest 

Greenland. 


Lars Jensen coming from a dog sled 

race, Kullorsuaq, Upernavik District, 

northwest Greenland. 

Photograph by Philippe Geslin 




Summer Sky. Upernavik City, 




Ole Eliassen coming back from a seal 

hunt, Kullorsuaq, Upernavik District, 



8 / ZEKE APRIL FALL 2018 2015

ZEKE APRIL FALL 2015/ 2018/ 9

Helicopter landing. Nusuaq, 

Upernavik District, northwest 

Greenland. 





Ole Eliassen looking at seal nets 

on pack ice. Kullorsuaq, Upernavik 

District, northwest Greenland. 




Lars Jensen preparing a bear skin 

for drying, Kullorsuaq, Upernavik 

District, northwest Greenland. 



INUIT 

THE 

On the ice-covered island 

of Greenland, in remote 

regions inhospitable to 

agriculture, Inuit communities 

of the past endured 

and thrived by relying on 

every part of the seal. The meat 

provided protein and nutrients; 

the skins, warm clothing and 

boots; the blubber, oil for lamps. 

Bones and sinew became tools 

and thread. 

By Tori Marlan 

Historically, subsistence 

hunters provided for their 

families while sharing the 

rewards of seal hunting with 

their communities. They participated 

in the global economy 


as early as the 18th century, 

bringing sealskins to colonial 

trading posts. 

Today, as always, “seals are 

very important for Inuit,” says 

Hans Rosing, an Inuit hunter. 

But since the mid-20th century, 

AND THE DECLINE OF 

SUBSISTENCE SEAL 

HUNTING IN GREENLAND 

Inuit communities across the 

Arctic have experienced rapid, 

dramatic changes to their 

way of life. Health and social 

problems have ensued, including 

increased rates of poverty, 

alcoholism, alcohol-related 

violence, and suicide. 

Though seal hunting is still 

widely practiced and remains 

central to Inuit identity and 

culture, it is no longer a means 

of survival—or, even, a viable 

profession. 

“Maybe there are still a few 

full-time seal hunters with wives 

who work in schools or hotels, 

where she makes the money,” 

says University of Versailles 

anthropologist Jean-Michel 

Huctin. But in Greenland, he 

says, most have moved on to 

fishing. 

Rosing is one of them. 

Though he sells seal meat to 

nursing homes and municipal 

institutions, he also relies on 

income from fishing, Greenland’s 

main industry. 

Across the Arctic, subsistence 

seal hunting has been 

declining for decades, facing 

the triple threat of modernization, 

politicization, and climate 

change. 

Modernization 

Life changed significantly for 

Greenlanders after Danish 

colonial rule ended and the 

island became part of Denmark 

in 1953. Policies promoting 

cultural assimilation forced the 

Inuit, the majority population, 

from their seasonal settlements 

(which were formed according 

to migratory paths of the 

animals they hunted) into 

permanent ones—and, as a 

consequence, into town-based 

jobs. Modernization continued 

at a faster pace after Denmark 

granted Greenland self-governance 

in 1979 and the island 

took control of its internal 

affairs. 


Though seal hunting is still 

widely practiced and remains 

central to Inuit identity and 

culture, it is no longer a 

means of survival—or, even, 

a viable profession. 

Today, about a quarter of 

Greenland’s 56,000 residents 

call the capital city, Nuuk, 

home. The rest live in coastal 

towns and small settlements, 

some with populations under 

100 people. Most settlements 

are shrinking, as people leave 

for educational institutions or to 

be near hospitals. Nuuk, whose 

population almost doubled 

from 1979 to 2014, now has 

gourmet restaurants, hotels, a 

university, museums, and an 

international airport. 

Knud Geisler Larsen, 

a teacher in the town of 

Upernavik, says that many 

residents “lived mainly by 

hunting and fishing when they 

lived in the villages” but now 

work wage-based jobs. 

“It’s hard to be a hunter 

today without having access 

to some kind of salary or 

income,” says Søren Thue 

Thuesen, associate professor 

of Eskimology and Arctic 

studies at the University of 

Copenhagen. 

That’s partly because hunting 

requires capital investment. 

Inuit hunters have incorporated 

modern technologies into their 

practice ever since they procured 

rifles at colonial trading 

posts. Today snowmobiles and 

boats with outboard motors are 

common in most regions, and 

hunters across the Arctic use 

satellite phones and GPS units 

to improve safety. 

This equipment is expensive, 

and many can only continue 

hunting by working day jobs. 

They hunt now on weekends or 

holidays or whenever they have 

spare time, says Thuesen, so 

they can “fill their freezers for 

the winters.” 

Younger generations, especially 

city dwellers, do that less 

often. Hunting territories near 

cities can get crowded. “Think 

also smart phones and the 

digital revolution,” says Huctin, 

pointing out that, like people 

everywhere, many are now 

drawn to activities that keep 

them indoors. 

For Larsen—who hasn’t 

hunted in 15 years and eats 

mostly store-bought items— 

traditional foods, such as seal, 

whale skin, or reindeer, are 

considered a treat. 

“We still crave for 

Greenlandic food when we 

have not had, for example, 

seal for a period,” he says. 

“Then it is always good to 

know someone who hunts.” 

Politicization 

Animal protection and conservation 

groups launched wildly 

effective anti-sealing campaigns 

in the 1970s and 80s. Global 

governments responded to the 

campaigns. The US banned 

seal products in 1972. Europe 

followed suit a few years later, 

banning products made from 

seal pups. Global demand for 

sealskin plummeted, and the 

commercial market—which 

enabled Inuit hunters to be 

economically self-sufficient in 

the modern era—collapsed. 

Although the activists had 

meant to target Canadian 

commercial sealers, Inuit communities—who 

hunt sustainably 

(and don’t hunt pups)—suffered 

grave cultural and economic 

injury. 

From 1983 to 1985, the 

average income of a seal 

hunter in Resolute Bay, an Inuit 

hamlet in the Canadian Arctic, 

dropped from $54,000 to 

$1,000. 

“Greenpeace apologized, 

but it was too late,” says Huctin. 

Other activist groups took 

up the mantle when new 

markets opened in the 2000s 

in countries such as Russia and 

China. The market’s revival 

was short-lived. Russia outlawed 

the baby harp seal hunt, 

and the EU extended its ban to 

all seal products, with an Inuit 

exemption. Reeling from historical 

damage, Canadian and 

Greenlandic Inuit sued the EU, 

to no avail. 

The EU ban—and vocal 

Inuit opposition to it— 

persists. Even if it were to be 

overturned, it is doubtful that 

subsistence hunting could ever 

make a comeback. 

Climate Change 

Arctic seals need thick ice. 

They find food near it, and they 

use it as a platform on which to 

rest, give birth, and nurse their 

young. 

Hunters also need the ice to 

be thick—to support the weight 

of their dogs or snowmobiles. 

Nowadays they regularly 

encounter ice that’s broken, too 

thin, or watery for hunting safely. 

Last year was the second 

warmest on record in 

the Arctic. According to a 

2017 report by the National 

Oceanic and Atmospheric 

Administration, the ocean temperature 

continues to rise, and 

sea ice gets thinner every year. 

Seasonal ice coverage is 

also an issue. Rosing says the 

sea used to freeze in October 

where he hunts. Now that happens 

in December or January. 

In some regions, the ice disappears 

by April, when it used to 

stay solid until June or July. 

As the habitat and behavior 

of marine animals change as 

a result of climate change, so 

does hunters’ access to them. 

Hunters must travel farther 

offshore by boat in summer, 

spending more money on gas 

and more time on the hunt. 

The Inuit are well-acquainted 

with climatic variations. Some 

speak of a time in the 1920s or 

30s when the sea didn’t freeze 

at all. But disruptions to their 

routines come rapidly now, and 

more often. This presents challenges, 

but also opportunities 

for a culture that’s survived by 

being adaptive. 

In southern parts of 

Greenland, where the climate 

supports agriculture, the growing 

season has lengthened. 

New crops, such as potatoes, 

are now grown locally. Some 

small-scale mining is taking 

place, and the prospect of a 

growing industry makes some 

hopeful that it will provide 

good jobs for younger generations. 


WHERE THE RIVER RUNS 



In 2007, Brazil’s President Lula da 

Silva announced the construction of 

over 60 major hydroelectric projects 

in the Amazon rainforest, with Belo 

Monte Dam at the forefront. The energy 

generated would fuel mining initiatives 

and power cities thousands of miles away. 

Nearing completion, Belo Monte will be 

the fourth largest dam in the world. It has 

displaced over 20,000 people. Indigenous 

groups such as the Xilkrin are strongly resisting 

the building of these dams. In January 

2018, the Brazilian government announced 

a major shift away from its policy of building 

mega-dams in the Brazilian Amazon, a result 

of the staggering environmental and social 

costs. 

Hydroelectric dams are touted as clean 

and renewable sources of energy, but large 

dams are often anything but, with hundreds 

of square miles of land flooded and complex 

river ecosystems permanently transformed. 

In the Amazon, they release huge amounts 

of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, 

while new infrastructure opens the forest to 

increased logging, mining, and agriculture. 

The result is the erosion of the Amazon rainforest 

and the sacrifice of communities that 

depend on the river and forest ecosystems 

for their way of life. The emergency plans 

created devastating impacts on the customs 

and way of life of these self-sustaining 

cultures. The Bacaja River, a tributary of the 

Xingu River that the people depend upon for 

fish and transportation, has severely dried 

since the completion of the Belo Monte Dam, 

impacting the water quality and affecting the 

health of the community. 

Aaron Vincent Elkaim is a documentary 

photographer currently based in Toronto, 

Canada. He studied cultural anthropology 

at the University of Manitoba and later 

pursued photojournalism. His clients include 

The New Yorker, The New York Times, TIME 

Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, HUCK, 

Macleans, The Canadian Press and The 

Globe and Mail. 

Since 2011, he has committed himself 

to exploring narratives where people still 

connected to the natural world are being 

impacted by industrial development. He cofounded 

the Boreal Collective, a team of 12 

internationally-based photojournalists. While 

highlighting important human and environmental 

issues, Aaron addresses the need to 

protect the natural world by revealing our 

profound connection to it. 

Munduruku women bathe and do 

laundry in a creek by the village of 

Sawre Muybu, on the Tapajós River 

in Para, Brazil. The Munduruku 

are a tribe of 13,000 people who 

live traditionally along the river 

and depend on fishing and the 

river ecosystem for their livelihood. 

They have been fighting against 

government plans to construct a 

number of hydroelectric dams on 

the Tapajos River in the Amazon 

rainforest that would flood much of 

their traditional lands. 


THROUGH 


A fire lit by a rancher burns on the side of highway BR-163, 

north of Novo Progresso, Para, Brazil. The BR-163 runs 

from the agricultural state of Mato Grosso to the transport 

hub of Santarem in Para, Brazil. From there, soy and corn 

are exported by boat through the Amazon River to international 

markets. The opening of the highway has created 

widespread deforestation in the Amazon, with about 95 

percent of all deforestation occurring within 50 kilometers of 

highways or roads. 



A Munduruku indigenous girl with her pet monkey in the village 

of Sawre Muybu, on the Tapajós River in Para, Brazil, 

in traditional paint preceding a ceremony the day after an 

action in coordination with Greenpeace in protest of plans 

to construct a series of hydroelectric dams on their river in 

Para, Brazil. The Munduruku are a tribe of 13,000 people 

who live traditionally along the river and depend on fishing 

and the river ecosystem for their livelihood. 



Juruna from the Paquicamba Indigenous Reserve at a public 

audience where riverine communities were able to voice their 

grievances to the Public Ministry and Norte Energia, the consortium 

in charge of building the Belo Monte Dam. The Juruna live 

on the stretch of the Xingu River in Para, Brazil known as the Big 

Bend, which has had 80% of its flow diverted by the dam impacting 

their fishing, river navigation and overall sustainability. They 

are now fighting to stop the proposed Belo Sun gold mine that 

would be 11km away from their village and would be the largest 

gold mine in the country. 



A child from the Xikrin village of “Pot crô” on the banks of the Rio Bacaja, in 

Para, Brazil. The rivers name means “the water that runs in river is the same 

as the blood that flows through our veins.” The Xikrin are a warrior tribe that 

strongly resisted the Belo Monte Dam. During an “emergency plan” enacted 

by Norte Energia between 2011-2013, the company gave each indigenous 

community 30,000 reais ($10,000 US dollars) per month. The emergency 

plan created devastating impacts to the customs and way of life of these 

self-sustaining cultures with many abandoning their crops and activities for 

processed foods and television. 



Ana De Fransesca and her son Thomas visit the Belo Monte Dam site, which will be 

completed in 2019 on the Xingu River in Para, Brazil. De Fransesca is an anthropologist 

who has been working for a local NGO, Instituto Socioambiental, while doing her 

PhD on the displaced riverine communities and fishermen impacted by the dam. 

Belo Monte is the world’s fourth largest hydropower project, yet is considered one 

of the least efficient in the history of Brazil, producing only 10% of its 11,233 MW 

capacity during the dry season between July and October. On average it will produce 

only 39% of capacity throughout the year. The project has displaced over 20,000 

people while impacting numerous indigenous and riverine communities in the region. 



December 11, 2016. Caboco Juruna from the Juruna village of Miratu in the Paquiçamba Indigenous Reserve 

on the Volta Grande do Xingu, fishes for Acarí fish on the Xingu River in Para, Brazil. This part of the Xingu River 

has had 80% of its water flow blocked by the newly completed Belo Monte Dam, severely damaging the fishing 

livelihoods of the people. The Juruna are now worried that the construction of the proposed upstream Belo Sun 

Gold Mine, which will be the largest open pit gold mine in Brazil, will further damage their river and way of life. 

While the environmental impacts of Belo Monte are still being analyzed, licensing processes for the mine haven’t 

taken into account any potential cumulative impacts on the river or the people who live upon it. 

Belo Sun had its environmental licensing suspended in February of 2017 due to lack of consultation with the 

Juruna. The company claimed they didn’t need to do an impact assessment with the Juruna because Brazilian law 

only requires it within a 10km zone. The village of Paquiçamba is 11km away from the proposed mine. 



An Extractavist family from the traditional riparian village of Mangabal on the 

Tapajós River. Extractavists came to the forests generations ago during Brazil’s 

rubber boom and continue to live a traditional way of life. Many survive on 

harvesting sustainable natural products such as rubber, nuts, and oils from 

the forest. While they historically fought with the neighboring Munduruku 

indigenous people, they have come together in the fight against the dams that 

would flood both of their territories. Forty-three dams have been planned for the 

Tapajos River Basin in hopes of turning it into a soy corridor for barges from 

Mato Grosso State to ports on the Amazon River. 



Members of the Munduruku indigenous tribe walk on a sandbar on the 

Tapajós River as they prepare for a protest against plans to construct 

a series of hydroelectric dams on their river in Para, Brazil. The tribe 

members used the rocks to write ‘Tapajós Livre’ (Free Tapajós) in a large 

message in the sand in an action in coordination with Greenpeace. After 

years of fighting, in 2016 the Munduruku were successful in lobbying the 

government to officially recognize their traditional territory with a demarcation. 

This recognition forced IBAMA, Brazil’s Environmental Agency, to 

suspend the environmental licensing process for the 12,000 MW Tapajós 

hydroelectric complex, due to the unconstitutional flooding of their now 

recognized land. 



The women of the Upper Omo River Valley in Ethiopia are traditionally known 

for their lip plates and intricate scarification patterns and often decorate themselves 

with white clay and flowers on their head. The Gibe III hydroelectric 

dam will affect these tribal communities that depend on the river for their 

survival. Photo by Louisa Seton. 

DAM- 

AGED 

LIVES 

THE EFFECTS OF 

HYDROPOWER 

ON INDIGENOUS 

POPULATIONS 

By Enrique Gili 

Dams are touted as a cheap 

source of power and a muchneeded 

form of renewable 

energy for developing nations. 

Often left out of this equation 

are indigenous groups, who have 

the least to gain and the most to lose, 

when a watershed is flooded due to 

dam construction. 

Once a symbol of human ingenuity, 

recent events show that dams built 

for the ages are often shortsighted 

in their execution. For example, a 

technological marvel like the massive 

Glen Canyon Dam in northern 

Arizona, built during the mid-20th 

century, now sits half empty due to 

prolonged droughts linked to global 

warming. 

In the United States alone, 

there are more than 87,000 dams 

recorded in the federal government’s 

inventory. Across the country, many 

of these dams no longer serve any 

useful purpose and thousands have 

been deemed unsafe by dam safety 

experts. No comprehensive database 

on the number of obsolete dams 

worldwide exists, but the number is 

likely to be much higher. 

At present there are an estimated 

800,000 dams of various 

sizes around the world. New dams 

continue to be built with relatively 

few being decommissioned due to 

obsolescence. 

Recent studies indicate there 

are additional reasons for concern. 

Dam projects have unintended 

consequences for wildlife and for the 

people living downstream. Among 

them, dams disconnect rivers from 

floodplains and turn rapids into 

still waters, resulting in a loss of 

biodiversity. According to the World 

Wildlife Fund, freshwater populations 

of fish and other species have 

declined by 80 percent since 1970 

worldwide, causing fish stocks to 

plummet in once vibrant locations like 

the Columbia River in Oregon and 

the Danube River flowing through 

central and eastern Europe. 

Why do stakeholders persist 

despite evidence of harm? Dams 

allow cities to thrive and are a 

boon to energy-starved regions of 

the world. In short, hydropower 

and irrigation bring the promise of 

progress to developing countries, 

while boosting the prestige of elites 

who can deliver large-scale projects. 

“Politicians like to have monuments 

named after them and a dam is a 

testament to their power,” says James 

Dalton, director of the water program 

with the International Union for 

Conservation of Nature. 

Indigenous 

Consequences 

Such a rationale has had serious 

consequences for indigenous people 

whose territories straddle dam sites. 

An estimated 40 to 80 million people 

have been directly displaced worldwide 

and an additional 470 million 

people have been impacted further 

downstream, according to a joint 

report titled Lost in Development’s 

Shadow:The Downstream Human 

Consequences of Dams, published 

by Brian D. Richter, Director of the 

Global Freshwater Program of The 

Nature Conservancy and other freshwater 

experts. 

Those affected include indigenous 

people, along with farmers, 

pastoralists, and fishermen who have 

had their livelihoods affected, if not 

destroyed by dams, jeopardizing 

their physical, cultural and spiritual 

wellbeing in the process. 

Dams also continue to be built 

without the free, prior and informed 

consent of affected indigenous 

groups. There have also been 


instances of violence directed 

against protesters of dam 

projects. 

For instance, the murder 

of the renowned indigenous 

leader of the Lenca people in 

Honduras, Berta Caceres, made 

global headlines. Caceres 

and two members of the Civic 

Council of Popular Indigenous 

Organizations (Copinh) were 

killed. Others reported assassination 

attempts in the weeks 

and months following her 

murder in 2016. 

On a global scale, 1,400 

dams are planned or are 

under construction, in locations 

once deemed too remote or 

impractical to be feasible. In 

Asia, Africa and Latin America, 

numerous proposed dam 

projects are on rivers that flow 

through indigenous territories 

and across national boundaries, 

raising potential waterbased 

conflicts between nations 

and among tribal groups competing 

for scarce resources. 

The Nile River, for example, 

is one of the more contentious 

areas of the globe. Ethiopia 

has built and plans to build several 

more dams on tributaries 

of the Nile in its uplands. This 

will divert water from countries 

downstream, including Egypt. 

Contributing to the tension 

is drought and a growing 

population more dependent on 

a water source that may be on 

the wane. 

According to published 

accounts, the Gilgel Gibe II and 

III Dams on the Omo River in 

Ethiopia have upended the lives 

of 200,000 farmers, fishermen 

and herders who depended on 

the natural flow of the river for 

their livelihoods. The people 

of lower Omo River now face 

food shortages and governmentsponsored 

modernization 

schemes that encroach upon 

their ancestral lands. 

According to observers, 

Ethiopia’s headlong rush into 

the Renaissance Dam will have 

serious implications for Egypt. 

Water shortages will continue 

to plague the region in the 

decades to come and the dam 

will exacerbate shortages in 

Egypt by an additional 25 

percent, the Geological Society 

of America estimates. 

In the Middle East, issues 

surrounding water, oil and 

politics are equally volatile. 

Mona Salavi believes an 

ecological disaster is unfolding 

inside Iran. As a member of 

the Ahwazi Arab minority in 

Iran and project officer for the 

Underrepresented Nations and 

People Organization, an NGO 

based in Brussels, she speaks 

from past experience. 

In a part of the world fractured 

along religious and ethnic 

lines, the ability to control the 

flow of freshwater takes on a 

political dimension. “Water and 

politics are linked,” she says. 

The Gibe III Dam is the highest dam in Central Africa. At 240 meters high, it will produce 

1879 MW of energy. Studies says that once completed, the cost of the dam will be 15% of 

the annual GDP of Ethiopia, becoming the biggest investment project ever made in all of the 

African continent. Photo by Fausto Podavini. 

The Karo tribe is the smallest ethnic group in the Omo River Valley. They are considered skillful 

herdsmen, farmers and masters of body painting. The Gibe III Dam threatens to damage traditional 

types of farming, known as “flood-retreat agriculture.” Photo by Vlad Karavaev. 

Salavi fled Iran due, in part, 

to the battle over water in the 

Al-Ahwaz province of southwest 

Iran. One of the few historically 

verdant places inside the 

country, the region is in the 

process of being turned into 

a wasteland because of dam 

construction, she contends. 

The province now has more 

than 14 dams which diverted 

free-flowing rivers away from 

the arable region, subjecting the 

Ahwazi minority to the imminent 

risk of water shortages. 

At the same time, the Iranian 

government has promoted the 

production of sugar, a waterintensive 

cash crop, displacing 

200,000 to 250,000 Arabs in 

the Ahwazi region. 

Despite their differences, the 

roughly 370 million indigenous 

people scattered around the 

globe share many of the same 

problems. In many instances, 

they have few allies at the 

national and international 

levels and are up against 

powerful forces working 

against them. 

“Environmental activists 

often support indigenous 

causes, working alongside 

them in claiming rights and 

environmental justice. As such, 

both environmental activists 

and indigenous organizers 

frequently fall victim to state-led 

repression of demonstrations 

and peaceful protests, as well 

as of corporate interests,“ 

Mona Salavi says. 

Touted as guardians of 

forests and protectors of rivers, 

indigenous leaders are 

often placed in the crosshairs. 

The watchdog group Global 

Witness warns that violence 

against activists is likely to 

continue because land grabs 

and the infrastructure needed 

to operate dams place indigenous 

groups at odds with the 

demands of the 21st century. 

A 2017 report published 

by Global Witness concluded 

indigenous leaders, along with 

environmental activists and 

wildlife rangers, are being 

killed at almost a rate of four 

per week worldwide. In 2016, 

the tally came to 200 victims— 

more than double the rate from 

five years ago. 

FOR MORE INFORMATION 

International Union for 

Conservation of Nature 

www.iucn.org 

Water Alternatives 

www.water-alternatives.org 

World Wildlife Fund 

www.wwf.org 

International Rivers 

www.internationalrivers.org 

Global Witness 

www.globalwitness.org 


AWARD WINNERS 

HONORABLE MENTIONS 

FROM SDN’S CALL FOR ENTRIES ON 

DOCUMENTARY IN THE ERA 

OF POST-TRUTH 

Taha Ahmad 

A Displaced Hope 

The Ferozshah fortress built 

in the Indian capital Delhi in 

the 18th century remains a 

ruin nestled between a cricket 

stadium and the city’s ring 

road. It is within these ruins that 

we find genie worship. Genies 

are supernatural creatures 

created out of fire, according 

to the Islamic texts. Thousands 

of people gather here every 

Thursday: praying, writing letters, 

giving money and lighting 

lamps to impress the genies for 

a better life. This has become 

a money-making mechanism 

for the self-proclaimed Godmen 

in the fort to exploit the misfortunes 

of the people who do not 

have the tools of education to 

question these practices and 

political agendas. 

Taha Ahmad is a documentary 

photographer based in Delhi, 

India. He developed an interest in 

documentary photography while 

pursuing his bachelor’s degree. 

He feels photography has a strong 

influence in creating and developing 

discourse for the future. His 

photographs are framed in a way 

that preserves their reality, which 

he feels is undergoing an everlasting 

change. 


DOCUMENTARY IN 

THE ERA OF POST- 

TRUTH JURORS 

Scott Brennan 

Indigenous Autonomy 

in Mexico 

This photographic project 

focuses on two indigenous 

populations that are working 

to enact social and 

environmental justice in the 

face of some of the world’s 

most dangerous elements of 

organized crime and corruption. 

The communities 

are Santa Maria de Ostula 

and Cherán K’eri, both in 

the notoriously violent state 

of Michoacán in southern 

Mexico. These two municipalities 

have begun social 

movements of ethnically 

and culturally indigenous 

peoples establishing semiautonomous, 

grassroots 

governments in response to 

rampant violence, corruption, 

environmental degradation 

and the failure of the 

social contract. 

Scott Brennan is originally 

from New York and has been 

living in Mexico since 2010. 

His main interest in photography 

is documenting the struggles 

of indigenous groups in 

Latin America and their ongoing 

fights to defend their territories 

and cultures. He graduated 

with a master’s degree 

in 2005 from The London 

College of Communication in 

photojournalism and documentary. 

This project is fiscally 

sponsored by The Blue Earth 

Alliance and this year won 

first place for Pictures of the 

Year International’s Community 

Awareness Award. 

Barbara Ayotte 

Alice Gabriner 

Kurt Mutchler 

Quentin Nardi 

Niama Sandy 


AWARD WINNERS (Continued) 

Javier Fergo 

Europes’ South Frontier 

Crossing the Mediterranean 

Sea from Morocco to Spain is 

the fastest-growing sea route 

into Europe, according to 

the United Nations, and the 

number of migrants taking this 

route has tripled in the past 

few months. The dramatic 

situation in Libya, with higher 

casualties than the case of 

Spain, might be shadowing 

this growing issue. Spain 

holds an infamous second 

position on death toll in their 

waters, surpassing Greece. 

Spanish authorities are struggling 

to cope with the amount 

of people arriving. Spanish 

coastguards rescue people 

on a daily basis, mainly in 

the area between the Strait of 

Gibraltar and in the Alboran 

Sea. 

Born in Jerez, Cádiz, Spain in 

1980, Javier Fergo has been 

keen on the arts, film and photography 

since childhood. In 2005 

he completed a Higher National 

Diploma in Photography at City 

of Bristol College, UK. Soon 

after, he moved back to Jerez, 

Spain, to start contributing to 

local and national newspapers 

including El País, El Mundo, 

ABC, and Público and internationally 

through the Associated 

Press, The Wall Street Journal, 

and The Washington Post. 



Interview 

WITH REZA DEGHATI 

by Caterina Clerici 

Reza Deghati (Reza) is a French- 

Iranian photographer. Over almost 

40 years, he has worked as a foreign 

and war correspondent for Newsweek, 

TIME Magazine, LIFE, Paris Match 

and Stern, among many others. He 

teaches photography to children in 

refugee camps and disadvantaged 

neighborhoods and communities 

in dozens of countries through the 

numerous NGOs he has founded. 

Caterina Clerici: Why did you want 

to become a photographer and how did 

you get started? 

Reza: Since a very young age, I’ve 

always been disturbed to see homeless 

people, barefoot kids and poor families 

in my hometown of Tabriz, in Iran. I 

was always asking “Why do people 

not react, why don’t they help?” At 

age nine, I witnessed a mob of kids 

that were pushing out from the school 

a barefoot kid that was the same age 

as I was. He was crying and saying 

“Please, I just want to see what a school 

looks like.” I tried to interfere but both 

of us were beaten by the kids and 

pushed out. It shocked me a lot. Later, I 

was trying to explain to the director of 

the school and the teachers what had 

happened, and nobody cared. So I 

thought maybe I wasn’t able to explain 

it with my language and I should show 

them a painting or a drawing of it. 

For two years I tried to learn how to 

paint and draw just to show the social 

injustices that I was seeing around me. 

At age 13, my father, who had one 

of the first big box Kodak cameras, let 

me try it. When I looked through the 

Mario Epanya 

viewfinder, I asked him “Everything you 

see here will be in the picture?” and 

he said “Of course!” and this was the 

reason I got a camera and started taking 

pictures. I was teaching myself, there 

was nobody around to explain to me 

how it worked, so it took a lot of years 

to learn. When I started at 14, I always 

looked for two things: beauty, but also 

social injustice. My thought was: “If I 

show it to people, maybe they’ll be able 

to change it.” 

CC: What was the focus of your 

photography in the early years? 

Reza: I liked beauty and family, but also 

looking around in the streets for things I 

thought people would react to if they saw 

them. When I was 16, I thought I could 

have a role in the high school paper. 

This was during the Shah’s regime in Iran 

and I had no idea what “secret police” 

meant. I made my first magazine, which 

was called Butterfly, and two days later I 

was arrested and all the magazine issues 

confiscated. My mum was beating me 

very badly and telling me “You shouldn’t 

touch newspapers and magazines anymore.” 

I was 16, that was 50 years ago, 

and from that moment I’ve done exactly 

the opposite. 

I photographed again social injustice 

and poverty in Tehran — the homeless, 

the drug addicts — and learned 

how to print the photographs. At night 

I would go out and put the black and 

white pictures with the little captions on 

the walls of the university, to show how 

people were living in poverty. That was 

from when I was 19 to 22, when I was 

also a student in architecture and fine 

arts. I was arrested again and spent 

three years, from 22 to 25, in prison, 

where I was tortured for five months 

for photographing and showing this 

[reality.] Then I came out of the prison 

just one year before the revolution and 

decided to quit architecture and become 

a photographer. 

CC: What would you describe as your 

mission as a photographer? 

Reza: I really didn’t come to photography 

trying to make an art of it. For me, 

photography is a tool to connect with 

people and create empathy. It’s a universal 

language, everybody understands 

it. I don’t know much about the technical 

aspects of it, the software, I only 

My mission is to make people 

take responsibility for what 

they see. 

—Reza 

focus on how photography can bring 

change to communities and how we can 

use photography as a tool for social 

change. My mission is to make people 

take responsibility for what they see. 

CC: As a photographer documenting 

Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, 

have you noticed any changes in the 

mainstream media narrative about this 

region, since you started working there? 

Reza: I have been working as a 

professional since 1979, which makes 

it almost 40 years now. The big change 

came around 15 years ago, when we 

started moving towards digital: the 

communication became immediate 

and a lot of people got access to these 

tools. Before that, in most cases, we 

were the only witnesses of the whole 

story. We felt we had a much bigger 

mission and people were trusting us 

more. The digital era has changed it 

completely: the number of people who 

take pictures, write or broadcast has 

multiplied by millions. Also, local people 

have access to media coverage of their 

own destiny and see that what is shown 

and told in the big media is not always 

the reality, because the media is run 

by governments and corporations with 

their own agendas. We have very few 

independent newspapers and magazines 

Photo by Reza. Afghanistan. Panjshir Valley. 1985. Portrait of 

Commander Massoud (1953-2001) during the Soviet invasion of 

Afghanistan (1979-1989). 


Photo by Reza. Afghanistan. Nuristan Province. 1985. Afghan children imitate the photographer by holding their hands in 

circles in front of their eyes. 

today and even they show a mainstream 

point of view, so we (photographers and 

journalists) have now become the target 

of the people who are unhappy with the 

reporting, because they immediately see 

what’s happening. 

From my very first trip to Afghanistan 

during the Russian invasion in 1983 

and onwards, I realized that the 

mainstream media was not able to tell 

the whole story. We come for a few 

days or a few weeks even, and we have 

our newsroom waiting for us in Paris, 

New York or London, and we have to 

come up with something to feed the 

beast. That’s how I thought, “What 

if I teach people how to tell their own 

stories?” That’s how I started doing the 

very first refugee training in 1983 in 

a camp in Pakistan with seven Afghan 

refugees. I bought the cameras myself 

in the Peshawar market, I bought the 

film, I workshopped with them, I left 

the cameras with them and told them 

to keep photographing and if they saw 

another photographer coming, to give 

them the photographs they had taken. 

From that moment, I’ve devoted half of 

my time and my income volunteering to 

help people tell their own stories. Only 

taking pictures is not enough. 

Recently, I was in the Panjshir valley 

in Afghanistan, where they were 

commemorating the assassination of 

Massoud, the head of the resistance 

against the Russians, Al-Qaeda and 

the Taliban until he was killed two days 

before 9/11. The day after he was 

assassinated by two Al-Qaeda operators 

who posed as TV cameramen pretending 

to interview him, his people printed 

a few thousand photographs of the 

portrait of Massoud I had taken and 

sent it to the frontline for each soldier. 

Everybody said those portraits helped 

them resist until the coalition forces 

came and the bombardment started and 

the Taliban was defeated. There are a 

lot of stories like this, about how a single 

photograph can have an impact on 

history. 

CC: How have you tried to get your 

audience more involved in topics that 

drive your photography, particularly 

refugees, migration and displacement? 

Do you believe in a “refugee fatigue,” 

just as there is war or poverty fatigue, 

and what can be done to still get people 

to empathize and sympathize with 

refugees? 

Reza: This is a challenge I have faced, 

like all media, with all kinds of crises: 

fatigue is not only created by the 

story covered by the media, but by 

the corporations or governments that 

don’t want the story talked about. My 

first action is deep respect for both the 

people I photograph and those who 

are going to see my work. I always feel 

like I’m trying to bring them together. If 

you’re arrogant, people will see you’re 

there for your reputation and don’t 

care about them. Honesty is transmitted 

through your photographs. 

Photography is an art and it’s not 

because I’m a photojournalist that I’m 

not an artist: whatever I’m covering, 

even if it’s a war, I always try to have 

a perfect composition and to make 

it beautiful. What I believe is most 

important is to help people get over 

their fatigue to make it personal. We 

have all seen so many pictures of boats 

carrying people — similar colors, similar 

clothes, similar faces, some drowning, 

some getting help — and it’s normal 

that after a while we are not shocked 

anymore. Make it personal, tell the story 

one by one, create empathy between 

the people who look at the pictures and 

those who are photographed. The way I 

do it is through portraits: they’re all very 

simple, on the spot and spontaneous. 

“The eyes are the windows of the soul,” 

and I’m trying to get those souls out. 

Another way to get people interested 

again is training refugee children to 

photograph the daily life in the camps. 

In the past five years I started trainings 

with Syrian and Yazidi children. They 

became the camp reporters and I’m 

publishing their photos around the world 

and this has a very different effect on 

people. Professionals already have 

a preconceived idea of what kind of 

picture will show the refugees, while the 

children just show their daily life. 

CC: How would you define being an 

“involved photographer” and do you 

think there are any ethical issues in 

being both a journalist and an activist? 

Reza: I really don’t think that journalism 

and activism are different. By all means 

any journalist who is looking for the truth 

is an activist, especially at a time where 

major corporations and governments 

are trying to cover it up. For me, 

there is no interference between my 

photography and my NGO work. One 

example is creating an independent 

media and cultural centre in Kabul, 

which I opened just a few days after the 

fall of the Taliban in September 2001. 

In 17 years, we have trained over 

1,500 Afghans to become journalists, 

photographers, filmmakers, a lot of them 

women, and helped them create their 

own media, such as Afghan Women’s 

Voices. We can bring more change not 

only through our photographs but giving 

voice to people who don’t have it. 


Photograph by Jan Zychlinski 

From Ukraine’s War Childen 

Children in a former Soviet-era 

Children’s Camp now occupied 

by a Baptist Church and refugees. 

Saoporoshje (East Ukraine). 2016 


LIFE AND WAR IN 

UKRAINE 

Photographs by 

Michele Cirillo 

Aude Osnowycz 




Photograph by Jan Zychlinski 

From Ukraine’s War Childen 

Two girls dancing in the hall of an 

old Soviet “Children Camp” in Kiev. 

No music, no audience, just in their 

own reality. 2015 



Affected by an ongoing war, the loss 

of the Crimea to Russian aggression, 

and endemic corruption, Ukraine, 

a geopolitically important country 

straddling Europe and Russia, 

remains hopelessly divided. Despite 

the Euromaidan protests four years ago that 

overturned a pro-Russia government and the 

more recent Minsk Protocol aiming to reduce 

hostilities, the country remains in a stalemate. 

The war in the Donbass in eastern Ukraine 

between pro-Russian militias and government 

and paramilitary forces has resulted in more 

than 9,300 deaths. 

Michele Cirillo, in his exhibit “Forgotten 

War” shows the realities of this war-torn 

quagmire--the destruction of homes and 

soldiers with lost limbs. But like in all conflict 

zones, life manages to move on. Aude 

Osnowycz’s portraits from her exhibit 

“In the Shadow of an Empire” show us a 

Ukraine with its rich culture of ballerinas, 

rock stars, activists, and youth militias. Jan 

Zychlinski’s “Ukraine’s War Children” 

delves deeper into the question of refugees 

and internally displaced persons from Crimea 

and Donbass, where the war rages on with 

pro-Russian separatists. People are living in 

container settlements, rented flats, old sanatoriums, 

kindergartens, dormitories or some in 

huts in the middle of nowhere. Amongst them, 

there are lots of children—a generation at 

war with so many different expectations and 

perspectives. 

Photograph by Michele Cirillo 

From Forgotten War 

A house damaged by artillery shelling in 

Slavyansk (Donetsk region, Ukraine). The 

Minsk Protocol was not enough to stop the 

war at the borders of Donbass and Luhansk, 

marking, since the begin of the conflict, more 

than 9,300 deaths, countless casualties, a 

spread of violence, unpunished rapes and 

attacks on journalists. 



Photograph by Michele Cirillo 

From Forgotten War 

Kiev Military Hospital. Dmytro Kotov, 

41, was injured by a mine in 2014. 



Photograph by Aude Osnowycz 

From In the Shadow of the Empire 

Two young soldiers from a Russian elite 

military unit during Paratroopers Day, 

Donetsk (self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s 

Republic). August 2017. 


Photograph by Aude 

Osnowycz 

From In the Shadow of the 

Empire 

Young girl practicing her shooting 

skills during a Cossack patriotic 

youth camp, Cherkassy, Ukraine. 

August 2017. 




Photographs by Aude Osnowycz 

From In the Shadow of the Empire 

Left: Member of activist band FEMEN, 

strongly opposed to the Putin regime, 

posing in a park. Kiev, Ukraine, August 

2017. 

Below: Young Ukrainian soldier, 

Ukrainian front line, Ukraine. 



Photographs by Aude Osnowycz 

From In the Shadow of the 

Empire 

Left: Ballet student during rehearsals 

at Donetsk Opéra. Despites hostilities, 

The Donetsk Opera has been working 

since the beginning of the conflict and 

still continues to please the eyes of 

the citizens, Donetsk (self-proclaimed 

Donetsk People’s Republic). August 

2017. 

Below: Guitarist of a punk band during 

a clandestine concert in a winery in 

downtown Donetsk. In Ukraine, on both 

sides of the frontline, young people 

often aspire to return to a semblance 

of normal life and continue their fight 

against the old Soviet-era shackles, 

Donetsk (self-proclaimed Donetsk 

People’s Republic). August 2017. 


UKRAINE 

AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE 

By Glenn Ruga 

With contributions 

by Joseph Lim and 

Anne Sahler 

Above: A kitchen in an overcrowded 

refugee flat in Kiev. 2014. Photo by Jan 

Zychlinski from Ukraine’s War Children. 

The Ukrainian crisis is 

a story about Russian 

aggression, a divided 

nation, domestic corruption, 

and common people 

caught in the middle. The 

crisis has produced not only 

a conflict between the deeply 

divided east and west, but also 

a deep sense of disillusionment 

among Ukrainian youth. 

The recent Ukraine crisis 

began in November 

2013 when President Victor 

Yanukovych pulled out of 

the Ukraine-European Union 

Association Agreement that 

would have strengthened 

cooperation between Ukraine 

and the 28 EU member states. 

However, according to the 

Lithuanian president’s office 

hosting an EU summit to finalize 

the pact, Yanukovych was 

pressured to pull out of the 

agreement by the Kremlin. 

On December 17, 2013, 

Yanukovych instead signed 

an Action Plan with Russia 

in which Russia agreed to 

buy $15 billion in Ukrainian 

Eurobonds and supply natural 

gas at a lower price. This 

immediately set off protests by 

youth who looked to the west 

(the EU) as their future. 

An investment of capital 

from either the EU or 

Russia was vitally important 

to Ukraine that year as 

industrial production fell by 

4.9%. Moreover, natural 

gas prices were hiked by the 

Russian natural gas provider, 

Gazprom, after it discovered 

that officials in Ukraine were 

stealing gas and failing to pay 

off debts. Public opinion was 

starkly split between the EU 

(39%) and the Russia-headed 

Eurasian Customs Union 

(37%). However, EU-friendly 

western Ukraine citizens, 

centered around the capital 

of Kiev, were outraged after 

Yanukovych didn’t deliver 

on his promise to join the EU 

agreement. 

The 2014 Ukrainian 

Revolution (also called the 

Euromaidan Revolution) was 

organized by the Maidan 

People’s Union, the ultra-nationalist 

Right Sector, and other citizens 

who mobilized on social 

media in favor of Ukraine 

signing the agreement with the 

EU. The protestors called for 

Yanukovych to resign and end 

the oppression against activists 

and opposition leaders. 

Protests Turn Violent 

Although protests in 2014 

began peacefully, they quickly 

became riots after demonstrations 

were suppressed 

violently by police units. 

When the Ukraine government 

passed anti-protest laws 

in 2014, masked protesters 

held regional administration 

buildings hostage and clashed 

with law enforcement. Unable 

to silence the revolution, 

Yanukovych finally signed the 

Agreement on Settlement of 

Political Crisis in Ukraine in 

Young cadet in parade costume at Kiev military academy. December 2016. 

Photo by Aude Osnowycz from In the Shadow of the Empire. 


i 

a 

Gdansk 

Poznan 

Brno 

Liepaja 

Bratislava 

HUNGARY 

Gyor 

Debrecen 

Budapest 

Pecs 

Klaipeda 

Bydgoszcz 

Sea 

Titograd 

Szeged 

Lodz 

Wroclaw Breslau 

Kaliningrad 

Olsztyn 

ec Kralove 

Krakow 

Ostrava 

Tirane 

P OLAND 

S LOVAKIA 

LITHUANIA 

Sovietsk 

Vilnius 

Warsaw 

Arad 

Riga 

agreb 

Timisoara 

CROATIA 

Novi Sad 

ka 

Belgrade 

BOSNIA 

t 

Sarajevo 

Mikhaylovgrad 

Ionian Sea 

YUGOSLAVIA 

ALBANIA 

erranean Sea 

Cluj 

Lvov 

LATVIA 

Lida 

Lutsk 

Bucharest 

Botosani 

ROMANIA 

Daugavpils 

Braila 

Pleven 

BULGARIA 

Sofia 

Minsk 

BELARUS 

MOLDOVA 

Chisinau 

Vitebsk 

Vinnitsanitsa 

Varna 

Constanta 

Mogilev 

Odessa 

February 2014. 

Burgas 

Skopje 

However, he 

Stara Zagora 

fled Titov the Veles country for Russia that 

MACEDONIA 

Istanbul 

same month, 

Xanthi 

halting all plans 

Thessaloniki 

to salvage the EU Association Bursa 

Ioannina 

Agreement 

Aegean 

and 

Sea 

GREECE Larisa cancelling 

Lesbos 

all 

Agrinion 

provisions promised from 

Izmir 

Russia Patrai through the Ukrainian- 

Peloponnesus Athens 

Russian Action Plan. 

Soon after Yanukovych’s 

Rhodes 

resignation, Khania pro-Russian 

Iraklion 

Crete 

protests began in eastern and 

southern parts of Ukraine. 

Historically, territories of 

eastern Ukraine were administered 

by Russia and became 

a republic under the Soviet 

Union. In 1991, following the 

demise of the Soviet Union 

and a failed coup attempt 

by Soviet hardliners, the 

government signed the Act of 

Declaration of Independence 

of Ukraine, establishing an 

independent state. Although 

many Ukrainians wished to 

maintain sovereignty, regions 

in eastern Ukraine such as 

Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk 

were linguistically and culturally 

affiliated with Russia and 

felt that Ukraine and Russia 

should unite into a single state. 

The Kremlin’s active involvement 

in Ukraine ultimately 

divided the country. During the 

2014 Revolution, the Kremlin 

provided Yanukovych with military 

support to suppress protesters. 

In March, Russian soldiers 

without insignias invaded 

the Crimean parliament 

building, held a referendum 

on independence with Russian 

Kiev 

Antalya 

Smolensk 

Voronezh 

UKRAINE 

Zaporozhye 

Crimea 

Kaluga 

Orel 

Kharkov 

Black Sea 

Rostov 

Moscow 

RUSSIA 

Donbass 

RUSSIA 

Voronezh 

V 

Krasnodar 

Sochi 

sympathizers, and annexed 

Crimea. Similar referendums 

Zonguldak 

were held by pro-Russian and 

anti-government Ankara groups in 

Donetsk TURKEY and Luhansk, which 

L. Tuz 

mobilized combatants alongside 

paramilitaries groups 

coming across Adanathe border from 

Russia. What ensued was the 

Aleppo 

Nicosia war in Donbass, in which the 

Cyprus 

SYRIA 

Kremlin allegedly provided 

tanks and “humanitarian convoys” 

to separatist members 

to prolong the conflict and 

0 

expand its territorial influence. 

Although, cease fires were 

0 

500 KM 

negotiated through the Minsk I 

Parallel scale at 50˚N 0˚E 

and II Agreements, fighting still 

continues to this day. 

20˚E 25˚E 30˚E 35˚E 40˚E 

EU Responds to 

Russian Aggression 

The EU responded to Russia’s 

aggression by imposing various 

restrictive measures against 

Russia. On top of cancelling 

high-level diplomatic meetings 

and limiting access to EU 

capital markets, the European 

Council also imposed asset 

freezes on 155 people and 44 

entities because their actions 

undermined Ukraine’s territorial 

integrity, sovereignty and 

independence. 

The outcomes of the revolution, 

the ongoing war, and 

international disputes have 

been disproportionately harmful 

to ordinary citizens. Since 

2014 when the war began 

Poti 

Gorkiy 

the UN estimates that 23,500 

people have been injured and 

10,000 people killed. Even 

after cease fire provisions from 

the Minsk Agreement, mortar 

50˚N 

shells fly between government 

territory and the self-declared 

People’s Republic of Donetsk. 

In war zones, people live without 

central heating. Collapsed 

infrastructure such as bridges, 

roads, 45˚N and public buildings 

aren’t repaired because of 

fear of more shelling. Worse, 

professionals such as lawyers, 

judges, and doctors, have 

Tbilisi 

left war-torn regions, leaving 

the inhabitants in precarious 

conditions. 

40˚N 

Moreover, widespread 

corruption is still pervasive 

throughout Ukraine. According 

to investigative reporters with 

Mosel 

the Al Jazeera TV, Yanukovych 

along with his corrupt oligarch 

cronies, appropriated $1.5 

billion through off-shore businesses 

registered in Scotland. 

A logbook confiscated by 

500 Miles 

the Ukrainian Anti-Corruption 

Bureau suggests that 

Yanukovych disbursed $1.4 

million worth of bribes on a 

daily basis. Even following the 

revolution, corruption is still 

endemic as seen from nepotism 

in the judicial system and 

irregular payments in the tax 

Volgograd 

Ordzhonikidze 

L. Van 

Yerevan 

55˚N 

administration. In the medical 

industry, for example, patients 

pay bribes to doctors to get 

intensive care and medical 

equipment. There is even a 

Ukraine corruption park that 

displays the sheer pervasiveness 

of corruption. 

In midst of such circumstances, 

Ukrainian youth hold 

a critical role. Twenty-six-yearold 

Yulia Marushevska, an 

activist who appeared on the 

viral video ‘I am a Ukrainian’ 

during the 2014 Revolution, 

was appointed as Chief of 

Odessa Customs with the goal 

to make customs more transparent. 

However, according to a 

nationwide poll produced by 

the New Europe Center, 65% 

of respondents aged between 

14-29, are “not interested at 

all” in Ukrainian politics. The 

unpopularity of civil activism 

(only 6% of respondents) is 

concerning. The New York 

Times suggests that Svyatoslav 

Vakarchuk, a famous rock 

singer whose songs became 

protest anthems during both the 

2004 and 2014 revolutions, 

will be a strong candidate for 

president. Whether he will 

choose to participate or not, 

Ukraine needs role models like 

him to lead its next generation 

and rebuild its country. 

In Severodonetsk (Luhansk region of Ukraine) it is not uncommon to find Soviet-era 

missiles and artillery used during the recent war in the Donbass. Photo by Michele 

Cirillo from Forgotten War. 


IMAGE IN THE ERA OF 

POST-TRUTHBy Fred 

What is the role of the journalistic or 

documentary photograph for maintaining 

the public record and enabling constructive 

social change in this era labeled 

“post-truth”? 

Ritchin 

An exhibition at the UN in March 2015 of 

nearly two dozen of the 55,000 photographs 

of tortured and killed Syrian prisoners taken by 

“Caesar,” the code name of a former Syrian 

military police photographer. Syrian President 

Assad commented to Yahoo News on the 

photos, “You can forge anything these days. 

We are living in a fake news era.” Photo by 

Lucas Jackson. 


In the first 466 days of his presidency, Donald 

Trump made 3,001 false or misleading 

claims. “Seventy-two times, the president 

has falsely claimed he passed the biggest tax 

cut in history — when in fact it ranks in eighth 

place,” the Washington Post reported on 

May 1, 2018. “Fifty-three times, the president 

has made some variation of the claim that 

the Russia probe is a made-up controversy. (If you 

include other claims about the Russia probe that are 

not accurate, the count goes to 90.) Forty-one times, 

the president has offered a variation of the false 

claim that Democrats do not really care about the 

Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals 

program that Trump terminated.” 

As well as his disdain for the truth, Trump’s 

frequent attacks on the press as providers of “fake 

news” further undermine the functioning of democracy, 

dependent upon a credible press to report on 

issues and events so that citizens can decide how 

to vote and their political representatives on how to 

govern. Elsewhere, authoritarian leaders increasingly 

borrow from Trump’s attacking strategy, 

describing as “fake news” that which can be construed 

as criticisms of their policies. For example, 

a January 25 piece in the Guardian asserts that 

“In February, an Amnesty International report said 

the Syrian government had killed at least 13,000 

people in a military prison between 2011 and 

2015. Assad disputed the report. ‘You can forge 

anything these days,’ Assad told Yahoo News. 

‘We are living in a fake news era.’” 

THE AGE OF THE IMAGE 

Simultaneously, we are living 

in the Age of the Image with 

billions of photographs and 

videos uploaded daily, trillions 

available online, yet we are 

not sure what they mean, how 

they help, or whether they can 

be believed. Is that “selfie” a 

self-portrait, an exploration of 

identity, or a form of branding 

formulated to increase someone’s 

status online? Is that a 

photograph of an actual event, 

or a fabricated image made to 

The cover from a 1982 issue of 

National Geographic in which imagemanipulation 

software was employed for 

the first time in mainstream media—in this 

case to relocate one of the pyramids of 

Giza behind another so as to fit it on the 

magazine’s cover. 

simulate a photograph of an event that never happened? 

And we are left asking, in this era of social 

media, of strident opinions and media bubbles, of 

frequent and often unfounded allegations of “fake 

news,” what is the role of the journalistic or documentary 

photograph for maintaining the public 

record and enabling constructive social change in 

this era labeled “post-truth”? 

A 1990 book of mine, In Our Own Image: The 

Coming Revolution in Photography, argued that 

the imaging software being created then would 

allow us to re-create the world, and ourselves, “in 

our own image,” using the myth that “the camera 

never lies” to camouflage purposeful deceits. My 

thinking was provoked, in part, by the 1982 cover 

image of the mainstream publication, National 

Geographic, in which image-manipulation 

software was employed to relocate one of the 

pyramids of Giza behind another to make a 

vertical image from a horizontal photograph so 

as to fit it on the magazine’s cover. Two years 

later the modification was explained to me by 

the magazine’s editor as, in his opinion, merely 

the retroactive repositioning of the photographer 

a few feet to one side so as to get another 

point of view. Surprisingly, in 1982 National 

Geographic seemed to have already embraced 

a kind of photographic time travel. In the digital 

environment the “decisive moment,” photographer 

Henri Cartier-Bresson’s famous formulation of “the 

simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, 

of the significance of an event as well as of a 

precise organization of forms which give that event 

its proper expression,” could now happen any time 

after the initial moment itself. 

Less sanguine and concerned about the enduring 

integrity of the journalistic photograph, National 

Geographic’s director of photography said that the 

introduction of such a technique was “like limited 

nuclear warfare. There ain’t none.” In any case, the 

reader had not been informed of the modification, 

and a series of highly publicized alterations of 

cover images in other publications (Time, TV Guide, 

Newsday, etc.) that would follow contributed to 

public skepticism concerning the photograph’s 

witnessing function. Given this erosion of trust, the 

photojournalistic community did little in response 

to bolster public confidence in the photograph, 

refusing to take these challenges seriously. 

But the issue was not only one of digital modifications. 

While photographs have always been 

interpretive, constructions dependent upon the 

knowledge and intuition of the photographer who 

makes the picture, the widespread use in journalistic 

publications of photographs of staged events as if 


If we are now no longer of the 

opinion that “a photograph in 

and of itself is going to make 

any difference,” then why make 

photographs? 

they were spontaneous, and of imagery that 

emphasized the spectacular without providing 

context, were similarly deleterious to 

photography’s role as a social referent. 

So, for example, after the 2011 killing 

by US forces of Osama bin Laden, mastermind 

of the September 11 attacks a decade 

before, a historic retaliation that was supposed 

to be a partial resolution to a nation’s 

enduring pain, President Barack Obama 

said: “It is important to make sure that very 

graphic photos of somebody who was 

shot in the head are not floating around as 

an incitement to additional violence—as 

a propaganda tool.” House Intelligence 

Chairman Mike Rogers concurred with 

the president’s contention but added: 

“Conspiracy theorists around the world will 

just claim the photos are doctored anyway.” 

And Obama agreed: “Certainly there’s no 

doubt among Al-Qaeda members that he 

is dead. . . . And so we don’t think that a 

photograph in and of itself is going to make 

any difference. There are going to be some 

folks who deny it. The fact of the matter is, 

you will not see Bin Laden walking on this 

earth again.” 

WHAT ARE PHOTOGRAPHS 

GOOD FOR? 

If we are now no longer of the opinion 

that “a photograph in and of itself is 

going to make any difference,” then why 

make photographs? And if too contested, 

too inflammatory, too malleable, too 

questionable, too much implicated in an 

image war to be useful to the public as 

evidence of a very major event, what are 

photographs good for? Such skepticism 

also helps to explain why in recent years, 

with the exception of two images of very 

small children, the 2015 photograph 

by Nilüfer Demir of the drowned threeyear-old 

Syrian refugee, Alan Kurdi, and 

the 2018 photograph by John Moore of 

two-year-old Honduran migrant Yanela 

Sanchez hysterically crying at the US 

border, there have been few photographs 

that have attained the iconic status 

necessary to focus the world on critical 

issues (some photos may go momentarily 

“viral,” but soon fade from public 

consciousness, in part due to a lack of a 

“front page” to sustain them). In this media 

environment innovative strategies that are 

less dependent upon the previous century’s 

belief system in the inherent power of the 

photograph need to be formulated as well. 

Furthermore, this era of photographs 

made malleable via Photoshop and other 

software may very soon seem like a 

moment of comparative innocence. In the 

very near future it will become increasingly 

easy to synthesize from scratch not 

only photographs but also video and 

audio, so that the results will be nearly 

indistinguishable from the actual thing. 

Work is being done in laboratories in 

many countries, much of it with artificial 

intelligence, to provide inexpensive tools to 

create realistic photographic-like portraits 

of non-existent people, to produce videos 

realistically portraying non-existent events, 

and to synthesize speeches that sound 

like they come from the mouths of world 

leaders (one such recently synthesized 

speech online, simulating the voice of 

President John F. Kennedy, was the one he 

was to give the day he was assassinated 

in Dallas). 

IF ANYTHING CAN BE REAL, 

NOTHING CAN BE REAL 

A recent discussion concerns the ethically 

challenging advent of “deepfakes” of 

female celebrities, their faces composited 

onto those of others performing in sexually 

explicit videos. Soon this software is 

expected to be made more efficient and 

easier to use, available for widespread 

use. And the potential to use this kind of 

software to place prominent people in a 

variety of situations, such as having a world 

leader seem to declare war or confess 

to corruption, will create a multitude of 

challenges. Whether such software has 

actually been utilized or not, its existence 

will call into question much of what we 

view online, hear on the radio, watch 

on television, or read in our newspapers 

and magazines. As one deepfakes user 

commented, “If anything can be real, 

nothing is real.” Or, as technologist Aviv 

Ovadya, who has recently gathered 

a consortium of colleagues in the tech 

industry to try to combat fake news and 

camouflaged bots, asked, “What happens 

when anyone can make it appear as if 

anything has happened, regardless of 

whether or not it did?” 

This challenges the functioning not only 

of journalism, but of democratic institutions. 

As Zeynep Tufekci stated in a recent issue of 

Wired magazine, “The most effective forms 

Photograph from the Guantanamo Bay detention camp by Edmund Clark from “Guantanamo: If the Lights Go Out.” Example of 

a photograph emphasizing a conceptual approach to using documentary images. 


of censorship today involve meddling with 

trust and attention, not muzzling speech 

itself.” In this vein, software that allows 

the public to easily synthesize realisticlooking 

people and events requires a strong 

response from institutions that take authenticity 

seriously. But after recently reporting 

on the use of artificial intelligence to create 

fake videos, New York Times writer Kevin 

Roose remarked: “And there’s probably 

nothing we can do except try to bat the 

fakes down as they happen, pressure social 

media companies to fight misinformation 

aggressively, and trust our eyes a little less 

every day.” 

But if we cannot trust our eyes in this 

age of image, what then will be able 

to rely upon? On an institutional level, 

considerably more has to be done by 

publications and photographers themselves 

to verify media and assure the readers of 

its integrity. Should there be a labeling 

system that is strictly enforced among 

reputable publications and photographers 

to categorize photographs, such as 

“reportage,” “photo illustration,” “photo 

opportunity,” “altered photograph,” and 

so on, similar to one that I proposed in the 

1990s with a group of colleagues? The 

“four corners project” that I have been 

working on would allow photographers 

to use each of the photograph’s corners 

to add supplementary information online, 

including their own code of ethics, the 

backstory, image context and links to other 

websites. And there are many other ideas 

that need to be urgently investigated. 

One of the productive responses to 

this evolving media climate by a number 

of photographers is to rely less upon the 

assumption of the photograph’s inherent 

veracity and more upon a slower accumulation 

of evidence via a number of media, 

photography included, that ultimately 

provides insights into an underlying 

process rather than concentrating primarily 

on its symptoms. It is not a new approach, 

but one that is now much more broadly 

practiced. Philip Jones Griffiths’ 1971 

book, Vietnam Inc., can be considered a 

pioneer in this effort, showing the decisionmaking 

process among military leaders, 

juxtaposing the relatively unseen pilots 

with their victims, explaining how young 

girls are introduced into the sex trade, and 

undermining his own dramatic, at times 

heroic black-and-white imagery captions 

From Mathieu Asselin’s “Monsanto: A Photographic Investigation,” a book that resulted from a documentary process conducted 

for five years throughout Vietnam and the United States which portrays a comprehensive portrait of the ancient and current 

practices of the Monsanto Corporation and their environmental practices. 

that he wrote pointing out the absurdity 

of what he depicts: “US combat troops 

arrive, outnumbering the enemy 3 to 1 and 

possessing the most sophisticated military 

hardware; the job seemed easy. Earlier, 

spirits were high among the troops, intoxicated 

as much by the spectacle of their 

own strength as by the cold beer delivered 

to them daily.” 

There are many photographers today 

exploring massive social ills with more of a 

conceptual documentary approach — from 

chemical poisoning by Monsanto (Mathieu 

Asselin) to torture at Guantanamo (Edmund 

Clark, Debi Cornwall) to the blue skies 

over 1,078 World War II concentration 

camps (Anton Kusters), drones as weaponized 

surveillance (Tomas van Houtryve), 

and the satellites monitoring us (Trevor 

Paglen). Utilizing techniques of the artist, 

journalist and documentarian, much of this 

work is published in books and shown in 

exhibitions as well as appearing in various 

publications. 

And there are some interesting metrics as 

well: Gideon Mendel’s photographic work 

on a pilot program to provide HIV-positive 

South Africans with anti-retroviral medicine 

is credited by UNAIDS with encouraging 

contributions that allowed eight million 

people to get life-saving treatment, and 

Magnum’s Access to Life project that 

highlighted the work of eight photographers 

raised $1 billion for a similar goal. 

More recently, a screening at a 2015 

fundraising conference in Kuwait of a virtual 

reality film on the life of a 12-year-old 

Syrian refugee, “Clouds Over Sidra,” is 

reported to have raised $3.8 billion for 

relief efforts; the use of virtual reality 

is becoming more widespread among 

humanitarian organizations attempting to 

get potential donors and others to empathize 

with the plight of those in difficult 

circumstances. 

Paradoxically, and hopefully, there are 

more media strategies than ever before at 

our disposal while the media’s credibility 

is under widespread attack. Ways must be 

found to help restore the requisite referents 

necessary for society to function, and to 

provide a greater understanding of crucial 

processes that currently remain largely 

opaque. At this point a reactive stance, 

simply covering events in traditional 

ways while contemplating the growing 

morass, is insufficient. It is apparent that 

newer strategies, including hybrid ones 

that will take advantage of the enormous 

and largely untapped visual resources of 

social media, must be devised to engage a 

wary, divided, confused, and increasingly 

exhausted public. 

The media revolution is only beginning. 

Fred Ritchin began writing on photography 

and digital imaging in 1984 for 

the New York Times Magazine. Since 

then he has authored three books on the 

subject: In Our Own Image: The Coming 

Revolution in Photography (1990), After 

Photography (2008), and Bending the 

Frame: Photojournalism, Documentary, and 

the Citizen (2013), the latter exploring 

media strategies for social change. He is 

Dean Emeritus of the International Center of 

Photography. 


BOOK 

REVIEWS 

ON ABORTION 

By Laia Abril 

Dewi Lewis 2018 

196 pp./ £ 35.00 

Laia Abril is a deft excavator, a 

cultural anthropologist disguised as a 

multimedia artist, utilizing the light of 

photography to illuminate historical human 

encounters often left in the dark. The 

first chapter of On Abortion, “A History 

of Misogyny,” delves into abortion with 

the focus on the repercussions of lack of 

access. On Abortion, Abril’s third book, is 

a palimpsest, making visible the layered 

marks wrought over millennia on the 

individual bodies of women, and on the 

body collective of the female gender, born 

with a biological imperative to reproduce 

our species. 

A compilation of portraits, documentary 

photographs, film stills, advertisements, 

legal documents and testimonies honor 

the horrific truth and undeniable impact of 

the incessant war on women’s bodies. The 

book’s pages are unnumbered reflecting 

the timelessness and vast expansiveness of 

both the number of years and the number 

of lives scarred, or killed, due to unwanted 

conception. Abril documents modes of 

contraception: from three-month-old sheep 

intestines utilized to form a condom tied to 

a penis with string, to the ancient acidic 

interventions including crocodile dung 

inserted into the vagina, to the still-present 

use of piercingly sharp metal cervical stem 

pessaries inserted into uteruses — our 

archaic and life-threatening manner of 

preventing the impact of mating persists. 

Abril utilizes images with select and 

concise text thoughtfully and skillfully 

entwining the historical and the unfathomable 

with a consistent lens of fact. One 

hundred and thirty eight countries restrict a 

woman’s right to a safe and legal abortion. 

Annually, 21.6 million women experience 

unsafe abortions resulting in 47,000 

women dying. Prohibition does not stop 

the practice of terminating a pregnancy, it 

does force women to endanger their lives. 

The United States has seen conviction of 

foeticide as recently as 2015, and 37 

states require parental involvement (if not 

consent) for women under 21 years of age 

to obtain a legal abortion. 

A photo of the pre-abortion letter sent 

to her boyfriend by a 28-year-old Brazilian 

school teacher is paired with a photo 

of the clinic where she died having the 

procedure. A glossy-paged double spread 

ultrasound screengrab is of a fetus within 

a nine-year-old Nicaraguan mother. The 

male fetus is her father’s child, the result of 

his repeated incest begun when she was 

seven years old. Eight other countries do 

not consider rape to be a legitimate reason 

to abort. Five nations prohibit abortion 

under any circumstance. 

Within this macabre reality, Abril, 

leaves no layer untouched or hidden. She 

introduces us to activists, we read transcripts 

of threatening calls made by antiabortion 

terrorists to abortion clinicians, 

and we see the portraits of practitioners 

who have been jailed or murdered for providing 

legal health services. We learn of 

the US advocacy group All Girls Allowed. 

And we are grateful that for a decade, 

the Dutch advocacy group, Women on 

Waves, provides global site-specific 

resources and online education, answering 

over 10,000 emails a month in 17 

languages. Abril’s brave visual narrative is 

a necessary exhumation. 

—J. Sybylla Smith 

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

MISS WISH 

By Nina Berman 

Kehrer Verlag 2018 

268 pp./$55 

Nina Berman’s An Autobiography 

of Miss Wish is an extraordinary 

documentary book that brings 

forth the hard truths of sex trafficking, violence 

against women, drug addiction and 

incarceration. This is a collaborative work 

with Kimberly Stevens, formerly Cathy, 

“Miss Wish,” whose story is told here. 

Nina firmly believes that in order to go 

deep into a project like this one, covering 

addiction and these difficult issues, 

it is essential to have it be collaborative. 

Otherwise the potential for missteps, 

exploitation and miscommunication around 

expectations can be harmful and explosive. 

The fact that Kim has been writing all 

of her life and making art around her story 

makes this a unique collaboration between 

subject and photographer. 

In 1990, Nina went to London where 

she met Kim (then Cathy) who, along with 

other street kids and castaways, was hustling 

to get by. Nina photographed for two 

weeks learning bits and pieces of Cathy’s 

story. Upon leaving she gave Cathy her 

phone number and address and promised 

to keep in touch. Cathy sent Nina her diary 

and over time Nina amassed an archive 

of Cathy’s psychiatric reports, identification 

cards, drawings, letters and writings. 

Six months after they met, Cathy won a TV 

music contest and with the prize money 

visited Nina in New York City. This is where 

their long-term relationship began. 

Cathy came back to New York City in 

1993 fearing for her life if she returned 


to London. From that time on Nina hardly 

photographed but Cathy became a friend 

and part of Nina’s family. In 2007, Cathy 

was in ill health due to HIV and drug use 

and was incarcerated in Rikers Island 

prison. It was after this that Nina starting 

photographing again with no purpose 

other than to record Cathy’s life. 

All the while Cathy was writing her 

own book and asked Nina if she could 

get it published. Nina wasn’t sure but 

began to consider how they could craft 

this together. In 2014, during a two-week 

residency at Blue Mountain Center for artists 

working on stories of sexual violence 

and human trafficking (that she was also 

doing), she went through her archive and 

worked out some ideas for this book. 

Nina often asked Cathy if she was sure 

she wanted to do this, and asked her to 

write down her reasons for wanting this 

published. Part of the letter she wrote is 

in the book explaining her reasons. For 

Nina, this was more important than any 

legal consent form. 

As documentary makers we need to 

talk to the people we are working with 

and openly lay out what it is we are trying 

to do. With our involvement, sometimes 

the protagonist might think they can find 

some notoriety, get on TV, get rich or get a 

new life. As Nina made clear, Cathy had 

none of these wishes. She knew the book 

wouldn’t make her life perfect. 

Nina was clear that Cathy/Kim could 

have her say over what she did and 

didn’t want to reveal. And Nina was very 

protective and insisted that certain names 

and references be blacked out, that some 

of Kim’s secrets should be kept private. 

She did not want to risk Kim’s safety. The 

only thing Kim was adamant about was a 

photo of her by the Cathedral of St John 

on 110th Street in Manhattan. She hated 

it and wanted it out. As Nina pointed out, 

It must have reminded her of something 

really bad. 

This situation is unique on many levels. 

If Nina gets paid, Kim gets half. Kim never 

expected or asked for this but she is an 

artist and Nina believes she should have 

something for her part in this. 

Kim’s drawings and writing, their text 

messages and letters, and Nina’s photographs, 

bring depth and poignancy to the 

harrowing inhumane details of this story. 

On pages 212-213 there is a drawing by 

Kim of a life she dreams of - a bedroom of 

her own with a dog, above that is a photograph 

by Nina of an amulet of an angel 

with Kim’s hand, blurred, gesturing. This 

kind of subtle photography is what brings 

humanity to Kim and her story. 

There are many difficult scenes 

depicted in Kim’s drawings and many 

moving photographs by Nina as well. But 

she did not want to photograph the obvious— 

Kim smoking crack, exchanging sex 

for drugs, etc. As Nina points out, 

“Kim is pictured in some ways very 

straight forward. She’s looking fragile, in 

crisis, sick. She’s messed up, lying in the 

street. How can you see the depth of that 

person and lead the viewer into the story 

with these images?” 

What Kim is searching for is to be seen 

as a human being. What Nina wants the 

viewer to come away with is that this is a 

person who has been looking for love and 

support all her life, who was looking for 

adults to protect her. What does it mean to 

be lonely and to seek out love? One of the 

takeaways she is hopeful for is that people 

will now look at a person on the street and 

not judge but empathize. 

At the end of the book Kim writes, “My 

eyes are streetwise and if you look closely, 

you will see the pain in my eyes. My eyes 

are the way into my memories of fear and 

everything I’ve seen, and somewhere in 

there is the real me.” 

—Lori Grinker 

MEXICO: Between Life and 

Death 

by Harvey Stein 

Kehrer Verlag, 2018 

176 pp./$45 

It is a pleasure to view Harvey Stein’s 

new photography book, Mexico: 

Between Life and Death. This striking 

publication offers Stein’s street photographer 

aesthetic combined within a 

documentary framework. He has selected 

one hundred and fifty-seven pictures from 

fourteen trips between 1993 and 2010. 

In New York, Stein has had a forty-plus 

year career as a photographer of life on 

the street. He is also well known for his 

teaching, most recently at the International 

Center of Photography. Originally influenced 

by the 1967 New Documents show 

at the Museum of Modern Art, he and 

other dedicated educators have helped 

mythologize the American street as an 

open studio for making photographic art. 

In Mexico: Between Life and Death, Stein 

has exemplified the legendary lure of the 

street by directing his camera at Mexico’s 

most dramatic festivals. 

Stein is a sophisticated picture maker. 

By photographing in black and white, 

he neutralizes the friction of contrasting 

colors. Documenting the world in shades 

of gray pushes his pictures toward a traditional 

street shooter aesthetic. In addition, 

he often under-exposes the white-hot sun to 

emphasize gorgeous skin tones and telling 

details outlined in shadow. He is adept 

at sorting his crowded frames into dark 

and light fragments. In his pictures, facial 

expressions pop out of the darkness and 

dramatic body language can hide in the 

shadows. Stein’s skilled vision expresses 

the mystery of Mexico. 

These duotone images become a visual 

text on how to transform what is in front 

of the lens into a successful picture. A possible 

distraction in the foreground can be 

the subject, the frame, or lead the eye into 

a composition. He keeps his camera close 

to the action; it seems to parade along 

with the Mexican people he is picturing. 

Stein brings his inclusive New York 

vision to portray Mexico in all its kinetic 

magnificence. 

—Frank Ward 


N.O.K: NEXT OF KIN 

By Inbal Abergil 

Essays by Carol Becker, Maurice Emerson 

Decaul, Fred Ritchin and Stephen Mayes 

Daylight Books 

Two Volumes, 111 pp. each/$45.00 

The first indication that this is not a 

typical photography book is the 

format. N.O.K.: Next of Kin, by 

Inbal Abergil, is printed as two separate 

volumes held together with elastic cord. 

Part I contains only photographic plates. 

Part II, only text. 

The text is a series of faithfully transcribed 

personal stories—of mothers, 

fathers, wives, sisters, brothers, and other 

family members of men and women who 

were killed in action, from Iwo Jima to 

Iraq. Abergil interviewed 18 Gold Star 

families across the US for this project. 

Their unscripted, candid reflections touch 

on the moment they learned their loved 

one had died, their struggles with loss, 

and their powerful memories. 

This choice of format—the stories 

collected in their own volume rather than 

appearing in a single volume with the photographs—gives 

them the intended weight. 

The photographs complement these 

personal stories—they don’t overpower 

them. Printed at a small scale (some only 

four inches wide), the photographs suggest 

faithful documentation, intentionally devoid 

of any interpretation by the artist. 

The photographs are of the things the 

soldiers left behind, carefully preserved, 

cherished by their families. 

Some of the possessions photographed 

are markers of a career spent in the military—newspaper 

articles, uniforms, boots, 

medals. But these objects alone don’t 

tell the story of a life. As one woman 

interviewed by Abergil—the sister of a 

fallen soldier—notes: “My dad says […] 

when he looks up at his medals, he starts 

thinking ‘What did you become to me? 

Pure medals?[,,,] I told you to not try to be 

a hero because the heroes end up in the 

cemetery.” 

There are more images of mundane, 

day-to-day possessions, markers of a full 

life: a handmade ornament on a Christmas 

tree, a cigar, a harmonica, an album of 

baseball cards, a box of old toy cars. 

Most of the photographs are extremely 

close-up—the numbers on a football jersey, 

a pearl necklace, and a watch completely 

fill the frame. This treatment gives a sense 

of the preciousness of the object, how it 

is being held in memory, all that it now 

represents. 

There are a handful of wide-format 

images—a corner of a bedroom with a 

backpack on the floor and a snowboard 

in the corner, a living room that has been 

converted into an altar to a lost son, a view 

of a bedroom with a photograph on the 

bedside table. These wider views explore 

loss in a different way, and perhaps in a 

way that is more accessible to the viewer. 

In a room where a soldier’s possessions 

are still laid out as he or she might have left 

them, death seems even more incongruous. 

A room in which a family has carefully laid 

out cherished objects makes clear the loss 

they live with every day. 

But all the photographs convey one 

coherent message: that the possessions 

of a loved one—the things they touched, 

wore, played with, wrote, loved—take 

on profound meaning in their absence. 

Abergil’s photographs, in partnership with 

the honest and moving personal testimonies, 

tell a story of loss, the struggle to 

make sense of it, and the attempt to find 

one’s way in its wake. 

—Jenna Mulhall Brereton 

46750 

by João Pina 

FotoEvidence, 2018 

146 pp./$60 

46,750 is the number of homicides 

in Rio de Janeiro between 2007 

when Rio won the FIFA World Cup 

bid and 2016 when it hosted the World 

Cup games. The extraordinary personal 

photographs in João Pina’s book, 46750, 

belie the title. These photographs are not 

statistics, rather they are real people living, 

working, and dying in real favelas as this 

city and nation struggle with poverty, drugs, 

gangs, and preparing for a signature international 

event—World Cup soccer. 

To put this in perspective, Rio does 

not list on the top 50 homicide rates of 

cities in the world. The homicide rate in 

Brazil is far below that of El Salvador, 

Honduras, Jamaica, South Africa, and the 

US Virgin Islands. But at an average of 

4,600 homicides per year, this is still more 

than ten times the number of homicides in 

New York City—a city with a much larger 

population. 

No matter. 46,750 is a sobering 

statistic. Approximately 25% are the result 

of police action and the remainder from 

gang and other criminal action. 46,750 

people with loved ones. 46,750 people 

who through circumstances not of their 

own making, live in a city that pits law 

enforcement against residents living in 

poverty and find themselves involved 

with, forced into, or seeking out gangs for 

protection, identity, and financial support. 

Police officers who seek out decent paying 

jobs often end up being the target of gangs 

in a city they are trying to keep safe. 


This is the background for the gritty, 

bold, beautifully composed, and humancentered 

black and white photographs 

that make up this masterly designed and 

produced book by Pina. His photographs 

walk us through a city alive with soccer, 

samba, funk, prisons, gangs, police raids, 

corpses, and lovers, all watched over 

by the statue of Christ the Redeemer on 

a 2,300 foot peak overlooking the city. 

The product of Pina’s work though only 

begins with the photos. The book itself is 

a brilliantly designed stage. Interspersing 

the pages of photos are black uncoated 

paper leaves with numbers from 1 through 

46,750 printed in white opaque ink. The 

only color in the book is the deep red 

cover and a handful of narrow pages 

interspersed throughout the book and 

printed with the same red ink on one side 

and overprinted with poignant poems by 

Vivian Salles. The most gruesome photos 

are embedded in foldouts forcing the 

reader to open up a gatefold to reveal 

the horror—details of one of the 46,750 

homicides. 

The art of making a black and white 

documentary photo is painstaking, and 

Pina makes it look obvious and easy. On 

page 8-9 is one of the signature images 

in the book. According to the caption, 

“Policemen from the DRAE (Civilian Police 

Division Against Weapons and Explosives) 

carry the body of a young man, while two 

children coming back from school look at 

the scene….” But this is not only a news 

photo. The composition, the gestures, 

the facial expressions, the tonality, the 

cropping, make this a classic work of 

composition worthy of any Renaissance 

painting. 

Today when photographers and publishers 

are seeking ways to expand on the 

experience and meaning of a traditional 

two-dimensional photograph, they can 

look to how Pina has done this brilliantly 

with 46750. 

—Glenn Ruga 

UNDOCUMENTED: 

Immigration and the 

Militarization of the U.S.- 

Mexico Border 

by John Moore 

powerHouse Books/Getty Images, 2018 

176 pp./$50 

Everyone has seen the iconic picture. 

The image of a young Honduran 

girl crying at the border in Texas as 

she and her mother were searched by US 

border agents. Featured on the cover of 

Time Magazine, it has become a symbol 

of Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration 

policies and represents the thousands of 

children who were separated from their 

parents this summer. As I write this review, 

nearly 500 migrant children remain in 

detention separated from their families. But 

there is much more than this one image 

to John Moore’s work. Undocumented is 

an extraordinary volume of photographs 

taken over ten years of documenting the 

immigration crisis along the entire length 

of the border. It is unflinching, honest 

and leaves no stone unturned. And every 

American should read it. 

The book is structured as a six-part 

story beginning with the origins of flight 

from impoverished and violent Central 

American neighborhoods; moving on to 

the decision to embark on the perilous 

journey north through harsh conditions; 

the militarized border and the agents who 

monitor it; life in detention with its stark, 

chain-link enclosures and cement floors; 

and finally, the deportation back. In this 

unending journey of misery, Moore is an 

optimist, ending with the hopeful pageantry 

of the naturalization ceremonies for 

the newest Americans. 

While Moore’s images don’t hold back 

from showing brutal violence, he manages 

to find beauty in the sunset over Zone 18, 

one of the most dangerous neighborhoods 

in Guatemala City, or in his gorgeous night 

shots—illuminated by the ambient light of 

flashlights, klieg lights, or the moon. 

Two-page color spreads are shot 

from the point of view of the migrants, 

documenting what they see as they push 

through thick forests or perilously ride atop 

moving freight trains to reach the border. 

Other spreads show the perspective of US 

agents enforcing laws, high atop the border 

in their surveillance helicopters and drones. 

The center of the book features full bleed 

color spreads without captions showing 

the rugged beauty of this cruel and 

thankless terrain—aerial views of the Rio 

Grande, the border fence snaking through 

scrublands and canyons, and the Imperial 

Sand Dunes-—hiding the stark choices 

that lurk below. From the perspective of 

the US border control, Moore shows the 

exasperation on the migrants’ faces as 

agents close in on them at night. 

Moore doesn’t take sides in this book. 

He includes trifolds of portraits “to put a 

human face on a complex story,” silhouetted 

against black backgrounds of 

immigrants from Central America, gang 

members whose faces are covered by 

handkerchiefs, border patrol agents, 

inmates, Dreamers, protesters, and finally, 

new Americans. He shows how undocumented 

immigrants live ordinary lives in 

tidy houses, share meals, and work the 

farm fields in back-breaking jobs. Their 

kids, like all kids, play on trampolines. 

Moore “dealt all the players the 

measure of respect they deserve” in this 

continuing tragic narrative. The book is 

largely apolitical except for the jarring 

photo of the lush green golf course on 

the border, showing the stark economic 

disparities while giving a nod to President 

Trump’s favorite pastime. 

John Moore reminds us that we must 

look beyond the headlines and the 

statistics. We all have a migration story 

somewhere in our family history. In many 

ways, their story is ours. 

—Barbara Ayotte 


Contributors 

Photographers 

Taha Ahmad is a documentary 

photographer based in Delhi, India. He 

believes photography has a strong influence 

in creating and developing discourse for the 

future. Currently, he is covering issues related 

to his community, people and his memories. 

He is the recipient of The Documentary 

Project Fund/Award 2018, among others. 

Scott Brennan is a photographer living in 

Mexico since 2010. His principal interests 

are in documenting the rise of social movements 

and the processes of territory defense 

in rural and indigenous regions of Latin 

America. His work has appeared in the New 

York Times, Time Magazine, BBC and has 

been used by Amnesty International. 

Michele Cirillo is a photographer based 

in Rome, Italy who is interested in using 

photography to tell stories focusing on human 

rights issues, identity and health from around 

the world and how the geopolitical changes 

of recent years relate to minorities, conflicts 

and marginality. 

Aaron Vincent Elkaim is a documentary 

photographer currently based in Toronto, 

Canada. He focuses on narratives where 

traditional culture and environmental degradation 

collide. Since 2011, he has committed 

himself to exploring colonialist narratives 

where people still connected to the natural 

world are being impacted by industrial development. 

Aaron addresses the need to protect 

the natural world by revealing our profound 

connection to it. Aaron is the winner of 

SDN’s Call for Entries on Documentary in the 

Era of Post-Truth. 

Javier Fergo is a freelance photographer/ 

photojournalist and multimedia storyteller 

based in Spain. He contributes to national 

newspapers such as El País, El Mundo, ABC, 

Público and internationally to The Wall Street 

Journal, The Washington Post and others. 

Philippe Geslin is an ethnologist who 

studied at the Sorbonne and at the Ecole des 

Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. 

He has contributed to the development of 

anthropotechnology through numerous fields 

of research and intervention in Africa, Asia, 

Latin America and Greenland. 

Aude Osnowycz graduated with a 

master’s degree in geopolitics and began her 

photojournalism career in 2011 when she 

spent four years documenting the impacts of 

the Arab Spring in the Maghreb and Middle 

East countries for various French and international 

magazines. She is currently working 

on a long-term project about Russian borders, 

using an artistic and personal approach, 

questioning the Slavic soul and her family 

history. 

Writers 

Barbara Ayotte has served as a senior 

strategic communications strategist, writer 

and activist for leading global health, human 

rights and media nonprofit organizations, 

including the Nobel Peace Prize- winning 

Physicians for Human Rights and 

International Campaign to Ban Landmines. 

Barbara is SDN’s Communications Director 

and is Editor of ZEKE magazine. 

Caterina Clerici is an Italian journalist and 

photojournalist for American and Italian 

online publications, mainly covering news, 

social and political issues at a national and 

international level and diaspora communities 

in the US. 

Enrique Gili is a freelance writer covering 

environmental issues in Southern California 

and beyond. His focus is the intersection 

between nature, science and technology with 

a twist of food politics. 

Lori Grinker is an award-winning 

photographer, artist, educator and filmmaker. 

Her projects revolve around the themes 

of history, culture and identity. She is the 

author of Afterwar: Veterans from a World in 

Conflict, and The Invisible Thread: A Portrait 

of Jewish American Women. Her third book, 

Mike Tyson, will be published by Powerhouse 

Books. She is an adjunct professor of 

photography at New York University’s Arthur 

L Carter Graduate Journalism program, on 

the faculty of the ICP, and teaches workshops 

around the world. 

Joseph Lim is a Film and Media Major 

student at Tufts University. He currently works 

for the Tufts Daily as an editorialist and a 

former investigative journalist covering the 

off-campus housing crisis. He is a blogger 

and poet, passionate in writing profile stories 

of the people he meets. 

Tori Marlan is an award-winning independent 

journalist whose stories expose abuses 

of power, illuminate subcultures, and profile 

fascinating but unheralded people. Her work 

has been published by many outlets, including 

Pacific Standard, The Atavist Magazine, 

BuzzFeed News, the Texas Observer, The 

Marshall Project, and The Walrus Magazine, 

among others. She was previously a staff 

writer for the Chicago Reader. 

Jenna Mulhall-Brereton is both a 

photographer and a professional in the 

philanthropy sector—two passions that are 

fueled by her travels throughout the world. 

Fred Ritchin began writing on photography 

and digital imaging in 1984 for the 

New York Times Magazine. Since then 

he has authored three books on the 

subject: In Our Own Image: The Coming 

Revolution in Photography (1990), After 

Photography (2008), and Bending the 

Frame: Photojournalism, Documentary, and 

the Citizen (2013), the latter exploring 

media strategies for social change. He is 

Dean Emeritus of the International Center of 

Photography. 

Glenn Ruga is the Executive Editor of 

ZEKE magazine and founder and director 

of the Social Documentary Network (SDN). 

From 2010-2013, he was the Executive 

Director of the Photographic Resource Center. 

From 1995-2007 he was the Director, and 

then President, of the Center for Balkan 

Development. Ruga is also the owner and 

creative director of Visual Communications, a 

graphic design firm located in Concord, MA. 

J. Sybylla Smith is an independent 

curator with more than 25 solo or group 

exhibitions featuring over 80 international 

photographers exhibited in the US, Mexico, 

and South America. An adjunct professor, 

guest lecturer, and thesis advisor, Sybylla has 

worked with the School of Visual Arts, the 

School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Wellesley 

College, and Harvard University. 

Frank Ward is a professor of visual art at 

Holyoke Community College, Holyoke, MA. 

In 2012, he gave workshops in Central Asia 

as a Cultural Envoy for the US Department 

of State. In 2011, he was awarded an Artist 

Fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural 

Council for his photography in the former 

Soviet Union. He has received numerous 

awards for his work in the former Soviet 

Union, former Yugoslavia, Tibet, India, and 

Puerto Rico. He is represented by Photo Eye 

Gallery in Santa Fe, NM. 


WHAT’S HOT! 

TRENDING 

PHOTOGRAPHERS 

ON SDN 

Of the hundreds of exhibits submitted to SDN 

each year, these four stand out as exemplary 

and deserving of further attention. 

Carol Allen Storey: Out of the Shadows: Abandoned Teen 

Mothers, Rwanda. A tragic epidemic of teen pregnancies is 

permeating the population in Rwanda. Over 17,000 were 

pregnant in 2016. Vulnerable girls as young as 13 find themselves 

in this unwarranted circumstance. Many as a result of rape and 

others through ignorance of engaging in sexual activities without 

protection. They are left with the awesome responsibility of 

becoming a mother when they are still children. 

Ann Sophie Lindström: Don't Fence Me In. Horses give 

young people confidence, self-esteem, and hope, especially 

in a neighborhood like North Philadelphia where the pull of 

the streets is so strong horses have become a blessing. Here 

a minority of African American low-income people created 

a safe harbor through keeping horses in this high-crime 

neighborhood. 

Amilton Neves: Godmothers of War, Mozambique tells the 

story of Mozambican women who were sponsored by the 

Portuguese government to provide moral support to the soldiers 

fighting on the frontlines during the war for independence. 

Many of these women were rewarded with influential positions 

in society and some were given houses by the Portuguese 

government. In 1974, when the war ended these women were 

ostracized for their role in supporting the colonial forces. 

Marco Sadori: The Hidden Face of Life in Nepal. The project 

is an investigation of Nepal's identity today and its social 

condition. Beyond the widespread stereotype of Nepal as an 

exotic place of calm, peace and happiness, there is a very 

complex reality, where the identity is not well defined. A place 

where poverty, marginalization, and homelessness are all part 

of the human landscape. 


SDN is ten! Your support matters as we enter 

our second decade of telling truth. 

For ten years, SDN has been reaching 

out to documentary photographers 

from all parts of the globe to tell 

stories and show images that you do 

not see elsewhere—images of real 

people experiencing the real joys 

and struggles of daily life. Stories that 

matter. 

We started out as a website in 2008 

and in 2015 began publishing ZEKE 

magazine, allowing us to present 

visual stories in a print form with 

greater in-depth writing. 

Some of the stories we have presented on SDN 

and in ZEKE include the migration and refugee 

crisis, the war in Syria, women in the workplace, 

climate change and global warming, maternal 

health in Africa and Haiti, and life in Vietnam today. 

Since 2008, we have presented more than 3,000 

exhibits on our website by more than 2,000 

photographers from all corners of the globe! 

Your support will allow us to continue 

into the next decade 

SDN and ZEKE are very fortunate to continue our 

relationship with our nonprofit fiscal sponsor, Talking 

Eyes Media. Your support of SDN/ZEKE through Talking 

Eyes Media at the link below is 100% tax-deductible. 

Make a tax-deductible contribution today 

www.socialdocumentary.net/cms/support-us 

“SDN has been publishing stories by photographers 

reporting from their home communities long before 

the broader western photo community understood 

the urgency to present diverse viewpoints and 

voices from around the world. A look back at SDN’s 

archive reveals a deep trove of global talent and 

storytelling.” 

—Amy Yenkin 

Former Director, Documentary Photography Project, 

Open Society Foundations 

“Under continued pressure to sustain news and 

documentary, the Social Documentary Network is a 

masterful bastion staunchly showcasing the labors 

of dedicated photographers who visually reveal the 

questions that confront us.” 

—Lou Jones 

Founder, panAFRICAproject 

www.socialdocumentary.net 

ZEKETHE MAGAZINE 

OF GLOBAL 

DOCUMENTARY 

www.zekemagazine.com 



Fall 

THE MAGAZINE OF GLOBAL DOCUMENTARY 


Donors to SDN’s Tenth Anniversary 

Campaign 

ZEKE magazine and SDN would like to thank the following 

donors to our Tenth Anniversary Campaign. Support from private 

individuals is essential for ZEKE and SDN to continue publishing. 

If you would like to support the campaign, please visit 

www.socialdocumentary.net/cms/support-us 

Founding Sponsor 

Roree Iris Williams 

Benefactor 

Anonymous Donor 

Marietta Pathy Allen 

Edward Boches 

Rudi Dundas 

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Susan Mazer 

Jamey Stillings Photography, Inc. 

Sustainer 

Judy and Bob Ayotte 

Robert I. Usdan and Amy Yenkin 

Supporter 

Joan Lobis Brown 

Connie Frisbee Houde 

Morrie Gasser 

Vivien Goldman 

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Donor 

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2018 Vol. 4/No. 2 

ZEKE is published by Social Documentary Network (SDN), an 

organization promoting visual storytelling about global themes. 

Started as a website in 2008, today SDN works with thousands 

of photographers around the world to tell important stories 

through the visual medium of photography and multimedia. Since 

2008, SDN has featured more than 3,000 exhibits on its website 

and has had gallery exhibitions in major cities around the world. 

All the work featured in ZEKE first appeared on the SDN website, 

www.socialdocumentary.net. 


Executive Editor: Glenn Ruga 

Editor: Barbara Ayotte 

Social Documentary 

Network 

Founder & Director: Glenn Ruga 

Communications Director: 

Barbara Ayotte 

Intern: Joseph Lim 

SDN Advisory Committee 

Lori Grinker, New York, NY 

Independent Photographer and 

Educator 

Catherine Karnow, San Francisco, 

CA 

Independent Photographer and 

Educator 

Ed Kashi, Montclair, NJ 

Member of VII photo agency 

Photographer, Filmmaker, Educator 

Reza, Paris, France 

Photographer and Humanist 

Molly Roberts, Washington, DC 

Senior Photography Editor, 

National Geographic 

Jeffrey D. Smith, New York NY 

Director, Contact Press Images 

Jamey Stillings, Sante Fe, NM 

Independent Photographer 

Steve Walker, Danbury, CT 

Consultant and Educator 

Frank Ward, Williamsburg, MA 

Photographer and Educator 

Amy Yenkin, New York, NY 

Independent Producer and Editor 

ZEKE is published twice a year by 

Social Documentary Network 

Copyright © 2018 

Social Documentary Network 

ISSN 2381-1390 

ZEKE does not accept unsolicited 

submissions. To be considered for 

publication in ZEKE, submit your 

work to the SDN website either as 

a standard exhibit or a submission 

to a Call for Entries. Contributing 

photographers can choose to pay 

a fee for their work to be exhibted 

on SDN for a year or they can 

choose a free trial. Free trials have 

the same opportunity to be published 

in ZEKE as paid exhibits. 

To Subscribe: 


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ZEKE Magazine: Fall 2018

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