A Long Walk

January 28, 2014, 7:40 am

≪ Previous: Introducing the 2013 Production Grantees from Central Asia, the South Caucasus, Afghanistan, Mongolia, and Pakistan

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Jamun Mam, a woman in her 70s from Iferi, walked many days to reach South Sudan’s northern border.

Maban County, Upper Nile State, South Sudan, June 2012.

Musa Shep, a two-year-old boy from Gabanit, traveled more than 20 days to reach South Sudan’s northern border. He sat on the shoulders of his mother, Atoma Tifil, during most of the three-week journey to the border of South Sudan. He was too young to comprehend the circumstances of their flight or their prior months of displacement in a forest. By March 2013, he was a healthy little boy in the Batil refugee camp, living with his parents and two older siblings. At some point, Atoma Tifil will tell him about their beautiful homeland and their perilous escape, but for now she doesn’t want to think about it and is relieved they are safe.

Maban County, Upper Nile State, South Sudan, June 2012.

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Aradia Sheikh, a six-year-old girl from Al Ahmer, traveled more than 16 days to reach South Sudan’s northern border.

Maban County, Upper Nile State, South Sudan, June 2012.

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Mam Odom Bar, an elderly woman from Gabanit, traveled more than 20 days to reach South Sudan’s northern border. Her son was able to transport her most of the way on a donkey. In September 2012, shelling and aerial bombardments drove her from her home. Mam Odom Bar’s older sister stayed and was burned alive in her hut. Mam Odom Bar estimates about 50 of her fellow villagers died by fire or from aerial bombardments. For months, her family moved between the mountains and villages until they were able to make the journey to the border.

Maban County, Upper Nile State, South Sudan, June 2012.

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Gasim Issa, a man in his late 50s from Igor, walked more than 20 days to reach South Sudan’s northern border. In Igor, he farmed and raised livestock. Starting in September 2011, Gasim Issa and his neighbors in Igor were terrorized for months by shelling, aerial bombardment, and direct attacks on the village, driving them to seek refuge in the mountains for weeks at a time. In April, soldiers torched Gasim Issa’s home along with the remaining stores of sorghum that had not already been stolen. He headed south with his family, carrying a granddaughter on his shoulders during the arduous journey to the border. He was unable to transport his mother and she remained behind like many of the elderly who could not travel easily. Some were abandoned in their homes as the village was attacked; others started the journey but told families to go ahead without them in order to get the children to help as soon as possible. There are some reunions when refugees arrive in South Sudan, but there are also many people like Gasim Issa, who lie down at night unsure of the fate of loved ones still in Blue Nile.

Maban County, Upper Nile State, South Sudan, June 2012.

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Makka Bala, a woman in her 30s from Buk, walked more than 15 days to reach South Sudan’s northern border.

Maban County, Upper Nile State, South Sudan, June 2012.

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Atoma Suliman, a woman in her 20s from Jam, walked for over a month to reach South Sudan’s northern border. In September 2011 when the shelling began, Atoma Suliman, a mother of two, first fled her home. Aerial bombardments followed, and she witnessed neighbors lose their lives from the bombs and subsequent fires. Tanks destroyed villagers’ homes, and eventually, Atoma Suliman’s home burned down as well and she lost everything. The villagers scattered, traveled south in small groups, and reunited once they crossed into South Sudan.

Maban County, Upper Nile State, South Sudan, June 2012.

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Muhammed Hajana, a man in his 30s from Tiful, walked more than 30 days to reach South Sudan’s northern border.

Maban County, Upper Nile State, South Sudan, June 2012.

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Sela Changil, a woman in her 40s from Gabanit, walked for more than two months to reach South Sudan’s northern border. In September 2011, she and her neighbors first fled to the mountains when warned that the Sudanese forces were coming. In the following months, their homeswere torched and they sought refuge from aerial attacks. Sela Changil’s journey south with a group of approximately 400 people was made with great caution. They walked in the woods, stayed away from roads, and sent young men ahead to look out for soldiers and locate water sources.

Maban County, Upper Nile State, South Sudan, June 2012.

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Bashir Rumudan, a man in his 40s from Gabanit, walked for more than 20 days to reach South Sudan’s northern border. Bashir Rumudan is a sheikh—a community leader of his village. In Gabanit, aerial bombardment began in September 2011, but no direct attacks occurred until April 2012, when Sudanese forces fired on the town, took livestock, and burned the houses. Bashir Rumudan led his constituents on the trek south, carrying a grandchild on his shoulders. They typically walked for six hours early in the morning and six hours late in the evening to avoid the harsh midday sun; however, one dangerous passage required 16 hours walking without a rest.

Maban County, Upper Nile State, South Sudan, June 2012.

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Ajuk Ido, a man in his 70s from Jam, walked more than 20 days to reach South Sudan’s northern border.

Maban County, Upper Nile State, South Sudan, June 2012.

Shannon Jensen

Shannon Jensen is a documentary photographer interested in creative approaches to contemporary social issues. Jensen graduated in 2007 from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School with a BS in economics. She developed an interest in journalism while working as a photographer and columnist for the university’s daily newspaper. Jensen had previously traveled to East Africa for academic research and chose to return to the region as a photographer in 2008, where she remained through 2010. Jensen is a featured contributor with Reportage by Getty Images, and continues to cover stories in sub-Saharan Africa.

Her work has been used by publications and clients such as 6Mois, GEO, Le Monde, Médecins Sans Frontières, Monocle, National Geographic, the New York Times, Newsweek, Oxfam, Saturday Telegraph Magazine, Stern, and Vanity Fair (Italy).

Jensen won the Amnesty International Media Award for photojournalism and was honored by Pictures of the Year International and the Days Japan International Photojournalism Award (2013) for her series on the shoes of Sudanese refugees. She has also received recognition from the Magenta Foundation, the National Press Photographers Association, and PDN. Jensen was selected for American Photography’s annual award (2012 and 2013) and featured on Reportage by Getty Images’ Emerging Talent roster (2011 to 2013). In 2009, she attended the Eddie Adams Workshop XXII.

Artist Statement

Shannon Jensen

One month before South Sudan seceded from Sudan in June 2011, conflict reignited north of South Sudan’s border between the Sudanese government and the insurgent Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army-North (SPLM/A-N). The SPLM/A-N had been an integral part of the movement that led to the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005, ending 22 years of civil war and paving the way for South Sudan’s independence. The agreement failed to meet the aspirations of Sudanese living in South Kordofan and Blue Nile who had supported the SPLM/A-N but not received the autonomy they desired. With the outbreak of new fighting in 2011, more than 200,000 civilians were driven from their homes and sought safety as refugees in South Sudan.

In June 2012, I traveled to the Blue Nile refugee camps in northeast South Sudan, where there was a dire water shortage and little media coverage. My arrival coincided with an influx of 30,000 new refugees. Many had never left the vicinity of their villages before shelling, aerial bombardments, and soldiers drove them away the previous September. For months, families traveled back and forth from the forest to the mountains, rarely spending more than a week in one place, until they finally made the long trek to South Sudan’s northern border. With them, they carried stories of grandparents left behind and brothers who never returned from fetching water; days in hiding and nights of walking; treasured possessions lost and herds of livestock stolen.

The upheaval was new for these refugees, but hardly a novel phenomenon in the region. In photographing their arrival in South Sudan, I struggled with how to represent their journey in a way that was different from the thousands of existing refugee images.

And then I noticed the shoes. The refugees were wearing an incredible array of worn-down, misshapen, patched-together shoes. Each pair provided a silent testimony to the arduous journey. Each detail revealed the persistence and ingenuity of their owners and the diversity of the hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children brought together by tragic circumstance.

With this project, my aim was not to solicit sadness or pity, but to honor the resilience, determination, and perseverance of the people arriving at the camps, and spark interest in the situation that forced them to flee their homes.

—Shannon Jensen, January 2014

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Hong Kong Under China

January 28, 2014, 8:32 am

≫ Next: Goodbye My Chechnya

≪ Previous: A Long Walk

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The Mongkok district in Kowloon is one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in the world, and is well known for its underground night life such as the mah jong games, massage parlors, sex workers, and night markets that are overseen by Hong Kong’s organized crime organizations called the Triads.

Mongkok, Hong Kong, June 2011.

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Man standing in street covered in Post-it notes

To commemorate the Tiananmen Square demonstrations 22 years earlier, a young artist has invited passers-by to cover him with notes of protest, many directed at the Chinese government and the Hong Kong leadership. China’s tolerance is wearing thin, but the One Country/Two Systems policy still allows freedom of expression in Hong Kong.

Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, June 2011.

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A taxi driver has several extra mobile phones mounted on his dashboard, connecting him to various dispatching syndicates that book discount fares to undercut the traditional first-come-first-serve rule.

Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong, June 2011.

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Security cameras eye the traffic in Chungking Mansions, a 17-story hive of market stalls, restaurants, and cheap lodging where global traders do business. Indians, Nigerians, and Pakistanis all show up, buying made-in-China goods to sell back home. This block of grungy apartments has been called “the Ghetto at the Center of the World” by Gordon Matthews, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Matthews says that the phone dealers, curry shops, sex workers, flophouse travelers, asylum seekers, and others from over 130 different nations engage in a myriad of daily micro-exchanges that show real world globalization in action.

Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong, December 2011.

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Woman lying on bed and drinking a beverage

A former factory accountant from northeast China, J currently works in a legal one-woman/one-room brothel on Hong Kong Island. Over the last few years, she has saved enough to buy two apartments back on the mainland, and is now planning to buy another property in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong, June 2011.

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Miniature statues arranged on a wave-sprayed rock

On the wave-sprayed rocks beside Aberdeen Harbor, fishermen and others who work on the ocean have placed figurines of Guan Yin (Kwun Yam), the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, for her protection at sea. Such everyday expressions of traditional Chinese belief in the metaphysical are far more common in Hong Kong than in mainland China, where many “superstitious” folk customs were wiped out during the Cultural Revolution.

Aberdeen, Hong Kong, December 2011.

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Women picnicking in a park under an overpass

Hong Kong employs about 300,000 migrant domestic workers, mostly from Indonesia and the Philippines. On Sundays—their only day off—they crowd the Central district and Victoria Park, where here some Indonesian women enjoy their day off under a highway overpass. Political organizers also use Sundays to rally these workers to fight for residency rights.

Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, June 2011.

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People burning incense and praying at a temple

Wong Tai Sin Temple, a Taoist place of worship known for fortune telling, is popular among Chinese tourists, who make up about 70 percent of the temple’s visitors. The day before the annual Cathay Pacific Hong Kong International Races at the Shatin Horse Track, the temple also draws in many gamblers seeking spiritual guidance to make winning bets.

Wong Tai Sin, Hong Kong, December 2011.

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Large crowd seated at a nighttime demonstration

A memorial in Victoria Park following the January 2, 2011, death of long-time democracy activist Szetoh Wah serves simultaneously as a democracy protest.

Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, February 2011.

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Reflection on window looking out onto an office building atrium

The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Company, headquartered in a 1986 Norman Foster-designed post-modern cathedral to capital, is arguably the most powerful corporate institution in the city. Hong Kong’s traditionally dominant financial infrastructure continues to thrive as it serves the Chinese investors and institutions that contribute an ever-increasing share to Hong Kong’s wealth and business.

Central, Hong Kong, December 2011.

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Armchair and antennas on a rooftop, with cityscape in the background

Beat-up armchairs await residents of an informal settlement built on the top of a factory building. Middle- and working-class Hong Kong residents are feeling the housing squeeze from China on two sides. While wealthy mainland Chinese investors drive up real estate prices, affordable housing grows scarce in one of the world’s most expensive cities. At the same time, Chinese migrant laborers are crossing the increasingly open border to the north, which creates competition even for these dilapidated squatted rooftop units in industrial neighborhoods.

Kwun Tong, Hong Kong, December 2011.

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A forest of high-rises, mostly public housing projects, covers Kowloon, one of the world’s most crowded pieces of real estate. Despite Hong Kong’s glittery reputation, almost half of its seven million residents live in subsidized housing, with the real estate market pushing apartments beyond middle class affordability. Hong Kong’s Gini coefficient, which measures the gap between wealthy and poor, is the largest among highly developed nations and states. The gap has been widened by the influx of both low-income migrants and multi-millionaires from China.

Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong, December 2011.

Mark Leong

Mark Leong is a fifth-generation American-Chinese from Sunnyvale, California. After graduating from Harvard University in 1988, he was awarded a George Peabody Gardner Traveling Fellowship to spend a year taking pictures in his ancestral homeland. In 1992, he again visited China as an artist-in-residence at the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing, sponsored by a fellowship from the Wallace Foundation. In 2003, Leong joined the photo agency, Redux Pictures. His book China Obscura was published in 2004, with a selection of those pictures exhibited in the Open Society Foundations’ Moving Walls 12.

Leong’s photographs have appeared in Fortune, GQ,National Geographic, the New York Times Magazine, New Yorker, Smithsonian, Stern, and Time. His work has been recognized with awards from the National Endowment for the Arts (1992), Fifty Crows (2002), and the Overseas Press Club (2007), among others. In 2010, he was named the Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year for his regional coverage of the Asian wildlife trade. Exhibitions of his work include solo shows at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University (1991), the San Francisco Arts Commission at City Hall (2007), and the Leica Gallery Frankfurt (2008).

Artist Statement

Mark Leong

The Hong Kong I first visited in 1989 was the essential gateway into China—a British-controlled laissez-faire playground of lucrative pragmatism that fluidly balanced East and West, ancient and hyper-modern, legitimate and underworld. Upon the 1997 transfer of sovereignty from the United Kingdom to China, Beijing’s assurances that “Hong Kong would remain unchanged for 50 years” promised to showcase its good-faith efforts to foster democracy and rule of law. Some 17 years on, however, the lack of universal suffrage paired with fading relevance compared to booming megapolises like Shanghai and Shenzhen are provoking anxiety that Hong Kong is becoming just another Chinese city.

There might be less concern if this were making everybody rich, but Hong Kong’s growing wealth gap is the widest on the United Nation’s list of most highly developed economies. Property values skyrocket while nearly half the population lives in subsidized housing. Even gangsters complain that the scramble for scraps has displaced the sense of brotherly purpose that once drew them in. A former enforcer for one of Hong Kong’s organized crime gangs, the Sun Yee On triad, told me, “It’s more of a business for profit now.”

Hong Kongers who once looked down on visiting Chinese have become resentfully dependent on their spending. They call them “locusts” for consuming apartments, Gucci handbags, iPads, and even—until restrictions were recently introduced—maternity beds, as mainlanders seeking Hong Kong IDs for their babies crowded local mothers out of hospitals. The territory’s reputation for apolitical materialism has given way to constant angry protests concerning residency, spiritual rights, artistic expression, migrant domestic workers, and especially against a Hong Kong leadership seen as more interested in a self-preserving relationship with property tycoons and the China elite than general welfare and freedoms.

Is Hong Kong’s identity at risk? My pictures—of neon streets and rooftop shanties, of globalized domestic workers and elite financiers, of entrepreneurial sex workers and peddlers at international black markets, of open political expression and ancient Chinese tradition untouched by revolutionary purges—show the mash-up that distinguishes Hong Kong from the mainland. At the same time, I hope my work conveys the mounting imbalance and pressure after nearly two decades of Chinese rule.

—Mark Leong, January 2014

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Goodbye My Chechnya

January 28, 2014, 1:38 pm

≫ Next: In Ruins: The Fall of Greek Industry

≪ Previous: Hong Kong Under China

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Seda Makhagieva, 15, wraps a pastel-colored head and neck covering around her head. Makhagieva fought to wear the hijab—a sharp break from her family’s traditions.

Serzhen-Yurt, Chechnya, February 2012.

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Chechen girls after school in front of the Heart of Chechnya Mosque—also known as Akhmad Kadyrov Mosque—the largest in Europe. In early 2012, the government would impose a new law ordering all girls, regardless of their religion, to wear headscarves before entering public schools and government buildings.

Grozny, Chechnya, November 2011.

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Students attend a gym class at School No. 1 in Serzhen-Yurt. The schoolgirls—dressed in skirts with their heads wrapped in headscarves—say gym clothes violate Muslim dress code.

Serzhen-Yurt, Chechnya, March 2012.

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Chechen girls study the Koran at an underground madrasa—an Islamic school—in the village of Serzhen-Yurt. A new generation of youth is embracing Islam after decades of religious repression by secular Communist authorities in the Soviet Union.

Serzhen-Yurt, Chechnya, February 2012.

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Amina Mutieva, 21, a student at the Islamic University in Grozny prays in a prayer room for women.

Grozny, Chechnya, November 2011.

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Chechen girls make their way to the mosque in the mountain village of Serzhen-Yurt.

Serzhen-Yurt, Chechnya, March 2012.

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A woman prays at a local mosque in downtown Grozny.

Grozny, Chechnya, March 2012.

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Two women fix the headscarf of a young girl

Seda Makhagieva, 15, sits beside her friends as they adjust her hijab. She started wearing the head covering a year ago, despite her family’s disapproval.

Serzhen-Yurt, Chechnya, February 2012.

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In the village of Serzhen-Yurt, a couple on a date must meet in public and sit at a distance from one another. All physical contact is forbidden before marriage.

Serzhen-Yurt, Chechnya, February 2012.

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Chechen girls wait to be picked up for a party in the village of Achkoy-Martan.

Achkoy-Martan, Chechnya, April 2012.

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Amina Mutieva, 21, a student at the Islamic University in Grozny prays in her bedroom.

Grozny, Chechnya, January 2012.

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A Chechen teenage girl, who considers herself “emo” puts on pink lip gloss in her room. “Emo” youth differentiate themselves from others by wearing black clothing, piercings, and heavy eyeliner, and are often characterized as having morbid or suicidal thoughts. When asked if she wants to kill herself, she said: “I don’t know yet.” The “emotional” punk and rock music scene in the United States inspired “emo” subculture, and Chechen youth who are influenced by it have become targets of violence by authorities.

Serzhen-Yurt, Chechnya, April 2012.

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The empty bedroom that Elina Aleroyeva, 25, once shared with her husband. He was abducted by security forces at his workplace on May 9, 2011, and accused of being a militant. Disappearances, which were a signature abuse in both Chechen wars, continue to take place despite the end of fighting in the country.

Grozny, Chechnya, April 2012.

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Layusa Ibragimova, 15, has her hair and nails done before her wedding. Her marriage to 19-year-old Ibragim Isaev was finalized by her father just weeks before she was married.

Shali, Chechnya, March 2012.

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Jamila Idalova, 16, on her wedding day. Idalova was kidnapped by her boyfriend, and then her family eventually approved the marriage. Although bridal kidnappings are outlawed by the government, they continue to occur in Chechnya.

Shali, Chechnya, March 2012.

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A group of Chechen men stand at the opposite end of the room from the women at a party in Grozny. Gender segregation is strictly enforced in Chechnya through decrees made by President Ramzan Kadyrov.

Grozny, Chechnya, November 2011.

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A group of Chechen women stand at the opposite end of the room from the men, the result of strict enforcement of gender segregation decrees issued by Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov.

Grozny, Chechnya, November 2011.

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Party guests cheer as a couple dances Lezginka, a traditional dance performed in the North Caucasus.

Shali, Chechnya, March 2012.

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At sunset on the outskirts of Grozny, Kazbek Mutsaev, 29, fires celebratory gun shots as part of an age-old wedding tradition in Chechnya.

Grozny, Chechnya, April 2012.

Diana Markosian

Diana Markosian is a documentary photographer and writer based in Rangoon, Burma. Markosian began her career while she was a student at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Her photography has since taken her from Russia’s North Caucasus mountains, to the ancient Silk Road in Tajikistan, and overland to the remote Wakhan Corridor in northeastern Afghanistan, where she has worked on both personal and editorial assignments.

Markosian’s images have appeared in the Boston Globe, Foreign Policy, Foto8, Marie Claire, the New York Times, the Sunday Times, Time.com, and World Policy Journal. Her work has also been exhibited by international organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and UNICEF.

Her photography has been recognized by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism’s annual photography prize (2010), the National Press Photographers Association second place in multimedia (2011), Reuters’ best 100 photos of the year (2011), the Marie Claire International Photography Award (2012), Reportage by Getty Images’ Emerging Talent roster (2012), and Burn Magazine’s Emerging Photographer Fund (2013). In 2013, she was selected to participate in the World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass in Amsterdam.

Artist Statement

Diana Markosian

Goodbye My Chechnya chronicles the lives of adolescent Muslim girls as they come of age in a Russian republic that is struggling to rebuild itself after two separate wars spanning from 1994 to 2009.

As Muslim traditions and cultural practices became established in the aftermath of war, young women in Chechnya are finding that the most innocent acts can mean breaking the rules. Unmarried couples holding hands in public are subject to punishment; the sight of a Chechen girl smoking may lead to her arrest. Rumors of a girl having sex before marriage can trigger honor killings which, according to human rights groups, have been on the rise in recent years.

Chechnya’s Kremlin-backed president, Ramzan Kadyrov, has publicly endorsed such murders, based on the belief that women are the property of their husbands. Kadyrov has also launched a “virtue” campaign imposing strict rules upon women. Public decrees require Chechen women to dress “modestly”—including wearing headscarves—to spare their men from the “duty” of killing them if their clothing or actions are perceived as bringing dishonor to the family. The government’s compulsory dress code applies to schools, government offices, and hospitals, and officials hope to extend it to other public places such as streets, parks, and shops.

The few girls who dare to rebel—whether through religion, choice of music, style of dress, or voicing their own aspirations—take huge risks. For example, a young girl I photographed considers herself “emo”—a cultural movement originating in the United States in which young people differentiate themselves from others by wearing black clothing, piercings, and heavy eyeliner. In Chechnya, “emos” are subject to honor killings.

Most news reports on Russia’s volatile North Caucasus region* have dealt with the violence of ongoing conflict and war. My aim with this project is to show a different, more intimate and subtle glimpse of a new generation of young women as they try to live within Chechnya’s restrictive laws. After enduring the horrors of two wars, these women are now confronted by a period of peace marked by increasing oppression. Through my images, I try to show how girls and young women are navigating their transition into adulthood in this context, and honor their strength amidst the challenges they face.

*The North Caucasus region consists of the republics of Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, and North Ossetia.

—Diana Markosian, January 2014

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In Ruins: The Fall of Greek Industry

January 28, 2014, 2:10 pm

≫ Next: Shadow of the Condor

≪ Previous: Goodbye My Chechnya

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The manager’s seat left behind at the John Phil carpet factory in the village of Stavroupoli, Xanthi, in northern Greece. The company was named after its owner, Ioannis Phillipides. It first opened in 1966 in Athens, but was completely destroyed by a fire. In order to rebuild the company, Phillipides moved to northern Greece to take advantage of the low two-percent VAT (value added tax) and the generous 28-percent subsidy offered by the Greek government. Locals say that at one point, half of the village was employed by John Phil.

Stavroupoli, Xanthi, Greece, February 2011.

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Interior of abandoned office, with Greek map on wall.

The Sidiropoulos factory produced packaging for dried fruit and went out of business in 2008, when the financial crisis struck Greece. The relief map of Greece on the wall is one of the few things that remained intact in the factory.

Komotini, Greece, February 2011.

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Whatever was left after factories were closed or abandoned has been taken by looters to sell as scrap.

Alexandroupoli, Greece, February 2011.

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Abandoned car parked outside an abandoned factory building.

An abandoned hearse parked in the destroyed John Phil carpet factory in the village of Stavroupoli. The company was named after its owner, Ioannis Phillipides.

Alexandroupoli, Greece, February 2011.

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Blue plastic containers piled outside an abandoned factory.

A large pile of plastic containers littering a factory yard is all that remains after this plastics company closed down.

Xanthi, Greece, February 2011.

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Open field with steel frame of an abandoned factory.

After the financial crisis, the Greek landscape was littered with empty and destroyed warehouses and buildings.

Alexandroupoli, Greece, February 2011.

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Abandoned factory with red and blue external wall panels.

The Sidiropoulos family’s abandoned packaging factory. The factory used to be a successful business that was eroded and eventually destroyed by the financial crisis.

Komotini, Greece, February 2011.

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An abandoned truck corrodes on top of a pile of carpets outside the John Phil carpet factory.

Stavroupoli, Xanthi, Greece, February 2011.

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The remnants of a sugar factory situated in Xanthi, northern Greece, is open to looters. Six sugar factories that were established in the 1960s are all owned by the Hellenic Sugar Industry, a state-owned company that continues to hold the monopoly today. After an earlier effort failed, the Greek government invited private businesses in 2013 to purchase shares in the sugar company in an attempt to revitalize the business through privatization.

Xanthi, Greece, February 2011.

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A doorframe is all that remains inside a plastics factory in the Evros region. Looters stripped factories in the region bare of everything of value to sell as scrap.

Alexandroupoli, Greece, February 2011.

Nikos Pilos

Nikos Pilos is an award-winning photojournalist currently based in Athens, Greece. He has traveled extensively to document war, natural disasters, poverty, and socioeconomic struggle.

Since his first assignment in Lebanon in 1988, Pilos has covered major historical events such as the overthrow of Nicolae Ceauşescu in Romania, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the conflicts in the Balkans, and the war in Iraq, where he spent 100 days among Iraqis, without being embedded with the U.S. Army. Most recently, he covered the antigovernment protests in Turkey, and for the past three years, his long-term project has been documenting the consequences of the Greek economic crisis.

Pilos’s work appears regularly in international newspapers and magazines including Die Zeit, the New York Times, Stern, Time, XL Semanal, ZReportage.com, and other media outlets.

His awards include a gold award in the press category for people/personality at the PX3-Prix de la Photographie Paris (2013), and also a silver award in the press category for people/personality, and a bronze award in the press category for feature story (2012). Pilos’s The Ruin of Greek Industry has also been honored at the China International Press Photo Contest (2012).

His work has been exhibited in Belgium, China, France, Germany, Greece, and Turkey, among other countries.

Artist Statement

Nikos Pilos

In 2008, when Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy and other large American banking institutions struggled to stay afloat, Greeks thought their economy was secure. Their country hadn’t bought any toxic assets, and they comfortably watched the news of the U.S. economic meltdown on television.

A year later, the financial crisis hit Greece and left the northern region of Thrace with fewer than 10 working factories and an unemployment rate of 50 percent. Thrace’s industrial zone—once a constant stream of activity—was now littered with abandoned buildings and factories.

Today, Greeks are trying to survive their country’s fifth economic recession. The destruction of Greek industries has resulted in unemployment levels of up to 27 percent and youth unemployment of 65 percent. Millions of jobs have been lost and thousands of businesses have closed. My hometown of Corfu has been deeply affected. The crisis is impossible for me to ignore.

I decided to show this catastrophic loss by photographing abandoned factories in Thrace. It is a place where businesses were created overnight with state subsidies, but with little planning and supporting infrastructure—like roads and railways—to transport goods to markets.

The industrial boom in the northern region of Greece started in 1976, when the Greek government subsidized the construction of hundreds of factories. The goal was to entice Greeks—particularly large numbers of 18- to 50-year-olds—to not emigrate to Germany and the United States for overseas employment. From 1982 to 1994, seven government development acts invested approximately one out of every four euros in the region. More than 370 businesses applied for these loans, and the government estimated that this development would create nearly 27,000 jobs. Banks also provided generous loans, and the emigration problem was temporarily averted as jobs became plentiful.

With the huge influx of money, the region’s image changed completely. Thrace’s industry boomed, supported by laws that boosted development. But it was growth without strategy or supervision. Many opportunistic people arrived and took the money without building businesses, and few places in southern Europe have ever experienced such rapid deindustrialization.

Thrace now feels more like a cemetery, or a place of ruins. Like a ghost town, buildings are empty of people but still contain decorations or office equipment, evoking the feeling that the employees left in a hurry with little forewarning of the crisis to come.

—Nikos Pilos, January 2014

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Shadow of the Condor

January 28, 2014, 2:32 pm

≫ Next: Moving Walls 21

≪ Previous: In Ruins: The Fall of Greek Industry

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Open field with archeological markers and large tree

The archeological markers outlining what used to be “La Escuelita,” a former clandestine detention and torture center used by the Argentine army to interrogate and kill left-wing militants in Bahia Blanca, Argentina, during the military dictatorship from 1975 to 1983. This torture center operated during Operation Condor—a secret joint military plan among six key countries—Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay—aimed at eliminating political opponents by using common resources and exchanging information, prisoners, and torture techniques. This plan, which was carried out during the 1970s, resulted in the “extrajudicial executions” of at least 60,000 people.

Bahia Blanca, Argentina, February 2012.

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A skull with an exit wound from a bullet at the Equipo Argentino de Antropologia Forense lab, a nongovernmental scientific organization created with the help of forensic anthropologist Clyde Snow in 1984 to help investigate human rights abuses and to exhume, identify, and return the remains of “desaparecidos” to their families in Argentina. Today the Equipo Argentino de Antropologia Forense has worked in more then 30 countries worldwide.

Buenos Aires, Argentina, February 2012.

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A storage room at the Equipo Argentino de Antropologia Forense lab, a nongovernmental scientific organization. The boxes are full of recovered remains of people who were abducted and killed—“disappeared”—for political reasons. The unidentified remains are stored at the lab until strong evidence is found or presented that confirms the identity of the disappeared person and allows the remains to be returned to family members.

Buenos Aires, Argentina, January 2012.

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Skeletal remains on two examining tables covered in black cloth

The remains of two unidentified bodies lie in the lab of the Equipo Argentino de Antropologia Forense, a nongovernmental scientific organization in Buenos Aires. Lab staff members will study the bodies and attempt to determine their identities.

Buenos Aires, Argentina, January 2012.

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Shadows cast across a walkway of a former concentration camp

A view of what used to be the cells of the Emboscada concentration camp in Paraguay. This camp was built to detain political prisoners in Paraguay during the military dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner. Today the camp is a high-security prison for men, and the former cells are used for workshops and classrooms for incarcerated people.

Emboscada, Paraguay, November 2012.

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Broken shower in a former detention and torture center

A bathroom of Londres 38, a former clandestine detention and torture center used during the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet of Chile.

Santiago, Chile, December 2008.

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One of the cell areas in the Punta de Rieles prison in Montevideo, Uruguay. The prison held female political prisoners during the Uruguayan dictatorship in the early 1970s. After democracy was restored in 1985, Punta de Rieles closed and later reopened as a prison for those convicted of committing civil crimes.

Montevideo, Uruguay, February 2012.

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Light illuminating the interior of a former torture room

The torture room of “El Olimpo,” a former clandestine detention and torture center used by the Argentine federal police and security forces to interrogate and kill left-wing militants and citizens during the military dictatorship of 1975 to 1983.

Buenos Aires, Argentina, November 2007.

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Broken stairs inside a former clandestine torture center and jail

A cell inside a former clandestine torture center and jail in the basement of the Interior Ministry in La Paz, Bolivia.

La Paz, Bolivia, November 2012.

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The Atacama Desert located in northern Chile. In 1973, the Chilean military under General Augusto Pinochet created a special task force known as the “Caravan of Death.” The task force swept through Chile, arresting, torturing, and killing hundreds of citizens and burying them in unmarked graves. The “Caravan of Death” ended its tour in the Atacama, where many of its victims still lie in undiscovered mass graves.

Atacama, Chile, March 2012.

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Airplane on display in a lot outside a building supply store

During Argentina’s military dictatorship, security forces executed left-wing militants by taking them out in this plane for what became known as the “Death Flights”—flights in which the militants would be thrown alive from the plane into the La Plata River and the Atlantic Ocean. Today, the plane is used as an advertising prop for a building supply store on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.

Esteban Echeverria, Argentina, September 2011.

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Former military men hide their faces during a trial conducted by the Argentine government to prosecute former officials for crimes against humanity that were committed by the military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983.

Bahia Blanca, Argentina, February 2012.

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Courtroom with families and friends of concentration camp victims holding signs that read “Cacho Scarpati.”

Families and friends of the victims of the Campo de Mayo concentration camp wait in court for the sentences to be delivered. The trial resulted in the former president Reynaldo Bignone and other officials receiving sentences of 25 years in jail for crimes against humanity.

Florida, Argentina, April 2010.

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Man in handcuffs being escorted off bus by a prison guard

A prison guard escorts Colonel Hugo Delme as he is transported from jail to the courthouse in Bahia Blanca. Delme, a retired army colonel, was accused of committing crimes against humanity—torturing and disappearing left-wing militants during the last Argentine dictatorship from 1976 to 1983. Delme was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison in 2012.

Bahia Blanca, Argentina, February 2012.

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Mug shot of a woman standing and holding sign that reads “230.”

Photographer unknown.

Mug shot of a Brazilian political exile living in Chile taken by Argentinian authorities in September 1973 when a military coup headed by Chile’s General Augusto Pinochet forced her to request refuge in the Argentinian embassy. Her photograph and political records were later found in the archives of the intelligence section of the Buenos Aires police.

Courtesy of the Dirección de Inteligencia de la Policia de la Provincia de Buenos Aires Archive (DIPPBA)

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Mug shot of a man standing and holding sign that reads “244.”

Photographer unknown.

Mug shot of a Brazilian political exile living in Chile taken by Argentinian authorities in September 1973 when a military coup headed by Chile’s General Augusto Pinochet forced him to request refuge in the Argentinian embassy. His photograph and political records were later found in the archives of the intelligence section of the Buenos Aires police.

Courtesy of the Dirección de Inteligencia de la Policia de la Provincia de Buenos Aires Archive (DIPPBA)

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Mug shot of a woman standing and holding sign that reads “270.”

Photographer unknown.

Courtesy of the Dirección de Inteligencia de la Policia de la Provincia de Buenos Aires Archive (DIPPBA)

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Portrait of a woman standing by a window

Anahit Aharonian, looking from the window of her former cell in the Punta de Rieles prison in Montevideo, Uruguay. Aharonian is a descendant of survivors of the Armenian genocide and was born in Uruguay. She became involved in politics as a teenager and embraced the Tupamaro National Liberation Movement, an urban guerrilla organization in Uruguay in the 1960s and ’70s.

She was arrested by the military during the early days of the Uruguayan dictatorship, and spent 12 years in prison during Operation Condor, a joint secret military plan among six key South American countries aimed at eliminating political opponents using common resources and exchanges of information, prisoners, and torture techniques.

Montevideo, Uruguay, February 2012.

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Salvador Gonçalves, a farmer from the Araguaia region who helped Brazilian guerilla fighters and was later arrested and tortured by the military at the Bacaba concentration camp in the Brazilian Amazon. In the photograph, Gonçalves stands in the lake where he used to bathe when he was held in the Bacaba camp.

Araguaia, Para, Brazil, August 2011.

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The funeral of Horacio Bau, a left-wing Montonero militant from Trelew. Bau disappeared in La Plata, Argentina, in November 1977. He was buried by the military as a “no name” in a cemetery in La Plata. In early 2007, his remains were found and identified by the Equipo Argentino de Antropologia Forense, a nongovernmental scientific organization. Thirty years after his disappearance, Bau was reinterred by his family in his hometown.

Trelew, Argentina, November 2007.

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Families of the politically “disappeared” in Calama, Chile, stand near the graves where 26 political prisoners were buried by the Chilean military. After the September 11, 1973, military coup by General Augusto Pinochet, Chilean military leaders and Pinochet organized a special task force known as the “Caravan of Death” that swept through the north of the country. The task force picked up political prisoners for interrogation, torture, and often, execution. People killed by the task force were buried in remote, undisclosed locations. They just “disappeared” and their families never learned what happened to them.

Calama, Chile, February 2012.

João Pina

João Pina was born in Lisbon, Portugal, and began working as a photographer in 1999. He graduated from the International Center of Photography’s Documentary Photography and Photojournalism Program in New York. He is currently based in Argentina.

Pina’s photographs have been published in D La Repubblica delle Donne, Days Japan, El Pais, Expresso (Portugal), GEO, La Vanguardia, L’Espresso (Italy), the New York Times,the New Yorker, Newsweek, Stern, Time, and Visão, among others.

In New York City, his work has been exhibited at the Howard Greenberg Gallery (2011, group show), the International Center of Photography (2005 and 2012, group shows), and Point of View Gallery (2008, solo show). Internationally, Pina’s work has been shown at the Casa Fernando Pessoa (2006, Portugal, group show), the Canon Gallery (2007, Japan, group show), the Centro Portugês de Fotografia (2007, Portugal, solo show), the KGaleria (2009, Portugal, solo show), and Visa pour l’Image (2010, France, group show).

In 2007, Pina published his first book, Por Teu Livre Pensamento, featuring the stories of 25 former Portuguese political prisoners. This project inspired an Amnesty International advertising campaign that won him a Gold Lion Award in the 2011 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. He was a finalist for the Henri Nannen Prize and the CARE International Award for Humanitarian Reportage (2011), received the Estação Imagem grant (2010), and was a finalist for the Pierre and Alexandra Boulat Association Award (2009).

Artist Statement

João Pina

In 1975, in the midst of the Cold War, six South American countries—Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay—that were ruled by right-wing military dictatorships created Operation Condor. It was a secret military plan aimed at eliminating political opponents using shared military resources and exchanges of information, prisoners, and torture techniques.

This extensive campaign—carried out over a period of more than three years—resulted in the extrajudicial executions of at least 60,000 people, mostly leftist youth inspired by the Cuban revolution. The number of victims may be much higher, but cannot be confirmed both because of the secrecy in which the repression took place, and because many of the mass executions were carried out in ways that the bodies disappeared forever in jungles, forests, rivers, and oceans.

From the Amazon jungle in Brazil to the cold open lands of Patagonia, thousands of victims remain buried in unmarked mass graves, while survivors struggle to cope with their memories. I have witnessed survivors and families dealing with problems such as acute depression, paranoia, and other psychiatric illnesses due to the immense traumas they underwent at the hands of the regimes that ruled 30 years ago.

The secrecy of Operation Condor has endured because of the nature of the political transitions that took place. In most of the countries involved, fragile democracies succeeded the military regimes, and remnants of former dictatorships forced sweeping political amnesties for the military. It has taken years for these amnesties to be overturned, and in some places, is still an ongoing battle. Many relatives of the victims still don’t know what happened to their loved ones, and the majority of those responsible for their deaths and disappearances have never been brought to justice.

This project aims to create images of something that happened in the past. I sought to create a visual narrative of one of the darkest periods in South America’s history by returning to the places where torture and disappearances had occurred, portraying survivors and victims’ families today, and using archival images taken by photographers and security forces from that period.

I hope the resulting work will not only create a visual memory, but also aid survivors and human rights organizations in bringing those responsible to justice.

—João Pina, January 2014

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Moving Walls 21

January 28, 2014, 2:58 pm

≫ Next: Moving Walls 22: Group Exhibition on Surveillance

≪ Previous: Shadow of the Condor

About Moving Walls 21

On display at Open Society Foundations–New York. Open Monday–Friday, 10:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.

The winter 2014 installment of the Open Society Foundations’ documentary photography exhibition series comes at a time when photography is becoming a regular mode of information sharing for many throughout the world. The medium is in a constant state of expansion and redefinition as new tools and technologies emerge.

In this context, citizen and professional photographers alike are seizing on new opportunities, but are also grappling with how to tell distinct and meaningful stories. Amidst the constant and cacophonous stream of visual information, how can a person capture the attention of others for longer than it takes to digest a single Instagram or Snapchat image? While eyewitness visual accounts uploaded and shared by ordinary citizens provide a wealth of first-hand information and personal perspective, what does a seasoned photographer add to our understanding of global events and injustices?

In contrast to the immediacy of images shared in real time, documentary photographers often commit to stories long term, creating narratives that have nuance and depth, and often challenge our assumptions or expand our knowledge. These stories explore the broader context and personal impact of global realities that we often only glimpse on the front page of a newspaper or a social media feed.

The photographers in Moving Walls 21 continue this tradition. Each considers how to visually represent an issue in a way that provides a new perspective on a story or place.

When Shannon Jensen traveled to refugee camps in northeast South Sudan in 2012, she aimed to highlight the arduous journey of hundreds of thousands of civilians fleeing conflict in South Kordofan and Blue Nile. Jensen wanted to avoid the dehumanizing and exploitative way that refugees and their suffering are often represented. She chose instead to focus her camera on the tattered shoes that these men, women, and children wore. For Jensen, each uniquely worn-down or patched-up pair of shoes not only reflected the individual struggles of their owners, but also spoke volumes about their ingenuity and perseverance during their long walk to safety.

Likewise, Diana Markosian shows present day Chechnya in ways that depart from mainstream coverage of this Russian republic, which continues to experience ongoing instability and conflict in the aftermath of two wars that lasted from 1994 to 2009. While most news reports focus on the overt violence there, Markosian shows the transitional nature of this region through the perspective of girls and young women coming of age in the context of an increasingly repressive environment. Through her intimate photographs, we are introduced to an array of young women, some who embrace and others who take huge risks to defy the Islamic fundamentalist government’s new decrees monitoring women’s behavior and dress.

Mark Leong, too, confronts distorted perceptions of a place on a much larger scale through his cityscapes of Hong Kong, which explore the tension between its reputation as a glittering, apolitical city driven by materialism, and the reality of its growing wealth gap and diminishing freedoms. This disconnect is placed within the context of Hong Kong’s increasingly uneasy relationship to China since the 1997 transfer of sovereignty from the United Kingdom to China. On rooftops and neon-bright street corners, at a park frequented by migrant laborers, and on the dashboard of a taxi operated by an entrepreneurial driver, Leong finds visual cues that signal Hong Kong’s distinct identity as it reflects on the traditions of the past and the challenges of the future.

With youth unemployment at 65 percent and millions of jobs lost, Greece is also facing uncertainty about its future. Nikos Pilos documents the impact of Greece’s economic recession in eerily serene photographs of abandoned factories and businesses in the northern region of Thrace. Since the mid-1970s, this region experienced a state-subsidized, but ultimately unsustainable, industrial boom. Once the economic crisis hit Greece, Thrace’s hundreds of factories were diminished to fewer than ten. Pilos’ photographs of industrial ruins are a reflection on Greece’s recent past and serve as stark reminders of the dangers of poorly-planned economic growth.

João Pina also considers the weight of history, in this case, the legacy of Operation Condor, a secret plan created in 1975 by the right-wing military dictatorships of six South American countries—Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay—to forcibly silence and remove political opposition. Pina unearths remnants of past atrocities embedded in the landscape, in family members’ stories, in legal proceedings, and in official documents and files. By combining his own photographs with a selection of archival images, Pina creates a visual history of a past that has been actively suppressed through extreme violence.

Together, these five bodies of work represent a range of visual narratives, and each photographer plays with varying degrees of intimacy and scale to tell their stories. By honoring this work, we hope to broaden and deepen viewers’ understanding of complex issues in ways that highlight both their global impact and their personal significance for those most directly affected.

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Moving Walls 22: Group Exhibition on Surveillance

March 31, 2014, 11:29 am

≫ Next: An Ordinary Item Tells the Story of an Extraordinary Journey

≪ Previous: Moving Walls 21

The Open Society Documentary Photography Project is soliciting proposals for our next exhibition: Watching You, Watching Me: Photography in an Age of Surveillance.

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An Ordinary Item Tells the Story of an Extraordinary Journey

April 24, 2014, 11:16 am

≫ Next: After an Economic Crisis, Modern-Day Greek Ruins

≪ Previous: Moving Walls 22: Group Exhibition on Surveillance

Photographer Shannon Jensen shines a light on the crisis in South Sudan through images of the tattered shoes worn by civilians fleeing conflict.

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After an Economic Crisis, Modern-Day Greek Ruins

May 12, 2014, 10:42 am

≫ Next: On the Trail of a Mysterious Disease in Nicaragua

≪ Previous: An Ordinary Item Tells the Story of an Extraordinary Journey

Photographer Nikos Pilos documents the wreckage of Greece's industrial zone in the wake of the financial crisis.

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On the Trail of a Mysterious Disease in Nicaragua

May 16, 2014, 1:47 pm

≫ Next: A Photographer’s Journey Through a Changing Hong Kong

≪ Previous: After an Economic Crisis, Modern-Day Greek Ruins

Photojournalist Ed Kashi documents a deadly epidemic of kidney disease affecting sugarcane workers in Central America.

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A Photographer’s Journey Through a Changing Hong Kong

July 1, 2014, 10:22 am

≫ Next: A Photographer Goes Behind the “Roma Walls”

≪ Previous: On the Trail of a Mysterious Disease in Nicaragua

Photographer Mark Leong, whose work appears as part of the Moving Walls 21 exhibit, aims to capture the various facets of contemporary Hong Kong in his series of lush images.

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A Photographer Goes Behind the “Roma Walls”

July 24, 2014, 8:54 am

≫ Next: Taking a Closer Look at Surveillance Culture Through Photography

≪ Previous: A Photographer’s Journey Through a Changing Hong Kong

Bjorn Steinz aims to overcome the physical—and psychological—walls erected to exclude the Roma.

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Taking a Closer Look at Surveillance Culture Through Photography

July 28, 2014, 1:29 pm

≫ Next: Life on the Margins of China’s Economic Boom

≪ Previous: A Photographer Goes Behind the “Roma Walls”

A new exhibit explores how photography has been used both as an instrument of surveillance and as a tool to document, expose, and challenge the impact of surveillance on basic freedoms.

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Life on the Margins of China’s Economic Boom

August 8, 2014, 7:27 am

≫ Next: Growing Pains in California’s Most Neglected Region

≪ Previous: Taking a Closer Look at Surveillance Culture Through Photography

Documentary photographer Sim Chi Yin looks at the human faces behind China’s massive and rapid urbanization.

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Growing Pains in California’s Most Neglected Region

September 16, 2014, 9:01 am

≫ Next: For Chechen Women, Modesty is the New Normal

≪ Previous: Life on the Margins of China’s Economic Boom

Photographer Matt Black documents California’s Central Valley, one of the richest farming regions in the world, but also home to many of the poorest communities in the United States.

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For Chechen Women, Modesty is the New Normal

September 19, 2014, 11:46 am

≫ Next: Moving Walls 23: Group Exhibition

≪ Previous: Growing Pains in California’s Most Neglected Region

Photographer Diana Markosian traveled to Chechnya to explore what it means to come of age as a young woman living under an increasingly repressive regime.

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Moving Walls 23: Group Exhibition

September 30, 2014, 11:12 am

≫ Next: Moving Walls 22 / Watching You, Watching Me Opening Reception

≪ Previous: For Chechen Women, Modesty is the New Normal

The Open Society Documentary Photography Project is soliciting proposals for our next exhibition, Moving Walls 23, opening in June 2015 at Open Society Foundations–New York.

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Moving Walls 22 / Watching You, Watching Me Opening Reception

November 3, 2014, 3:00 pm

≫ Next: The Transformative Power of Photography and Collaboration

≪ Previous: Moving Walls 23: Group Exhibition

Moving Walls 22 / Watching You, Watching Me is an exhibition that explores how photography has been used as an instrument of surveillance, as well as a tool to expose and challenge its far-reaching negative effects.

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The Transformative Power of Photography and Collaboration

October 28, 2014, 11:08 am

≫ Next: Watching You, Watching Me Exhibit: Public Programs

≪ Previous: Moving Walls 22 / Watching You, Watching Me Opening Reception

Recipients of the 2014 Audience Engagement Grants cover a range of places, populations, and ways to merge activism with documentary art.

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Watching You, Watching Me Exhibit: Public Programs

November 3, 2014, 9:00 pm

≫ Next: Plain Sight: The Visual Vernacular of NYPD Surveillance

≪ Previous: The Transformative Power of Photography and Collaboration

Moving Walls 22 / Watching You, Watching Me explores how photography can be both an instrument of surveillance and a tool to expose and challenge its negative impact.

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