Photoville 2013: 'Photography-focused pop up village' comes alive in Brooklyn

Photograph by Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times from the exhibition LIBERIA: REMEMBERING presented at Photoville 2013. (Monrovia, Liberia, 2003). -- The bloody siege of Monrovia in 2003 marked the culmination of 10 years of brutal civil war in Liberia, a West African country that was originally established as a colony for freed African-American slaves in the 19th century. Photojournalists who covered the battles in Liberia’s capital in 2003 captured vivid and often brutal images of the violence that engulfed the country. “Liberia: Remembering” includes the work of nine photojournalists who were in Monrovia at the end of the civil war in the summer of 2003. Of those, three have died covering other conflicts, including Chris Hondros, Tim Hetherington, and Martin Adler. The show is presented in their memory and in honor of all those who lost their lives during Liberia’s decade-long civil war. (Photoville.org)

Photograph by Donald Weber/VII from the exhibition INTERROGATIONS presented at Photoville 2013. -- 'Interrogations' is about a place where justice, mercy, hope, and despair are manufactured, bought, bartered, and sold; a sound-proofed factory where truth is both the final product and the one thing that never leaves the room.

From 2005 to 2012, Donald Weber traveled through Russia and Ukraine photographing the physical and emotional ruins of the unstoppable storm called history. Meeting and living with ordinary people who had survived much—from wars and conflict, to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, to the fall of the Soviet Union—he began to see the modern state as a primitive, bloody, and sacrificial rite of unnamed and unchecked power. (Photoville.org)

Photograph by Tyler Hicks/The New York Times from the exhibit TYLER HICKS: ONE YEAR presented at Photoville 2013. (Gaza City, 2012). -- Over more than a decade in Iraq and Afghanistan, in Somalia and Libya, capturing America’s wars, the Arab Spring and African civil conflict, Tyler Hicks has come to personify combat photography. “My job is to document in the most simple way possible and the most straightforward way possible the news that’s happening in front of me,” Mr. Hicks said. Might it not be better, he has been asked, to forget some of the horrors he had seen? “When you put yourself in somebody else’s space, you involve yourself in someone else’s world,” he replied. “To try to turn off those experiences after the fact would be wrong. You have a responsibility both to yourself and to your subjects to remember them.” (Photoville.org)

Photograph by Martin Roemers from the exhibit METROPOLIS presented at Photoville 2013. -- Martin Roemers embarked on Metropolis in 2009 to document this process of urbanization by focusing on the world’s megacities – places with a population of more than ten million people. How can people live in cities that are so vast yet so incredibly crowded and hectic? What are the differences between these megacities and what do they have in common? How do cities and their populations evolve? For all their chaos, big cities still have a sense of humanity. It is this humanity and sense of interconnectedness that he wishes to reveal in these photographs, the dynamic character of each city and the urban dwellers who make it their home.(Photoville.org)

Photograph by Kisha Bari from the exhibit HOW SANDY HIT ROCKAWAY presented at Photoville 2013. -- Almost a year after Hurricane Sandy hit the coastal areas of New York and New Jersey, the road to recovery is still long and hard. With so many images in the mass media depicting landscapes of devastation and disaster immediately after Hurricane Sandy, How Sandy Hit Rockaway focuses on the people affected by the disaster and the unique obstacles to recovery facing each individual. This powerful collection of emotive human faces aims to bring to light the ongoing humanitarian issues of recovering after such an event. From public housing residents stuck in mold ridden apartments to small business owners paralysed by their insurance and displaced families stuck in a hotel limbo for months on end, each of the residents have a unique issue or story that needs to be told. The people in this ongoing series are not just a picture on a wall or a fleeting news story. We need to identify with these individuals and think about our own human story and the relationship to the people of Rockaway recovering from an enormous natural disaster and the issues at hand. (Photoville.org)

Photograph by Nick Zinner from the exhibition 501 PHOTOGRAPHS presented at Photoville 2013. -- "I’ve been taking photographs since I was in high school. I’ve got a terrible memory and a tendency towards voyeurism. I was also born with a mild binocular vision disorder which means that essentially I have no depth perception and see the world mostly flat, like a photograph. But that’s not really important. What’s important is that somewhere along the way I formed a rock band with my friends, and found myself in a different city every other day, which made me want to look around even more. Everywhere I am I see tiny moments of a time and of a place that will never be repeated, like film stills from a very, very long film. I take photos of everything because I don’t want to miss anything. And sometimes an image can suggest more than it’s showing, and I need what it evokes to attempt to understand the world, or sometimes laugh or sigh or simply just remember.” (Nick Zinner/Photoville.org)

Photograph by Anaïs López from the exhibition
ONLY IN BURUNDI presented at Photoville 2013. -- The past two years photographer Anaïs López and writer Eva Smallegange worked on this project and eventually succeeded in making a new book about Burundi: a book with a positive outlook, containing personal stories of Koky, their guide and the main narrator. He tells about his childhood and introduces ten of his friends from different strata of society such as the manioc miller from whom he buys his flour, the princess who was once engaged to his brother, the president, and his cousin the cow herder. They share their view on what you need to survive in this intriguing country, five years after the ending of the civil war that raged for years: to get things done you need the right connections. (Photoville.org)

Photograph by Ann Curry/NBC from the exhibition REPORTING OUR WORLD presented at Photoville 2013. -- ‘Reporting Our World’ uses five key photographs to shine a light on domestic and global issues documented by NBC News anchor/correspondent Ann Curry. The images are brought to life utilizing augmented reality technology, creating an interactive, multimedia experience which connects Ann Curry’s broadcast journalism with her passion for photography. (Photoville.org)

Photograph by Jason Florio from the exhibition RIVER GAMBIA: A 1044km AFRICAN ODYSSEY presented at Photoville 2013. -- Florio, along with Helen, his wife and expedition co-leader, and two Gambian fisherman, Abdou and Ebou, they set off on 1044km odyssey – from the river’s humble source in the Fouta Djallon Highlands of Guinea, through the gold bearing lands of Senegal and along the length of The Republic of The Gambia to the Atlantic ocean. They traveled 300km by motorcycle/4×4 and 744km by canoe – creating a photographic and written account along the way, of the tribes and communities whose traditional lifestyle and livelihood depend upon this mighty African waterway. (Photoville.org)

Photograph by Karen Rodriguez from the exhibition PHOTO REQUESTS FROM SOLITARY presented at Photoville 2013. -- 'Solitary' features photographs that represent a unique collaboration between men held in supermax prisons and the photographers who fulfilled their requests. (Photoville.org)

An overview of Photoville 2012 at Brooklyn Bridge Park, Brooklyn, NY. (Photo by Julienne Schaer)

Visitors tour the exhibitions at Photoville 2012. (Photo by Alexis Devaney)

Visitors taking a photo op at Photoville 2012. (Photo by Alexis Devaney)

Inside one of the cargo containers (exhibit space) at Photoville 2012. (Photo by Emma Raynes)

Visitors tour the exhibitions at Photoville 2012. (Photo by Alexis Devaney)

A greenhouse installation at Photoville 2012. (Photo by Alexis Devaney)

A lecture series during Photoville 2012. (Photo by Alexis Devaney)

An exhibition 'container' at Photoville 2012. (Photo by Alexis Devaney)

Evening screenings at Photoville 2012. (Photo by Alexis Devaney)