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Published to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, Glad Tidings of Benevolence brings together Moises Saman’s photographs taken in Iraq during this period and the following years, with documents and texts relating to the war. Exploring the construction—through image and language—of competing narratives of the war, the book represents the culmination of Saman’s twenty years of work across Iraq. " (Publisher presentation).

Gost, 2023
195 x 260 mm
384 pages, 200 images
Softback
ISBN 978-1-910401-77-4

Glad Tidings of Benevolence.

Larry Towell photographed the Old Colony Mennonites in rural Ontario and Mexico between 1990 and 1999. The resulting black and white photographs—accompanied by an extensive text drawn from diary notes and ‘the silt of the memory’—formed Towell’s landmark book,
The Mennonites, first published in 2000. This revised and updated second edition revisits the project and includes 40 previously unpublished photographs.
The Mennonites, originating in 16th century Holland, are non-conformists and have
traditionally separated themselves from the world by living in settlements, or colonies, set apart from society at large. This project focuses on the Old Colony sect, the most
conservative and insular sect, engaged in an ongoing battle with modernism which seeks to change and absorb them. Rather than compromise their way of life, Mennonites have
continually been forced to migrate around the world to maintain their freedom to live as they choose.
Larry Towell first encountered the Mennonites near his home in Ontario, Canada and
friendship with them gained him unique access to their communities.
‘In 1989, I discovered them in my own back yard, landhungry and dirt poor. They came looking for work in the vegetable fields and fruit orchards of Lambton, Essex, Kent and Haldimand-Norfolk Counties. I liked them a lot because they seemed otherworldly and therefore completely vulnerable in a society in which they did not belong and for which they
were not prepared. Because I liked them, they liked me, and although photography was
forbidden, they let me photograph them. That’s all there was to it.’
The result of this friendship was a unique and tender portrait of an often misunderstood and peripheral community. Towell’s texts chronicle—over many miles and seasons—the details
of the experiences of those he encountered, the harsh pressures wrought by both nature, the economy and society, and the battle to keep the drive of change at bay. Even when first published in 2000, the images appeared estranged from the contemporary world, and this
new edition, with previously unseen images, remains as poignant.
‘When a Mennonite loses his land, a bit of his human dignity is forfeited; so is his financial
solvency. He becomes a migrant worker, an exile who will spend the rest of his life drifting among fruit trees and vegetable vines, dreaming of owning his own farm some day.’

Gost
May 2022
250 x 185 mm Portrait format
288 pages
Hardback
978-1-910401-53-8

The Mennonites (2022)

The Iraq War began on March 20th, 2003, with the invasion of Iraq by a US-led international coalition aiming at the overthrow of authoritarian president Saddam Hussein and the destruction of Weapons of Mass Destruction, which later revealed to be inexistent. The war resulted in thousands of military and civilian casualties, caused the displacement of millions of refugees, destroyed the country’s economy and destabilised the whole region, creating a breeding ground for extremist groups to develop.

Magnum Photographers documented the different aspects of the war and its consequences on the populations and geopolitics still being felt today.

20 years Since the Beginning of...

On February 6, 2023, the earth trembled off Southern Turkey and Northern Syria. Two devastating earthquakes hit the region. Within a few hours, thousands of buildings crumbled down and millions of people were out in the streets. As of beginning of March, the latest reports stated that 50,000 had lost their lives and 120,000 were wounded.

Emin Özmen, Peter Van Agtmael, William Keo and Sabiha Çimen were on the field to document about the situation.

2023 Earthquake in Turkey and Syria...

Nanna Heitmann captures the snow covered graves of soldiers who lost their lives fighting for a private, Russian mercenary force known as Wagner, which consists mainly of inadequately trained ex-convicts. As of February 24th, 2023 at least 30,000 Wagner mercenaries have been killed, wounded, or captured since the February 2022 general invasion of Ukraine.

The High Casualties of Russia's...

"Divya Chaudhry is a 16-year-old from Madhya Pradesh--the rural Indian state with the fifth largest population in the country--who is bravely defying tradition. She’s using skills she learnt from UNFPA to thrive - and to eventually become financially independent, and able to make empowered, decisive choices about her own life.

Divya is part of the increased female labor force participation in India. Young women like her, fueled by youth empowerment groups, are actively delaying marriage and family formation.
Instead of early marriage, Divya is studying for a career in science, and taking a leadership role in a youth health project. She believes she is “empowered to do anything.”

Part of her motivation comes from her family, who also defied traditional Indian family values. Divya’s parents decided to only have two children, and her mother, Miradevi, 37, is an Accredited Social Health Activist, with a team that counsels women’s health and family planning to more than 10,000 families in the region. Her parents support Divya’s dreams of success and encourage her potential to flourish.

Divya’s decision to delay maternity is part of a larger trend which can help shift demographic challenges and contribute to rising human development indicators. India has been the largest contributor to population growth as the global count hits 8 billion. This is even as its fertility rate has declined to 2.1, (putting it in 96th place according to the UNFPA’s 2022 rankings. It is expected to soon overtake China as the world’s most populous country.

“The world’s population has reached 8 billion. This is a milestone for humanity and a moment for reflection,” says Andrea Wojnar, Representative India and Country Director Bhutan. These kinds of statistics always disproportionately affect the most vulnerable, including women and girls, which is why Divya is a trailblazer. She’s proving that social norms withholding the potential of women and girls can be reversed with ambition and knowledge.

“I want to and to become anything I want to,” she says happily, adding that her latest skill is to learn how to drive a motorcycle and run errands in the village-- something usually reserved for young men. “People in the village do talk and raise their eyebrows, but I have the support of my parents.” But Divya says, after seeing her riding with freedom and grace, the other girls in the village want to learn how to do the same. Divya is jubilant. “This is the power of Rights and Choices.” " - Text by Janine di Giovanni

Learning to Drive in India

In Poland and Germany, the population growth has been stagnating for several years and progressively suffer from loopholes in the labor force. The two countries, who experience some of the lowest unemployment rates in Europe, welcome asylum seekers, and adapt their systems to better integrate them. They became an opportunity to maintain the economic growth. The war also changed the attitudes of the local who, according to the latest Pew Research Center survey, conducted from March 25 2022 to May 5 2022, showed that 8 in 10 Polish now support taking refugees from countries where people are fleeing violence and war, up from 49% in 2018.

Enri Canaj went to Wroclaw, Essen and Berlin to meet with Ukrainian and Syrian educated women and mothers who created a new life in their hosting countries.

Host-Countries: Germany and Poland....

"MASI Lugano opens the 2023 season with an exhibition of rediscovered works by Swiss photographer Werner Bischof (1916 – 1954), here presented to the public for the first time.
(…). This exhibition, organised by MASI Lugano and Werner Bischof Estate in collaboration with Fotostiftung Schweiz Winterthur, which will be hosting the second leg of the project, is aimed at showcasing a little-known side of Werner Bischof, exploring his work in colour in a comprehensive manner for the first time. To this end, the exhibition include some one-hundred colour digital prints from the original negatives from 1939 to 1950s, restored for this occasion.
After a first introductory room, where a selection of the artist's original negatives, magazines, posters, and diaries offers insight into his modus operandi, the show opens into a boundless adventure in colour, through the worlds visited and experienced by Werner Bischof throughout the course of his entire career, alternating unpublished images captured using both his Rolleiflex, with square negatives, and a Leica with its classic 35 mm film format.
This journey in colour is particularly captivating in the series of works taken across Europe using the Devin Tri-Color camera. (...). For the exhibition, some sixty images taken by Bischof with the Devin Tri-Color camera have been selected and are presented for the first time, following the complex work of restoration and colour calibration of the original glass plates. (…)
The exhibition features subjects familiar to the Swiss artist, who, like few others, was able to combine aesthetics and feeling in a perfect composition: from the formal experiments of his early years of research to his studio and fashion photographs, from the illustration of Europe's post-war period to social documentary photography, from the intimate representation of the Far East to photographic campaigns in the US, right up to his last trip to South America.
(…)

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published in three different languages, englisch and german was published by Scheidegger & Spiess. And the italien version was published by Edizioni Casagrande, with texts by Tobia Bezzola, Clara Bouveresse, Luc Debraine and Peter Pfrunder.

MASI - Fondazione Museo d'arte della Svizzera italiana, Lugano 12.02.2023 – 02.07.2023

Fotostiftung Schweiz Winterthur 26.08.2023 – 21.01.2024

Werner Bischof: Unseen Colour

Thomas Hoepker

The "Ilısu Dam", in the region and beyond, is on everyone's lips. It has haunted these lands for decades. For years, a cruel countdown has been underway. As the controversial dam condemns an entire territory to disappear under water, the tragedy is compounded by uncertainty and dashed hopes as the project is constantly delayed. Once completed it will be the second largest dam in the country. Started in 2006, the project was described by the then Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, as bringing "the greatest benefit" to the people. In reality, the project is highly contested. It is a whole ecosystem that will be disrupted, but also the ancestral traditions and ways of life of an entire region.

-Extract written by Cloé Kerhoas, in collaboration with Emin Özmen

Turkey's Controversial Ilisu Dam...

On January 19, 31, February 7 and 11, millions took to the streets in France to protest against the government's recent pension reform proposal. This is the first time since 2010 that the 9 biggest worker unions were united in a common front. The reform would, among other policies, set the retirement age from 62 to 64, causing criticism from the government's leftists opponents. There were large disruptions in education (on the first day a historic number of 70% of teachers went on strike; 1 of 3 schools closed), rail and air transport and refineries. According to the authorities, 1,12 millions protesters gathered, according to the unions, they were more than 2 millions.

The fifth day of mobilisation, on March 7, gathered about 3.5 millions according to the CGT Union. As discussions in Parliament are coming to an end, demonstrators show no signs of fatigue and are already planning to strengthen the movement.

Jean Gaumy was on the field in the Northern cities of Le Havre and Fécamp as well as Peter Van Agtmael in Paris.

General Strike Against Retirement...

« I grew up and lived all my life in Seine-Saint-Denis (93), one of the poorest departments in France. First in a housing estate - in which my parents who fled the Cambodian war - found a home, then in a suburban area. This led me to discover different aspects of this department, which does not stop at the towers of the housing estates, as some would like to believe.
Seine-Saint-Denis is a place full of paradoxes, both stigmatized and romanticized. Through photography I always tried to represent this idea of opposition; all the nuances and contradictions that forge the identity of this suburb. I then began a long-term work in the ’’9-3’’ (department number), starting by documenting the adaptation of migrants in the cities of Saint-Denis and Aubervilliers.
The Coronavirus crisis has only exacerbated the social inequalities in this suburb, reinforcing the anger of the inhabitants who feel abandoned by their government. Indirectly, the public services have a mission of general interest, they represent the last bulwark between this anger and the government.
They are the embodiment of the State at the local level, and have to face the anger of the French people, as much in crisis as they are. Public services are the societal reflection of our country and of how the government treats its population. » - W. K.

William Keo obtained a grant from Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF) which published a call for proposals around the subject « Radioscopy of France », to realize this project. For almost a year, he documented the different kind of Public Services such as an anti-crime Brigade, an emergency service, public infrastructures, and a detention center.

Seine-Saint-Denis: Shortage in...

British guitarist and rock icon Jeff Beck has died at age 78. Best known for his work with the The Yardbirds and the Jeff Beck group, he had a substantial influence on guitarists of his own and younger generations of rock artists.

Jeff Beck: 1944-2023

"Three decades as a photojournalist have taken me to cover many conflicts worldwide. I was at the heart of wars from the Balkans to Africa, from the former USSR to Afghanistan via the Middle East. True to the definition of a photojournalist, I was always on the lookout for real conflict, moments of life and death, unpredictable situations as they only happen in times of war.
By documenting these conflicts, the more time I spent in the field, the more I realised that what was happening on the margins was just as interesting and important as the heart of the fights, even if they remained spectacular and strong. A few years ago, I decided to turn "the game" around and observe our world from the angle of "War Games." Looking for the fake/false. The staging. Of interpretation. A spectacle. The iconography of war influences many aspects of our daily life, itself often defined by a paradox between violence and peace, between a need for security and the showing of terror.

During the first half of 2022, I began to explore a France hit by the health crisis; a France already used to a state of emergency that has protected and preoccupied it for several years.
I immersed myself in a world of military, security, medical and first-aid training, virtual or semi-virtual recreations of combat, military-sports and strategic games, exhibitions and presentations of weapons, the political, ideological and cultural battles, engaging with the memory of past wars, historical tourism. All are forms of "war" in the broadest sense.
At the end of February 2022, the shock of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and a new war in Europe took me by surprise and gave a dark and bitter background to my "War Games." Do I have the right to "play at war" when a few hours to the east of our home is a real war, brutal, atrocious?
Little by little, day after day, details and clues of the war in Ukraine crept into my documentation of France: Die-ins of victims of the conflict, scenario changes during military training, preparations for the reinforcement of the embargo, national evacuation exercises, rising wheat prices." - T.D.

Thomas Dworzak's story is part of a national photographic project called « Radioscopy of France » and launched by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF).

France. War games.

The Kurdish villages in the border area of northern Syria and Iraq, are harassed by Turkish drones. The bombing has never stopped since the ceasefire was established in 2019.

The Tall Tamr region, in Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan), is located in the 32-kilometer buffer zone that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is working to complete while Erbil area, in northern Iraq, has continuously received turkish attacks since the last days of the IS caliphate, the terrorist organisation that has lefts heavy repercussions.

Refugees camps are settled in different cities, hosting civilians and as well IS family members.

Turkey's political and economical tension target as well the primary resources, already impaired.
The flow of the Euphrates River has been reduced by climate change and by dams built upstream by Turkey, where it originates. The war has damaged two-thirds of the country's water treatment plants, half of the pumping stations and one-third of the water towers.

An invasion of northern Syria against the Kurds would be a way for the Turkish leader to boost his flagging popularity ahead of elections in 2023.

Magnum photographer William Keo was in the area on assignment for Le Monde newspaper

Turkey's Shadow Wars

Everyday, approximately one thousand Venezuelan refugees cross the border into Brazil, fleeing political instability, violence, poverty and a desegregated health system. The waiting to be relocated can last months depending on whether migrants find job opportunities or have family waiting for them. In a country they don’t speak the language, many, especially indigenous women and children will stay in camps at the border, in poor living conditions. Among their multiple needs - child care, medicine, shelter - the need for awareness of reproductive health stands out. In the remote border towns of Brazil, where knowledge about contraception is sometimes lacking, both populations found they could help each other. 23 year-old mother Besania Hernández, of Warao origins, has then been serving as a facilitator for the UNFPA to inform women about their sexual health and reproductive rights. Yet, in Brazil, birth control is accessible and free. According to Dr. Pamela Biasdakosta, indigenous tribes do not have the same access to standard healthcare and education about family planning but she has noticed a change in mentality in the last three years.
On commission for the UNFPA, Newsha Tavakolian travelled through the extreme northern Brazilian region of Roraima and witnessed what these neighbors could bring to the local communities.

Learning From Neighbors in Brazil...

In Serbia, an increased number of households have decided to return to the countryside. If this large Balkan country still experience an urbanisation rate of more than 56%, especially in Belgrade, this trend is slightly down (-0.4%) compared to last year. In Vrmdza, it is the case for Aleksandra, Igor, Silvana and Dragana, who all have lived abroad or in the city and are highly qualified. There, in the middle of the sumptuous scenery offered by nature, they reconnect with the earth and a peaceful life.

Serbia: Returning to the countryside...

Since 2007 Japan has been experiencing a demographic decline, due to an increasing aging rate and low birth and immigration rates. In 2050, people over 65 should represent almost 40% of the population compared to 28% in 2018. To counter the negative effects of this trend on its deficit, the archipelago adopts new policies, including raising the retirement age. Some of these workers are not unhappy about it, like Toyoko (94 y.o.) who owns and works at her Ramen noodle restaurant "Rairaiken", Mitsuko (80 y.o.) who runs a target shooting place "Shibu-Onsen Club "at Shibu-Onsen, or Kichiroji (74 y.o.) owner of a Ryokan.
Cristina de Middel went to meet some of them who continue to lead a full life.

Aging in Japan

After the security phase, which lasted nearly two years, the restoration of Notre-Dame-de-Paris began in September 2022. The workers have undertaken the cleaning of the sculptures, ornements and paintings as well as the erection of a gigantic scaffolding that will allow the reconstruction of the spire. This one should point in the Parisian sky from March 2023. This cleaning chapter was also an opportunity to make discoveries; a lead sarcophagus probably dating from the 14th century and pieces of sculpture from the 13th century from the fall of the rood screen between the heart and the nave, lapidary marks, left by the craftsmen during the centuries of construction of the cathedral. Notre-Dame is a gold mine for archaeologists in search of information about the past, who knows what secrets it still holds in its heart.
Patrick Zachmann has been following every stage of this long process since 2019.

Notre-Dame de Paris, The Restoration...

Ukrainian President Vicktor Yanukovych’s cabinet abandoned an agreement on closer trade ties in the EU, favoring closer cooperation with Russia. What began as small protests escalated to the Revolution of Dignity, also known as the Maidan Revolution, a violent protest with at least 88 deaths. Following the Euromaidan protests and removal of Yanukovych, partnered with pro-Russia unrest in Ukraine, Russian annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea.

Demonstrations in the Donbas area of Ukraine escalated into a war between the Ukrainian Government and Russian-backed separatist forces. Russian military vehicles crossed the border in several locations of Donetsk Oblast, which is believed to be responsible for the defeat of Ukrainian forces in early September of 2014. In November, Ukrainian military reported intensive movement of Russian combat troops into separatist-controlled parts of eastern Ukraine.

In October 2021, Russia reignited concerns of a potential invasion after moving troops and military equipment to the shared border with Ukraine. The buildup continued until Russia launched a full-scale invasion in February, 2022.

Russo-Ukrainian Conflict

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