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For Immediate Release
November 17, 2008
Contact
Barbara Ayotte, Director of Communications
617.549.0152
bayotte@socialdocumentary.net
NEW PHOTOGRAPHY WEBSITE LAUNCHED: SocialDocumentary.net
Features Documentary Photography from Around the World, Offers Easy-to-Use Tools to Create Online Exhibits
SocialDocumentary.net has been launched! This new website features documentary photography from around the world--images and words that are devoted entirely to exploring humanity, culture and societies through the documentary form.
SocialDocumentary.net, provides easy-to-use tools for photographers to create quality online exhibits in five simple steps.
"Unlike other image sharing sites, such as Flickr or Shutterfly, SocialDocumentary.net, is committed to hosting only quality images with a strong point of view and a deliberate and meaningful composition. The images and writing must have documentary integrity and technical quality," said Glenn Ruga, publisher and founder of SocialDocumentary.net. "There are no other sites devoted to the documentary form that allow photographers-both amateur and professional-to easily upload their own quality exhibits and to be a part of the fastest growing community and collection of documentary work on the web," said Ruga.
Technical Features
- SocialDocumentary.net hosts exhibits (minimum of 6 images) as low as $1.50 per image per year.
- Images are uploaded at a large size that will nearly fill a standard high resolution browser, allowing web visitors to see more than they normally would on other sites.
- Each exhibit has a unique size slider that enables visitors to adjust the size of the image simply by moving the slider.
- All exhibits have a slide show feature and visitors can determine the duration of each image.
- Each exhibit provides statistics on number of visitors and allows viewer feedback.
- Each exhibit comes with a unique URL with the photographer's name.
- The website will limit the ability of web users to copy images.
Advocacy and Community
SocialDocumentary.net also includes advocacy functionality allowing visitors to take action-either by contacting or supporting groups working on the issues that are documented or by engaging in direct political action. Visitors can also comment on the issues and exhibits, enabling a community discussion on critical issues facing the world.
"The goal of the site is to connect and inform societies around the world through photography. It is designed to be a resource for teachers, students, policymakers, and consumers who are concerned and interested in learning about the world," said Ruga. "I wanted to create an online image bank of quality photographs that create a fresh way to look at the world and a greater understanding of humanity-whether struggling farmers in Darfur, suburban teenagers in Philadelphia, AIDS orphans in Mozambique, postwar Bosnia and Kosovo, or life in Siberia and Moscow," said Ruga.
Featured Exhibits on SocialDocumentary.net
Current photography exhibits include the following topics:
- An exploration of the people and urban landscape of Lahore and Karachi, Pakistan, by Kevin Bubriski;
- Change in the Yamal Penisula, Western Siberia, Russia, a gas development area populated by reindeer herding Nenets by Bryan and Cherry Alexander;
- The first Waldorf School in Western Africa, in Sierra Leone by Annabel Clark
- Cave Dwellers in Hebron, West Bank, by Eddie Gerald
- Homeless women in the United States, by A.M. Rousseau
- Alzheimer's Disease, by John-Robert Ward II
- Children with Special Needs, by Andrea Mellen
About the Founder
Glenn Ruga, a full-time graphic designer, works in Lowell, MA and resides in Concord, MA. A part-time social documentarian and a lifelong human rights activist, Ruga has created traveling and online documentary exhibits on an immigrant community in Holyoke, MA, on the struggle for a multicultural future in Bosnia, and the war and aftermath in Kosovo. He is the owner and creative director of Visual Communications and the founder and President of Center for Balkan Development, a nonprofit organization created in 1993 to help stop the genocide in Bosnia and create a just and sustainable future in the former Yugoslavia. Glenn has a B.A. in Social Theory from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and an MFA in Graphic and Advertising Design from Syracuse University. He also has a certificate in Interactive Communications from Massachusetts College of Art.
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