Greetings!
This week we celebrate being live for six months and I want to take this opportunity to thank you and everyone else who has contributed to making SDN a success. The photographers who have created exhibits deserve the greatest acknowledgment, followed by our members and viewers, who are just as much a part of this website. And I also want to thank our Advisory Committee for their volunteer efforts.
The world is a very rapidly changing place. We strongly believe that documentary photographers play an important role in helping us understand how ordinary people adjust to these changes and demand new changes. This is as true in Burma, Afghanistan, and
Ethiopia as it is in the United States, Europe, and South America.
It is always with great pleasure that we prepare these Spotlights featuring new work submitted over the course of the previous week by photographers from around the world who, often at their own expense, go to great efforts to bring us these important stories.
Thank you and best regards,
Glenn Ruga
Founder |
Featured Exhibit/April 14, 2009
Existence of Dismissal: Obstetric Fistula in Ethiopia
Photographs by Yanina Manolova
Hamlin Fistula Hospital, Ethiopia.
Yanina Manolova, originally from Bulgaria, is a freelance photographer based in Washington, DC. She has worked on projects in Africa, Latin America, Europe and USA. She is dedicated to working on worldwide humanitarian and health care-associated documentary projects.
Her photos have appeared in numerous exhibits and she has won several international awards and various nominations including the Alexia Foundation, the Northern Short Course in Photojournalism, Southern Short Course in News Photography, NPPA 2008 Women In Photojournalism, National Geographic (Bulgaria), PX3 Prix de la Photographie (Paris) and many others. Her work has been featured in US Oncology News magazine; CITY magazine, World Health Organization, United Nations Population Fund, The Fistula Foundation, and National Geographic (Bulgaria).
Ethiopia has one of the highest maternal death rates in the world. 15% of the approximately 29 million women living in rural, mountainous areas of Ethiopia experience serious complications during childbirth. For a woman in obstructed labor, the nearest doctor able to perform a cesarean section may be over 200 miles away. In Ethiopia alone, about 9,000 women develop fistula each year. An obstetric fistula is a hole between the vagina and adjoining organs, and is caused by unrelieved, prolonged or obstructed labor, often lasting from 1 to 7 days. Because of the wetness and odor caused by their constantly leaking urine, these women are often shunned from their home villages, and are ignored or abandoned with no support and no means for survival, until someone tells them that a cure awaits them in places such as Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital.
View the Exhibit.
New York Photo Festival, May 13-19
SDN is proud to be a media sponsor of the New York Photo Festival, curated by William A. Ewing, Chris Boot, Jody Quon, and Jon Levy. These world-renowned curators all bring their personal visions in contemporary photography to the main pavilions of the 2009 edition of The New York Photo Festival. More information.
Portfolio Review
The NYPH'09 Portfolio Review will be the centerpiece of the new Review Pavilion. It is a platform for all levels of aspiring and professional photographers to present their body of work for review and critique by leading experts in the fields of photography, art, media, and advertising and to receive guidance and mentorship for future artistic and commercial career development. The portfolio review will be run by photography book publisher powerHouse Books.
For more information, visit the website at www.nyphotofestival.com
Call for Entries: Documentary Photography
Deadline May 12, 2009. Documentary photography has
the power to tell stories, create social change, awaken
emotions, and show the intimate and unseen. This exhibition will
feature the artistic viewpoint of the documentary photographer.
Eligibility: The exhibition is open to photographers world wide, both
amateur and professional. The Center for Fine Art Photography invites
photographers working in all media, styles, and schools of thought to
participate in this exhibition. Experimental and mixed techniques are
welcome. Juror: Ed Kashi. Ed Kashi is a photojournalist dedicated to
documenting the social and political issues that define our times. His
images have appeared in National Geographic, the New York Times Magazine, Time, MediaStorm, GEO, Newsweek, and many other domestic and international publications. For more information, the Center for Fine Arts Photography.
About SocialDocumentary.net
SocialDocumentary.net is a new website for photographers, NGOs, journalists, editors, and students to create and explore documentary websites investigating critical issues facing the world today. Recent exhibits have explored oil workers in the Niger River Delta, male sex workers in India, Central American immigrant women during their journey north, and Iraqi and Afghan refugees in Greece. Click here to view all of the exhibits.
