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Dear SDN Readers:

If you have noticed a lull in communications from SDN this past month it is because we have been busy completing our first issue of ZEKE magazine scheduled to go to press later this week. The magazine will go on sale March 20 in both print and digital formats. It has been extremely exciting to work on a print publication, especially in the age of digital and mobile. I hope you agree and will order your copy later in the week. If you are in the New York  area, I also invite you to join us for the launch party on April 16 at the Anastasia Photo Gallery.

We are also now getting ready for the exhibition at the Bronx Documentary Center of the winners of our last Call for Entries. I hope you can join us on Saturday, May 30, to view the stunning work of Paolo Marchetti, Ake Ericson, Michelle Frankfurter, Glenna Gordon, and Jordi Pizarro Torrell.

I am very pleased to present this month's Featured Photographer, Lianne Milton. Her work from Rio de Janeiro is raw, intense, and an inside view of the vibrancy and the violence in one of the world's largest and fastest growing cities as it gets ready to host the 2016 Olympics. Lianne's photos are also featured in the current issue of ZEKE magazine to illustrate the essay on Rio written by Paula Sokolska.

Glenn Ruga
SDN Founder and Director
Lianne Milton
 
  Photos by Lianne Milton from "Right Side of the Wrong Life".

Lianne Milton/March 2015 Featured Photographer of the month
Right Side of the Wrong Life, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
 
This essay depicts an intersection of stories exploring the rhythm of chaos and change in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro as its residents anticipate the approaching 2016 Olympics. Life in the favelas is chaotic, intense, rhythmic, but also home to the new middle class, baile funk, new businesses, poverty, and thriving communities. Favelas hold a labyrinth of stories and memories throughout the alleyways that intrinsically wind like veins pumping life into a culture of its own.  
View Exhibit >>

Lianne Milton
Lianne Milton is an American editorial and documentary photographer based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her work focuses on the effects of politics on people and their environments, in places such as, Southeast Asia, Latin American, as well as the U.S. Lianne began her freelance career in 2009, after working as a newspaper photographer for three years. She is a member of Panos Pictures.   


March 2015 Spotlight

Faces of the Rasin Foundation; Haiti>>
by Cheryl Clegg/Haiti

The non-profit, Rasin Foundation's mission is to improve the health of the poorest citizens of rural Haiti. In January 2013, Cheryl Clegg traveled for the first time with the doctors of the Rasin Foundation to their clinic in Le Petite Riviere, a village just outside of Leogane. Walking through the sugarcane...

Azerbaijan: The Elegance of Fire & The Massacre of Innocents >>
by REZA/Azerbaijan

"In 1987, I have been invited to Baku and I am looking forward to seeing it. I'm convinced that I shall find something of my own childhood there. This is my first travel in this country which is part of the Soviet bloc. Since that journey, I have visited Azerbaijan several times as a photojournalist...

Dear Japanese: Children of the War>>
by Miyuki Okuyama/Netherlands

"Dear Japanese | Children of the war" is a documentary made with my personal perspective as a Japanese immigrant to the Netherlands, portraying the offspring of Japanese soldiers and Dutch-Indonesian women, born during the Pacific War in Indonesia under Japanese occupation, now living in the...

"Coming Out">>
by Antonia Decker/United States

The inspiration for this exhibit began from a simple realization in my university dorm room: we, young adults, were all in our own worlds--feeling, reflecting, exploring--but within such close proximity of one another. We had been granted the same stage, a 12 x 15-foot box with pasty walls and light, ...

An open school for fewer degrees>>
by A.M. Ahad/Bangladesh

Anika, a nine-year-old Bangladeshi girl, lives on the street with her family and reads in a free school on a street in Dhaka. Her mother is a rag picker and her father abandoned them. It is estimated that there are over 600,000 street children living in ...

Gathering of millions>>
by Saud A Faisal/Bangladesh

It is the third largest Muslim congregation in the world, held on the banks of the Turag River near Dhaka, Bangladesh. Despite the large number of devotees living within a confined space, generally there are very few problems of sanitation, cooking, and internal movements ...

In Search of The Familiar; Stories From Kolkata>>
by Nancy Farese/India

The adage "Never turn down an adventure without a good reason" seems to recede in the distance as we age. We pad and insulate our lives till the chance for stepping into the fast lane of the foreign becomes increasingly remote. Sometimes adventures do come to us, unbidden and even unconsciously...


Advisory Committee
Kristen Bernard
Lori Grinker
Steve Horn
Ed Kashi
Reza
John Sevigny
Jeffrey D. Smith
Stephen Walker
Frank Ward
Jamie Wellford

Glenn Ruga
Founder & Director

Barbara Ayotte
Communications Director

Caterina Clerici
Special Issue Editor  

 
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SDN News
DocClassZEKE Magazine Goes on Sale March 20

ZEKE Cover ZEKE magazine will be available for sale starting March 20 in both print and digital formats and features work of leading SDN photographers. The first issue will have three feature articles exploring water scarcity, the Bangladesh garment industry, and Rio de Janeiro.

Join us for a ZEKE launch party 
Thursday, April 16
6:30 - 8:00 pm
Anastasia Photo
166 Orchard Street, New York, NY 
More information >>

magnum
Magnum Foundation and Brown Institute for Media Innovation Sponsor Digital Narratives Lab
Photographers and journalists are now faced with incredible new challenges and opportunities to shape visual storytelling for social impact. So while independent reporters are adopting emerging digital tools, news corporations and media startups are also moving strategically into interactive journalism, to produce more immersive and shareable stories.
More information and to register>>

HPAHumanity Photo Awards Submissions Deadline April 15
The Humanity Photo Awards (HPA), with support of UNESCO and founded by the China Folklore Photographic Association, is a biennial photography contest focusing on folklore cultures,  portrait and costume, architecture, living customs, production and commerce, festivities and traditional rites. During the past 16 years, photographers from 153 countries have participated in HPA. Six Grand Awards winners will receive $2,000  cash prize and transport allowance.
For more information, awards, and to enter>>

submitSubmit Your Work to SDN
Find out how to have your work included in ZEKE, Spotlight, and eligible for Featured Photographer of the Month.
Find out how >>



About Social Documentary Network
SocialDocumentary.net is a website for photographers, NGOs, journalists, editors, and students to create and explore documentary exhibits 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.