From June 16th to June 20th 2010 the second Lumix Festival for Young Photojournalism took place in the city of Hannover. Along with lectures of renowned photographers, panel discussions and portfolio reviews, more than 1400 images were presented in sixty exhibitions. A close insight into the favelas of Brazil’s second largest city was presented in João Pina’s photo essay “Gangland – Rio de Janeiro’s Urban Violence.” In one of the most violent cities in the world Pina looked at both sides of the story, documenting young drug dealers and gang leaders, as well as police units going about their work with an oftentimes indiscriminate force. In a straight and unbiased fashion Portuguese photographer João Pina shows a cruel reality in which it is nearly impossible to escape the violence.

Selected by Sophia Greiff on August 17, 2010

This series of images accompanied by text is part of a larger installation called “Je suis la frontière” (I am the border) which encompasses a growing archive of audio and visual documents that explore the complexity of living in the US – Mexico borderland. The whole archive constitutes a personal cartography of El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, two cities that are at the same contiguous but divided by four international bridges. In her work, Vera seeks to challenge the limited and biased information that the media gives us about certain places in the world. She believes in approaching those places by listening to individuals, following their steps, and walking on the streets. She thus hopes to create a personal cartography of a place and to give presence to the voices and life stories behind the sometimes overwhelming statistics.

Selected by Marta Daho on July 27, 2010

I have photographed in rural Rajasthan for ten years now, in villages. Over the years I developed a relationship with the NGO Urmul Setu Sansthan, in Lunkaransar town, where I knew I could always stay when I was passing through. In 2003 they organised a Balika Mela – or fair for girls, attended by almost fifteen hundred adolescent girls from 70 odd villages. At the Mela, I created a photo-stall for people to come in and have their portraits taken, and then buy at a subsidised rate. I had a few basic props and backdrops – whatever we could get from the local town on our limited budget, but it was fairly minimal, and since it’s dusty and out in the desert everything would keep getting blown around anyway. Some of the girls who posed for these pictures also went on to learn photography in the workshops that we started in May of that year, and two years later they documented the fair themselves.

Selected by Yumi Goto on July 2, 2010

Indonesian photographer Veronica F. Wijaya: “When the tsunami hit Aceh, Indonesia in 2004, a hundred thousand people died and tens of thousand houses were destroyed. It wiped out the infrastructure, making the region inhabitable. In Teluk Dalam, South of Nias, life hasn’t changed by the tsunami for the family in these photographs. They had been living in a shack, and reconstructed it, seeing no reason to move to a tent camp for homeless and displaced people. They preferred the relative comfort of their slum house. These photographs document what their living conditions are like.

Selected by Yumi Goto on June 21, 2010

Huang Xiaoliang: “An Expectation or a New Miracle” is my series related to memory and yearning for the future. Many things from my memory appear in these works; these things are from scenes that I remember. The works are all on a line, like a platform for my feelings, where wild weeds and modern things overlap, uncovering some tiny specks of hope in a sad situation. All of this emerges from the shadows – shadows can be seen, but the thing itself cannot, as if it were the principle of time. It is like the reverse image of yourself in water, which allows you to examine yourself in the mist.Slight sadness is an absolutely necessary attitude towards past memories.

Selected by Three Shadows Photography Art Centre on June 16, 2010

Wang Huan, winner of the Three Shadows Photography Award’s Shiseido Prize: In the small town of Zhuantang near Hangzhou, lives a group of simple, decent people. It was this simplicity that moved me and made me want to record their lives and engage in this narration about life’s vicissitudes. By using a camera to catch this simplicity, I also achieved my artistic intention. As a result, I often walked around Zhuantang’s streets and alleys with my “toy camera,” keeping my “image diary”, my “alley graffiti.”

Selected by Three Shadows Photography Art Centre on June 13, 2010

Yamalike Mountain lies in the city of Urumqi in Xinjiang Autonomous Region. The Urumqi Train Station stands at the foot of the mountain, with the railroad tracks forming a border of sorts. Yamalike Mountain is Urumqi’s main shanty-town, and people call it the slums. Tens of thousands of migrant or semi-migrant Uighur, Hui, Han, and Kyrghiz people live there. The mountain is their home, and the city below is the place where they try to make a living and pursue their dreams. Drawn there by destiny, I started taking photographs of this wild and lively mountain by chance. I became captivated by these pure, unaffected and dirty children.

Selected by Three Shadows Photography Art Centre on June 12, 2010

Today’s presentation: “Silence,” by Mu Ge, semifinalist of the 2010 Three Shadows Photography Award. The award invited a five-member international jury to China, consisting of Les Rencontres d’Arles Photography Festival Director François Hébel, Museum of Modern Art Photography Curator Eva Respini, art critic Karen Smith, Japanese art critic Kotaro Iizawa, and Three Shadows Photography Art Centre Founder RongRong.

Selected by Three Shadows Photography Art Centre on June 11, 2010

The 2010 Three Shadows Photography Award is a juried competition that selects artists that display a spirit of individuality and artistic potential from the emerging trends of Chinese photography. Through professional production, criticism, exhibition, and publishing, the award introduces the newest achievements of Chinese contemporary photography to a broad audience. The juried competition is open to photographers of Chinese descent dedicated to the creation of contemporary photography art in China or abroad regardless of age. On January 22, 2010, the Three Shadows Photography Award committee made their preliminary selections. Twenty artists were chosen as semifinalists out of more than two hundred applicants.

Selected by Three Shadows Photography Art Centre on June 10, 2010

Featuring Benjamin Ong’s Songs For Sorrow. “Indeed the idols I have loved so long, have done my credit in this world much wrong, have drowned my glory in a shallow cup, and sold my reputation for a Song.” Songs for Sorrow is inspired by the works of Omay Khayyam, an 11th Century poet, astronomer and philosopher. Abandoning any notion of the photograph as a document of the real, each work is a visual performance; a visual fable that finds it’s truth in imaginative resonance rather than hard evidence.

Selected by Recommending Viewer on May 16, 2010