“Container,” by Anna Simone Wallinger: For refugees and asylum seekers who arrive in Berlin, a settlement of container-like accommodations in an industrial area just outside of Berlin-Spandau functions as a central collection point. In this area, no (social) infrastructure is available either for adults or children. For the duration of their stay, people accommodated here are thus limited in their being to living within the walls of a container home.

Selected by Recommending Viewer on September 1, 2010

In a region that has been stirred up by political, religious and military conflicts for centuries, Italian photographer Davide Monteleone captured scenes of an everyday life that is still far away from normality. With an eye for telling details he transmits a sense of agitation and uncertainty lurking underneath the even surface. His images of the Russian Caucasus are poetic and captivating, yet informative and insightful.

Selected by Sophia Greiff on August 26, 2010

In his photo essay “A Star in the Sky” photographer Thomas Lekfeldt accompanied the Danish girl Vibe and her family. Vibe was diagnosed with a cerebral tumor at the age of five and died two years later. In sensitive and intimate images Lekfeldt documents a family life between hospitalizations and chemotherapy, joy and sorrow, hope and despair. Capturing this plethora of emotions without the intention of being tear-jerking, Thomas Lekfeldt presented a very touching and emotional series.

Selected by Sophia Greiff on August 24, 2010

From June 16th to June 20th 2010 the second Lumix Festival for Young Photojournalism took place in the city of Hannover. In his work “The Terrible City – Gaza 2009” German photographer Heinrich Völkel focuses on the urban structure of a city that has been the centre of violent confrontations between Israelis and Palestinians since the 1970s. It is a city of ruins and debris, in which people are attempting to regain a state of normality. Showing a life in improvised circumstances, Heinrich Völkel also has an eye for the special aesthetics of the ruins.

Selected by Sophia Greiff on August 20, 2010

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

It hasn’t been so long since Kabul was considered an open-minded metropolis. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Afghan capital was a popular stop on the hippie trail to southern Asia. Now, after thirty years of occupation and war, Afghanistan is struggling to reestablish its identity. Residents are pessimistic about the future. Rebuilding the city drags on, and the constant fear of new attacks has shaken people’s trust in NATO forces. “Crossing Kabul” is a portrait of today’s Kabul where, far from the fighting, normality is slow to return. German photographer Daniel Pilar focuses on everyday situations caught between tradition, Western influence and social progress.

Selected by Sophia Greiff on August 11, 2010

From June 16th to June 20th 2010 the second Lumix Festival for Young Photojournalism took place in the city of Hannover. One of the most touching and affecting stories was the work “Albino – In the Shadow of the Sun” by Swedish photographer Johan Bävman. By portraying people with a pigmentary abnormality who are being discriminated against and even killed due to the widespread superstition that their body parts hold magical powers, Bävman calls attention to a group of outcasts in Tanzanian society. He shows the traces and wounds that the sun has left on the skin of the portrayed but refrains from displaying images of suffering and misery. Amongst the hardship there’s also laughter and hope, there are friendships and intimacy.

Selected by Sophia Greiff on August 8, 2010

Mathieu Pernot’s work analyzes the relationship between the individual and the power exerted by different social institutions. The artist uses the photographic medium at the same time that he questions its normative effects. What is particularly interesting is that his work does not only offer an état de lieux but each project could also seen as a piece of active resistance. Pernot’s opposition is silent, far from touching on the spectacular. It is solid and advances progressively.

Selected by Marta Daho on August 5, 2010

Khumbu, also known as the Everest region, is one of the three sub-regions of Sherpa settlement in the Himalayas. The region attracts visitors from around the globe; mountaineering and tourism has now replaced traditional trade and farming to become the backbone of the Khumbu economy and culture. The high Himalayan and inner Asian ranges have the largest areas covered by glaciers and permafrost outside the polar regions. The ice and snow provides important short and long-term water storage that serves more than 1.3 billion people in the downstream basin areas of ten large Asian rivers that originate in the mountains. Imja glacial lake, created only in the last century by a prodigious retreat of the glacier, is cited by researchers as a potential disaster for Khumbu: An outburst would sweep away many a downstream settlement, destroy infrastructures and jeopardize communities, and forever destroy parts of an ancient culture. There is very little documentation of the human aspect: How do Khumbu people perceive this threat? What change in climate have they experienced? What alarms them most?

Selected by Yumi Goto on July 5, 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