“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

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

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

Two photo series from Iraq by Julie Adnan. The first, Born In Prison, shows women with their young children, photographed in prison in Erbil, Iraq. The second shows installations made with survivors of the 1988 gassing of Halabja, using photographs of their deceased family members.

Selected by Yumi Goto on July 9, 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

Philippines documentary photographer Tammy David: Two years ago, I was shocked to learn that my law school bound friend was training to join the National beauty pageant. “Is she crazy? Is she bored? Is she broke? There is actually a beauty queen boot camp?” For a long time I had thought only pretty people who wanted fame and fortune would dare to participate in such a spectacle. And like with anything else that intrigued me, I picked up my camera and started to look for answers.

Selected by Yumi Goto on June 27, 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