Five international photographers explain an image of a protest that they captured in their respective countries.
Curator ENTEROriginally from São Paulo, Brazil, Leandro Viana is a freelance photographer based in New York City. After breaking into the field through fashion, editorial, and advertising photography, Leandro began documenting social issues such as immigration, refugees, and human rights.
Photo by David Butow - US | Info | Credits
“This picture was taken the night following the release of the Grand Jury's decision to not indict the police officer who shot Michael Brown. It was very cold night and I noticed that as this man was shouting, his breath was lit by an overhead light. There was something simple and direct about the man’s emotions. Like many of those who were protesting, his emotions show the frustration not just in the single shooting and the Grand Jury’s decision, but rather at what is seen as a pattern of inequality that is being repeated again and again.”
David Butow (USA) is a California-based photojournalist. He has worked in over two dozen countries including Afghanistan, Burma, Iraq, Peru and Yemen. His current project is titled Seeing Buddha, which has been published in the New York Times and National Geographic magazine.
davidbutow@gmail.com
Photo by Sergiy Lebedynskyy - Ukraine | Info | Credits
“Euromaidan (a wave of protests at Maidan Square in Kyiv, Ukraine) was a symbol of hope. If everything would be perfect in my country, I would never have become a photographer. My goal is to interpret the situation in Ukraine from an insider point of view and to share it worldwide.”
Sergiy Lebedynskyy was born in 1982 in Kharkiv, Ukraine. He holds a PhD in engineering and works as a freelance photographer since 2010. His works were shown internationally at festivals Les Rencontres d'Arles, FotoFest Houston, Noorderlicht, Riga Photomonth and others.
s.lebedynskyy@gmail.com
Photo by Emine Gozde Sevim - Turkey | Info | Credits
“At every protest, more than anything, I am scared. Too many people, the police, the unpredictability, the violence that can erupt however peaceful it was all meant to have been. The picture of the girl on the flowers is a symbolic representation made after the period of Gezi Park protests. She is being helped to get up but not quite standing. Her arms open, almost seeming to embrace the viewer. It is a declaration in a way, without words, of a universal human ideology that was once wanted, shared, and which unified us. In protests, all too suddenly, this sense of innocence can dissipate into the burning smell of the tear gas, the heat of the fire and the sound of the bullets.”
Emine Gozde Sevim (Turkey) graduated from Bard College in 2008 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Photography, Sociology and International Relations. She has worked in Israel and the West Bank, in Egypt and in Turkey, dividing her time between New York and the Middle East.
egozdes@gmail.com
Photo by Fernando C. Netto - Brazil | Info | Credits
“Protests had already been going on in the city of São Paulo for months in 2013. The day I took this photo on Paulista Avenue, near the corner of another major avenue, Consolação, confrontation between protesters and the military police was intense. Lots of running, banks being destroyed, tear gas… This figure being dragged in the photo is a girl, really skinny. She was taken to the police station. She must have slept there and been released in the morning. I saw her again in another protest a week later.”
Fernando Costa Netto is a journalist, photographer, entrepreneur and owner-partner of DOC Galeria. He is the creator of Mostra SP de Fotografia, an occupation of Vila Madalena, a São Paulo neighborhood, by using photography.
fernando@docgaleria.com.br
Photo by Mansi Thapliyal - India | Info | Credits
“This photograph is a statement about the self-abuse we all live in - the silence within which we keep ourselves is as harmful as what others do to us. When a 23- year old girl was gang raped in Delhi, nobody had expected that it would give rise to such an historical movement. For the first time I saw men and women standing together to protest not just for women's safety, but for the change in the mindset of the whole society. Being a single woman living in the capital, I could not separate myself from the protestors. I was a photographer, who was protesting with her camera, witnessing and capturing the wind of change.”
Mansi Thapliyal (India) is a freelance news and documentary photographer based in New Delhi and Rishikesh, Uttarkhand. She earned a bachelor of arts degree in political science from Delhi University and a postgraduate diploma in photography and visual communication from Jamia Millia Islamia University, Delhi. Her work has been published extensively including in the New York Times, Time, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, and the BBC.
mansi.pictures@gmail.com
