Strike captain during protest by the packing house workers from the Miller's series 'Chicago's South Side ' ( 1946 - 1948 ) :
https://www.magnumphotos.com/newsroom/society/wayne-miller-chicagos-south-side/
World Press Photo of the Year ( 2004 ) :
An Iraqi man comforts his 4-year-old son at a holding center for prisoners of war, in the base camp of the US Army 101st Airborne Division near An Najaf.
The boy had become terrified when, according to orders, his father was hooded and handcuffed.
A US soldier later severed the plastic handcuffs so that the man could comfort his child. Hoods were placed over detainees' heads because they were quicker to apply than blindfolds. The military said the bags were used to disorient prisoners and protect their identities.
It is not known what happened to the man or the boy
From the Great Ongoing Series " The Pillar "
From the Book " Indien Sehen "
Joseph Duo, a Liberian militia commander loyal to the government, exults after firing a rocket-propelled grenade at rebel forces at a key strategic bridge during the brutal second Liberian Civil War
A fire broke out in Saltivka, a suburb of Kharkiv, after a Russian bomb struck a large gas pipeline in the area
From the Book " Will They Sing Like Raindrops or Leave Me Thirsty "
From the Book " The Italians "
Walker Evans was born in 1903 in St. Louis, Missouri, to an upper-middle-class family, affording him access to a formal education.
He initially aspired to become a writer, an interest he never fully abandoned. He attended Williams College in Massachusetts for a year and briefly studied at the Sorbonne in Paris before moving to New York City in 1926 to focus on photography.
From 1935 to 1937 Evans worked as a photographer for the “Resettlement” , a US government initiative instituted to document the severe conditions of rural America during the Great Depression in order to gain support for relief programs. A significant moment for his artistic growth, the position allowed Evans to refine his photographic eye as he traveled across the country, focusing his camera on churches, advertisements, sharecroppers, and steel mills. Despite the advantages of steady employment, Evans had some personal reservations about working for a government program. Before accepting the position, he declared that under no circumstances would he “ make photographic statements for the government…. No matter how powerful—this is pure record not propaganda…. No politics whatsoever. ”
Throughout his career, Evans continued to resist the characterization of his work as political, remarking, “ I didn’t like the label that I unconsciously earned of being a social protest artist. I never took it upon myself to change the world. ”
Even if Evans’s intentions were driven by aesthetic pursuits rather than a political agenda, viewers of his work are not afforded the same neutrality, especially with challenging photographs such as Minstrel Showbill or Houses and Billboards in Atlanta. Despite being taken nearly 90 years ago, these alarmingly casual depictions of violence in the American vernacular are not records of a distant past; instead, they are sobering reminders of struggles that persist in the US today. In addition to these challenging scenes, Evans on occasion injected humor and absurdity into his work, as seen in images such as Truck and Sign, in which the word “ Damaged ” appears boldly across the photograph. In the summer of 1936 Evans took a leave of absence from the Resettlement Administration to work with his friend, the writer James Agee, on the publication " Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. " Through words and photographs, the book provided an account of life among a group of tenant farmers in Hale County, Alabama.
Evans continued to photograph until his death in 1975, holding positions at Time as well as Fortune magazine, where he worked as an editor and photographer from 1945 to 1965. A 1938 exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, Walker Evans: American Photographs, surveyed his first decade of photography, and was the first one-person presentation by MoMA’s Department of Photography. ( An exhibition of Evans’s photographs of Victorian houses four years earlier was considered an architecture exhibition ) The exhibition’s accompanying publication, which serves as an exploration of US society through its workers and institutions, is considered one of the most influential photobooks in the history of the medium because of its rhythmic, uninterrupted sequencing. While Evans’s enduring vision was embraced by museums worldwide, the lifelong contrarian pushed back against the acclaim, noting one should “ be careful about being established…. Part of me doesn’t want this to be established...because it tames it. ”
Today, Evans’s impact and “ lyric documentary ” style can be seen in the work of many contemporary artists, including William Christenberry and RaMell Ross, both of whom have also worked in Hale County. Their works probe everyday life to depict an “ epic moment in something incredibly simple. ”
Viewing their photographs, one can sense that behind the veneer of banality, potentially mistaken as commonplace, social commentary and radical thought might be revealed
U.S. Marines photograph the apocalyptic scenario of Kuwaiti oil fires
James Nachtwey is a renowned American photojournalist who has dedicated his life to capturing the horrors of war and social injustice through his powerful and haunting images. Born in Syracuse, New York in 1948, Nachtwey studied art history and political science at Dartmouth College before beginning his career as a photographer.
In the early 1980s, Nachtwey began covering conflicts in Central America, including the civil wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador. He later documented the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany, as well as the Gulf War and the conflict in Bosnia.
Nachtwey's work has been published in major news outlets such as Time, Newsweek, and National Geographic, and he has received numerous awards for his photography, including the Robert Capa Gold Medal and the World Press Photo of the Year.
In addition to his war photography, Nachtwey has also documented social issues such as poverty, famine, and the AIDS epidemic. He has worked with organizations such as Doctors Without Borders and has been a member of the photo agency Magnum since 1986.
Nachtwey's photographs are known for their raw and emotional impact, often capturing the human toll of war and conflict. Nachtwey's images focus on the impact of injustice and violence, yet they evoke a sense of compassion and sympathy. Within large-scale historical events of global impact, he documents intimate moments of humanity. His photographs can appear to have a formal completeness, but they are spontaneous, intuitive and often composed in a fraction of a second.
His images have been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world, and his book "Inferno" features a collection of the most powerful photographs from his career.
Despite the trauma and danger he has faced in his work, Nachtwey remains committed to using his photography to raise awareness and provoke change
" The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don’t have to explain things with words "
~ Elliott Erwitt