I’ve enjoyed watching Starved for Attention unfold after I first heard about it. The campaign is a multimedia partnership between VII and Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders). The project aims to raise awareness about the global malnutrition crisis. It’s an ambitious and far-reaching project, and the website is substantial: video and photos by Marcus Bleasdale, Jessica Dimmock, Ron Haviv, Antonin Kratochvil, Franco Pagetti, Stephanie Sinclair, and John Stanmeyer; calls to action; and a blog with periodic updates on the campaign and additional information about malnutrition.

I managed to snag a few moments (over email) with Jason Cone, executive producer of the Starved for Attention films and MSF’s Communications Director based out of New York, and Ron Haviv, one of VII’s founding members. I wanted to ask the two about how NGOs and photographers work together, how a campaign such as this is produced, and how NGOs and journalists work to get stories out to a wide audience within such a fractured media environment.

First, could you tell us a bit about the project. We’ve seen the website, but what other components does it have?

Jason Cone/MSF: Besides the websites, there have been multimedia exhibits of the documentaries as well as still images slideshows in New York City, Toronto, and Milan. We are planning additional exhibits in the coming months in Washington, DC; France; Switzerland; Greece; Italy, Belgium; Canada; and the UK. Other countries may be added as well. We are also making plans to present some of the films in several West African countries in the Sahel region, a major malnutrition hotspot. These showings will take the form of conventional museum exhibits along with presentations in major public spaces or even mobile trucks displaying the films. We recently created an “Action Kit” that allows the general public, students, and others to screen the films on their own and put on a Starved for Attention event to spread the word about malnutrition and join our international petition drive to rewrite food aid policy. The kit can be ordered at the Starved for Attention website here: http://www.starvedforattention.org/action-kits.php

MSF has been commissioning documentary photography for some time. How does documentary photography fit into the organization mission and goals?
MSF: MSF has been working with photographers almost since our inception in 1971. Some of the most significant and planned earlier collaborations took place with the photographer Sebastiao Salgado in Ethiopia during the 1984 famine, and with the late French photographer Didier Lefevre, who embedded with our clandestine medical teams crossing over from Pakistan into Afghanistan in the 1980s. Lefevre’s work resulted in several photo books, and the graphic novel trilogy the Photographer, which Lefevre co-authored with Emmanuel Guibert and Frederic Lemercier. (http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/events/exhibits/thephotographer/). We have worked with hundreds of other photographers over the years.

The impetus for our collaborations with photographers is that while our main priority as an organization is providing direct medical care and assistance to people struggling to survive amid conflicts, natural disasters, and epidemics in more than 60 countries around the world, we aren’t so bold to believe that our response alone is sufficient to alleviate the suffering inflicted by conflict and disease. When assistance is not enough to save lives or we face obstacle to providing aid to these populations, MSF speaks out from the perspective of what our medical teams are witnessing on the ground. Often it is photographs of an emergency that act as a catalyst for action. And the best photographers can open the eyes of the world to the suffering of people languishing in the shadows of forgotten wars and neglected diseases. This is definitely the case with a largely invisible crisis like childhood malnutrition.

I know VII and MSF have worked together before. Where did the impetus for this project come, from VII or from MSF?

MSF: Malnutrition is medical priority for MSF. We treat hundreds of thousands of children every year. Over the past few decades, the image of emaciated, fly-ridden children on the brink of death from famines and other catastrophe has come to define the visual representation of childhood malnutrition. And in this media saturated world, flush with information documenting the daily toll of human suffering, it is understandable that a visual immunity has developed as a line of defense against this clichéd imagery provoking any kind of an emotional response to tackle the crisis of childhood malnutrition head on. It was in this context that we challenged VII to capture a new visual identity for malnutrition. We had the strong experience of working together in Congo, and this offered another compelling opportunity for collaboration between VII and MSF.

Who was driving the editorial message behind it?

MSF: This was true collaboration with VII in the sense that we identified together the places to send the photographers. It was up to the photographers to find the stories. They worked alongside MSF teams in Djibouti, Burkina Faso, Congo, and India. In Mexico, US, and Bangladesh, the photographers were going after the story through other contacts and we really relied on them to find the images and footage that would bring the story home.

At the same time, I see each film as a chapter in a book. With Marcus Bleasdale piece from Djibouti, you see through the eyes of an MSF team the frustration that no matter how many children they treat this crisis is so much bigger than the response of one organization. Then we go to Burkina Faso with Jessica Dimmock to see the malnutrition through the experience of one mother, and to Bangladesh and India with Ron Haviv, and Stephanie Sinclair, respectively, to the heart of the malnutrition crisis in South Asia, and then the war zones of Congo, and finally to Mexico and the US where we see how early childhood malnutrition has been virtually wiped out with national level programs.

Bangladesh – Terrifying Normalcy / Ron Haviv and MSF

Ron Haviv, how did you get involved in the project?

Ron Haviv: Several VII photographers including myself had been looking for a follow up to our Congo project.

How does a project like this get put together? Where does the funding come from? I see LG is a sponsor–what does that mean (money, technology, staff, distribution?)?

MSF: LG’s support for Starved for Attention came after the project had already entered development in terms of the field work. Their willingness to not only support Starved for Attention but also provide funds for MSF’s malnutrition field programs bridges the two critical aspects of our work—providing assistance and speaking out. LG provided a $500,000 grant to this end, and also television screens to make the exhibits possible. Their support opened the doors to the multimedia exhibits, which was not in the original conception of the project. The project was originally solely intended for online distribution.

How does an NGO/photojournalist work with corporate sponsorship?

MSF: LG has been very easy to work with in the sense that they have been responsive to our requests for additional TV screens and other technology to support exhibits as opportunities have arisen.

Haviv: I don’t think that there is large differentiation between working for traditional media which is solely based on advertising and direct sponsorship. In actuality projects such as these give us more control over who we are funded by.

Who is involved in the production? How long did it take from the first ideas to the final product?

MSF: MSF and VII worked together with a production called Herzliya Films. The photographers and MSF project staff were in the editing rooms with Herzliya throughout the process. The project was first discussed with Ron and Stephen Mayes, managing director of VII, in January 2009. It took us about 9 months to identify all the locations, make the appropriate contacts, and schedule the photographer visits. The field work was completed in early January 2010, and the film production ran from early March and the project was launched online and in an exhibit in New York City on June 2.

Who is the intended audience for this project?
MSF: The audience ranges from the general public to policymakers. As mentioned, we will be screening the films in West Africa during a meeting of the West African Health Organization in Ivory Coast. We have sent the films to policymakers and key decision-makers at the World Food Program, World Bank, and other important players in the field of malnutrition programming.

What is the goal of the project?
MSF: The project aims are awareness raising about the issue of malnutrition—the scope of the problem but also how it is a preventable and treatable conditions with existing tools and strategies—and the petition to pressure the top food aid donor countries to ensure they provide food assistance that meets the nutritional standards and needs of young children.

Is the goal of the project to get donors, and if so which kinds? People off the streets? How do you know that the intended audience has been reached?
This project is not driven by an ambition to increase donors or fundraising. It is purely meant to advocate on behalf of the children affected by this crisis. We know we will reach the public through the website, media coverage, and events over the coming the months. We also know through direct feedback from policymakers that they are hearing our message from the project.

Where are you marketing the project? How are you getting people to know about it?
MSF: We are marketing the project in the various cities and regions where exhibits are being held. We are doing direct outreach to our donors and supporters online through email newsletters, Facebook postings, and a concerted social media campaign through Twitter (MSF-USA, MSF-UK, MSF_canada, and MSF_Australia). The more grassroots efforts with the Action Kit will take hold in the coming weeks as supporters of Starved for Attention put on their own events.

Is the general public tired of stories of starving people in far-off places? If so, how do you combat this indifference and disinterest as an organization/photographer?
MSF: I think we have tried to combat this fatigue with compelling stories about the problem but also real solutions that exist today. We are not talking about a condition requiring a new vaccine to prevent it. We know if we can find ways to get nutritious foods in the hands of mothers and the mouths of young children who need it most we can save lives right now.

Haviv: Successful stories, messages and communication occur when the photographer is able to humanize the people in the images. When someone is able to digest a statistic like 195 million and relate it to a story that touches them we are able to succeed.
Read on »

I’ve been traveling and working a lot lately around Serbia in the last month, hence my lack of interesting posts, and I am taking off in a few hours for the Visa pour L’Image photojournalism festival in Perpignan, France. I’ll then be back in the United States (Seattle and New York City) from September 6 through October 24, before returning to Belgrade. If you’re in Perpignan and want to meet up, be sure to send me an email or track me down. Same if you’re in the States.

I also wanted to share a couple of places where my work has been published recently:
The New York Times Lens Blog published a feature about my project in Bosnia “This Time Tomorrow” to coincide with the 15th Anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre in July. Please have a look at the nice piece that James Estrin put together.

The Sunday Times Magazine in London also published three pages of my project “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere”, about the destruction of a Roma community in Belgrade. The article and web gallery are behind their paywall but you can see clips on my website.

I look forward to getting back to regular posting and sharing some of what I’ve been up to soon. Happy end of summer everyone!

Corentin Fohlen has been awarded the City of Perpignan Young Reporter’s Award – 2010 for Visa Pour L’image this year. Fohlen’s work is definitely worth a look: beautiful colors and interesting stories.

The Online Photographer and Peter Turnley published this week a two-part story on the life and career of master printer to the stars Voja Mitrovic. A Yugoslav immigrant to France, Mitrovic began working at the famous Picto lab in Paris and became essentially the personal printer to such greats as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Josef Koudelka. The piece in part one and part two provides a terrific backstory to Mitrovic’s own life and his role in printing some of the most famous photographs of the last century.

He indicated to me that the three most important things involved in being a great printer are patience, developing a good dialogue and communication with the photographer he is printing for, and knowing how to read a negative. It is most important to know the photographer, to know what he or she wants, and to be able to read the image—like photographers, some people see things, and others don’t! Great printing involves knowing how to choose the right paper, having technical skills, and a strong artistic and aesthetic sense. He feels that it has helped him very much to have been himself a photographer, in order to understand the goal of a photograph.

 

“The Washington Post Co. said Monday it has sold struggling Newsweek magazine, which it has published for half a century, to audio industry pioneer Sidney Harman.” -Washington Post sells Newsweek to stereo mogul, CNN

CNN reports that Newsweek has been sold to an audio industry magnate. The terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but the new owner may be on the hook for financial obligations totaling tens of millions of dollars. Sidney Harman pledges “to continue to produce a lively, compelling and first-rate news magazine, but also an equally dynamic Newsweek.com.” This comes after a Chinese group’s recent failed attempts to buy the magazine.

 

“Young journalists who once dreamed of trotting the globe in pursuit of a story are instead shackled to their computers, where they try to eke out a fresh thought or be first to report even the smallest nugget of news — anything that will impress Google algorithms and draw readers their way.” -The New York Times, “In a World of Online News, Burnout Starts Younger“

Newspaper and magazine websites have long been listing their most popular, most read, and most emailed stories in prominent places. Organizations such as Gawker, Bloomberg News, CNET, and others, have tied reporters’ pay, in part, to how many times readers click on their articles. This so-called Pay-Per-View journalism has been heralded as one of the possible saviours of journalism in the internet age, but it’s taking its toll. In a recent New York Times article, the Chicago Tribune’s managing editor was quoted, “You can’t really avoid the fact that page views are increasingly the coin of the realm.” By juking headlines to drive search traffic, guiding coverage toward what is most popular, and endless promotion and “branding” for both media companies and individual journalists (definitely read that link), newspapers and magazines are doing whatever they can to stay relevant and solvent. One side effect, though, is that journalists are burning out younger than ever before. The 24 hour push for clicks, shares, and tweets, is driving young reporters into the ground. “At a paper, your only real stress point is in the evening when you’re actually sitting there on deadline, trying to file,” Jim VandeHei, Politico’s executive editor, told the New York Times. “Now at any point in the day starting at 5 in the morning, there can be that same level of intensity and pressure to get something out.”

(via Slashdot)

I just heard some great news from our friend Ethan Welty who we wrote about in April after he was arrested in Colorado after an environmental protest. As of this week, the charges against him have been dropped. At the time I wrote,

Shortly after the four who had trespassed on the plant’s property were arrested and escorted out police approached Welty, who was on property outside of the power plant, and arrested him. All five were charged with 2nd Degree Criminal trespass, which carries a maximum penalty of six months in jail and a $750 fine. Welty is trying to set the record straight, as media is reporting that simply five were arrested at the protest and no one (including the police) is acknowledging that he was there covering the event as a member of the press and that he was obviously not with the four protesters inside the plant.

The arraignments for all five arrested on that day were scheduled for June. To Welty’s knowledge, the four who had been documented trespassing on the coal pile have had their meetings rescheduled to July. Welty had his arraignment rescheduled after a telephone meeting between the District Attorney and his attorney, who is a University of Colorado professor who took the case pro-bono. Following this meeting the DA dismissed the charges. Welty provided this run-down of the reasons:

- the DA, not yet having reviewed the case, was assuming that I had been on the coal pile, so my attorney asks the DA to take a closer look at my case, sending a few of my pictures and mentioning I have several testimonies from witnesses present during the action
- the DA proceeded to contact the police, who informed her that no officers had seen me trespass, and that they had not recorded the name of the Excel Energy security guard who had pointed me out
- with no evidence against me other than the word of an unnamed Excel employee, the DA decided to dismiss my charges rather than to bring my case to trial

This is great news and we are happy for Welty. However he has mentioned that his next step will “be to find a civil (rather than criminal) attorney to scrub official records of my arrest, which to my surprise does not happen automatically when charges are lifted.” There also remains the faulty news accounts of his arrest which we discussed in our original post and were picked up by other websites including re: photo and the always troubling and enlightening Photography is Not a Crime blog.

As well we should mention that Welty has been incredibly busy lately even besides his legal issues. He recently had the cover image of Backpacker Magazine, and was interviewed by the magazine itself to tell you how he did it. He also won an International Conservation Photo Award for an image he made in the North Cascades of our home state of Washington. Oh, and he wrote:

Meanwhile, I’m involved in (too) many projects. In Boulder County, partnering up with photographer Morgan Heim to document local biodiversity for MeetYourNeighbours(.org); in the North Cascades, photographing areas being proposed for national park and wilderness expansion by the conservation community; in Boulder doing my own research on mapping urban agriculture potential which my professors are urging me on to publish. And all that in addition to my classes, glacier research and the more mundane mechanics necessary to maintain momentum as a photographer. I’m excited to be convening (curating) a session on quantitative applications of photography in the Earth Sciences at the huge American Geophysical Union meeting in SF in December.

I’ve already got plans to write about many of those things here on dvafoto when Welty has them finished. Cheers to an energetic and passionate photographer for keeping up the good work and settling up fairly with the law.

I just got word from previous dvafoto interviewee Molly Landreth that her project with Amelia Tovey, “Embodiment: A Portrait of Queer Life in America” has been funded to 130% through the website kickstarter.com. Their project page is still online where you can learn much more about the project, the funding model offered by kickstarter and a great video about their work. In total, they had 355 backers and raised $12,568 to fund the next stages of their work. Be sure to go back and read our interview if you haven’t already.
Congratulations, I cannot wait to see what is produced and how the final web presentation comes together.

Pause in our normal programming for a bit of an update on what I have been up to here in the Balkans. Lots has been going on and it seems like it will be continuing through the summer. And Scott and I have plenty of interesting things planned for dvafoto so keep tuned.

My long-term project about the relocation of Belgrade Roma “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere” is currently featured in Lens Culture magazine. This project was also shortlisted by Anthropographia and was included in the exhibition at the New York Photography Festival and will continue to tour worldwide (a cool picture of the exhibition, snapped by a NY friend, is in the gallery above).

I’ve also published “Chapter Two” of this project on my Photoshelter Archive and included some images in the gallery above, so you can catch up on the project since my last post about the project on dva. I am continuing to photograph this story, following the families of the Gazela camp as they resettle around Serbia following the destruction of their community.

Lastly, thanks to friend Pete Brook at Prison Photography for writing about my work on this project in a post titled The Roma People: Matt Lutton building upon a legacy of wandering photographers.

I also have published on my archive a new gallery of work from Bosnia in an ongoing project called “This Time Tomorrow”. I will be following events in Bosnia closely as political and economic stagnation continues to slowly suffocate the country. Some tectonic shift will and must come to solve one of the world’s most entrenched political crises. Maybe tomorrow, but probably not.

I am currently focused on completing my book about Serbia in the aftermath of the Milosevic decade, titled “Only Unity”. My project was recently announced as one of seven nominees for the POYi Emerging Vision Incentive, a $10,000 grant for an emerging photographer. See some of the work and my (full) proposal at the POYi website. Congrats to the winner of the grant, James Chance and the other nominees.

I am also announcing for the first time publicly the existence of an tumblr sketchbook for this project: onlyunity.tumblr.com. Have a look if you want to follow me feel my way through this work. The latest news is that I’ve finished the first book dummy, which will serve as my university thesis, enabling me to finally graduate this year.

It has been a busy couple of months with a few interesting assignments, taking me from Budapest on a corporate job to a British international school in Belgrade for a UK newspaper. There is much to come this summer, including a trip to a Serbian winery connected to the royal family and projects to be featured in well known online publications. And of course focus on Dvafoto. I look forward to sharing this all soon, and I hope you are enjoying your summer (or winter, if you happen to be south of the equator).

Getty’s got a new scheme to turn flickr into a revenue stream. Now, flickr users can set their pictures up to have a “Request to License” link underneath all of their photos. When someone clicks that link, they will be directed by Getty through the licensing process. The licensing fees, all royalty free, seem to range from $5 to $425. Getty will keep about 70% of the licensing fee. The BBC has good coverage of the deal. And Amateur Photographer outlines why both amateur and professional photographers should be worried about the Getty-Flickr scheme.

‘Amateurs are not necessarily au fait with the value of their images and could be persuaded to license them to Getty for low rates, thereby undermining the rate that professionals work so hard to achieve.’ -John Toner quoted by Amateur Photographer

The previous Call For Artists partnership between Getty and Flickr, launched two years ago, drew a fair share of criticism. See on flickr member’s experience, entitled “I feel like I got screwed by Getty,” as an example. In the first two months, the photographer made about $200, but the royalties soon dwindled to just a few dollars for each sale.

(via Slashdot, of all places)