We are thrilled to introduce award-winning photographers Anselm Ebulue and Mark Chapman at the In Focus event on the 25th of September. Both photographers bring a unique perspective to the photographic medium, transitioning from deeply personal, introspective, visceral stories on loss and mourning to powerful, straightforward documentary photography.
Anselm Ebulue is a documentary photographer based in London. He was a winner in the 2018 and 2020 Portrait of Britain award and was awarded a scholarship for the LCC x Magnum Documentary Photography Short Course. He has recently graduated from the MA Photojournalism and Documentary course at UAL. His work has been published in a variety of publications and clients include The Guardian and Observer, The Modern House, Time Out Magazine and Red Bull.
Anselm will be presenting ‘Whims of the Rye’ which is an ongoing documentary series exploring Ebulue’s personal relationship with Peckham, in south east London. Ebulue’s approach is visceral, making pictures of mundane spaces that resonate with his emotive reactions where memory and change intersect. The work expresses a sense of loss, mourning the transformation of an area in a state of rapid flux that is most clearly evidenced by its gentrification. Ebulue is particularly interested in the relationship Black communities have with Peckham and through documentation, hopes to highlight the significance of the area to the Black diaspora. Whims of the Rye serves as both a celebration and preservation of the Black communities who have called Peckham home for many decades.
Mark Chapman is an award-winning photographer and film-maker based in Gateshead, North East England and London. His moving-image work has been screened internationally across narrative, documentary and experimental contexts. Chapman’s debut photobook ‘God’s Promises Mean Everything’ explores isolation and displacement via a long-term study of a hostel resident from Teesside. The book was published by internationally renowned Dewi Lewis Publishing and launched during Photo London at Somerset House in May 2024. Mark will be speaking about ‘God’s Promises Mean Everything’, an immersive long-term character portrait that extends over seven years, but limits its perspective to a single room. Haunted by the spectre of the family he lost, Derek, a hostel resident from Teesside lives without the social safety nets many of us take for granted. Mark was given unique access to document Derek’s life over several years and the project seeks to elevate a working class story that would otherwise go unacknowledged. The images are an inseparable mix of the self-aware and spontaneous, candid and constructed. Seeking to explore the boundaries between filmmaking and photography practice, I want to tell urgent contemporary stories that are also rigorous aesthetic constructions. However, my aim is not straightforward realism, but rather to transform. My work moves between naturalism and expressiveness, altering the shape of the real world into something disturbing and mysterious. This is now the third project in which Derek has appeared (across film and photography): his unifying presence creates a constellation of individual projects across disciplines that have now become an open-ended archive of experience. The Dewi Lewis Publishing website: https://www.dewilewis.com/products/gods-promises-mean-everything
December 2023, Mediterranean sea. People onboard an overcrowded rubberboat drifting in the central Mediterranean sea have been found by the rescue crew of the Sea-Watch 5, at sunset on Christmas Eve.
The history of migration across the Mediterranean goes back thousands of years. In recent years, tens of thousands of people have crossed the Mediterranean by boat from North Africa and Turkey to seek asylum or to migrate to Europe. The central Mediterranean Sea is the Europe’s deadliest frontier. In 2014 and 2015, about 320,000 people crossed the sea from North Africa to Europe, mainly ending up in Italy and Malta. The next year, the vast majority of migrants crossing to Europe did so in the Eastern Mediterranean, landing on Greek islands close to the Turkish coast. Altogether, however, the most dangerous route is still in the central Mediterranean where distances are longer and the weather more unpredictable.
In 2023 alone, at least 3,129 men, women and children trying to cross into Europe were reported missing or dead at sea – an average of 8 people per day. This makes 2023 the deadliest since 2017. While Libya remains the main point of departure, during 2023 the number of boats leaving from Tunisia have increased dramatically. The majority of migrants are being smuggled by human traffickers who charge thousands of euros for a vague promise to take migrants to the closest EU territory. Most of these migrants are subject to serious abuse prior to their departure and there’s no guarantees of ever making it to Europe.
Fenruary 2021, Medieterranean sea. People onboard an overcrowded rubberboat drifting in the night through the central Mediterranean sea have been found by the rescue crew of the Sea-Watch 3. The rescue operation was carried out in the darkness.
Since 2014 around 30,000 migrants have been confirmed dead at sea but the reality is that many more attempt the crossing and lose their lives without ever being found. With legal pathways to gaining entry to the EU not an option for most refugees detained in or transiting through Libya or Tunisia, risking their lives at sea is the only way out the country.
The stories of those who make it to Europe mostly have a similar theme. In the places where they were waiting for passage to Europe they were often working for no money, being kidnapped for ransom and facing horrendous violence, murders, forced eviction, destruction of property, detention and arbitrary arrests, even if they were on their way back to their country of origin. Thousands of migrants find themselves in an impossible situation. Either they endure abuse in the transit countries or risk the journey to Europe.
December 2023, Mediterranean sea. RHIB crew of the Sea-Watch 5 during a training. The RHIB crew has the task to perform first approach and provide the first rescue to the peole in distress at sea, transferring them from their boats on the morhter ship. Trainings are frequent, intense, and cover almost all possible real scenarios that could occur during a critical rescue.
‘Libya is so hard for us. We are stuck. We can’t move on and we can’t travel back where we came from. That’s why we take the risk and cross the sea. This journey is the journey of life or death. A journey of no return’ says one of the lucky ones who was rescued by a boat chartered by Sea Watch, an NGO that patrols the Mediterranean and assists migrant boats in distress.
The accounts of the ‘journey of life or death’ told by so many survivors are equally harrowing. Overcrowded and unseaworthy boats, no food or water for days, struggling people driven to despair by exhaustion, dehydration and extreme temperatures combine with the gravest discomfort in cramped decks, sea sickness, storms and other adverse weather to test even the strongest-willed. Most journeys cover a distance of between 400 and 500 km to Italian and Maltese shores. SOS calls are systematically bounced between various European authorities and coast guards often resulting in them being ignored or actioned after an agonising wait. Many boats capsize or sink before rescue craft make their way to the scene.
Through the most recent deals with Libya and Tunisia, the EU has increasingly trained, financed and strengthen the unofficial coast-guards of the northern African countries to reach as many boats as possible. The unscrupulous so-called Libyan coast guard and Tunisian authorities unlawfully bring the migrants back to the place of abuse they had escaped from. Libya, a country that has been in a state of de facto civil war since the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, is officially deemed ‘unsafe’ by international law, and interceptions violate the fundamental human right of non refoulement. Only 5% of the migrants leaving the North African coasts reach Italian or Maltese territory independently. The vast majority are rescued by the Italian coast guard and non- profits operating their own rescue missions to try and prevent more deaths.
‘They use Black people [people] to make money there. So if you don’t have the money you will have to die there or live in pain’ recalls another person rescued by a patrol boat in the Mediterranean. ‘The life in Libya is very tough, it’s by God’s grace that I’m still alive today. Because sometimes you go to work, you work with them and maybe they don’t want to pay you: they can take your life there.’
Non-governmental organisations carrying out search and rescue (SAR) operations have been a constant presence in the Mediterranean since 2014, seeking to fill the void left by the lack of state-organised SAR operations. The European Union, and especially Italy, are increasingly implementing stricter migration policies, essentially criminalising NGOs carrying out SAR activities.
February 2021, Mediterranean sea. Migrant rubber boat after its passengers have been brought to safety onboard the Sea-Watch 3. Between 70 and 80 people were crossing the sea on the overcrowded rubber boat, with limited water, gasoline, no gps nor satellite connection, no food and at risk of sinking for deflation or capsize.
After systematic cases of arbitrary seizures of the rescue ships and prosecution of crews, the recent practice of assigning distant ports for disembarkation, for example, keeps rescue ships away for days from the search and rescue area in the central Mediterranean where most of the emergencies occur. Despite the challenges, a number of non-profit organisations, such as Sea-Watch portrayed in this work, continue their tireless search and rescue activities at sea, in solidarity with the most criminalised: the people fleeing in search of a safer future.
Selene Magnolia Gattiis an Italian award-winning IFJ, NUJ freelance photojournalist based in Northern Italy and Berlin. Her work spans multiple issues, including questions of environmental and social justice, food production, migration, as well as gender related and contemporary political issues. She works on assignment and independent projects. Since 2023 she is represented and distributed by Panos Pictures. Raised in the Italian Dolomites, where she developed a strong bond to the natural environment, she has a background as emergency nurse, volunteer medical personnel in humanitarian crises, and academically qualified linguist, before shifting to and studying photojournalism. She has worked for a number of publications such as Der Spiegel, The Guardian, de Volkskrant, Il Reportage, Il Manifesto, amongst others. She also works for some of the leading environmental media agencies and a number of international no profits. Some of her photographic work on intensive food production is featured in the book ‘Hidden – Animals in the Anthropocene’, awarded ‘Photography Book of the Year’ by POY (2021). Her long-term project Zor, which portrays life in the biggest so-called ghetto in Europe, was exhibited at Perpignan’s Visa Pour L’Image photojournalism festival 2022. Her work was recognised by British Journal of Photography (2023), Siena Photography Awards (2022), London Photography Awards (2022), Prix de la Photographie Paris (2022), TIFA, MIFA, BIFA (2022), Kolga Tbilisi (2022), Global Billboard Project (2021), among other winning entries. She was selected for the Hamburg Portfolio Review in 2023. In 2023, she is the yearly Senior Fellow of WeAnimals Media Agency and a recipient of the European Environmental Journalism Fund grant for an ongoing project about the impact of factory farming.
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Photojournalism Hub and Riverside Studios are delighted to announce Sascha Klamp and Valeria Luongo as the featured photographers for ‘In Focus,’ a captivating series of photography events. This series present photographers whose work engage with social documentary photo storytelling, using the lens as a powerful tool for engagement, exploration and raising awareness. The event includes presentations, live interactive Q&As and a social. Our guests of this edition have a background or work with an anthropological approach, using documentary photography to present stories that capture and explore community and individual memory, archives and rituals.
Valeria Luongo is an Italian documentary photographer, filmmaker, and anthropologist who’s based between Mexico and the UK. Her photographic approach is characterised by working on long term projects. Her work explores stories regarding gender, spirituality and rituals and has been featured in National Geographic, The Guardian, BBC, GEO Magazine and exhibited internationally.
“When Women Fly” is a project about a group of indigenous women from Cuetzalan del Progreso, Mexico, challenging gender roles by participating in a traditionally male ritual called Danza de los Voladores. The ritual begins with a ceremonial dance. Five participants then ascend a 30-metre pole and jump off the top, head first, tied to ropes as they revolve around the pole towards the ground. Historically, only men were allowed to partake in the ritual. However, a few women in Cuetzalan have recently joined the practice. The flying women defy traditional gender roles, symbolising transformation within their social context. Since 2022 I’ve been working alongside several women and girls who fly, documenting their everyday lives among their community.
Sascha Klamp is a British/German multi-award winning Documentary Filmmaker, Photo-documentary Journalist and Producer based in London, UK. He spent the majority of his career as an investor and entrepreneur which enabled him to travel across frontier and emerging markets. His photography practice centres on highlighting social impact and social justice affairs which is deeply rooted in his curiosity to learn more of the world around him. He tells frontline human and community stories based on empathy for the situation and the people involved. His thinking is informed by his interest in ethnology and social anthropology. Sascha exhibited a small selection of his The Art of Seeing, The Art of Remembering project in London in November 2022. His work was highly commended by the TPF Social Documentary Awards (Professional Category, Series) for his The Art of Seeing, The Art of Remembering work. Sascha completed his MA Photojournalism & Documentary Photography studies at the University of the Arts (Distinction), London. He also holds an MBA (Bayes Business School, London) and a Masters in Law, LLM (King’s College, London), and a BSc International Securities, Investment & Banking from Henley Business School (ICMA Centre). Filmography: “The Art of Seeing, The Art of Remembering” (2022), “The Blockade” (2023).
In a remote village in Kosovo, the past casts a long shadow. A single family of 2500 souls, now in its 13th generation, struggles to find its place in a changing world. Based on the Directors engagement with the community and renowned Community Archival work, KINSHIP tells the story of one family’s search for belonging. We meet Rabit, the community’s Doctor, who recounts his heart-breaking tale of being ‘gifted’ to his uncle as a young boy. An all too common practice rooted in ancient customs. He grapples with the trauma of his stolen innocence. Meanwhile, Couple Mumin and Qamile Dermaku tell their moving story of how they met, the challenge he went through gifting a brother to a neighbour and his wife’s struggle to join the ‘jungle’ of a remote community. Expecting mother Florentina faces her own struggle. Pregnant with her first child, she dreams of a better future. But is that future possible here? Or must she also make the painful choice to leave everything she has ever known behind? The village Elders tell their stories aided by black-and-white photographs sourced from their family photo albums. They recount stories of happier times but also times of conflict and change. These memories contradict with the experience of the younger generations who cannot imagine a rural life with its limited resources and opportunities. Joining the diaspora is a potential way out to seek a fortune and future elsewhere. The cleric focuses on holding the community together. But his own story contradicts the ambitions of his community. The state looks away from the Kanun law/ tradition (Kanun of Lek Dukagjini). The honour code (vendetta in Italy) contradicts with the country’s ambition to become a full EU member. We engage with Child Psychologists who explain the harm done to children being gifted to family members and how that trauma informs their choices. Running away from it all sounds like a sound choice for many.
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We were delighted to host a new photojournalism nights series event ‘In Focus’ in collaboration with the west London arts and media centre Riverside Studios. Our guest photographers of the evening were Denise Laura Baker and Etienne Bruce . Owning to the ‘In Focus’ series, both photographers engage within the realm of socially engaged documentary photography and their projects are of a long form.
Etienne Bruce presented Xenitia, which is an archive, centered on displacement to Greece. And Dr. Denise Laura Baker shared Deeds, Not Words: motivations and methods of resistance from a photographer’s perspective, currently being shown until April 13th at Gallery 74, Waterside Arts in Sale, Manchester, which explores the myriad ways photography crosses into the realm of activism and the complex relationship between photojournalism and activism.
One of the highlights of the event was the inspiring work shared by the photographers and the engagement of the audiences. The atmosphere at Riverside Studios buzzed with energy as the fully packed studios engaged in lively discussions, and Q&As.
Furthermore, conversations flowed freely well after the event ended, which it denotes the power of documentary photography and photojournalism. Thanks to our guest photographers, whose work brought people together around photography and the voices that might otherwise remain unheard.
Next Photojournalism Hub event at Riverside Studios is on the 22nd April 2024.
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On Tuesday 2nd August, Cinzia D’Ambrosi and Safeena Chaudhry from Photojournalism Hub were in conversation with Ada Trillo & Isaac Scott about their current exhibition ‘I Look At The World’, which is curated by David Acosta and is being shown at the Da Vinci Art Alliance in Philadelphia.
Ada Trillo is a Philadelphia-based photographer. Born and raised in the U.S/ Mexican border region of Juarez and El Paso, her work focuses on sex trafficking, climate and violence-related international migration, and long-standing barriers of race and class. Her projects have been featured in international publications including The Guardian, Vogue, Smithsonian Magazine, and Mother Jones. Trillo’s work is held in the Library of Congress, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and other institutional and private collections. Her many awards include a First Place in the Tokyo International Foto Awards (2019), a British Journal of Photography Female In Focus Best Series Award and The Me & Eve Grant from the Center of Photographic Arts in Santa Fe (2020). Trillo’s images have been exhibited in the US, Japan, Luxembourg, Italy, England, France, and Germany. She holds degrees from the Istituto Marangoni in Milan, and Drexel University in Philadelphia. Website: https://adatrillo.com
Isaac Scott is a ceramic artist, curator, and photographer from Madison, Wisconsin, who is currently living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Scott is an MFA candidate at Tyler School of Art and Architecture and plans to graduate in Fall of 2021. His ceramic work has been exhibited around the country including at The Clay Studio in Philadelphia and at the 2019 National Conference for Education in the Ceramic Arts in Minneapolis. Scott’s photographs of the 2020 Uprising in Philadelphia were featured in the June 22, 2020 issue of The New Yorker. In August of 2020 Scott completed his first mural alongside collaborators Gerald A. Brown and Roberto Lugo. The Stay Golden mural is located at 33rd and West Diamond St. in Philadelphia. Just as Scott elevates his subjects on the surface of his pottery, his photography pays tribute to the people and places in his environment. His work capturing the 2020 Uprising follows the protesters and organizers in Philadelphia and the movement for Black Lives. He captures the humanity of those involved and the brutality they face in the streets. Scott’s goal is to capture the voices and stories of the movement for Black Lives Matter and amplify them past this moment so they can speak to generations to come. Website: https://studiopotter.org
Exhibition ‘A Look At The World’ runs: July 27th – August 17th Opening Reception: July 28th, 4-7pm at Da Vinci Art Alliance (704 Catharine St)
BECOME A PJH MEMBER Consider becoming a member of the Photojournalism Hub and receive the benefits of free access to events, Photojournalism Hub resources, editorial content, portfolio reviews and photography exhibitions, and lots more! whilst supporting our work advocating, advancing social justice and human rights through promoting, engaging the public and stakeholders to committed, courageous independent photojournalism, and journalism. If there were ever a time to join us, it is now.Support the Photojournalism Hub from as little as £1 every month. If you can, please consider supporting us with a regular amount each month. Thank you. JOIN US HERE
Photography Workshops for the third Sector and Companies
We offer bespoke Documentary Photo Storytelling Workshops. Our workshops offer learning in documentary photography practice which adds value in reporting, and visually tell a story. Our workshops bring people together and have been noted to strengthen the relationships within a team or with the communities they serve. Contact us with your needs, or asks us for ideas on running a bespoke photography workshop.
