Educators
Our international educators have both teaching and practical experience in their fields, working as photojournalists, visual and print journalists, writers, curators, and editors. They speak a multitude of languages to enable us to welcome students from across the world to our tuition-free online courses (for more information, please see our Core Programs and read our FAQ).
MONICA ALLENDE
Monica Allende is an independent curator/artistic director, consultant and educator.
She is the Artistic Director of Landskrona Foto Festival, and was GetxoPhoto International Image Festival Artistic Director from 2017 to 2019. She has also collaborated with WeTransfer as a Consultant and Creative Producer, and was the director of FORMAT17 International Photography Festival. She is curating the Blues Skies Project, a multidisciplinary project with artist Anton Kusters and Ruben Samama, shortlisted for the Deutsche Borse Photography Foundation Prize 2019. She collaborated with Screen Projects as a producer of the ScreenLabs.
Allende was the Photo Editor at the Sunday Times Magazine, where she launched Spectrum, the award-winning photography section.
She is a visiting lecturer at the London College of Communication, London & EFTI in Madrid.
Monica has also produced and taught creatives labs for FIFV in Chile, ScreenLab in London and Taskheil in Saudi Arabia. The Mentorship Business Programme for the University of Sunderland’s and workshop for Internazionale a Ferrara, WPP workshop Angola, Magnum Professional Practice, among many others, as well as WPP JOOP Masterclass.
She is dedicated to nurturing new and established talent and nominates photographers for prizes including the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, the Leica Oskar Barnack Award, the Prix Pictet and The Joop Swart Masterclass/ WPP.
Allende is also a reviewer and ambassador for Reminders Photography Stronghold in Japan and Docking Station in Holland.
ALI ARKADY
Ali Arkady (b. 1982) is an artist, photographer, and filmmaker from Khanaqin, Iraq. A graduate of Khanaqin Institute of Fine Art, he has been working as an independent photographer since 2006. In 2014 Ali joined VII Photo Agency as part of their VII Mentor Program.
Ali’s work has focused on wounded and disabled Iraqis during the war, as well as the daily life of his countrymen. He has done intimate work on the plight of the Yazidis, an ethnic group residing in Syria and Iraq, after their expulsion by Daesh (Islamic State). More recently Ali produced some of the most important evidence of war crimes in the past 30 years when covering Iraqi forces in the battles for Mosul: he portrayed humanitarian conditions and conflicts with sensitivity and an unflinching eye.
Ali chose to cover the deteriorating situations of his people following the regime change of 2003. He has presented a compelling work titled ‘Iraq: Situations’ for the internationally acclaimed project ‘Over My Eyes’ produced by DARST which features several of the most important Iraq contemporary photographers.
He won the Most Resilient Journalist Award (2019) for his exceptional courage and persistence, the prestigious Bayeux Prize for War Correspondents (2017), and had his work shown as part of the Venice Biennale (2017).
His current projects include covering immigrants conditions in Europe, as well as documenting Middle East artists who left their country.
ANUSH BABAJANYAN
Armenian photographer Anush Babajanyan focuses her work on social narratives related to women, issues of minorities and the aftermath of the conflict in Nagorno Karabakh, among others.
In addition to working extensively in the Caucasus, she also continues to photograph in Turkey, the Middle East and West Africa.
Much of Anush Babajanyan’s recent activity has been dedicated to peace building processes between Armenia and Turkey. In 2016, she co-founded the #BridgingStories project that brought together young photographers from Turkey and Armenia, in an effort to bridge peace between the two nations.
Anush is currently making her first book–The House of Culture– by hand; it is about the memory of Soviet Armenian culture houses.
Before joining VII, Anush co-founded and was a member of women photographers’ collective 4Plus.
Anush received a grant from the Open Society Foundations Documentary Photography Project in 2013 assisting her continuous work between Armenia and Turkey.
Anush Babajanyan’s photography has been published in The New York Times, Washington Post, National Geographic, Foreign Policy Magazine, and various other international publications.
GIORGIO BARAVALLE
Giorgio Baravalle is the Creative Director at de.MO, an award-winning, multidisciplinary design firm that collaborates with a wide range of international clients, from start-ups to established businesses — all of them seeking authentic expression, cultural relevance, and deeper engagement. Our global team produces strategic, visually dynamic solutions that successfully articulate each brand’s character and mission.
Founded in 1997, in Milan, Italy, de.MO has been housed since 2002 in a restored 19th-century carriage house in Millbrook, New York.
Select clients:
Alicia Adams Alpaca, Aperture, Chronicle Books, Gray Kunz Restaurants, Hearst Corporation, International Center for Photography, Kieselstein-Cord, Magnum Photo, Melcher Media, MISH New York, Morgenthal Frederics, Random House, Redux Pictures, Rizzoli, Studio Museum in Harlem, Tufts University, United Nations, Villanova University, VII Photo.
PHILIP BLENKINSOP
In 1989, carrying two Leicas and a large cardboard box full of film, Blenkinsop arrives in Asia.
He embraces its all-consuming chaos, the violence and the beauty that lurks beneath, the armed struggles being waged on forgotten fronts, on distant hilltops and in the remote jungles of South-East Asia; From East Timor to Nepal.
His experiences define him and in time it becomes his world.
With this, comes proximity to the people he documents, empathizing to the point of assimilating the injustices suffered.
“To photograph rage, I must feel that rage. To photograph loss, I must try to feel the weight of that loss as if it were my own to bear.”
“A man of guerrillas and of resistances”, (Herve Le Goff), and “one of the most essential photographers of his generation” (Christian Caujolle), Blenkinsop’s uncompromising vision and commitment to the region has given birth to a contemporary body of work, at once remarkable and unparalleled.
A member of l’Agence VU from 1997 to 2007, Blenkinsop was one of the founding members of the prestigious Noor Photo Agency. He is an Honorary Fellow of Falmouth University in recognition of his services to photojournalism.
In 2009, acclaimed film director David Bradbury released his 70-minute documentary on Blenkinsop and his work entitled My Asian Heart.
Monographs include The Cars That Ate Bangkok, (White Lotus) and Extreme Asie (Nathan/Delpire-Photopoche).
Major awards include the Felix H Man Prize for his work on the suppression of the Pro-Democracy Movement in Thailand, The Grand Prix Photo Jean-Louis Calderon for his reportage on ethnic cleansing in Borneo, The Nuit des Yeux d’Or, the Prix Scam ‘Roger Pic’ and Amnesty International’s Award for Investigative Journalism for his expose of the Secret War in Laos and three-time recipient of the Visa d’Or for his work on Laos, the Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami and the Great Sichuan Earthquake.
Blenkinsop sits on the advisory boards of the Program for Narrative and Documentary Practice at The Institute for Global Leadership, Tufts University, USA and Photo Kathmandu Festival in Nepal.
BEN BOHANE
Ben Bohane is an Australian photojournalist and tv producer based in Vanuatu in the South Pacific.
For the past 30 years he has specialised in reporting religion, conflict and culture across the Asia Pacific region for a variety of Australian and global media including TIME, Vanity Fair and National Geographic. Most of his work since 1994 has been focused on the much under-reported Pacific islands region, where he has documented the forgotten conflicts of Bougainville, West Papua, East Timor and New Caledonia among others.
With the global “centre of gravity” moving from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean, the Pacific region is now on the frontline of climate change and geopolitical tensions between China and the US, and Bohane has focused on these stories in recent years. Another area of interest for him has been the role of kastom, cult and cargo-cult movements across the region; how religion and indigenous belief systems collide and co-exist, how they spark but also end conflict, ushering in kastom reconciliation processes and peace.
His photos are collected by The New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum and Australian War Memorial, as well as being held in private collections.
He is the founder of Waka Photo Agency, the first photo agency in the Pacific, as well as a co-founder, along with Tim Page, of the Australian war photographers collective degreeSouth. He is on the Advisory Council for the main think tank in the Pacific, the Pacific Institute of Public Policy, and currently works with the Pacific Security College based at the Australian National University.
His books include Follow The Morning Star about the struggle for independence in West Papua; War by the degreeSouth collective; and The Black Islands - Spirit and War in Melanesia, a 20 year photographic journey through kastom and conflict in Australia’s closest island neighbours. In 2014 he made Island Style, a one-hour documentary following the experience of Pacific island soldiers serving in Afghanistan that screened widely across the Pacific. In 2019 he was the inaugural winner of the Walkely/Sean Dorney award for Pacific journalism.
ERIC BOUVET
Eric Bouvet (born 1961) began his photographic career in 1981 after studying art and graphic industries in Paris.
His interest in photography was sparked when, at the age of 8, he watched the first live television images of the Apollo 11 mission landing on the moon. It was then that he realized the importance of news and historic moments, not to mention capturing them on film.
Bouvet worked as a staff photographer at the French photo agency Gamma during the 1980s and launched his freelance career in 1990. He first won international recognition with his 1986 pictures of the rescue efforts in the aftermath of a volcano eruption in Omeyra, Colombia. Since then, Bouvet has covered conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Chechnya, Sudan, Somalia, the former Yugoslavia, Lebanon, Israel, Northern Ireland, Kurdistan, Surinam, Burundi, Libya, and Ukraine.
He has covered major international events including the funeral of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran, Tiananmen Square in China, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Prague’s Velvet Revolution, the U.S. attack on Libya, the release of Nelson Mandela, the Olympic Games, and the migrant crisis in Europe.
He has also worked on many ‘society’ stories including life in Russian jails, young sailors on aircraft carriers, French police working in the Paris suburbs, France’s last coal miners, and life at a pediatric clinic for children with cancer.
Since 2011, he’s also worked on documentaries projects with large format camera, 4x5 and 8X10 : first one “Sex, Love...” second about “Peace” and still in 2016 “Chaos” and “the French.”
His work has been published in many international magazines including Time, Life, Newsweek, Paris-Match, Stern, The New York Time’s Magazine, and The Sunday Times Magazine. He has also led photographic campaigns of UN and various NGOs and charities including Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), International Red Cross (ICRC), Medecins du Monde (MDM), and Action Against Hunger (ACF).
For the past 20 years, he has given workshops in Arles and many European countries.
Along the way, Bouvet has received five World Press Awards, as well as two Visa d’Or Awards (Perpignan Photo Festival), the gold medal for the 150th anniversary of photography, the Bayeux-Calvados Award for War Correspondents, the Public award from Bayeux-Calvados, the Front Line Club award, and the Paris-Match Award.
BEN BRODY
Ben Brody is an independent photographer, educator, and picture editor working on long-form projects related to the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their aftermath. He is the Director of Photography for The GroundTruth Project and Report for America. His first book, Attention Servicemember, published by Red Hook Editions and designed by Kummer & Herrman, has been shortlisted for the Aperture - Paris Photo First Book Award. Ben holds an MFA from Hartford Art School’s International Low-Residency Photography program. He resides in western Massachusetts.
STEFANO DE LUIGI
Born in Cologne in 1964, Italian photographer Stefano De Luigi currently lives in Paris and started his career working for the Grand Louvre Museum as a photographer from from 1989 to 1996. He has published 3 books: Pornoland (Thames & Hudson-2004), Blanco (Trolley, 2010), and iDyssey (Edition Bessard 2017).
His numerous awards include four World Press Photo awards (1998, 2007, 2010, 2011), the Eugene Smith fellowship grant (2008), the Getty Grant for editorial photography, the Days Japan International Photojournalism Award (2010), and the Syngenta Photography Award (2015).
Stefano works regularly with several international publications including The New Yorker, Geo, Paris Match, and Stern and has exhibited his work in New York, Paris, Geneva, Milan, Rome, London, Istanbul, and Athens.
Stefano De Luigi has been a member of the VII Agency since 2008.
LINDA BOURNANE ENGELBERTH
Linda Bournane Engelberth is a Norwegian/Algerian artist based in Oslo and Berlin. She holds an advanced craft certificate in photography and a BA in History of Art. Her work focuses on identity through personal and subjective narratives, as well as rural communities which are in flux. Her most recent work has been exhibited at the Henie Onstad Art center, Norway, Die Haus der Photographie, Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, DUMBO Art Festival, New York and Noplace, Oslo, among several other exhibitions in Norway, the US, and Europe. From 2011-2013, she was selected for the Norwegian Journal of Photography, a program supporting ten independent photographers in Norway. Her work was selected for the European Photo Exhibition Award 2014.
DANNY WILCOX FRAZIER
Documentary photographer and filmmaker Danny Wilcox Frazier focuses his work on marginalized communities both in and outside of the United States. Frazier has photographed people struggling to survive the economic shift that has devastated rural communities throughout America, including in his home state of Iowa. His work acknowledges isolation and neglect while also celebrating perseverance and strength.
With his photographs from Iowa, Frazier documented those individuals continuing to live traditional lives in rural communities across the state, people challenged economically but often unwavering in their conviction to stay. The project, Driftless, was awarded the Center for Documentary Studies/Honickman First Book Prize and was published in 2007. After completing the book, Frazier directed and co-produced with MediaStorm a documentary that confronts issues highlighted by his photographs.
Frazier’s photographs have been included in numerous books including: MVP (The Millennium Villages Project), de.Mo design Ltd. November 2016, Detroit: An American Autopsy by Charlie LeDuff with the essay, Evidence Detroit, by Danny Wilcox Frazier, The Penguin Press, February 2013, War Is Only Half The Story, Vol. IV, The Aftermath Project, January 2012, burn.02, burn inc, September 2011, and Land – Country Life in the Urban Age (catalogue), Noorderlicht, October 2010.
Frazier is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships including: Aaron Siskind Foundation, Individual Photographer’s Fellowship (2016), Emergency Fund, Magnum Foundation (2016), The Aftermath Project (2009), Humanities Iowa, an affiliate of the NEH (2009), W. Eugene Smith Grant finalist (2007 and 2008), and the Stanley Fellowship for Graduate Research Abroad (2003).
TSAR FEDORSKY
Tsar Fedorsky is a photographer whose work has been exhibited nationally and published worldwide. She was awarded an Artist Fellowship Grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council in 2015, and was a Critical Mass Finalist in 2015 and 2017. Her first book The Light Under the Door was published in August 2017 by Peperoni Books. Work from this series has been included in the Photographic Resource Center Exposure 2016 group show, the Garner Center at New England School of Photography, the Detroit Center for Contemporary Photography’s online “NEW DIRECTIONS” gallery, and the Eli Marsh Gallery at Amherst College. The artist earned a M.F.A. from the Hartford Art School where she was the first recipient of the Mary Frey Photo Book Award and a B.A. in history from Amherst College.
ZIYAH GAFIC
Ziyah Gafic is an award-winning photojournalist and videographer based in Sarajevo focusing on societies locked in a perpetual cycle of violence and Muslim communities around the world. He covered major stories in over 50 countries including conflicts in Chechnya, Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan. Ziyah’s work received many prestigious awards such as multiple awards at World Press Photo, Grand Prix Discovery of the Year at Les Rencontres d’Arles, Hasselblad Masters Award, City of Perpignan Award for Young Reporters at Visa pour l’Image, Photo District News, Getty Images grant for editorial photography, TED fellowship, Prince Claus grant, and Magnum Emergency fund grant. His work is regularly published in leading international publications. Ziyah authored several monographs including Troubled Islam - short stories from troubled societies, Quest for Identity, and the most recent, Heartland. Ziyah is TED speaker and Logan fellow.
MARY GELMAN
Mary Gelman is a Russian photographer based in Saint Petersburg. In 2016, she received a BA in sociology, and she graduated from the School of Modern Photography Docdocdoc (Saint Petersburg). She was a participant in various international and local workshops. She works as a photojournalist and teacher. The most important part of her professional life is personal projects. She explores the larger world through close personal narratives. Mary focuses on issues of gender and body, boundary and identity, discrimination and the human relationship with the environment.
Mary Gelman’s photography has been published in The Washington Post, National Geographic, Internazionale, Buzzfeed, and other international magazines.
ASHLEY GILBERTSON
Ashley Gilbertson is an Australian photographer and writer living in New York City widely recognized for his critical eye and unique approaches to social issues. Gilbertson is a member of the VII Agency, a frequent contributor to The New York Times, and a collaborator with the United Nations.
Early on, Gilbertson’s work focused on refugees, an interest that in 2002, led him to Iraq. His work from that country earned critical acclaim from the Overseas Press Club which awarded Gilbertson the Robert Capa Gold Medal for his 2004 work in Falluja. Gilbertson’s first book, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, released in 2007 to critical acclaim, went on to become a best seller.
After Iraq, Gilbertson shifted his focus to veterans issues, drawing attention to post traumatic stress disorder, suicide, and traumatic brain injuries. Gilbertson’s second book, Bedrooms Of The Fallen, a collection of photographs depicting the intact bedrooms of service members killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, was released in 2014. That work was published in The New York Times Magazine, and received a prestigious Ellie award, regarded then as the Pulitzer Prize of the magazine world.
Since 2014, Gilbertson has been examining global migration, with an emphasis on the arrival and integration of refugees in Europe and the root causes for migration from Africa.
In addition to photographing, Gilbertson regularly writes opinion and news for outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, ProPublica, and UNICEF. Gilbertson also works on multimedia stories and his story on The South China Sea earned him an Emmy nomination in 2014.
Gilbertson has shot commercial assignments for Apple Computer, Axa Insurance, and the Ad Council.
Gilbertson’s prints and books are included in the permanent collections of numerous museums and art galleries around the world, and has been exhibited widely at institutions including The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery (Washington), Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne), Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas), and The National September 11 Memorial Museum (New York).
Gilbertson lectures regularly at universities and museums globally.
RON HAVIV
Ron Haviv is an Emmy nominated and award-winning photojournalist and co-founder of the VII Agency, dedicated to documenting conflict and raising awareness about human rights issues around the globe.
His first photography book, Blood and Honey: A Balkan War Journal, was called “One of the best non-fiction books of the year,” by The Los Angeles Times and “A chilling but vastly important record of a people’s suffering,” by Newsweek. His other monographs are Afghanistan: The Road to Kabul, Haiti: 12 January 2010, and The Lost Rolls.
Haviv has produced an unflinching record of the injustices of war and his photography has had singular impact. His work in the Balkans, which spanned over a decade of conflict, was used as evidence to indict and convict war criminals at the international tribunal in The Hague. President George H.W. Bush cited Haviv’s chilling photographs documenting paramilitary violence in Panama as one of the reasons for the 1989 American intervention.
Haviv is the central character in six documentary films, including National Geographic Explorer’s Freelance in a World of Risk and River of Gold. He has provided expert analysis and commentary on ABC News, BBC, CNN, NPR, MSNBC, NBC Nightly News, Good Morning America, and The Charlie Rose Show.
ED KASHI
Ed Kashi is a photojournalist, filmmaker, speaker, and educator dedicated to documenting the social and political issues that define our times. A sensitive eye and an intimate relationship to his subjects are signatures of his work. A member of the VII Agency since 2010, Kashi has been recognized for his complex imagery and its compelling rendering of the human condition.
In addition to editorial assignments, filmmaking and personal projects, Kashi is a mentor to students of photography and an active participant in forums and lectures on photojournalism, documentary photography and multimedia. His early adoption of hybrid visual storytelling has produced a number of influential short films. Additionally, his editorial assignments and personal projects have generated eight books, including Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta, THREE, and Photojournalisms.
In 2002, Kashi, in partnership with his wife, writer + filmmaker Julie Winokur, founded TALKING EYES MEDIA. The non-profit company has produced numerous award-winning short films, exhibits, books & multimedia pieces exploring significant social issues. TEM has coordinated Newest Americans in partnership with VII Agency and Rutgers University-Newark. Newest Americans is a multimedia and multidisciplinary collaboration documenting the stories about immigration and identity that radiate from Rutgers-Newark, one of the most diverse universities in the nation.
DR. PAUL LOWE
Dr. Paul Lowe is a Reader in Documentary Photography and the Course Leader of the Masters programme in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts, London, UK.
Paul is an award-winning photographer, whose work is represented by VII, and who has been published in Time, Newsweek, Life, The Sunday Times Magazine, The Observer and The Independent amongst others. He has covered breaking news the world over, including the fall of the Berlin Wall, Nelson Mandela’s release, famine in Africa, the conflict in the former Yugoslavia and the destruction of Grozny.
His book, Bosnians, documenting 10 years of the war and post war situation in Bosnia, was published in April 2005 by Saqi books. His research interest focuses on the photography of conflict, and he has contributed chapters to the books Picturing Atrocity: Photography in Crisis (Reaktion, 2012) and Photography and Conflict. His most recent books include A chronology of Photography and Photography Masterclass, published by Thames and Hudson, and Understanding Photojournalism, co-authored with Dr. Jenny Good, published by Bloomsbury Academic Press.
CHRISTOPHER MORRIS
Christopher Morris was born in California in 1958 and began his career as a documentary conflict photographer working almost exclusively for TIME Magazine, where he has been on contract since 1990. He has been credited with redefining political coverage in America during his years working at the White House for TIME Magazine from 2000 till 2009. While working as a photojournalist, Morris expanded his work into the fashion world. Morris is a founding member of VII Photo Agency.
ALISON MORLEY
Alison Morley is a photography coach, editor and educator. She is chair emerita of the Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism Program at the International Center of Photography. She has taught workshops all over the world and has worked at various magazines and newspapers as Photo Editor, including for The New York Times, Esquire and Life Magazine. She has written on photography for Elle Magazine and is an editor for major monographs such as The Ninth Floor by Jessica Dimmock, Andrea Star Reese’s Urban Cave and Ron Haviv’s Blood and Honey. She is currently curating the Daegu Photo Biennale 2021 in Korea and editing forthcoming photo books.
MACIEK NABRDALIK
Maciek Nabrdalik is a Warsaw-based documentary photographer and a member of the VII Agency since 2009. His primary focus is on sociological changes in Eastern Europe. Maciek’s awards include honors from World Press Photo, Pictures of the Year International, NPPA The Best of Photojournalism, and multiple awards in his native Poland.
Nabrdalik’s project on German Nazi camp survivors worldwide was published as a book, called The Irreversible in 2013. His second book, Homesick, summarizes his long-term project chronicling the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster and was published in 2016.
Nabrdalik was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University 2016/2017. His work has been exhibited and published internationally.
ILVY NJIOKIKTJIEN
Ilvy Njiokikthien is an independent photographer and multimedia journalist based in the Netherlands, represented by VII Photo Agency and is a Canon Ambassador.
She has worked in many parts of the world, with a focus on Africa. As a documentary photographer, she covers current affairs and contemporary social issues. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Der Spiegel, NRC Handelsblad, Telegraph Magazine and Stern, among others, and was exhibited at Visa pour l’Image in 2012.
Accolades include a Canon AFJ Award, two awards at World Press Photo and first prize in POYi’s Issue Reporting Multimedia Story.
ESPEN RASMUSSEN
For eleven years, Espen Rasmussen has worked as a picture editor for Helg magazine, part of Norway’s leading newspaper VG, and focuses now on producing online feature stories for the magazine at the newspaper’s Hub. Espen is also one of three mentors/teachers for the Norwegian Journal of Photography, a biannual journal where he guides 8 to 10 photographers through making a book for two years.
NINA ROBINSON
Nina Robinson is an award-winning documentary photographer and educator based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her work has been described as tender, cinematic and visceral. It has been featured on international platforms including National Geographic, The New York Times and Time’s Lightbox. She covers stories in the American South, Midwest, and East Coast. Robinson developed a groundbreaking and innovative phototherapy program in 2015 with senior citizens at William Hodson Community Center in the Bronx. Through the use of photography, older residents were able to openly explore personal and social issues. She continues similar social workshops and programming centered around photography across the country.
NICHOLE SOBECKI
Nichole Sobecki is an American photographer and filmmaker based in Nairobi, Kenya.
After graduating from Tufts University, Nichole spent the early years of her career in Turkey, Lebanon, and Syria, focusing on regional issues related to identity, conflict, and human rights. From 2012-2015, she led Agence France-Presse’s East Africa video bureau and was a 2014 Rory Peck Awards News Finalist for her coverage of the Westgate mall attacks in Kenya. Nichole’s work has been recognized by Pictures of the Year, the One World Media Awards, the Alexandra Boulat Award for Photojournalism, The Magenta Foundation, and The Jacob Burns Film Center, among others, and her work has been exhibited internationally.
She is a contributor to Everyday Africa, a collection of images shot on mobile phones across the continent, and an attempt to showcase the moments missing from dramatic news images — everyday life that is neither idealized nor debased.
Nichole aims to create photographs and films that demand consideration for the lives of those represented – their joys, challenges, and ultimately their humanity.
DANIEL SCHWARTZ
Daniel Schwartz graduated from Zurich School of Arts and Craft (now Zurich University of the Arts) in 1980. He concentrates on book projects, with exhibitions, based on extensive travels, photographic essays, and reportages covering the Eastern Hemisphere from Iran to East Timor, from Turkmenistan to Bangladesh. Schwartz’s art is documentary; it is in the history of places. His journalism is not a reaction to events; it builds on memory. His method is best expressed in Travelling through the Eye of History (published, in 2009, like all his books by Thames & Hudson), a pre- and post-9/11 observation covering Central Asia including Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Kashmir.
In 1987/1988, during a forbidden journey, Schwartz became the first foreigner and photographer to travel along all sections of the Great Wall of China. His reportages about the habitats of South and Southeast Asia’s deltas, endangered by the consequences of climate change, were an early photojournalistic investigation of climate change, celebrated by the Financial Times as a “visual j’accuse” and made him twice a finalist of the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography (1993 and 1995). A sequel to his work Delta (published 1997) and awareness project, While the Fires Burn: A Glacier Odyssey is featured in Beyond the Obvious, a film about Schwartz’s life and work, to be released in 2018.
From 1990 to 2005, Schwartz was a member of the editorial team of DU, and became the prestigious magazine’s second staff photographer after Werner Bischof. From 1996 to 2004, he was a member of Lookat Photos Agency and conceived and curated major traveling exhibitions. He is a member of the Advisory Board, Program for Narrative and Documentary Practice at Tufts University. In 2012, he was Visiting Artist at the Center for Studies in the Theory and History of Photography, Institute of Art History, University of Zurich. In 2010, Schwartz was awarded the prestigious Cultural Price of the Canton of Zurich.
Schwartz had major solo exhibitions, e.g. at the Kunsthaus Zurich (1986) and the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin (2011), and participated in group exhibitions stretching from the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie, Arles (1988) to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2011).
MAGGIE STEBER
Maggie Steber, a documentary photographer specializing in humanistic stories, has worked in 67 countries. Her honors include a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation in 2017, the Leica Medal of Excellence, World Press Photo Foundation, the Overseas Press Club, Pictures of the Year, the Medal of Honor for Distinguished Service to Journalism from the University of Missouri, the Alicia Patterson Grant, the Ernst Haas Grant, and a Knight Foundation grant for the New American Newspaper project. Steber has worked in Haiti for three decades. Aperture published her monograph, Dancing on Fire.
In 2013, Steber was named as one of eleven Women of Vision by National Geographic Magazine with an exhibition that traveled to five cities. Steber served as a Newsweek contract photographer and as Asst. Managing Editor of Photography and Features at The Miami Herald, overseeing projects that won a Pulitzer. Her work is included in the Library of Congress, the Guggenheim Foundation Collection, and The Richter Library. She exhibits internationally. Steber teaches workshops internationally including at the World Press Joop Swart Master Classes, the International Center for Photography, Foundry Workshops, and the Obscura Photo Festival.
SARA TERRY
Sara Terry is an award-winning documentary photographer and filmmaker known for her work covering post-conflict stories, and a 2012 Guggenheim Fellow for her long-term project, Forgiveness and Conflict: Lessons from Africa. Her first long-term post-conflict work, Aftermath: Bosnia’s Long Road to Peace, led her to found The Aftermath Project in 2003 on the premise that “War is Only Half the Story.” An accomplished speaker on aftermath and visual literacy issues, her lectures include a TedX talk, Storytelling in a Post-Journalism Word, and several appearances at The Annenberg Space for Photography. She has directed and produced two feature-length documentaries, Fambul Tok (2011) and FOLK (2013). Fambul Tok, about a groundbreaking grass-roots forgiveness program in Sierra Leone, premiered at SXSW in 2011, and grew out of her photo project, Forgiveness and Conflict: Lessons from Africa. It was supported by the Sundance Documentary Institute and Chicken and Egg, and was hailed by Paste magazine as one of the best 100 documentaries of all time. Terry became a photographer and filmmaker after a long, award-winning career in print and public radio. She is working on her third documentary, That’s How We Roll, about mobile home parks and the affordable housing crisis.
DR. LAUREN WALSH
Dr. Lauren Walsh teaches at The New School and New York University, where she is the Director of the Gallatin Photojournalism Lab. She is also the Director of Lost Rolls America, a national archive of photography and memory. Walsh’s most recent book is Conversations on Conflict Photography. She is co-editor of The Future of Text and Image and The Millennium Villages Project, and editor of Macondo: Memories of the Colombian Conflict. She has published widely in mainstream media and academic journals and anthologies. She is the co-director of Biography of a Photo, an in-progress documentary film about two iconic photographs of conflict.
Walsh’s lecture series for VII Academy workshops focuses on responsible documentary practice, with emphasis on media literacy and ethical concerns. Topics include the role of journalism in society, an understanding of stereotypes in visual storytelling, considerations regarding consent from subjects, and documenting issues of crisis or hardship. Lectures are followed by discussion sessions, where Walsh leads conversations with students about their own work and the images we encounter in contemporary culture.