Delhi Photo Festival 2015: A Preview

MADCHENLAND by Karolin Klüppel

In the state of Meghalaya in India, the Khasi indigenous people, with 1.1 million members, form the majority of the population of the eastern part of Meghalaya. The Khasi are a matrilineal society. Here, traditionally, it is the girls who are of particular importance and are the forefront of the family. The line of succession passes through the youngest daughter. If she marries, her husband is taken into her family‘s house, and the children take their mother‘s name. A family with just sons is considered unlucky, because only daughters can assure the continuity of a clan. The succession after maternal line guarantees girls and women in Meghalaya a unique economic and social independence compared to general Indian conditions. To disrespect a woman in the Khasi culture means to harm the society. Between 2013 and 2014 Karolin Klüppel spent nine months in the Khasi village of Mawlynnong in northeast India, a village of just 95 dwellings. In her series, she concentrates on the girls themselves in contextualising them in their everyday physical environment through a sensitive balance between documentation and composition.

PERFECT CITIZEN by Arturo Betancourt

This photographic essay, not meant to be a mere illustration of the harsh reality, but a photograph of the critical unconsciousness of individuals, submerged by social inertia in apathy to all historical matters that surround them. The photographs try to confront the spectator between the importance of “being” and not just “existing”, to reflect in those actions that turn the individual insensitive and as part of a society used to its own routines. These images seek to remove the inner consciousness and resurrect “the human being with a voice and sight, with the ability to hear and thus, one who possesses a criteria.”

ON THE IDENTITY OF A TOMATO PICKER by Dario Bosio

I went to Grand Ghetto, a cluster of precarious shelters in the countryside near Foggia, Italy, with the intention of documenting the harsh living conditions of the thousands of African immigrants that work in the fields picking tomatoes.

Soon I started being confronted by the workers about my right to shoot those photographs. Many others have been here before me, they said, shooting and distributing pictures that were largely unrelated to the image that the people portrayed have of themselves.

I am not what I look like, was the key concept of the long speeches I had while I was trying to understand why people were so reluctant to be photographed.

Nevertheless, I was fascinated by the vast spectrum of humanity I had been able to come across during my stay. People who saved money for years in order to afford the journey to Italy, a place where they could find a well-paid job and have a brighter future in the ‘promised land’ Europe. People who now live in cardboard shelters with no water or electricity, working ten hours per day for less than four Euros per hour. People who have lose their identity and become tomato pickers.

HUMANE by Angelica Dass

Humanae is a work in progress, which intends to deploy a chromatic range of the different human skin colours. This taxonomy of Borgianas proportions adopts the format of the PANTONE Guide, which gives the sample a degree of hierarchical horizontality that diluted the false preeminence of some races over others in terms of skin colour. The presentations of the range of colour shades induce the viewer to reflect on one of the dual meanings containing the word identity: that associated with equality. Humanae activates a semantic mechanism with an "innocent" displacement of the socio-political context of the racial problem in a safe environment, as is a colour catalog in which the “primary” colours have exactly the same importance as “mixed”.

URBAN MOUNTAINS by Arun Vijai Mathavan

For the first time in human history, in 2007, more than 50% of the world’s population was living in urban areas. In the last 50 years, the developing world has seen the most radical migrations to cities, with people flooding them looking for a better life. In India especially, the large megapolises of Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta and others accommodate thousands of new migrants every day. The challenges for these cities in providing space, housing and work all pale however in comparison to the biggest challenge of all Waste.

Huge mountains of waste, creating a new looming landscape that no one wants to talk about, now frame these cities’ outskirts. The mountains of waste bring with them a host of issues, which affect all of us, but most critically the unfortunate poor who live and work around it. In this project, the photographer has tried to look at these landscapes of waste, and what the dangerously looming reality means for all of us.

THE WORLD AROUND US by Arjen Schmitz

My autonomous work in photography highlights the development and change in space in the broadest sense of the word. This interest originates from my fascination with metropolitan architecture, landscape and the human being moving within and includes a feeling of desolation left behind.

Space is in perpetual motion. Where tradition and development meet, often arises a discrepancy. Enforced by the progressing economic developments, old and new sometimes hardly intertwine; they will deviate and ultimately new will prevail, mostly without dialogue or compromise.

In my work, I focus on project development, architecture and landscape that come into being through economic growth, and political decisions that manifest themselves on a megalomaniac scale, because of which attention for living and working comfort – including the housing environment - is reduced to a minimum. The space and the landscape are filled in with almost anonymous mass architecture as a reflection of wealth and development even when it is empty.

All my photographs are made with an analogue 8x10 inch camera. Thus, I force myself to be contemplative; to observe and to study in what way the filled space presents itself and forces itself upon me. This work has been photographed in monotonous reserved light.

BORDERS by Jérémie Lenoir


As the product of political and economic processes, the contemporary landscape has evolved today to disappear into its own constraints. The non-places are nowadays multiplying themselves into globalized patterns, while saturated urban peripheries are compartmentalized in impersonal and dehumanized architecture. Realized between 2010 and 2014, BORDERS studies the urban / rural frontier in France. These places of tensions reveal our landscape evolution and cast doubt on the meaning of the society we are currently building.

Then, the transfiguration of the landscape embodied in abstract painting leads to question the photographic medium in its capacity to recreate reality. Despite a very specific protocol (each photograph’s shot at the same time, at the same altitude, with the same focal lens and nothing is added or removed), I choose to invite the viewers in an abstract world that requires time to decipher. In the second phase, the combination of aerial perspective and abstraction permits an investigation on the ability of our contemporary territories to deliver any form of intelligibility or any proof of vernacular identity. Thus, between the necessity of capturing the real and its transfiguration into paintings, my pictures are attempting to give a new realism to our contemporary territories.

THE TWO LABYRINTHS by Michel Le Belhomme

While I hold a great respect for classical traditions of photography, I believe it is indispensable to place them in perspective. This series explores its most blatant legend: landscape and its representation. Landscape, the ultimate romantic subject, most often expresses itself from the angle of the contemplative or the breathtaking. Etymologically, a landscape is a layout of traits, characters, and shapes of a limited space.

But it is to be seen firstly as a system, perfect theorem of flows and crossings, of borders and intermixing. In this series, I firmly choose to stand “in conflict” with the landscape, as a vision and as a product of space and despite its apparent obviousness I assume it can be put in perspective and thus reinvented. To do so, I have a structuralist approach of the spectrums of exploration, analysis of this visible production.

To experience landscape is to practice it, to place it in contradiction, thus creating a peripheral vision. The visible then asserts itself through deconstruction and alteration. Without moving away from the primary function of an image, which is to show, this series elaborates hybrid and fanciful creatures, images of images, representations of representations.

Halfway between dreamt-up images, suspended between documentation and fiction reality swiftly moves from obviousness to abstraction. The visible thus becomes minimalistic, ghost-like, a breathtaking void.

A WOMAN WITH TWO NAMES by Vittoria Mentasti

"A Woman With Two Names" explores Native Inuits' modern way of life and social challenges in Nunavut, a large region in the Canadian Arctic. At the beginning of the 20th century the Inuit in Nunavut were still nomads, hunting and fishing, living off their land. The Canadian government and the Church began a process of forced assimilation, through permanent settlements and Residential schools. This deprived the Inuit of their social and spiritual customs. The transition away from their nomadic roots to modernized living has led to alcoholism, domestic violence and unemployment. The tension between old values and Western Civilization makes it difficult for the Inuit, especially the youth, to assert their own identity and find a place in the world.The legacy of abuse still haunts those living today in a cycle of violence, which is self destructive and directed towards loved ones. The many social ills that afflict the population act like a chain, linking generations as they branch out through families and communities. I followed the chain of relationships that bond them, trying to bring light to the love and violence that they experience.

SUNDAY SOLDIERS by Daniella Zalcman

Every weekend, thousands of British hobbyists converge in empty fields to dig trenches, erect tents, gas up tanks, and stage battles from Normandy to North Africa. These are Britain’s Sunday Soldiers. World War II is an inextricable part of this country’s collective consciousness, and the act of reenactment is deeply personal.

So many Brits have a family legacy that connects them directly to the war. Many wear uniforms or personal effects that belonged to their fathers or grandfathers. Others reenact specific veterans with whom they’ve corresponded. While it is a hobby for most, it’s an all-consuming one. Summer weekends are devoted to loading up trailers and trucks with huge amounts of gear and stepping into the past.

Most of all, WWII re-enactors are looking to commemorate the deadliest war in human history. These exhibitions, designed to educate, are a testament to enduring collective memory, to Britain’s greatest generation, and to some of the most ambitious military operations in history.

In keeping with the re-enactors’ ethos, these photos were produced with a period twin-lens reflex camera. With it, I’ve attempted to pay respect to the war, its veterans, and those who enable its memory to live on.

LOVE ME OR KILL ME by Sarker Protick

The Bangladeshi film industry—based in Dhaka, and so known as ‘Dhallywood’—has been around since 1956. Dhallywood movies have fallen out of favour among the richer classes, who prefer foreign films. The growing influence of Bollywood films in Bangladesh has also had an adverse impact on the local industry. Yet, the Dhallywood industry produces around 100 movies a year, and still gets the support of many ordinary moviegoers.

Growing up in Dhaka, there was no cable TV except the national channel. Bangla film was the height of entertainment for us. Slowly, other films and TV channels took over. We didn’t think Dhallywood movies were cool anymore; they no longer played a part in my life. In the process of making photographs of Dhaka city I visited a film studio in F.D.C and was captivated by the colours, the light and the atmosphere. The events and details were odd, sometimes bizarre. The costumes are flashy, the sets and effects are cheap, and the colours are daring. There seems little contact with real life but I found it full of life.

‘Love Me or Kill Me’ is the title of a Dhallywood film, one that expresses the extreme emotions that define the genre. Love and revenge are the core ingredients of these movies. The stories do not change much: boy meets girl, falls in love, bad guy takes girl away, and hero fights to get her back. There is always similar climax and a happy ending. People love it.

JUST THE TWO OF US by Klaus Pichler

Who hasn't had the desire just to become someone else for a while? Dressing up is a way of creating an alter ego and a second skin, to which one can adjust their behavior.

Regardless of the motivating factors which cause somebody to acquire a costume, the main principle remains the same: the civilian steps behind the mask and turns into somebody else. For this photo series I visited owners of elaborate costumes in their own homes. As a matter of fact, 'just the two of us' deals with both: the costumes and the people behind them."

BEST IN SHOW by Karan Vaid

Winter in India is a busy time for dog enthusiasts and professional breeders. Each week thousands travel to compete in dog shows across India. The breeders spend great sums in importing pedigreed dogs, hiring professional handlers from abroad and flying these dogs to various shows across India.

Dog shows have a rich and long history in India; the first show was held in India in 1896 and flourished under the patronage of the English elite and subsequently the Indian aristocracy.

For participants today, it’s a highly competitive game with their reputation and aspirations on the line. There is usually no prize money to be had but breeding a placed dog can lead to big financial returns and many people aspire to be at the top of the dog show world in India.

If you leave passion aside, given the rich aristocratic history of dog shows, the closest reason for its existence would be pride for the most affluent members and of course aspirations of belonging for the rest. There is this celebrity like cult following among the fraternity for the best dogs and their respective kennels and it was natural to assume the role (and style) of a paparazzo and to make photographs within that “genre”.

ONE LAST PLAYGROUND by Md Farhad Rahman

This is a story of a fantasy world of a group of children. A world that was created by filling water bodies. A world in transition that existed for just a few days; the place will soon be transformed into a construction site within a few days. This is the only remaining playground for the local children.

100 YEARS by Sandy Gutkowski

Concerning my artistic work, I lay the emphasis on the process of its creation, the time of exploration, my connection to a certain idea, the feelings it provokes in me. I closely look into what seems visceral to me, to what relates to my deepest emotions. My activity as a photographer is not a steady method. It may be generated from different starting points. With every work I try to create different meanings; in my imagination, it sometimes appears to be more literal and sometimes more concept-related. I am fully into image creation, which allows to convey a new meaning to everyday life. The body as an artistic support, the space as an environment of experiences and the architecture that sets in context the emotion of situations. All of these make a vital universe on which I feel gradually interested, with more questions, more challenges influencing both my way of understanding life and my way of having it photographed. The purpose of my photographic essay is to provide another perspective on old age, more real for the present time, inviting to consider ageing also from a powerful and desirable point of view. My mother Cecilia is 100 years old; she is still engaged to life; she thinks positively and with her great sense of humour she proves that there is another possible way of ageing.

100 YEARS by Sandy Gutkowski

To some people, let’s just call them gamers, the world consists of bits and bytes. The virtual reality merges with the real world – if there even is such a thing as a real world, of course. It's easy to lose yourself in a virtual world, to inhabit and become the characters and avatars present on the screen in front of you. It’s a case of oversensitive empathy, throwing your mind forward into a simulated other, feeling and sensing what that small construct of pixels and polygons does, as though they are part of your own physical self.
If they were here with us, they would tell us about how they surf the alleyways of dreams and fantasies, of passion and fashion. In a split second, they would leave us again, reentering the world of bytes where their real lives play out.

This year it is estimated that a total of 966,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes of information will travel across the globe via the Internet, that is 966 Exabyte's of data. Such an awesome quantity of information has never existed before, and it all exists as the result of people communicating via virtual networks. Gradually digitizing and leaving traces of themselves on a simulacrum of reality.

HANG ON by Sophal Neak

Neak Sophal is seriously pursuing her exploration of contemporary Cambodian society. After a series of pictures in the countryside, in which she used the leaves of plants and trees to create portraits without faces in the landscape, she is now working in the city. Always putting the question of identity at the center of her work, Neak Sophal asked men and women to pose for her in the street, hiding their faces behind the objects that characterize them. Often these objects are related to their jobs. Each one loses his or her identity behind that which ultimately characterizes all: their work. Choosing each time the perfect distance, without effect, the photographer builds a strange documentary series, an inventory of functions behind which the individual disappears. We get a sense of a rigid society, stress and no real possibility to escape. The choice of the backgrounds, their colors and textures make a beautiful collection, at the same time diverse and strict.

WAITING FOR BETTER DAYS by Fatemeh Sarah Jabbari

Alternation of name of Persian Gulf, after 2500 years as “Gulf” in worldwide media (not the legal registered name in UN) inspired me to know more about an old country which owns more than 7000 years culture and 2500 years registered history.

Thus, I chose this project to work to depict daily life of an Iranian Balouchi family, one of Aryan tribes of Iran in a city which suffers from a severe poverty, with lots of jobless people, and addicted youth and is located near Pakistan border and Gulf of Oman.

I have tried to show their effort and desire to improve their way of life, their attempt to reach better days in all aspects of their lives, financially, socially etc.

Only few photographers have covered this subject because of the geographical, political, and social problems in this region.

A NATION OUTSIDE A NATION by Nadine Stijns

Labour migration is part of the lifeblood of Filipinos around the world. Nearly 10% of the population has left the Philippines in search for work abroad. My partner is Filipino-American and for years I watched the small-scale migrations among his family in California and the Philippines. These patterns are both visible and invisible: gifts are sent in gigantic boxes, money is returned and invested, new formations of friends and family are established in a foreign land, while Skype buzzes in the background with the sounds of home.

‘A Nation Outside a Nation’ captures these moments and movement in the Netherlands. The subjects I photograph often live in limbo—undocumented domestic workers or au pairs, who are also the targets of Dutch crackdowns on illegal immigration.

How can I capture the memories, the dreams and the flow of capital and possessions throughout the Filipino Diaspora? The Balikbayan Box, goods sent by Filipino migrants free of tax back to the Philippines, is an ideal symbol of my interest in the tangible and intangible experiences of labour migration. The box is more than foreign gifts and supplies; it’s an act of giving, an offering and a sign of new possibilities.

ROHINGYA by Michael Drost-Hansen

This is a story of a fantasy world of a group of children. A world that was created by filling water bodies. A world in transition that existed for just a few days; the place will soon be transformed into a construction site within a few days. This is the only remaining playground for the local children.

74 by Christian Werner

The Yazidi religion is one of the oldest religions. The Yazidis have faced persecution more than other religious community, because they are regarded as devil worshippers. They believe in Tausi Melek, a fallen angel in the form of a peacock. Since its founding years, 74 genocides have been committed against them. The youngest and most systematic of these persecutions have been conducted by the ISIS. Since the invasion of the ISIS in Iraq, hundreds of thousands Yazidis have been uprooted and are on the run. Thousands of men and boys were shot and beheaded, women abducted and sold at auction as sex slaves.

Only a few made it to the camps set up by NGOs. Most live in concrete skeletons of unfinished houses, improvised tents made of tarpaulin and branches or on the road. They had no chance to prepare for their flight, nor to pack essentials. Winter has come to Kurdistan and saps the forces of refugees who have no winter clothes or blankets to protect themselves. Until the beginning of the year, 10,000 Yazidis were encircled in the Sinjar Mountains of the IS militia. Over 4 months, they fought with little food, little ammunition and weapons to survive, until the Kurdish Peshmerga fought to open a land corridor, enabling the Yazidis to be evacuated.

With this story, I wish to draw attention to the situation of the Yazidis, who are the main victims of this conflict. I wish to show a broad spectrum: the current life situation, the despair of the encircled, the struggle for survival, the war with all its horrors, the religion, the destruction of religion, individual fates and their background.

ARUNIKA by Simon Wheatley

In 2008 Simon Wheatley, seeking his Bengali ancestry and with an interest in yogic philosophies, met a girl at a Calcutta ashram who had come from Nagaland with her family for an annual festival. Eighteen months later they married in a simple ceremony conducted by a monk who had initiated him into the tantric tradition his wife was born into.

When their daughter was born in 2011, he found himself in the northeastern town of Dimapur and began photographing with real enthusiasm for the first time in India. A year later he returned to Dimapur from some time in Hong Kong and China to feel principles encountered through a study of Tai Chi affecting his approach to photography. Previously he had relied on hard-won access to difficult subject matter, but in Dimapur he wandered randomly with the Taoist ideal of flowing like water, avoiding any resistances, chasing the light to wherever it seemed he was meant to be.

This approach has resulted in pictures of myriad situations, some indicating that he is still drawn to society’s edges. ’Arunika’ is a combination of tenderness at home and a reflection of concern at the world he has brought a daughter into.

NO ONE DIES AT A GYPSY WEDDING by Arjen Zwart

My autonomous work in photography highlights the development and change in space in the broadest sense of the word. This interest originates from my fascination with metropolitan architecture, landscape and the human being moving within and includes a feeling of desolation left behind.

Space is in perpetual motion. Where tradition and development meet, often arises a discrepancy. Enforced by the progressing economic developments, old and new sometimes hardly intertwine; they will deviate and ultimately new will prevail, mostly without dialogue or compromise.

In my work, I focus on project development, architecture and landscape that come into being through economic growth, and political decisions that manifest themselves on a megalomaniac scale, because of which attention for living and working comfort – including the housing environment - is reduced to a minimum. The space and the landscape are filled in with almost anonymous mass architecture as a reflection of wealth and development even when it is empty.

All my photographs are made with an analogue 8x10 inch camera. Thus, I force myself to be contemplative; to observe and to study in what way the filled space presents itself and forces itself upon me. This work has been photographed in monotonous reserved light.

LIVING IN THE SHADOWS by David Maurice Smith

In 1835 the town of Wilcannia, Australia was "discovered" by explorer Major Thomas Mitchell. Located inland on the Darling river, the name originates from the local Barkindji people and translates to either 'gap in the bank where the floodwaters escape' or 'wild dog'. The polarity of this lost translation reflects the identity of the Barkindji who called the area home long before Mitchell arrived.

The Barkindji strive to rewrite a cultural story torn from them through historical wrongs. They face the challenge of adapting to external influences while living in deep shadows cast by institutionalized racism. As traditional keepers of one of the most prosperous countries on the planet, they endure third world conditions.

Barkindji men have a life expectancy of only 37 years, domestic violence rates are 13 times that of other Australian communities and infant mortality rates are 3 times higher than non-Aboriginal people. Dependency on government subsidies for survival, overcrowding, violence, alcohol and drug abuse keep the community in a cycle of survival mode.

Although damaged, the spirit of the Barkindji carries on. There is rhythm and meaning despite the shadows cast on the Barlkindji. The fact that even shreds of their culture remain is a testament to their resilience.

THE OTHER HOME by Marina Paulenka

Požega Penitentiary is the only female prison in Croatia where more than 130 prisoners serve their prison sentences of six months or more. Croatian “Law Execution of Sentences of Imprisonment” states that photographing or filming of prisoners is allowed only in a way in which they cannot be identified.

Due to the fact that historical reductive forensic portraits in their depictions delete everything except the criminal identity, I try to show the complex way of women’s lives, deprived of their liberty, with photographs of existing scenes in dormitories, cells, bathrooms, “personal items” and their invisible traces, as they are often presented and experienced in society as the Other.

Within the same story, I present six clusters, through which I visualise topics such as womanhood, intimacy, motherhood, home, and surveillance and architecture, in order to emphasise the traces of the presence of women inside the prison.

I question the notion of freedom inside and outside of supervisory institutions’ architecture, while comparing it with a family home, which is often a model under which the prison system operates for a purpose of the “re-education of women”. According to many feminist theories, a family home is the central social scene in which a woman is simultaneously the subject and the object of control, but if a home looks like a prison, how do we then perceive a public institution in which prisoners serve their prison sentences?

SANGUINITY by Rahul Kumar Das

If Cubist sculptor Jacques Lipchitz claimed that art is a denial of death, then photographer Rahul Kumar Das audaciously disproves this assertion in his photographic essay “Sanguinity.”

In his piece, Das becomes not only a witness but also a documentarian of the art of dying. What makes this work all the more striking is that the subject is the artist’s father. During the last three years of his father’s life, Das became his primary caretaker. Remaining true to his artist soul, he employs his camera to capture the disturbing paradox of the human condition in its final days: indignity and dignity, frailty and resilience, love and fear. In his work, he draws back the curtain on the most sacred of human experiences to reveal the truth of our common mortality.

SEEK FOR INTIMACY by Abdollah Heidari

Intimacy is not just a wish or hope; but it is a basic and a real need. With the loss of intimacy, rings of life will be broken.

In a girl school of a far village in Iran, defects in the heating system caused the biggest fire event in Iran schools, which led to death of two students and severe burns of all the others.They suffer from depression and lack of calm and loss their old friends. Besides their bodies, their spirit also burns in the lack of earlier friendly relations in their life. Loneliness and loss of motivation and life expectancy and embrittlement of the society became a nightmare in their life, in the way that lack of communication with their peers and even with their parents and their brothers and sisters caused frustration and lack the confidence to express their concerns.

They always look in the mirror to their burnt face and think how they should get along with their lost beauty and how they could make an intimate communication with the others in order to continue living.

BY THE RIVER by Ian Flanders

After three long years of helping to build a bridge to freedom for a group of enslaved prostitutes in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, the last thing Ian expected was the confronting realisation that opportunity was not enough. The arduous and precarious task of building trust and developing relationships with some of these women - who had no reason to trust anyone - had educated him in the complexity of their lives. Regardless, he had no foresight that the choice to cross may have been a bridge too far.

Ian had something a lot more valuable than a gritty photographic expose of the sex-slave industry in Cambodia. He nervously handed over all recorded photos and evidence to the NGO’s and hounded them for action. On November 12th 2014, the shacks were raided and eight women and three children were rescued, while two traffickers were charged and prosecuted.

WAR DREAMS by Jean-Marc Caimi & Valentina Piccinni

What do you see when you close your eyes?

A simple question was asked to a group of Ukrainian soldiers of a military base near Donetsk, prior their departure for the front line of the war. A polaroid was taken and their visions and dreams individually annotated on a diary. A photo portrait shot on the backdrop of a inner panorama of emotions, ranging from simple hopes, fears and wishes, to philosophical considerations. Farewell from people undertaking a life threatening journey to war while seeking for their ideal of peace.
With this work we are searching for a new way of recounting the war, focused on human beings rather than the clashes, in the attempt to get viewers better empathize with the subjects and therefore understand crucial aspects of the ongoing conflict.

The Donbass conflict started after the 2014 revolution of Euromaidan. Following the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, the tense situation in the East escalated into an armed conflict involving separatist Russian-backed forces and Ukrainian governmental army with volunteer paramilitary battalions. Despite two ceasefires agreements, the clashes have not ceased in several towns. After 15 months of conflicts the Donbass war has taken more than 6500 lives.

MY NAME IS CAMILA AND I LOVE MY LIFE by Claudia Gori

Camilla is 33 years old and she’s affected by Muscular Dystrophy since she was 3 years old. Muscular Dystrophy is a genetic neuromuscular disease characterized by progressive skeletal muscle weakness and death of muscle cells and tissue.

For women affected by this disease, pregnancy is a hard choice. Apart from the chances of transmitting the genes of the disease to the children, pregnancy can cause a worsening of the syndrome with increased muscle weakness.

Camilla Nielsen has three kids: Ella, 3, and twins, Agnes and Esther, born 7 months ago, in Randers, Denmark. Camilla’s body is in a worse condition than before the pregnancies. She often gets tired, she can ́t lift her children and needs help twelve hours per day, but when she looks back at the decisions she took putting herself to risk, she feels she did the right thing. She has always wanted to experience the joy of motherhood, as she’s always wanted to lead a normal life.

When I ask Camilla to write me her story in a diary, the first sentence she wrote down is: my name is Camilla and I love my life. This is not a story about a disability but it’s about being a woman, a mother and a girlfriend struggling everyday with something that makes everything more difficult.

THE BUFFALO THAT COULD NOT DREAM by Felix von der Osten

This project is about the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana, USA. It gives an Impression of the outcome of the 1851 Appropriations Act, that forced Native Americans into Reservations, with a focus on how and where they live, as well as their struggle trying to maintain their century old left culture.

Fort Belknap is the shared homeland to the Gros Ventre and Assiniboine Tribes, who were historically enemies, but were forced to live together. My project documents this community and shows a life and circumstances that most people don't know about. The project reflects on the people live on a Reservation, what they do and how they try to maintain their beautiful centuries-old dying culture in the white world of America. The project lets the viewer explore a 2.626,415 square kilo-meter area, as it is, with its rich history in the past and present.

COWBOY LIFE by Kasper Løftgaard

This is a story about cowboy culture. About a special kind of people, who live the lives of real cowboys, that I personally didn’t think existed anymore. But as it turns out, there are plenty around.

I became friends with these boys and men in Odessa and Gardendale, Texas and photographed them. Most of them are students at the Odessa College Rodeo Program, some are coaches, and some are regular cowboys.

I ended up living with Shawn Hogg, whom I introduce at the beginning of the series. He was kind enough to let me into his life, and I started photographing him and his family. He ended up being the main character in my story.

My aim is to show a culture and a group of people, whom we have a certain imagination about the way they are supposed to look. He’s Lucky Luke, he’s the Marlboro Man, he’s John Wayne. And in many ways, this collective imagination of ours is true, but in a lot of ways it’s not. Most of all, these cowboys are kind and humble human beings, fathers and sons, living in a modern world.