In the 1840s, the Canadian government created a network of Indian Residential Schools that were meant to assimilate young indigenous students into western Canadian culture. Indian agents would take children from their homes as young as two or three and send them to church-run boarding schools where they were punished for speaking their native languages or observing any indigenous traditions, routinely sexually and physically assaulted, and in some extreme instances subjected to medical experimentation and sterilization.
The last residential school closed in 1996. The Canadian government issued its first formal apology in 2008.
These multiple exposure portraits show survivors who are still fighting to overcome the memories of their residential school experiences. These individuals are reflected in the sites where those schools once stood, in the government documents that enforced strategic assimilation, in the places where today, First Nations people now struggle to access services that should be available to all Canadians. These are the echoes of trauma that remain even as the healing process begins.
This project was supported by a grant from The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. You can see more work from the project here. This work was also the recipient of the 2016 FotoEvidence Book Award, and will be released in October. You can preorder the book here.
The residents of the Runnymede Eco Village all agree: modern living is fundamentally broken. So the 40 of them decided they wanted nothing to do with it. On the side of Cooper's Hill, under the cover of oak, sycamore, and birch trees, they are living in the woods. This 24-acre plot of disused land, 30 miles west of London, has been their home since 2012.
They all came for different reasons. Some were homeless before they found this self-sustaining community. Others gave up houses and nine-to-five jobs to join. The residents are attempting to question the conventions of consumerism, land ownership and the right to natural resources. And for them, the village seems to have provided an answer.
They call themselves Diggers, after a group of land activists who occupied St. George's Hill in 1649. The original Diggers believed that land had become over-privatized. As long as they were cultivating and caring for the area they inhabited, they claimed, they had a right to remain.
The spot that the reincarnated Diggers chose to occupy in 2012 is littered with symbolism. From the western side of their encampment, the villagers have a view of Windsor Castle, the Queen's summer residence. Just 500 yards down the hill lies a simple granite memorial, inscribed "To commemorate Magna Carta, symbol of freedom under law." The pillar marks the spot where the charter, which guaranteed basic civil liberties for all citizens, was signed on June 15, 1215.
Just a few months after the charter's 800th anniversary, the landowners won a protracted court battle to evict Runnymede Eco Village. This project is a record of a community trying to redefine what is required for human survival and human happiness, intentionally unmoored from modern society.
Ever since Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni signed a bill criminalizing homosexual activity, the country's LGBT population has been under siege. The law calls for sentences ranging from 14 years to life for charges of "aggravated homosexuality." The law also criminalizes any allies of the LGBT community; anyone from public health workers to landlords to taxi drivers could be tried and imprisoned for "promotion."
These are some of the most visible members of the LGBT rights movement -- people who are defiantly public about their sexual identities and determined not to go underground. They have intensified their efforts to demystify homosexuality; they wanted their faces to be seen, to educate the outside world and to change perceptions in their own neighborhoods, workplaces and families.
This project was supported by a grant from The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. You can see more work from the project here.
This is a love letter to two beautiful cities.
In November 2012, I moved across the Atlantic. New York had been my home for seven years. I belonged to New York. It was, and always will be, my city.
But then I arrived in London and fell in love. It was thrilling to hunt for all the little differences between the two cities, and comforting to find moments of familiarity. Soon, London felt like home as well.
So now I belong to two cities. I created this series of double exposures to map the intersections between two sets of streets and skylines. The resulting images are part New York, part London, and collectively represent my vision of home.
New York + London explores place, memory, and identity through architecture and nostalgia. Brooklyn Bridge Park meets Leicester Square. Whitehall meets the South Bronx. The High Line meets Knightsbridge. After a while, the cacophony of concrete and street life begins to blend into something more universal. My hope is that in the noise and silence, everyone will find something that feels like home.
Prints of selected New York + London images are available through Subject Matter and LUMAS.
Every weekend, thousands of British hobbyists converge in empty fields to dig trenches, erect tents, gas up their tanks, and stage battles from Normandy to North Africa. These are Britain's Sunday Soldiers. World War II is still very much a part of Britain's collective consciousness, and the act of reenactment is deeply personal. Many wear uniforms that belonged to their fathers or grandfathers. Others reenact as 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 reenactors are looking to commemorate the deadliest war in human history.
In keeping with the reenactors' ethos, these photos were produced with a period twin-lens reflex camera.
Echosight is a collaborative project founded by photographers Daniella Zalcman and Danny Ghitis. Each week, two or more photographers produce cooperatively shot and edited composite images, with each individual supplying a layer of the final photo. Contributors are usually based in different cities but often have some kind of connection — whether it’s personal, like with long-distance partners, or professional, like two photographers covering the same conflict.
In an era where photography — and mobile photography in particular — has become speedy and sometimes careless in nature, this is an attempt to slow the photographic process and force people to engage thoughtfully with not only their own work, but the work of their peers. The act of creating an Echosight is leisurely and ponderous, and by the same token the act of viewing the same images requires more visual effort to decipher than the average image in an Instagram feed. Above all, the project seeks to use accessible technology to bring alternative photographic techniques to a wide audience.
Carolina Hidalgo + Bethany Mollenkof
