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ron haviv
Ron Haviv has produced some of the most important images of conflict and other humanitarian crises that have made headlines from around the world since the end of the cold war with a special focus on exposing human rights violations, he has covered conflict and humanitarian crises in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Russia and the Balkans. A co-founder of the photo agency VII, his work is published by top magazines worldwide. He has also published two critically acclaimed collections of his photography: Blood and Honey: A Balkan War Journal, and Afghanistan: On the Road to Kabul. His work has received some of the highest accolades in photography. He regularly lectures at universities and seminars, and numerous museums and galleries have featured his work.
"Over the past seven years, the world has changed many times over. Throughout all
the events most people remember, the one that has affected the most people and
taken the most lives has been one almost no one has heard of. The situation in the
DRC has been and continues today to be intolerable. Although we are very late in our
small attempt to tell the world what is happening – every moment counts – and we
need to do something."
Gary Knight began working as a photographer in South East Asia in the late 1980s and moved to the former
Yugoslavia in 1993. Documenting war and crimes against humanity has remained the core theme of his work ever since. His award-winning work has appeared in numerous magazines and is displayed in museums and galleries. A contract photographer for Newsweek, Knight co-founded VII photo agency. His book, Evidence, documents war crimes in the Kosovo war.
"Congo is trapped in a cycle of poverty, corruption, war, corporate avarice, and
environmental destruction. There is a total breakdown of law and order, a grotesque
primary health-care system and a scale of mortality amongst the civilian population
that a century ago outraged world opinion and led to the removal of King Leopold as
its sole proprietor. Today, beset with the same problems and described by senior UN
personnel as the worst humanitarian crisis of the day, we have the means to do
something. Yet, millions have died in little more than seven years while we caress
the cat and fret over which disaster to watch on television."
Antonin Kratochvil is an internationally renowned photographer. During a thirty-year career, Kratochvil has been consistently published the world over in every major editorial publication bar none. He is the author of four acclaimed books: Broken Dream, Sopravvivere, Incognito, and Vanishing. Kratochvil's honors are many and varied. Among those he is most proud are his Infinity Award given by the International Center of Photography for photojournalism in 1992; his Leica Medal of Excellence for his outstanding achievements in photojournalism in 1994; his Ernst Hass Award and his Dorothea Lange Prize from the Duke University Center for Documentary Studies, both given in 1995; his Alfred Eisenstadt award presented by LIFE magazine and the Columbia School of Journalism in 1998; and his 2003 first prize World Press Photo Award in the nature and environment category. This honor is one of many World Press Photo awards Kratochvil holds, but the one of which he is most proud. Antonin Kratochvil is a founding member of the photo agency VII.
"Photographing in this tragic place, I found extraordinary dignity as well as an
uncommon sense of humor among all the people I encountered."
Joachim Ladefoged's dream of becoming a soccer player was shattered in 1987, when he was almost crippled by
rheumatism. A year later he obtained his first camera in the hope that photography would bring him closer to the activities from which his illness excluded him. Soon he joined a small regional newspaper in Denmark, shooting up to six assignments a day. In 1995, he moved on to become a staff photographer at the national newspaper, Politiken. In 2000, he published his book Albanians about the turbulent life in Albania in the period from 1997-1999. He has worked in more than 30 countries, winning international recognition for covering war, conflict and ordinary life around the world. Through the years, Visa d'Or, World Press Photo, LIFE magazine, and Denmark's "Picture of the Year" are among the organizations that have seen fit to award Joachim for his work. Joachim lives in Denmark with his wife and their two boys.
"In Kinshasa, sex workers live and work in a room, the size of a twin bed. MSF's clinic
is the life preserver for these lost women."
James Nachtwey grew up in Massachusetts and graduated from Dartmouth College. Images from the Vietnam
War and the American civil rights movement had a powerful effect on him and were instrumental in his decision to become a photographer. He worked aboard ships in the merchant marine, and while teaching himself photography, was an apprentice news film editor and a truck driver. In 1976, he started work as a newspaper photographer in New Mexico, and in 1980 moved to New York to begin a career as a freelance magazine photographer. He has worked on extensive photographic essays around the world and has been a contract photographer with TIME magazine since 1984. He has been the recipient of almost every major magazine photographic award. In 2001, he became one of the founding members of the photo agency VII.
"The tragedy of the Congo is a study in anarchy, greed, violence, and misery on a
monumental scale. That world powers have ignored it is unacceptable. Without
the work of nongovernmental organizations, the level of human suffering would be
inconceivable."
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