Show Room

This story is about how tourism affects the inhabitants of Matera. I have decided to focus on the locals, but still address the issue of tourism. I have tried that with a series of portraits combined with insights into the cityscape to build a connection between the people and the place where they live. The empty landscapes of Matera represent how European cities are being turned into museums. Almost seeming like the open air museum is closed right now, the visitors left and that is what remains. This idea of museumification has a strong negative association and is sometimes explained as turning a living city into a dead city. Or in some cases, turning a free space for locals into a product for tourists.

Vanessa Szopory

Vanessa Szopory is a 19 year old student from Austria. She was born on the 26th February, 2000 in Wiener Neustadt and is currently studying photography at the „Graphische" in Vienna.

Through the lens she is constantly learning about the world and even herself. Photography always was her way to communicate and express emotions. Throughout the years she especially fell in love with visual storytelling. She discovered her passion for capturing stories that are unique and different from her own experiences in Austria. With each new adventure she realizes how inspiring and affecting the human life can be. With her photographs Vanessa wants others to be as moved as she is, by the human spirit and the world in which we live.

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

“Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” examines the vanishing of small-scale, sustainable fishing in the Baltic Sea. In Germany, the current generation of fishermen is predicted to be the last due to the rise of dumping prices and industrial fishing. The project consists of polaroid emulsion lifts that were dissolved in the water of the catch area, resulting in distressed remains of the original photographs. They epitomise the vanishing of the profession and how it is profoundly affecting the livelihood of fishermen.

Naomi Frank

Naomi Frank was born 1999 in Vienna, Austria. Growing up, she soon developed a big interest in different art forms, more specifically sewing, sculpting, music, and digital arts, her approach being “learning by doing”. After graduating from a humanistic high school, Naomi Frank started studying Theatre-, Film- and Media Studies at the University of Vienna. Simultaneously, she worked in the stage design team at Max Reinhardt Seminar for the production “The Lady from the Sea”. In 2018, Naomi Frank changed her studies to “Photography and audiovisual Media” at “die Graphische”.

ROOTS UNDER THE SEA

I grew up in a family in which my mother and father work as foster parents. Children stay at my parents home for about one year until they get adopted.
Lidia lives with us since she was 11 months old and waited 8 years long for her adoption papers to get finalised. Seeing all the other children leaving from our house with their new parents, she experienced constant separations from her “siblings”. At the same time, being adopted became for her an unreachable dream.

In all this years Lidia grew up to be my little sister. From this perspective I experienced Lidia’s state of uncertainty and her constant balance between the desire to go back to her biological parents, to be adopted or to stay with us.
The story is built with photographies, journal entries, dialogues, drawings and quotes by Lidia.

Dalmonia Rognean

Dalmonia Rognean (born in 1993) is a Romanian photographer based in Vienna, Austria. She currently studies photography at the Higher Graphical Federal Education and Research Institute in Vienna.
With a background in Theatre, Film and Media Studies, she developed her interest in storytelling and sees photography as a visual research.

In her photographic projects she often has a documentary, philosophical and poetic approach.

Florian Sulzer

Florian Sulzer is a photographer based between Graz, Austria and Hannover, Germany.
He is studying photojournalism and documentary photography at the Hochschule Hannover. Florian focuses on reportage photography and personal long term projects. His interests are social issues and topics related to Austria.

Sabine

Work in Progress

The protagonist of my reportage is Sabine Ellerbrock, a 44 year old professional wheelchair tennis player from Bielefeld, Germany. Despite her job as a teacher, she has been competing at the highest level for many years. Due to a mental illness the season 2019/20 will be her last as a professional tennis player. Her journey was planned to end at the Paralympics 2020 in Tokyo, but will end by no later than January 2020.

WHO REMAINS

On 17th November 1989 the Head of State Todor Zivkov got expelled from the Bulgarian Communist Party. Bulgaria was thus on its way to the first democratic elections after almost half a century of Stalinist regime. Thirty years later the country is facing an unprecedented demographic crisis, the rise of Neo-Nazi movements and an ethnically and culturally heterogeneous population. Despite an increase in GDP following the entry into the European Union in 2007, about a fifth of the population is now living below the poverty threshold with average salaries and pensions among the lowest ones in the entire EU. The massive emigration of young people to Western Europe is the first cause of depopulation, a phenomenon that will cause a 30% decrease in population within the next thirty years in Bulgaria (world record). Ethnic and cultural minorities – inherited from the Ottoman rule and the migrations of past centuries – will play an increasing role in social and political dynamics: it is estimated that by 2050 one in four people in Bulgaria will belong to the Roma minority. Furthermore, in this scenario, far-right movements are constantly growing, in line with the European trend, and their march in honor of General Lukov is one of the events that receives maximum media exposure.

Mattia Marzorati

Mattia Marzorati (Cantù, Italy, 1992)After several experiences in the international cooperation and development field he has started working as a freelance photographer in Spain, where he was studying photography. He is now working as a freelance photojournalist.

Curriculum Vitae

In Italy 2 millions 800 are the citizens without a job.
The 41,7% of over 50 population is in a state of unemployment.
One of the most common consequences that hit this social group is depression. The protagonist of this project is my father, he is one of the half million over fifty unemployed in Italy.

“I hug you from afar
with my mind I whisper to you sweet words that you can’t hear because that wall made of silences I can’t tear down anymore”

Sabina Candusso

Sabina was born in 1997 in a small town in Northern Italy.
After her first volunteering travel in Colombia, she came back deeply changed and with a new consciousness: she understood the huge power of denounce and social investigation of the photographic medium.
She is deeply interested in documentary and conceptual photography.
The themes that she prefers to explore are about politics, social issues and feminism.
In particular, she is interested in the unconventional narrations of history: populations, events and cultures that are discriminated or unknown. Currently, she finished her studies on photograph at the Istituto Italiano di Fotografia IIF.

"Those I prefer are those who work hard, in obedience and possibly in silence." It is the message signed by Benito Mussolini at the entrance to the mine of Serbariu, today the south-eastern outskirts of Carbonia, Sardinia. In the twentieth century there were 94 mines in the area: lead, zinc, copper and iron, manganese and antimony, anthracite and lignite were mined. In 1927 there were almost 15,000 miners. Today there remain the skeletons that celebrate the epic of dead and buried work. To compensate for the lack of work, the state intervention was oriented towards the construction of one of the largest metallurgical center in the country, Portovesme. Today the chimneys no longer smoke, the plants rust and only the tent and a few fags remain outside the gates. Already in 1988 the University of Cagliari spoke of "ascertained biological damage" referring to a study on the alarming quantities of lead in the blood of middle school children. According to the latest report of the Regional Environment Agency released in June 2017, samples taken in the industrial area reveal arsenic, cadmium, fuorine lead, mercury, thallium, zinc and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, all in quantities hundreds of thousands of times over the limits. Toxic, neurotoxic, carcinogenic substances. Work is gone, pollution is left. In Portoscuso you cannot eat the milk of the sheep and goats that graze in the surroundings, nor eat the meat, nor collect blueberries and shellfish or sell fruit and vegetables. Data from the Report on poverty and social exclusion in Sardinia, carried out by Caritas, they are impressive. In 2013 the youth unemployment rate reached 73.9 percent in the province of Carbonia-Iglesias, the highest among all the Italian provinces. 40 percent of the working age population is a hoot, about three thousand on the move, as many in unemployment compensation, unemployment benefits are almost ten thousand. Te Sulcis is no longer needed: as a toy for a grown-up child he rests impassively on the bedside table of the forgotten area of Italy. A story of exploitation, of a disposable territory, of conquered people.

Filippo Taddei

Filippo Taddei (Como, Italy, 1990) graduated in "Political Sciences and International Relations - Institutions and Instructions for Cooperation" at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan; After some experience abroad in the cooperation field and some travels he started develop his vision and today he works as a photographer and video maker both in the commercial and documentary field.

The city and the ore

This is an ongoing project about a small mining town in central Georgia located in a beautiful valley and surrounded by high hills. This area is very rich on manganese; it’s mined there since the 19th century and it’s one of the world’s biggest deposits of the mineral. Manganese is a black mineral; it’s used as a main component for steelmaking but the extraction is very harmful to the health and the environment.

To have an access to the high regions where the deposit of manganese is particularly rich, many cableways were built, which I chose as a point of view to document the story because they had become the lifeline between the community and the mineral.

In my project, I explore this place heavily affected by industrialization and pollution, where the people, the nature and the ore are closely connected with each other, where the human well-being, life and health depend on this black mineral. I was first focused more on the people, now I want to go deeper and concentrate also on the landscapes to connect people to that place on which they are so attached and which they don’t want to leave.

Nadezhda Ermakova

Nadezhda Ermakova is a documentary photographer and a visual storyteller based in Moscow, Russia.

Her work primarily focuses on social and human rights issues in post-Soviet space. Nadezhda first studied philology and worked as teacher of French before turning to contemporary photography in 2016.

Nadezhda’s work has been recognized with industry awards such as Felix Schoeller, International Photography grant, Stenin Contest, and others.

Her works have been presented in exhibitions and screens in Russia and abroad.

Her works have appeared in multiple online and print publications worldwide.

For the moment she’s studying in the Rodchenko Art School (Moscow). She is a member of The Russian Union of Photographers.

Agbogbloshie is a scrap yard and e-waste dump in the capital of Ghana, Accra. In 1992 the Basel Convention was issued in order to regulate, reduce and prevent the movement and the trade of waste from developed to less developed countries. However, Agbogbloshie has become one of the biggest electronic waste dumps in the world, due to the import of electronic devices and appliances, declared as second hand. Young men and women migrate from the North of Ghana looking for better job opportunities, but lack of appropriate education, unfortunate family circumstances or simply the urgency of a quick income, brought these young men and women to work in the Agbogbloshie junkyard. The ones arriving with very little finances are most likely to start working in the burning areas, where appliances, cables and wires that can not be reused, are burnt for a few Ghanaian Cedis worth of tips, in order to extract raw materials like copper, aluminum and iron. Workers are constantly exposed to toxic emissions, with no health and safety regulations. There are no decrees to protect either the environment or labourers from pollution and poisonous fumes. Lead levels in workers’ blood and soil around the dump site are far above the TLV Threshold Limit Value. According to the 2018 World Health Organization report, the mortality rate for air pollution in Ghana has risen from 80 in 2012 to 203 people in 2016 for every 100,000 deaths. Despite the introduction of some initiatives throughout the years, inconsistency and lack of funds leave Accra as one of the most affected areas. Agbogbloshie extensively contributes to the release of toxic emissions due to burning activities.

Carolina Rapezzi

Italian London based photographer focusing on long-term projects, covering social, humanitarian and environmental issues. Currently working on the consequences of e-waste in West Africa and on an on-going project in London about gender and identity. Carolina started working in 2015, reporting on refugee crisis in Sicily, following the minors placement process in welcoming centers. In March 2016 she started covering the eviction of the Calais refugee camp in north of France, until the complete clearance in October. Since 2016 she has been covering the political protests movement in London and in 2017 she covered the celebrations of the 100th anniversary of the Russian revolution in Saint Petersburg and Moscow.

Carolina was awarded 1st Place Single Image LensCulture Art Photography Award 2019, she was part of the winners of the Flash Forward 2019 (Magenta Foundation) and shortlisted and featured in the first edition of Portrait of Humanity book 2019 (launched by British Journal of Photography and Magnum Photos).

BARE BRANCHES

Next year, China will have a surplus of 30 million single men; some of them are desperate for female companionship. They're called guang gun, translated to bare branches - men unable to carry on the family tree.

China’s preference for men stretches back for centuries. A son is your future and your pension. He secures the family name to go on. Back in 1979 the leader Deng Xiaoping started the one-child policy to stop the population growth. Next year, it will be over 30 million more men than women in China. The gap is going to grow more. By 2050 it’s estimated that 15% of men will be involuntarily single, unable to find love.

Before being considered for a date, it's expected that a man owns both a house and a car. When men can't meet those demands, they end up as unwanted marriage material. As a result of the long, now ended, one-child policy, millions of men are on the edge of society. Alone, many isolated in bachelor villages. Their clock is ticking.

Hanna Kristin Hjardar

Hanna Kristin Hjardar (b. 1996) is a photojournalist based in Oslo, Norway.
She finished a BA in Photojournalism June 2019 from Oslo Metropolitan University, which included an internship in Norway's biggest newspaper, Verdens Gang (VG) and a six weeks long reportage trip to China. She was selected for the Magnum Young Talent workshop at Visa Pour L'image in 2017.