During the entry period for Swap Shop, the global participation project with our partners Magnum Photos, we’ll be showcasing images, along with short statements by some of the photographers about their work.
Today’s blog shows the unique ability photography has to capture the small details of life, the uniqueness of the particular, and to communicate place, space, and culture. The images invite us to spend time with them, and to reflect on our place in the world, both geographically and historically.
See some of the recent entries below:
Bergina Leka
An important part of my photography is focused on the concept of human loneliness. I represent this concept symbolically through isolated figures, turned away, blurred or camouflaged in the urban landscape. In my compositions I aim for simplicity, whilst each image tells its very own story and captures the mood.
Jimmy Donelan
Holy Week in Mexico is an enormous celebration of Christianity, where religion is still very much at the heart of the week. From small villages to large cities, Mexico’s streets and churches are a hive of activity from sun up to sun down. This picture was taken in the middle of a large street procession during the Good Friday celebrations in Mexico City in March 2016.
Danielle Madeley
A community is the interwoven lives of different generations, a seamless unspoken memoir of times passed and present; a collective history that forms the foundations of the people it encompasses. ‘The Knot’ is the consolidation of work made over the period of a year; documenting the parallaxes of growing up in the county of Staffordshire and the tumultuous relationship with identity as a member of that community.
Tommaso Rada
“Domestic Borders” is a route where each photos is a stop on the way, not searching for answer but interrogating the social reality, the relations between habitants and the territory and the meaning of Europe today. “Domestic Borders” ends up being an unusual and unexpected trip, a dystopian portrait of the relationships between and across the border, showing the challenges of living in an unique space with a different passage of time.
Vanita Bhavnani
I really enjoy all kinds of photography but in particular feel more engaged when I am shooting images related to the human condition. This shot was taken in Broadstairs seaside resort in Kent and forms part of a small but growing series of images trying to tell the story of people’s engagement or interaction with the natural environment particularly in the context of leisure.
“I began making pictures because I wanted to record what supports hope: the untranslatable mystery and beauty of the world. Along the way the camera also caught evidence against, and I eventually concluded that this too belonged in pictures if they were to be truthful and useful.” – Robert Adams
