The Carleton University School of Journalism and Communication and Photosensitive, a Toronto-based NGO and pioneer of social photography, are showcasing a photo exhibit Living With from October 23 to November 4 in the Galleria on the fourth floor of the University Centre.
Seven PhotoSensitive photographers spent nearly two weeks in Rwanda photographing individual stories behind Rwanda’s struggle with HIV/Aids. Their goal was to use the power of images to raise awareness on the issue of HIV while also improving journalism in Rwanda. Their visit was organized by the Rwanda Initiative, a partnership between Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication and its counterpart at the National University of Rwanda.
“The story of the struggle against HIV/AIDS in Africa is something many Canadians care about,” says journalism professor Allan Thompson, and the person behind the Rwanda Initiative. “But too often people are left with a blur of facts and feel disconnected and powerless. PhotoSensitive’s documentary approach directly brings the viewer into the scene and, combined with the context and contacts of local Rwandan journalists, allows for more complicated and individual stories to be told and remembered.”
In Rwanda, six local media outlets published two-page photo essays of the content produced by their photographers, working in tandem with the visitors from PhotoSensitive.
Rwanda has approximately 200,000 people living with HIV/AIDS, according to the United Nations, in a country of less than nine million.
The exhibit is made possible by a generous grant from the Canadian International Development Agency.
For more information about the photojournalists, partners and the Rwanda Initiative, please view the attached backgrounder.
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For more information:
The Rwanda Initiative
Allan Thompson
allan_thompson@carleton.ca
613-799-1791
PhotoSensitive
James Burns
james@photosensitive.com
905-282-9074
www.photosensitive.com
Lin Moody
Media Relations
Carleton University
lin_moody@carleton.ca
613-520-2600 ext. 8705
BACKGROUNDER
The Participants:
Andrew Stawicki, the founder of Photosensitive, began his photographic career in his native Poland. In 1982, he joined the staff of the Toronto Star. His photographs have appeared in books on Canada, Japan, the U.S, Spain and the Soviet Union. He is a gold medallist in the Society of Newspaper Design Awards and CAPIC Awards. Andrew was the National Newspaper Award winner in the Features category in 1993 and 1999. His 10-year photographic study on Mennonites was published in his book, A People Apart, in 1995. Stawicki has helped to create a unique and powerful ensemble of talented men and women who, through black-and-white photography, enrich, enlighten and educate Canadians on issues of social significance.
Tony Hauser, born in Beyrouth, Germany, has mounted 17 solo exhibitions in Canada in the past 20 years. A graduate of the School of Modern Photography in Montreal, he is known primarily as a portrait photographer. His work is in the collections of the National Archives and the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography in Ottawa, the Stratford-Festival, Toronto’s Gardiner Museum and those of many private citizens.
Peter Bregg, Photo editor for HELLO! magazine, formerly with Maclean’s, began his career with The Canadian Press in his native Ottawa. He covered the White House for Associated Press and later worked for the agency in London and New York. He worked in1984¬85 on Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s staff as official photographer. He has travelled on assignment to more than 65 countries and is the recipient of many national and international awards. He also taught photojournalism at the National University of Rwanda for the Rwanda Initiative, in 2006.
Yuri Dojc, born in Czechoslovakia, left for England after the Soviet invasion in 1968. He arrived in Canada in 1969 and studied photography at Ryerson from 1971 to 1974. He has been profiled in a variety of magazines, including Zoom, Communication Arts, La Fotografia, and Colour Foto. In 1991, he was chosen by Kodak for its international campaign. This year, he participated in an exhibition in Prague of work by exiled photographers.
Kevin Van Paassen, born in Calgary, Alta., graduated from the journalism arts program at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology in 1997. He moved to Toronto in 1999 to begin freelancing for the National Post. After five years at the Post, he moved to the Globe and Mail where he was hired as a staff photographer in 2004. Based in Toronto, he has photographed various assignments for the Globe, both domestic and abroad, including stories examining Canada’s health care system, as well as the war in Afghanistan.
Steve Simon has been passionate about documenting life through photography since he began taking photographs at age 12 in Montreal. He graduated from Concordia University with a degree in communications/journalism. He has participated as a guest lecturer and workshop leader at various photography and arts events in Canada, the United States, and Argentina. He has had solo shows in New York, Buenos Aires, Toronto and Montreal and his work has been featured three times at the Visa Pour L’Image Photography Festival in Perpignan, France. He has received numerous international awards and published four books.
Lauren Vopni, spent the latter part of 2007 in Kigali as an intern with the Rwanda Initiative, placed by the organization Journalists for Human Rights (JHR). Lauren has a B.A. in political science and art history from McGill University and a photojournalism diploma from the Western Academy of Photography in Victoria, B.C.
The PhotoSensitive mission to Rwanda was undertaken with the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). The Journalism and Development Initiative, a component of CIDA’s development information program, aims to support activities proposed by Canadian journalists who are interested in enhancing their professional experience in the field of international development and cooperation.
The Partners
Photosensitive:
Photosensitive is the brainchild of Toronto Star photographer, Andrew Stawicki, and former Star graphics editor Peter Robertson. It was founded in 1990 as a non-profit collective of photographers determined to explore how photography can contribute to social justice. Their idea was to bring together the photographic talents of a number of Toronto-based professional photographers to harness the power of the camera to achieve social goals. Each photographer would bring his or her own vision to the subject; the sum of these visions would provide a compelling social comment. Today, PhotoSensitive is branching out to include the talents of photographers from across Canada and seeks to photograph issues that affect our social well-being. Over the years, Photosensitive has engaged in more than 15 special projects. The organization’s work is defined by the following characteristics:
Social Issues: PhotoSensitive projects focus on familiar realities including poverty, hunger, illness, racism, ignorance, injustice. But they concentrate on their antidotes: the hope found in the face of adversity, the laughter and love that make the difficulties of life tolerable, the simple pleasures that lightens dark lives. The photographers use the camera’s ability to tell a story, make social comment and spur viewers to action.
Black and White: PhotoSensitive believes that still photographs, especially in black and white, have a way of touching people in a unique way. By working exclusively in black and white, the photographers force viewers to concentrate on the image rather than the photograph.
Voluntary: Photographers contribute to PhotoSensitive projects as volunteers, giving their time to photography that falls outside their professional work.
The Rwanda Initiative:
The Rwanda Initiative is a partnership between the School of Journalism and Communication at the National University of Rwanda, in Butare, and its counterpart at Carleton University.
Launched in January 2006 by Allan Thompson, a journalism professor at Carleton University and former Toronto Star reporter, the project is now in its second year of operations. In that time it has sent more than 60 Canadians to Rwanda to teach journalism at the university, as media interns with news organizations in Rwanda or as media trainers in Rwanda’s newsrooms.
One of the objectives of the project has been to address the shortage of journalism educators in Rwanda, a country where the media sector, while devastated by the 1994 genocide, also remains key to the post-genocide reconstruction of the country. A major focus of the project has been to engage Canadians about the media capacity-building work in Rwanda. The latest phase of the project has been funded by CIDA’s Stand-Alone Public Engagement Fund. The project has garnered significant media attention to the issue of building the media sector in Rwanda, with coverage in The Ottawa Citizen, the Toronto Star, CTV’s Canada AM, on CBC-TV’s The National and CBC-Radio’s As it Happens. The current project, in partnership with Photosensitive, is a new venture for the Rwanda Initiative.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008 in News Releases
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