JASON FLORIO: Burma Freedom Fighters

KNLA - Karen National Liberation Army
Freedom Fighter and Film Maker
Photograph (c) Jason Florio/All rights reserved

Retired KNLA -
Karen National Liberation Army Freedom Fighter
Photograph (c) Jason Florio/All rights reserved

KNLA - Karen National Liberation Army
Freedom Fighter and Medic
who lost his leg after stepping on a land mine
Photograph (c) Jason Florio/All rights reserved

I have been arrested by the Taliban...ridden into far-flung Afghan valleys in search of nomads with mujaheddin as my security, dressed as a woman to cross a border, was at the foot of the Twin Towers as they collapsed, enjoyed the 'comforts' of a Cuban hospital, hunted bats in Surinam, chatted with Somali pirates over Coke and biscuits and danced like a fiend in Beirut nightclubs...among other things – Jason Florio

JASON FLORIO was born in London and relocated to the USA in 1987. He moved to NYC to pursue photography after seeing Richard Avedon's In The American West exhibition. "Florio photographed freedom fighters and civilians who struggled for independence in the Karen State of Burma, along the Thailand border in what is now the world’s longest ongoing conflict. The ill-equipped people have been fighting for an independent homeland against the ruling Burmese military government. “The Karen people have been locked in a David-and-Goliath conflict with a powerful authoritarian regime that seeks to push the Karen people off the map.” reports the award-winning photographer. Self -funded, he decided to bring the under reported struggle for survival against the brutal junta, to a wider audience."' – Gallery

JASON FLORIO
Portraits from the Jungles of Burma
Messineo Art Projects Wyman Contemporary
March 8 – May 4th
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Jason's Makasutu: Mecca In The Forest Project

RAGHU RAI: Magnum Photographer NYC Exhibit

Book Cover: Artist Studio, Kolkata, 2004
RAGHU RAI'S INDIA: Reflections In Black & White (Penguin Studio 2007)

Flower Market, Kolkata, 2004
Photograph (c) Raghu Rai /All Rights Reserved

Traffic at Chawri Bazar, Delhi, 1964
Photograph (c) Raghu Rai /All Rights Reserved

Ganpati Celebration, Mumbai, 2001
Photograph (c) Raghu Rai /All Rights Reserved

Preparing for Durga Puja, Kolkata, 1999
Photograph (c) Raghu Rai /All Rights Reserved

Burial of an unknown child the morning after the catastrophic Union Carbide gas leak that killed thousands on the early morning of December 3, 1984. Raghu Rai cried as he took this picture. Photograph (c) Raghu Rai /All Rights Reserved

Skulls discarded after research at the Hamidia Hospital, Bhopal after the great Bhopal Gas Tragedy. Photograph (c) Raghu Rai /All Rights Reserved

Raghu Rai next to his well-known photograph, "Mother Teresa at her refuge of the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta during prayer."The Guardian, 2010

Photographs by Raghu Rai (Penguin Studio 2010)

I believe that the photographer's job is to cut a frame-sized slice out of the world around him so cleanly that if he were to put it back again, life and the world would continue to move without a stumble–Raghu Rai

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Raghu Rai has been in the forefront of photography in India for over 40 years. As a member of Magnum, he established an international reputation as a photographer with his special photo-essays on the Bhopal Gas tragedy. His work has regularly appeared in Paris Match, National Geographic, The New York Times and Newsweek. Twenty-five of his photographs are held in the permanent collection of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, and in 1997 the National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi gave Rai the first retrospective exhibition dedicated to the work of a contemporary Indian photographer. His impressive body of work is now being featured in a retrospective at the Aicon Gallery, 35 Great Jones Street, in New York City.

Raghu Rai | A Retrospective Exhibition
February 18 - March 20, 2011

The Aicon Gallery, New York

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I like being among my own people. I merge with them. I don't carry camera bags, I don't wear stylish clothes. I have one camera with a zoom lens so I am not alarming people; no one is saying, 'Here comes a photographer!'

The Guardian Interview: It was a donkey that made Raghu Rai want to become a photographer. He trained as a civil engineer in the early 1960s, but did the job for a year in Delhi and hated it. His elder brother was already earning a living taking pictures and suggested Rai accompany a friend on a shoot to take photographs of children in a local village. When he got there, Rai's interest was sparked not by the children but by a donkey foal in a nearby field.

"I tried to get closer, but when I was about 10 feet away, the donkey started running and the children started laughing," he says now, more than 40 years later. Rai chased the donkey for the best part of three hours in order to amuse his audience. "I was enjoying myself. After a while, the donkey got tired and stood there so I got closer and took the shot. It was evening and the landscape was fading in soft light." His brother entered the resulting picture into a weekly competition run by The Times in London. It was published. "The [prize] money I got was enough to live on for a month," says Rai. "I thought, 'This is not a bad idea, man!'"

That was 1965. The following year, he joined the Statesman newspaper in West Bengal as its chief photographer. He never went back to civil engineering. "My father worked for the irrigation department," says Rai. "People would ask how many sons he had and he would say, 'I have four. Two have gone photographers', like he was saying, 'Two have gone mad.'" Over a career spanning four decades, his son has become one of the foremost chroniclers of the changing face of India. His images are famed for capturing both his country's brutality and its beauty, often within a single frame.

Rai, who was born in a small Pakistani village and came to India during Partition, has been witness to some of the most significant events in his country's recent history. He was one of the first photographers on the scene after the 1984 Bhopal industrial disaster and has produced acclaimed documentary series on Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama and the late Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi. Championed in the west by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Rai joined Magnum Photos in 1977 and went on to judge the World Press Photo Awards from 1990 to 1997...read the full Interview by Elizabeth Day in The Guardian , UK

Raghu Rai's Advice On Shooting Portraiture

DANNY LYON: The Civil Rights Movement

Danny Lyon's Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, with a foreword by Julian Bond, an early leader in the American Civil Rights Movement. (Twin Palms Publishers)

Demonstrators block traffic to protest segregation and unfair hiring practices in downtown Atlanta. (early 1960's) Photograph © Danny Lyon/ Twin Palms Publishers

Arrested for demonstrating, teenage girls are kept in a stockade in the countryside. They had no beds and no sanitary facilities. Lyon photographed them through the broken glass of the barred windows. (early 1960's) Photograph © Danny Lyon/ Twin Palms Publishers

"An important historical record of the Southern Civil Rights Movement"

Pictures, eyewitness reports, and text take the reader inside the Civil Rights Movement creating an authentic work of history

If you don't know the story of the real-life murders of these three young civil rights workers in 1964, rent Mississippi Burning (Gene Hackman, Willem Dafoe, Frances McDormand) based on the FBI investigation.

Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement
Danny Lyon

"In the summer of 1962, Danny Lyon packed a Nikon Reflex and an old Leica in an army bag and hitchhiked south. Within a week he was in jail in Albany, Georgia, looking through the bars at another prisoner, Martin Luther King, Jr. Lyon soon became the first staff photographer for the Atlanta-based Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which already had a reputation as one of the most committed and confrontational groups fighting for civil rights.

In Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, Danny Lyon tells the compelling story of how a handful of dedicated young people, both black and white, forged one of the most successful grassroots organizations in American history. The book depicts some of the most violent and dramatic moments of Civil Rights Movement, including Black Monday in Danville, Virginia; the aftermath of the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham; the March on Washington in 1964; and the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1962. Lyon’s photos were taken when he was the first staff photographer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

The book also includes a selection of historic SNCC documents such as press releases, telephone logs, letters, and minutes of meetings. Pictures, eyewitness reports, and text take the reader inside the Civil Rights Movement, creating both a work of art and an authentic work of history." (text from Twin Palms Publishers)

Danny Lyon gained broad recognition as a photographer, filmmaker, and writer. Working in the style called New Journalism, which involved immersing himself and becoming a participant in a given subject, Lyon photographed motorcyclists in the Midwest and documented life within the Texas prison system. Lyon’s talent was recognized by the Guggenheim Foundation, which awarded him a fellowship in photography in 1969 and another, in film, a decade later. Lyons has had one-person exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona.

Twin Palms Publishers

Other Notable Photographers of the American Civil Rights Movement