Dongting – A Lake in Flux from Sean Gallagher on Vimeo.

I am really delighted to share the news here on my blog that my multimedia piece, ‘Dongting: A Lake In Flux” recently won 1st Prize in the prestigious British Press Photographer’s Year 2011. These awards highlight some of the best wotk from British photographers working around the world, so am honoured to be included in their list of awardees this year. I am also especially grateful to the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting who sponsored the production of this work last year, as part of my Threatened Waters Project.

An exhibition of all the awarded work is now on at the National Theatre in London and runs from the 18th July to the 4th September. If you’re passing by, drop in and see some of the incredible work on show.

World Water Day | Newseum | Pulitzer Center

If you happen to be in Washingotn DC this week, you may want to drop by the Newseum to check out a slideshow that will be on show in the main lobby. The show is being hosted by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and National Geographic Society to mark World Water Day, showing images from around the world depicting the global water crisis.

World Water Day | Newseum | Pulitzer Center

I’m very happy to have a couple of my images from China included in the show. The show runs from March 17 to April 1, so should hopefully reach out to many people passing through the main atrium in the Newseum. If you’re in town, stop by and let me know how it looks!

World Water Day | Newseum | Pulitzer Center

Liu Bolin | Paris-Beijing Photo Gallery

I’ve been a fan Chinese artist Liu Bolin for some time now. Every once in a while, I come across one of his images and they always bring a smile to my face. Take a look at the image above and you will see why. Liu paints himself, to blend in with the background he is standing in front of. The image above, is one of the best I have seen from him. You can find quite a few more here. It’s a really interesting concept.

This morning I received a newsletter from the Paris-Beijing Photo Gallery announcing a solo-exhibtion of Liu’s work which will run from today until the 12th March. If you are in town, you should definitely check out the exhibition.

The evening of November 22nd saw the opening of the first public print display of ‘China’s Threatened Waters’, as part of the Greening the Beige annual party. We had a great attendance with a few hundred people attending the events and it really was a wonderful evening. Please find above a small selection of photographs from the evening, taken by myself, volunteers and GtB’s event photographer Jordan Thomas Mitchell.

Next week, I shall be heading back to western China again to visit the province of Qinghai (hopefully some very exciting developments will be announced after, and as a result of, this trip — please stay tuned!). I won’t be posting as much, so I shall leave you with these photos for the time being. There have been plenty of posts this week, so if you missed them , please go back and check them out. To help point you in the right direction, I have added a new plug-in which will recommends other blog posts to you that you might be interested in, depending on which you are reading at that time. You can find this at the bottom of each post. Happy reading and exploring!

Exhibition Flyer

Two weeks from today will see the first print exhibition of China’s Threatened Waters, at the Yugong Yishan venue in central Beijing. If you are free on the night of Monday 22nd November from 7:00p.m. till late.

The event is being organized with the help of Greening the Beige, a Beijing-based organization promoting green issues throughout China. As you can see from the flyer (above) there will be host of artists and performers there on the night, all promoting green initiatives and ideas.

Entry is free for the opening night party and the exhibition will run for three weeks after the opening night.

Hope to see you there!

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Dry and cracked soil in Gansu Province.2009

“Desertification is one of the most serious threats facing humanity”- Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary General. World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought. 2006.

A tourist stands on one of the large sand dunes that make up the Shapotou Desert tourist resort. The resort has provided jobs for local residents and has been a way for the local economy to benefit from the desert. 2009

“The dryness affects our lives a lot. We call it the ‘black disaster’, which means there is no grass. On the grassland, we are afraid of this disaster”, says Zamusu, a farmer who has lived his entire life on the central grasslands of  Inner Mongolia, in Northern China. These legendary grasslands are slowly deteriorating, suffering as a result of the world’s least reported environmental crisis.

A theme park in Ningxia Province is shrouded in sand during a sandstorm. Sandstorms occur as the spring winds blow and throw dry and degraded topsoil into the air. 2009

Desertification is the gradual transformation of arable and/or habitable land into desert, usually caused by overpopulation, water mismanagement, poor farming methods, the destructive use of land by industry and climate change.

Workers at the Shapotou desert theme park take a break as work slows. 2009

38% of the world’s surface area is now threatened by desertification, affecting countries across the world from North Africa, the countries of the Middle East, Australia, China and the western edge of South America.

A tourist runs in the desert in Ningxia province. 2009

“If we don’t take action, current trends suggest that by 2020 an estimated 60 million people could move from desertified areas of sub-Saharan Africa towards North Africa and Europe, and that worldwide, 135 million people could be placed at risk of being uprooted”, Kofi Annan (2006).

Creeping sands in Inner Mongolia swallow a fence at the side of a road. 2009

In 2007 I began photographing the issue of desertification and how it was affecting the lives of people in one of the world’s hardest hit countries, China. With the help of grants from the David Alan Harvey Fund for Emerging Photographers in 2008 and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting in 2009, I have been able to document how the people of China are being affected by this crisis, which has consumed over 20% of their country.

The grasslands of Inner Mongolia are suffering as a result of overgrazing and pressure put on them by rapid population and industry growth in the area. 2009

To learn more about how you can help combat desertification, please visit the Million Tree Project which aims to reforest areas of Inner Mongolia being affected by desertification.

A sandstorm descends on a bridge in Ningxia Province, bringing life to an almost standstill. 2009

International Migrants Day

“The UN proclamation of the annual International Migrants Day offers a rallying point for everyone across the world who is concerned with migrants. It is an opportunity to recognise the contributions made by millions of migrants to the well-being and economies of their countries.” – Compassion for Migrant Children

This Friday, 18th Dec, will see the China-based NGO Compassion for Migrant Children (CMC) host a fund-raiser in conjunction with International Migrants day. The event will be held at the New Cultural Art Center at the 798 Art District in Beijing from 7pm until late and will involve a Chuan’r bar, live music and a silent auction of photographs donated by local photographers.

I am happy to say that a few prints of mine will be available in the silent auction. So, if you are in the area on Friday night, please come down, pay 50rmb, enjoy the festivites and maybe even go home with a print. If you can find me at the event, I’ll happily sign it for you!

To get more info, visit the event website here. Hope to see you there.

David Alan Harvey Presents... (c) Brendan Hoffman

*UPDATE* For lots more photos from this great exhibition, please head here at brightyoungthings.com

This will be a very quick post, but wanted to show you the print of mine in the David Alan Harvey Presents… exhibition over at PhotoWeek DC at the moment. As you can see, the prints have been almost ‘strung-up’, hanging side by side clipped onto a metal or nylon string…can’t quite tell. It’s quite an interesting way to display the prints and I actually think it represents the ‘raw’ style that Burn is coming to be down for. A little different, loose, constantly changing.

Photo above is courtesy of Mr. Brendan Hoffman, Capitol Hill photographer extraordinaire. Next blog post will have more about him and our trip behind the scenes at the senate in DC.

FOTOWEEK DC

If you are in the Washington DC area this week, then you should make a beeline for the wealth of photography events they on this week as part of FOTOWEEKDC. I am slightly miffed as I spent the best part of last week in DC and had to leave just before all the events kicked off. Oh well, these things happen, but I am happy as two of my images will be featuring in two different events during the FotoWeek.

The first image is one from my series on desertification in China and it will be in the David Alan Harvey Presents… exhibition. For details of where to find it, please go here. As many of you will already know, this image was featured on David’s Burn magazine a few months ago. I actually bumped into David just the other day when I was in New York. He was passing through on his way to FotoWeek, but we managed to grab a coffee in his apartment in ‘the Kibbutz’ in Brooklyn.  He had just come back the night before from a workshop in Mexico, was off to FotoWeek briefly and then was heading back to Mexico again for another workshop. I thought I had a busy schedule, but David takes it to another level!

David Alan Harvey Presents...Desertification in China

My second image in FotoWeek DC will be part of the Critical Exposure Auction. Critical Exposure is an organisation that promotes young people to use photography as a form of empowerment and provides opportunities for them to change their lives using photography. I was approached last month to donate a print (see image below) to their auction, which will be held on November 12th. More details here. If you are around Georgetown at that time, please head down to support them and maybe even bid for my print!

Critical Exposure Auction | North Korea

burn.gallery.show

Yesterday and today, or today and tomorrow, depending on your time zone sees the launch of the new burn.gallery.show. This is one of the newest ventures for Burn magazine to raise funds and increase exposure for this new and exciting online photography magazine. If you have been living under a little bit of a rock in photography circles recently, then you may not have heard about Burn, the brainchild of the legendary Magnum and National Geographic photographer David Alan Harvey.

I first met David in 2003 when I attended one of his workshops in Lisbon, Portugal. At that time, I was an english teacher in Japan and was experimenting with photography and looking for inspiration, hence I travelled back to Europe to participate in one of his workshops. What I found was a man of incredible passion and enthusiasm for photography that was palpably infectious. Attending his workshop was one of the most important things that happened to me, photographically. On presenting my portfolio to David, he deconstructed it in a way I had never had explained to me before. Critical of many of the photos he saw, only a couple remained the critique that he barely liked. I decided from that moment to prove him, and most importantly myself, that I was able to create good pictures.

On January 1st 2008, through his blog Road Trips, David awarded me his first emerging photographer’s fund. Today, Road Trips has evolved into Burn magazine, which David has created alongside Anton Kusters, his Creative Director. Burn is an inspiration for many photographers who are struggling in a time when it seems that photography is being strangled and devalued.

The burn.gallery.show is the first print exhibition of many of the emerging photographers who have appeared through Road Trips and Burn, alongside legendary photographers such as Elliott Erwitt, Bruce Davidson, Susan Meiselas, Alex Webb etc. I am honored that one of my images has been chosen to run alongside these photographers. The image chosen is this one, that was featured on Burn earlier this year.

To find out what burn is, go here