For those of us who work in journalism the myth of the cavalier photojournalist who rushes toward conflict with zeal is well established. Robert Capa’s famous comment about photographers needing to get close to the action in order to capture the best picture is part of industry folklore. Don McCullin has spoken about the adrenalin rush of going to war, likening it to drug addiction. Tim Page’s antics during the Vietnam War have been immortalised in pop culture, Dennis Hopper’s character in the movie Apocalypse Now modelled on the British photographer. Yet while there are those who are lauded as celebrities, the vast majority of conflict photojournalists work in the background, committing themselves to covering some of the world’s darkest moments, to bearing witness to history, largely invisible to the outside world. Glory and money do not motivate them. In fact, these days it is more difficult to make ends meet than ever before. So what drives an individual to the frontline or to document the depths of human misery?
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Photojournalism Now: Friday Round Up – 7 February, 2020 – Photojournalism Now
Photojournalism Now: Friday Round Up – 7 February, 2020 -
The 2015 W. Eugene Smith Grant Recipients Matt Black, Marcus Bleasdale, Mary F. Calvert – The Eye of Photography
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The 76th Annual Overseas Press Club Awards – The Eye of Photography
The 76th Annual Overseas Press Club Awards
The 22 award-winning entries for the annual Overseas Press Club Awards depict a world in which entire nations and millions of people have been torn apart by newly intensified forces of nationalism, extremism, disease and environmental degradation. Al Jazeera America, Los Angeles Times and The New York Times won multiple awards. The Robert Capa Gold Medal Award, which honors the best photographic reporting from abroad requiring exceptional courage and enterprise, was presented to Marcus Bleasdale, a global documentary photographer, for his work “Central African Republic Inferno” done on assignment for Human Rights Watch, Foreign Policy and National Geographic Magazine.
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Marcus Bleasdale: When Photography Campaigns for Change – NYTimes.com
Marcus Bleasdale: When Photography Campaigns for Change
I think we have to be targeted. Sometimes the most effective thing is to be on the front page of The New York Times, and sometimes the most effective thing is to put several photographs in front of three people in the world. You just have to choose those three people and put your case to those three people, and that can be a lot more effective than putting it on the front cover of The New York Times.
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Marcus Bleasdale – Rape of a Nation | LensCulture
Marcus Bleasdale – Rape of a Nation
The continuing human tragedy of Congo is not a statistic. It is a continuing human tragedy. It is fourteen hundred and fifty tragedies every day. It is countless more than that if you include the orphaned, the bereaved, the widowed, and all the ripples of truncated lives that spread from a single death. It is you and me and our children and our parent, if we had the bad luck to be born into the world this book portrays.
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Marcus Bleasdale Wins FotoEvidence Book Award for Central African Republic Coverage | American Photo
Marcus Bleasdale Wins FotoEvidence Book Award for Central African Republic Coverage
The fifth annual contest highlights the photographer’s 18-month commitment to a horrific story forgotten by most media
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Photogs Marcus Bleasdale, Steve Ringman Win Environmental Journalism Awards
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A Philosophical Painter | PDN Photo of the Day
A Philosophical Painter
Photographer Morten Frool attended a multimedia/photography workshop with National Geographic photographer Marcus Bleasdale in Oslo, Norway, in December 2013. For his workshop project, he chose to work with a philosophical, anarchist painter named Art Ranger.
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Marcus Bleasdale on Shock and Change
Link: Marcus Bleasdale on Shock and Change – PROOF“It’s not the individual photograph, it’s what you do with it, and who you engage with it, that makes it powerful.”—Marcus Bleasdale
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Photography as Advocacy: Origins of a Journey
Link: Photography as Advocacy: Origins of a Journey – PROOFSometimes you can pinpoint the exact moment when you decide to change the rest of your life. For photographer Marcus Bleasdale, it happened one London morning in 1998 when he walked into the office where he was working as an investment banker. “Even at that point, I had long known I wouldn’t stay in banking, but that day there was just this trigger,” he recalled. “I didn’t even sit down, and I walked into my boss’s office and resigned.”
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Marcus Bleasdale’s Zero Hour: From photography to the world of video games
Link: Marcus Bleasdale’s Zero Hour: From photography to the world of video games – British Journal of PhotographyMarcus Bleasdale is always thinking about new ways to highlight the grim living conditions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and our own complicity in its people’s troubles. In 2009, he co-produced a comic book based on his images, and now he’s working with a team of games developers to create an immersive experience that will convey the complex reality. He speaks with Olivier Laurent
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Photo Essay: Lord's Resistance Army, DR Congo by Marcus Bleasdale
Link: Photo Essay: Lord’s Resistance Army, DR Congo by Marcus BleasdaleThe rebel Lord’s Resistance Army and Joseph Kony, its messianic leader, have waged a campaign of massacres, torture, and abduction on civilians across Central Africa since the mid-1980s. Their 20-year bush war against the Ugandan government, which aimed to establish a theocracy based on the Ten Commandments, killed thousands and forced the displacement of around 2 million people.
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My best shot: Marcus Bleasdale | guardian.co.uk
Link: My best shot: Marcus Bleasdale | Culture | guardian.co.ukThe documentary photographer talks about capturing child soldiers and conflict zones – and explains why the reason he takes pictures is because he gets angry
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Unsung Allies Battle Starvation in Africa – Lens
Link: Unsung Allies Battle Starvation in Africa – Lens Blog – NYTimes.comMarcus Bleasdale’s latest work, “Frustration,” is an intimate look at efforts by family members and medical professionals to cope with childhood starvation in Djibouti, at the mouth of the Red Sea.
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Bluefin Tuna – VII Photo Agency
by Marcus Bleasdale
Link: VII Photo Agency -
Van Houtryve Wins POYi's Freelance Photographer of the Year Award
Link: Van Houtryve Wins POYi’s Freelance Photographer of the Year AwardPhotographer Tomas van Houtryve has won POYi’s Photographer of the Year award in the freelance/agency category. His portfolio included several critical essays about the social and political effects of entrenched communist regimes in Moldova, Cuba and China. The second place award went to Getty staff photographer Paula Bronstein, while Marcus Bleasdale, a member of VII, won third place.
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marcus bleasdale – the rape of a nation | burn magazine
Link: Marcus Bleasdale – the rape of a nation | burn magazineAfter successive waves of fighting and ten years of war, there are no hospitals, few roads and limited NGO and UN presence because it is too dangerous to work in many of these regions. The West’s desire for minerals and gems has contributed to a fundamental breakdown in the social structure.
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Career change: Banker-turned-photojournalist – Telegraph
Marcus Bleasdale swapped derivatives for a camera to document the horrors of war
Check it out here. Once again, via APAD.
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Photo Essay: What Price Oil? – Venezuela
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Photo Essay: Kenya, By Marcus Bleasdale
By Marcus Bleasdale:
The post election violence in Kenya has killed nearly 1,000 and displaced 270,000. It is the most devastating violence to hit Kenya since its independence. Whilst politicians try to find solutions in Nairobi, the ethnic tensions in the Rift Valley reach new highs. Ethnic cleansing has led to killings and houses being burnt in a movement to shift different tribes out of their non-ancestral homes. Huge parts of different cities across the valleys have been razed to the ground and the inhabitants forced to flee. In the villages, warriors from opposing tribes battle with bows and arrows, rocks and occasionally guns to gain or regain control of their land. While the politician’s talk, the future of Kenya will depend, not on the final results of the discussions in Nairobi, but on the ability of Kenyans to forgive and live together again. That will take much longer.
Check it out here.
