This N That: Keep In the Know With Photography News
© Sam Sacco
Therapy Through Images: Veterans Put on Photography Show in Buffalo
Last year marked the first of a series of workshops dedicated to teaching veterans the basics of photography. The Odyssey Workshops, as they’ve come to be known, was offered a $59k grant that supported its efforts to provide veterans with a hobby that would help them document the complicated feelings and memories left by their traumatic war experiences. Just because some veterans may be unable to communicate their thoughts on their pasts doesn’t mean they can’t find a way to let some of it out; that’s when photography comes in.
© Stephen Siulc
Buffalo-based photographer Brendan Bannon leads the workshops alongside veteran/photographer Julian Chinana. By providing vets with new skills they can put into artistic practices and offering a space where they can put that practice into play, the duo gives vets enrolled in these workshops the tools necessary to not only make photos but be remedied through them.
A year later, in downtown Buffalo, “Odyssey: Warriors Come Home” exhibits the work of 36 veterans coping with life after war. The photos, on display until the end of December, offer drastically different takes on photography. Some vets approached their images straightforwardly, shooting a particular scene/portrait, while others got experimental, layering different images in order to best communicate their feelings. All in all, what hangs on the walls of Buffalo’s Market Arcade is a clear exercise in man and woman’s road to healing.
Photography Joshua Gordon, Courtesy of Havana Club and Aries
Cuba’s Unseen Trans Community
Historically, marginalized groups lack the recognition they deserve in normative society. This is the case all around the world. So, when Havana Club and Sofia Prantera came together for a collaboration, they decided their project was going to be risky, but undeniably intriguing. That is when Prantera, founder of streetwear brand “Aries,” came up with the idea to document the everyday life of trans-women in Havana, Cuba.
Joshua Gordon, former photographer/videographer for Dazed, was commissioned to shoot for the project and found himself living in Havana for a month in order to spend as much time with his subjects as he could. The shoots resulted in a documentation of Cuba’s trans community that has never been done before. The images are both truthful and nostalgic as they were shot on the streets of Havana as well as the very homes of the camera’s subjects.
In the end, Gordon shot so much content, in the form of moving images and stills, that the Havana Club and Prantera are putting out an exhibition, a film and a book dedicated to the project. The book, titled Butterfly, is set to be released in November alongside the film, that goes by the same name, which is being screened internationally in Milan, London, Berlin and Tokyo.
Ryan Shepler, right, gives a closing statement to Hocking County Juvenile Court Judge Jonah Saving Tuesday morning, Nov. 5, 2019, in Logan. Shepler was speaking on behalf of his client Jaden Churchheus. The 16-year-old is accused of murder of Victoria Schafer on Sept. 2 near Old Man's Cave in Hocking Hills State Park. Saving found probable cause to bound over Churchheus to the adult division of common pleas court for trial. (Photo: Matthew Berry/Eagle-Gazette)
Photographer Fatally Struck by Log 16-year Old Boys Pushed Off Cliff
An Ohio judge just ruled to charge two 16-year old boys as adults in the ongoing case of the photographer struck and killed by a log in September. Victoria Schafer, 44, was in Hocking Hills State Park taking photos with students for their senior year when a log fell from a 75-foot cliff and killed her instantly on impact. Now, the teens, Jordan Buckley and Jaden Churchheues, who are being tried for her death face years in prison after leaving the juvenile detention center they currently reside in.
Several debates regarding their guiltiness circle Buckley and Churchheues after they admitted to pushing the log off the cliff, although they had no intention of killing anyone with it. The questions surrounding the case are a matter of determining just how responsible the teens are. If not murder then is it involuntary manslaughter? And should they be held accountable regardless of intention because of their awareness of how busy the park was at the time they decided to send the log off the cliff? Could they ever have imagined the damage it would cause and the life it would claim? Regardless of any answers, it seems that the boys’ roles in the incident are enough to change the course of the rest of their lives.
© Victoria Allen
Woman Photographs Her Own C-Section
After experiencing giving birth to a stillborn, for what would have been her fourth child, Alex Mooney decided she needed to document every step of her next birth. Luckily enough, it was only five months later that Mooney found out she was pregnant again and, both terrified and invigorated, she underwent the process of scheduling her fifth c-section in preparation of her baby’s arrival into the world.
Inspired by photographer’s she’s seen document the birthing process, Mooney decided she’d do the same for her c-section. She’d be on the operating room table, camera in hand, ready to welcome her final baby into her family. When the operation would come to be too much, she handed the camera off to either her husband or trusted friend and birthing photographer, Victoria Allen. With all the support she needed, Mooney successfully shot the very first moments of her new son’s, Teddy, life as he was being lifted out of her body. The series of shots taken illustrate everything from Mooney before the operation to the very moments young Teddy is being held by doctors for the first time.
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