About Visura Spotlight + Submission Information

Letter to the Reader, Issue 4

Issue 04

A few months ago, my mother joined the statistics of single divorced mothers who lost their homes due to foreclosure. Initially, I was very upset with her for not telling me she was in a bad economic situation and for allowing it to get to this point. I kept asking both my mom and myself "when did it go wrong? Why didn't you tell me?” My mother quietly cried, unable to answer these questions.

ADRIANA TERESA | Serendipity

Issue 01

Featuring a poem by Eladia Blázquez

TABLE OF CONTENTS | Issue 4

Issue 04

Featuring

Eric Klemm
Ernesto Bazan
Jeff Jacobson
Amro Hamzawi
Thomas Lekfeldt
Rafael Fuchs
Cotton Coulson & Sisse Brimberg
Slava Mogutin
Andrea Star Reese
Daniela Edburg

THOMAS LEKFELDT | A Star in the Sky

Issue 04

Vibe’s father, Michael, often said that he would catch the stars in the sky for Vibe if she asked him to. Now Michael tells her sister that Vibe herself has become one of the stars in the sky. This is a story of childhood cancer. A story of how a brain tumor slowly but surely killed a little girl. At the same time it is a story about a dear friend of mine, little Vibe, the girl with the tumor. During the year that I worked on this story I became very close with her family, but I never left my camera in my bag or at home. When I sat drinking coffee with Vibe’s father, Michael, the camera lay on the table. When I drove down to get pizzas for dinner together with Vibe’s sister, Laerke, I had the camera with me in the car. Even when I became a friend I was still a photographer.

SLAVA MOGUTIN | Environmental Pictures

Issue 04

I took my best pictures while traveling. That is when I felt most inspired, free and alive, sometimes living out of my suitcase for months at a time, like a nomad with no specific goal in mind other than a constant change of settings and escape from the boring daily routine, schedule, regiment… And what a reward it is to come back home with a bagful of shot film! The moment of sharing your impressions and memories can be just as exciting as the journey itself.

I might have some gypsy blood in my genes: my Dad couldn’t settle in one place for more than a couple of years, and throughout my childhood, my family was constantly moving around Russia from one corner of the country to another. Taking advantage of his job as a newspaper journalist, my father crisscrossed the mammoth Soviet empire and even traveled as far as Mongolia and Bulgaria.

RAFAEL FUCHS | I am Amerikan

Issue 04

I am a collector. When I was a kid I used to collect stamps. I have stamps from all over the world.

When I grew up I started collecting memories. I decided to take pictures since I knew that otherwise I’d forget.

I do it, at times obsessively. I am aware of it.

I wish, sometimes, that I were in the moment, Looking, not through the lens, Just enjoying and being amazed and captivated.

JEFF JACOBSON | In the USA

Issue 04

Mojave National Preserve, Ca.

ERNESTO BAZAN | Cuba

Issue 04

In June, 1977, when I was seventeen years old and getting ready to graduate from high school in Palermo, Sicily, I had a dream in which I heard six words being spoken: “You need to become a photographer.” The next morning, I announced to my parents, who looked at me in disbelief, what my future profession was going to be. Far from wanting to sound like a preacher, I like to believe that it was God’s voice. Through this first revelation, I was given the chance to dedicate my life to photographing a broad range of feelings and emotions, the most simple and yet very universal conditions of our humanity: its sacredness in its basic and quintessential forms.

ERIC KLEMM | Silent Warriors

Issue 04

The image of the Indian from my childhood has been a heroic and romantic one. For me, like so many others growing up in Germany, there was an attraction and identification with North American Indian culture. When I immigrated to Canada, I eventually learned about the real story of the Indians, which is not romantic at all. I am picking up the thread where photographer Edward Curtis’ work ended. But now, nearly one hundred years later there are no more Great Warriors, their place taken by ordinary people who refused to give up.

DANIELA EDBURG | The Remains of the Day

Issue 04

Many ask me if I am obsessed with death but I think that I am more interested in artificiality. I believe that artificiality is true human nature and it comes precisely from our notion of death. This notion sparks our need to transform the environment in which we live. We therefore have an amazing creative, and at the same time, destructive drive to leave a mark on it or possess it. Our manmade objects, environments, and lifestyles constantly awe me. I live and breathe artificiality and am fascinated by these contradictions in human nature.

COTTON & SISSE | The Space Between

Issue 04

“Besmirch,” to damage or discolor

New emotions surface when we see the beauty in something that has almost been destroyed—in this case pictures shot on reversal film twenty to thirty years ago. Moments captured in the past become even more precious when we realize what was nearly lost. This series explores the way the mind navigates reality within a photograph. We connect in a new way with the deteriorating images. Water soaked, and over time, they have transformed into individual and unique creations with complex textures and colors.

ANDREA STAR REESE | The Urban Cave

Issue 04

“Don’t call me homeless” -Country

The Urban Cave, which I began in 2007, is an ongoing effort to document men and women living in makeshift dwellings around New York despite the city’s efforts to empty their encampments. It is a story about the resilience and humanity of people who live “on the other side” of conventional society. Most of all it is about a group of individuals and the spectrum of their lives, rather than their deprivations.

AMRO HAMZAWI | Iraqis Today

Issue 04

Ordinary Iraqis are the first victims of the Iraq War, yet there is barely mention in the media today of the cruel toll the conflict has taken on them. It is difficult to give a precise estimate of the number of civilians who have perished or were injured as a result of the invasion, but by all accounts the conditions on the ground are a humanitarian disaster with the civilians caught in the line of fire between the occupation forces, the militias that have taken over the country, and the various insurgent groups wreaking havoc.