TABLE OF CONTENTS | Issue 12
Issue 12
FeaturingJan Banning
Katie Orlinsky
Patrica Lay-Dorsey
Markel Redondo
Henry Jacobson
Nina Berman
Charles Harbutt
Jeff Jacobson
Larry Fink
Richard Mosse
Luceo Images
Marcia Michael
Mayra Montero
Paul McDonough
Alma Har'el
Neil I. Jacobs
Letter to the Reader, Issue 12
Issue 12
It has been more than six months since I published an issue of Visura Magazine. It has been a while. I have been soul searching, I guess, and I have distanced myself from everyone, including Visura. During the time, I was happy to learn that this platform has reached one million articles read since January 2009. Naturally, this made me reflect on the future of Visura.
JAN BANNING | Looking for a Hidden Past
Issue 12
I SOMETIMES WONDER, why do people do the things they do. Specifically, why did I become interested in focusing on wartime subjects when I was born and raised in times of peace?My parents were born during the early 1920’s in the Dutch East Indies, a colony that became modern Indonesia following World War II. My mother was sixteen and my father was twenty years old when the War began, which abruptly shattered their happy and prosperous youth, leaving an indelible impression.
KATIE ORLINSKY | Libya
Issue 12
Many people don’t know I was there with Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros on the day we lost them. I wasn’t physically injured—not a scratch. I think the journalists at the hospital all made the decision to take my name out of their stories, because one of the things I blurted out when I returned to the hospital was that my parents didn’t know I was there.The unrest in Libya began in mid-February and quickly escalated into a people’s revolt that left thousands dead. During the February fighting, protestors looted most of Gaddafi’s military bases in the east of the country. Although some of what was happening was obviously inspired by Egypt, the fact that so many young men carried Kalashnikov rifles and wore mismatched military garb made the scene uniquely Libyan.
JEFF JACOBSON | In the USA
Issue 12
Jeff Jacobson was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1946. He has published two books, My Fellow Americans, University of New Mexico Press, in 1991, and Melting Point, Nazraeli Press, in 2006. Jacobson joined Magnum Photos in 1978. He later left Magnum to help found Archive Pictures. Jacobson's photographs are in the permanent collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art among others.
Photographer Paul McDonough
Issue 12
Raised in New Hampshire, Paul McDonough attended the New England School of Art in Boston to study drawing and painting. Finishing his studies in 1963, Paul met Tod Papageorge, the noted photographer recognized for documenting the chaotic tension between fans and athletes in professional sports during the height of Vietnam. Swapping ideas and inspired by Tod’s recommendation, knowledge, and passion for the medium, both photographers formed a friendship that would resonate later in Paul’s career trajectory. He moved to New York City in 1967 where he was transfixed by the city’s soul and kinetic energy. In the city, Tod introduced him to renowned photographer Gary Winongrand, and so begun the transferring between souls.
PATRICIA LAY-DORSEY | Falling Into Place
Issue 12
I WAS 45 YEARS OLD when I took my first unexplained fall. Until that cold January day in 1988, I had run marathons, ridden 200-mile weekend bicycle tours with my husband, and had only recently stopped taking modern dance and ballet classes. My body had always done whatever I asked of it until suddenly, it became the most unpredictable part of my life. Eight months after that first fall, I was diagnosed with chronic (primary) progressive Multiple Sclerosis. From that moment on, I saw my body as a stranger.
LUCEO IMAGES | Diary of a Photographer
WE ARE SIX PHOTOGRAPHERS—David Walter Banks, Kendrick Brinson, Matt Eich, Kevin German, Daryl Peveto and Matt Slaby—unified by a search for answers in an often abstract and rapidly evolving global environment. We seek to understand the emotional resonance of each situation we chance upon, depicting the people and places we encounter with empathy, respect and curiosity.
MARKEL REDONDO | In God’s Hands
Issue 12
Many Central Americans leave their home countries for better working opportunities, to provide for their families and escape violence. They receive warnings that the journey is dangerous, and life in the U.S. is not easy. Still, they choose to embark on this arduous journey.Since 2010, I have been documenting the journey of Central American men, women and children while attempting to cross the borders from Honduras to Guatemala through Mexico and into the United States. I have photographed and interviewed victims, survivors, and heroes; meanwhile, I have witnessed the desperation that drives a person to leave his or her family, home, and country in the hope of a better life.
HENRY JACOBSON | Communiqué
Issue 12
I recently had a discussion about evolution. I argued that the next stage in human evolution was in the brain, in how it functions, and most importantly, how it communicates. I suggested that this shift would be rapid, fueled by advances in communication technology. It so happens that this debate took place after watching David Fincher’s the social network, in which the great Justin Timberlake utters a cocaine-fueled vision of the present/future; We lived on farms, then we lived in cities, and now we're going to live on the Internet.
CHARLES HARBUTT | Romance for the Real, Part I
Issue 12
A NOTE ABOUT HISTORIES. Most professional historians pride themselves in presenting the facts of history without any comment or response and that is valuable, like good journalism. However, the result is often dull and reductive: no juices, no attitude to what is being reported. These essays are not like that, and are not written from an observer’s detached point of view. I make pictures and what I’m reporting is VERY meaningful to me. I’m trying to describe the situation for a visual person in a verbal world.
NEIL I JACOBS, ESQ. | Casualties of Law
Issue 12
During my thirty years practicing law, I have worked with many creative people, including photographers, writers and musicians. Ten years ago, I formed my own law firm size. Tired of a relentless step toward an increase in law firms, I felt a sincere desire to do things my own way, and approach my practice with the same individual voice.
NINA BERMAN | The Afterglow
Issue 12
THERE WAS AN AFTERGLOW, a lingering light, and a feeling before the crush when the world tightened and the future we now suffer was sealed. I reach back to those days in between with such naked nostalgia I can hardly understand it. It is something more than hindsight, it is the physicality of the images, the simplicity of purpose, my purpose too, the complete lack of irony, a kind of innocence. Some call this period after September 11, a period of unity when America came together. However, that is political speak designed to manipulate and force us into narrow visions and proscribed postures.
RICHARD MOSSE | Via Goma
Issue 12
It is one year since I first visited the Congo. On that journey, my impulse was an unravelling of forms, of method, of purpose. After a year’s reflection though, the thread is tangled up again. One year’s elaboration of my initial journey dissipates with the honest satisfaction of a heavy day’s walk across front lines into rebel territory.
FOTOVISURA PAVILION | In Love and War
Issue 12
In Love and War exhibition reflects on the fragility of human life, in the hopes of bringing the viewer to a place of compassion and solicitude. This exhibition—featuring photographers Milagros de la Torre, Henry Jacobson, Richard Mosse, Jessica Hines, Justin Maxon and Grant Worth—was part of The FotoVisura Pavilion—sponsored by The Viso Lizardi Family—during the 2011 New York Photo Festival.
FOTOVISURA PAVILION | Dia
Issue 12
Dia Exhibition unites eight photographers who documented New York’s Puerto Rican communities from the Lower East Side to the South Bronx during the 1960′s to 1980s. This exhibition features photographers Frank Espada, David González, Ricky Flores, Perla de León, Joe Conzo, Pablo Delano, Francisco Reyes II and Máximo Colón.
FOTOVISURA PAVILION | E-cite
Issue 12
E-cite, a slide show presentation featuring a selection of five online blogs and magazines — New York Times Lens Blog, Time Magazine Lightbox, NPR Picture Show Blog, PDN Photo of the Day Blog & Visura Magazine—that have inspired the FotoVisura community. In a collaborative effort, each of these forums has created a unique presentation to represent their respective platforms.
The Envision Foundation Presents: Eyes and Angles
Issue 12
Students from the High School of World Cultures in the Bronx took part in a 5 month long program run by the Envision Foundation for Photography and Digital Media.By recording their everyday life, these teenage artists reflect on the role of self within the core of the family, school and community that they have settled in. Their images explore questions of connection and isolation that arise when making a home in a new country.
STATE OF SOUND | Alma Har’el
Issue 12
[...] The old maps of the entire world, the lust for travel and the beauty of love and getting lost in each other, while we drink and celebrate. Then, of course, is the loneliness and isolation that comes with the endless hunger to be ourselves, take off what binds us to a persona and suddenly release our fantasies so that we can be part of nature and the world.
MAYRA MONTERO | Appassionata
Issue 12
I WOULD HAVE FALLEN IN LOVE WITH HER, had I been a gentleman. One falls in love with the least expected trifles—the way someone asks a question, or lights a cigarette, or simply the quick, guilty, almost suicidal gesture of a cellist bending down to pick up a bow she had dropped on the floor. Something like this happened to a cellist in front of a gilded hall a few days ago, halfway through a concert. It was clear that she was a fine, conscientious person. I could tell by where she was seated among the other musicians, and the way she followed the conductor—a tall, handsome man who always gives the impression of having just stepped out of the shower. She was attentive to his smallest gestures—every motion—whether directed to her or to others, including the violins, the oboes and the singers. (There were singers that night.)
LARRY FINK | Hands On
Issue 12
Now that the Oscar parties have gone for this season and that the atmosphere hath born such devastating storms within the heartland, it may give some small comfort to attend, at least in pictures, the grand stand illusions of what has past. Lets start with an elegant black hand providing service in between the valley of pinstripe diagonals…This image is from the book The Vanities published by Schirmer Mosel.
