Following links from this week’s forum, I was deeply impressed by the work of Stanley Green (USA 1949-2017) and Bieke Depoorter

Stanley Greene was a photojournalist. He witnessed and photographed the fall of the Berlin Wall. He photographed the decline of communism and the break-up of the Soviet Union and was caught up in an assassination attempt on Yeltsin in October 1997 in Moscow. In the 1990’s he also reported variously from Chechnya, Bhopal in India and covered the famine in Southern Sudan. IN 1994 he covered the cholera outbreak in Zaire and Rwanda.

Open Wound: Chechnya 1994-2003 (Trolley 2003) – this is a collection of photographs documenting the plight of Chechens as they suffered following the collapse of the Soviet regime in the 1990’s. The images are direct, haunting and powerful – mainly in black and white, they depict harsh landscapes, the impact of the Chechen War and intimate portraits of desperation and despair. What comes across in all the photographs though is a profound sense of humanity and the photographer’s urgent please for the suffering to be recognised by the world.

Katrina: An unnatural disaster – this collection portrays the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina which decimated New Orleans and the areas around it in August 2005. The images highlight the shocking destruction at the time but also the profound subsequent suffering as attempts took rebuild the area took so long and were mired in corruption and racism. The photographs are visually gripping but again full of humanity and huge empathy with the plight of the people and the region.

https://www.noorimages.com/stanley-greene

Bieke Depoorter (Belgium, born 1986) has published a number of photographic books to date including: Ou Menya (2011), I am About to Call it a Day (2014), As it may be (2017) and Sète#15 (2015 Le bec en l’air). All works explore the relationship between the subject and the photographer and are often intimate portraits of her subjects in their homes. Ou Menya was the result of 3 trips to Russia, photographing the people that she randomly met and stayed with. I am About to Call it a Day is a similar collection taken whilst hitchhiking and driving around the USA.

In Sete#15, explores the nightlife of the French seaside resort of Sete. Depoorter’s approach is to photograph people she does not know in night settings. There is an acknowledged element of staging between the photographer and the subject but the warmth and poignancy of the images is striking and palpable stories emanate from each of the colour photos, inviting the viewer to linger and reflect on the scene. I am very taken by these portraits and how much depth of story is captured in a photograph of a single moment.

https://www.magnumphotos.com/arts-culture/art/bieke-deporter-sete-15/