What’s New at VII
Sign up to our mailing list and receive news, featured stories, events and recent publications from VII.
Featured Projects
The Washington Post recently featured Ilvy Njiokiktjien’s long-term project in which she spent 12 years documenting the lives of South Africa’s “born frees” — the generation born after apartheid ended.
Tomas van Houtryve’s “Lines and Lineage,” a series of photos about the missing photographic history of the American West, is the winner of France’s prestigious 2019 Roger Pic Award.
Upcoming Workshops
Instructors: Nichole Sobecki & Danny Wilcox Frazier
Dates: September 14 – 21, 2019
Using Nairobi, Kenya as a canvas, you’ll produce an in-depth photographic essay on the aspect of the city’s dynamism that most engages you.
Instructors: Ed Kashi & Ashley Gilbertson
Dates: September 23 – 27, 2019
This workshop will be beneficial to anyone looking to push the boundaries of their photography — how to capture emotion in a narrative; the image as a stand-alone image; the approach itself.
Instructors: Ed Kashi & Ilvy Njiokiktjien
Dates: October 1 – 6, 2019
This 6-day workshop will give you the opportunity to learn how to tell visual stories about the human condition.
Instructors: Ashley Gilbertson & Gary Knight
Dates: November 10 – 15, 2019
VII Photo Agency is heading to Oz! Join Gary Knight and Ashley Gilbertson as they push you–kicking and screaming at times–beyond your comfort zone. They’ll guide you to capture more emotion in a narrative, to think anew about the image as a stand-alone image, and ideally, to rethink your approach to photography.
Instructor: Sara Terry
Dates: October 12 – 16, 2019
This is a workshop about the emotional and sub-conscious content of photos–about how to make photos that come from that place, and that help truly define your own voice as a photographer.
Films
Two iconic photographs of conflict shape the course of history and inspire a quest for justice. Biography of a Photo is a feature-length documentary film traces the life stories, the biographies, of two of Ron Haviv’s iconic images—one taken in Panama (1989), the other in Bosnia (1992)—that have led extraordinary existences.
From an American dream to an American crisis, Netflix’s new original documentary series, Flint Town — the story of Flint, Michigan through the eyes of the city’s police department — explores the struggles of living in a constant state of emergency and the team of underdogs fighting against all odds to save the city. Flint Town was co-directed by Drea Cooper and VII’s Zackary Canepari and Jessica Dimmock.
For her ninth studio album, alternative-music icon PJ Harvey visited Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Washington, D.C., to talk with locals and let their stories inspire her song lyrics, while filmmaker Seamus Murphy captured the moments in the documentary, A Dog Called Money.
VII Members on a Small Voice Podcast
“I might and should be and am emotional while photographing. I cannot let the emotion overcome me at that point. The emotion overcomes me once the job is over; once I am back in a safe place, then I can break down and cry and process what I’ve just witnessed. But it is incredibly important to remain focussed while doing the job, while photographing and documenting. but at the same time I cannot be a robot. I mean it would be very easy to completely turn off all emotions, but my opinion is that once a photographer does that it comes across in the photography. So I have to feel something in order for it to come through the way I’m documenting the situation or for the viewer to feel something”
“Photography is 99% problem solving and 1% photography wrapped around 100% serendipity and good luck.”
“…I’m asking people who are sick to let me into there lives. Like, what an asshole if I do that and then I’m not 100% there! Because on some level those people don’t need another person with a camera. So I better have a damned good reason to be getting into their lives and then I need to treat that with dignity and respect and the sort of preciousness of this opportunity that they’re giving me. And if I’m not at 100%, there’s something not good about that.”
“I’m a documentary photographer. I’ve covered everything from war to fashion; i’ve worked for the Geographic; I’ve done all these stories, but I realized a few years ago that I had all of these things stored up in my head and I felt I was experiencing the tyranny of documentary photography, because that’s what described me. But we’re so much more than what we do…”
“You should work and work and let the time pass and never lose direction, get to your long period of time and then maybe look back and see. But lack of confidence is completely pointless, it never takes you anywhere.”
“To be successful today, in this moment, in this field, I think you have to have a deeper understanding that this is your business. That while you are a creative person in this space this is also your business and to think about it in those terms. But then you also have to shift away from that and say what stories do I want to be telling and how do I want to be telling them…”
