Open Society Foundation Moving Walls 2013 Exhibit Announced

Kim Jeong-Ya (a pseudonym), 67, lives in China near the North Korean border and belongs to a handful of Chinese human rights activists who dedicate their lives to help both North Korean defectors and abducted South Koreans make a safe passage from North Korea to South Korea via mainland China.

Photo credit: © Katharina Hesse

Via Open Society Foundation

2013 will mark a milestone for the Open Society Foundations’ Moving Walls exhibition. It will not only be our 20th exhibition since starting in 1998 but will be the inaugural exhibition at the Foundations’ new headquarters at the Argonaut building on 57th and Broadway in New York City. Moving Walls is a documentary photography exhibition produced by the Open Society Foundations that features in-depth explorations of human rights and social issues. These images provide human rights evidence, put faces onto a conflict, document the struggles and defiance of marginalized people, reframe how issues are discussed publicly, and provide opportunities for reflection and discussion. Since 1998, Moving Walls has featured over 150 photographers.

For the exhibition that will open in our new office, we received 300 proposals from 49 countries through an open call. The proposals were carefully reviewed by the Documentary Photography Project staff, an advisory committee of foundation staff, and the show’s longtime curators, Magnum photographer Susan Meiselas and Stuart Alexander, International Specialist at Christies. We recently completed selection and are pleased to announce that the following photographers have been chosen:

• Katharina Hesse, on North Korean refugees who crossed the border into China
• Fernando Moleres, on young men and boys imprisoned alongside adults and awaiting trial in Sierra Leone
• Yuri Kozyrev, on the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa and their aftermath
• Ian Teh, on the changing landscape of the Yellow River Basin in China
• Donald Weber, on police interrogations in Ukraine

In contrast to our current location, the new exhibition space will be located on the street level in a public conference space. That, combined with being more centrally located on 57th Street, gives us opportunities to engage with the public in a different way. The current office has been a great home to Moving Walls but I am excited for the new possibilities. Stay tuned for more information as we get closer to the opening of the exhibition.



Related: People Get Ready: The Struggle for Human Rights exhibition

Jeff Widener

A lone man stops a column of tanks near Tiananmen Square, 1989 Beijing, China

Santa Fe Reporter Pick

People Get Ready

Exercise your freedom and come witness 55 powerful photographs from significant human rights struggles in history. Reception 5-7 pm Friday, July 6.

PEOPLE GET READY

Jeff Widener

 A lone man stops a column of tanks near Tiananmen Square, 1989 Beijing, China

This recent headline:

"23 years after Tiananmen, China is still paying: The annual crackdown on commemorations of the June 4 anniversary of the brutal suppression of student-led demonstrations based in Tiananmen Square in 1989 Beijing is under way."

reminds us that the right to freedom of expression also requires consistent defense.

Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is pleased to announce "People Get Ready: The Struggle For Human Rights", a major exhibition of  dramatic photographs from significant human rights struggles in history. The exhibition opens with a public reception Friday, July 6, 5 - 7 PM, and continues through September 23, 2012

The belief that everyone, by virtue of her or his humanity, is entitled to certain human rights is fairly new. Its roots, however, lie in earlier traditions and documents of many cultures; however, it took the catalyst of World War II to propel human rights onto the global stage and into the global conscience. 

Yet, every day we still see images of people struggling for their freedom; their right to live without fear, their right to speak and their right to worship the god of their choice. In the past several months, we have watched as citizens in Egypt and Libya took to the streets to air their politics and struggle for freedom; and here in the United States, the Occupy Wall Street movement championed the cause of economic and social rights. The struggle around the world is unrelenting. Dedicated photojournalists have been, and continue to be, there to bring the voices and the images of the people as they rise to fight for basic human rights. (According to the Committee To Protect Journalists, 19 journalists have been killed in 2012 and 179 are currently in jail world-wide.)

Photographers in this exhibition illustrate the power of photography to inform, persuade, enlighten and enrich the viewer's life. Many of the photographs featured in this exhibition not only moved the public at the time of their publication, and continue to have an impact today, but set social and political changes in motion, transforming the way we live and think.

Many global human rights movements are documented in the exhibition, including: Civil Rights in America, Women's Rights, Democracy rights, People's rights, Worker's rights, Gay rights, and other causes. Also included are stark photographs of stalwart defenders of the-then status quo, from segregationists to proponents of sexism.

Photographers in the exhibition include: Eddie Adams, Nina Berman, Margart Bourke-White, Bill Eppridge, Ashley Gilbertson, Yuri Kozyrev, Ken Regan, Steve Schapiro, Paul Schutzer, Grey Villet, Jeff Widener, and numerous other renowned photojournalists.

The state of the world's human rights

Amnesty International has just released the 2012 report The State of the World's Human Rights.

A watershed year for activism

"2011 was a truly tumultuous year. Millions of people took to the streets to demand freedom, justice and dignity – some of them securing memorable victories.
Successful uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt early in the year ignited protests across the region and then the world, stretching from Moscow, London and Athens in Europe, to  Dakar and Kampala in Africa, to New York, La Paz and Cuernavaca in the Americas, to Phnom Penh and Tokyo in Asia.
In the Middle East and North Africa, the pent up grievances and demands of a rising generation exploded onto the streets, sweeping aside or threatening the survival of autocratic regimes that had ruled with iron fists for decades and had seemed invincible.
Inspired by these events, people elsewhere in Africa also risked reprisals by protesting against their desperate social and economic conditions and expressing their desire for political freedoms.
In Europe and Central Asia, as well as the Asia-Pacific region, people repeatedly challenged injustice and violations of their rights. In some cases, governments responded by stepping up already stifling levels of repression. The autocratic regimes in several of the successor states to the Soviet Union, for example, strengthened their grip on power by crushing protests, arresting opposition leaders and silencing dissenting voices.
The demand for human rights also resounded across the Americas – on the streets, in national courts, and in the Inter-American system. The calls for justice from individuals, civil society organizations and Indigenous Peoples gained strength, frequently bringing people into direct confrontation with powerful economic and political interests.
At the heart of many of these conflicts were economic development policies that left many, particularly those living in poverty and marginalized communities, at increased risk of abuse. Many forms of discrimination also continued to engender a sense of injustice that sparked and were reflected in protests around the globe.
All these events and trends are reflected in the Amnesty International Report 2012, which documents the state of human rights in 155 countries and territories in 2011 – the year that Amnesty International celebrated its 50th anniversary.
The report highlights the endemic failure of leadership at a local and international level to protect human rights. It shows that the response of the international community to human rights crises was often marked by fear, prevarication, opportunism and hypocrisy. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the Middle East and North Africa, with markedly different responses to government crackdowns on mass protests across the region.
The failure in leadership was also apparent as governments continued to exploit legitimate concerns over security or high crime rates to justify or to ignore abuses by their own security forces, and failed to hold business corporations to account for their impact on human rights.
As Amnesty International moves into its sixth decade, this report bears witness not only to the plight of those living in the shadow of human rights violations, but also to those who are inspired to take action, often at great personal risk, to secure human rights and dignity for all."

--Amnesty International

Related Exhibition - "People Get Ready" The Struggle For Human Rights"
Monroe Gallery of Photography
July 6 - September 23, 2012

Bahraini activist ‘Angry Arabiya’ arrested

A police officer drags Zaynab al-Khawaja after handcuffing her when she refused to leave after a sit-in. (HAMAD I MOHAMMED - REUTERS)   

By Elizabeth Flock

Zaynab al-Khawaja, 28, widely known as “Angry Arabiya” for her outspoken tweets on human rights abuses, has been arrested in Bahrain. Photos and a video show Khawaja, who is the daughter of jailed human rights activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, being disciplined and then handcuffed by police.

Full story here via The Washington Post.