Exhibition “Please Don’t Feed the Whale Sharks?”

We had a normal life

The collective exhibition “We had a normal life” features photos from Agentur Focus and MAPS, bringing together recent coverage of the conflict along with archival images. It offers an overview of Ukraine and the war’s various implications.

“We had a normal life, Ukraine 2006-2022”
From May 31 until July 3, 2022, in Hamburg, Germany

With the photographs of Daniel Berehulak, Massimo Berruti, Kitra Cahana, Justyna Mielnikiewicz, Dominic Nahr, Alessandro Penso, John Vink.

Perfecting the Art of Longing

“Perfecting the Art of Longing”, written and directed by Kitra Cahana, received the Betty Youson award for best Canadian short documentary at the Hot Docs film festival.

The film was screened at the festival on May 1st.

John Vink retrospective exhibition

Portrait(s) of a Resistance

Since 2004, Justyna Mielnikiewicz has been documenting Ukraine, creating a unique long-term project. In February 2022, she was in Ukraine and in the foreground to observe the Russian invasion. Two outdoor exhibitions, organized with the Polish Institute of Paris, cover the changing social and political reality between 2004 and 2022.

» Exhibition at La Maison des journalistes, Paris, France. From May 3 until the end of summer.
» Exhibition at the Hôtel de ville, Paris France. From May 10 to June 20.

Ashfika Rahman is among the finalists of the 2022 Sovereign Asian Art Prize, for her work ‘Redeem’.

May newsletter

Isola

Using a combination of self-portraits and documentation of everyday life, Simona Ghizzoni recounts the life of her new family and the difficulties of raising a child in circumstances as extraordinary as the confinements.Curated in collaboration with Nicolas Janowski.

Exhibition at Fotografia Europea, from April 29 to to June 12th. Reggio Emilia, Italy

Exhibition “No Agua No Vida”

Romano Cagnoni Award

ZOONOSE

World Press Photo jury

Simona Ghizzoni has been appointed as the Europe jury Chair for the 2022 World Press Photo Contest.

She has been involved with the World Press Photo as a Joop Swart Masterclass mentor in 2018 and as a Photo Contest winner in 2012 as well as 2008.

Back to Basics

As a Leica Akademie Instructor and during lectures, as a Leica Ambassador, Dominic Nahr has given insights to hundreds of people over the last few years. This video is the first of a series in which he will share these technical and creative tips.

Watch the tutorial here

Moving On collective project

Faten, Ilyas, Mustafa, Navanpreet, Hadeel and Ivica. They are a child, a cook, a support worker, a human-rights defender, an artist and a musician. They are six individuals who left their homes to carve out a better life for themselves, to secure a decent future for their families and children.

Our “Moving On” collective projecct brings together their six journeys. Six stories of migration, in Europe, today :

movingon.mapsimages.com

Funded by the National Geographic Society.

Vivants

Climate change, the sixth extinction of species, the rhetoric of collapse… These are the anxious hypotheses at the origin of Matthieu Gafsou’s vast photographic project, Vivants (Alive), in which our vision of the future is gradually shattered, leaving room for a new anxiety due to the threats that weigh on the world.

Exhibition in Galerie C, Paris, France, as part of Photo Saint-Germain. Opening November 9th 2021.

More info

The beauty of our world

Kitra Cahana’s image is among the “31 pictures from the National Geographic archives that capture the beauty of our world”.

See the image

Espíritu de las Casas

Artist and anthropologist Nicolás Janowski has partnered with architect Freddy Mamani to produce “Espíritu de las Casas, or The Spirit of the Houses”, a multi-dimensional photographic-based work that examines how the indigenous Aymara population in South America is seeing their values experience a renaissance.

Sofia Galli wrote a piece on the project, in PHmuseum.

November newsletter

A movie premiere, an awarded book, publications & exhibitions,… Our 22nd newsletter is out!

Read it here

‘Perfecting the Art of Longing’ movie premiere

“You perfect the art of longing by knowing where your soul is intended to be,” says Rabbi Cahana, who suffered a devastating brainstem stroke that left him “locked in,” only able to communicate through the blinking of his eyes.

Using footage from security cameras, video calls and home-video archives, this experimental short film leads us on a journey through memory, family and faith, exploring the nature of connection and distance.

“Perfecting the Art of Longing” written and directed by Kitra Cahana, premiered at the 2021 Festival du nouveau cinéma – FNC, as part of the National Competition, at 8:30 p.m., Montreal, Canada.

A National Film Board of Canada production.

Tarrafal: Topography of a Concentration Camp

How does one deal with historical events from a personal perspective? Photographer João Pina asks this question by probing Portugal’s recent colonialist and fascist past, exploring his own family archives.

João Pina presented his work “Tarrafal: Topography of a Concentration Camp” at the Institute for Ideas and Imagination.

Espíritu de las casas

With the “Espíritu de las casas” project, Nicolas Janowski and Freddy Mamani question the historical processes and the need to historically repair native peoples.

Exhibition at the Vigil Gonzalez gallery, Cusco, Peru. From September 23rd to October 20th.

More info

The typology of wounds, the mapping of healing

Ashfika Rahman’s exhibition “The typology of wounds, the mapping of healing” presents new and existing photographic and textile works produced in Bangladesh, in collaboration with marginalised indigenous communities.

This is Ashfika Rahman’s first solo show in VITRINE, in Basel, Germany.
From September 21st 2021 to January 9th 2022.

I Am Alive

The book “I Am Alive” by Dominic Nahr has been awarded by the Px3 Paris Photography Prize.

“I Am Alive can mean I have survived. I live well. Or I live with my terrible memories. All of these meanings can be found in this photobook. In an almost cinematic matter it chronicles the life of 11 people who lived through some of the past century´s most devastating conflicts as a child.”

More info: https://px3.fr/winners/px3/2021/11732/

Uno fanzine

“My summer was made of water, in my studio by the river. September arrived out of the blue, bringing with it some very important news for me, my first independent publication : Uno.”

Simona Ghizzoni’s fanzine, gathering her long-term work of self-portraiture will be published in October 2021.

See more and pre-order the publication here

Setpember newsletter

The MAPS September newsletter is out, with a focus on educational projects.

Read and subscribe here

The ‘Concurrent’ exhibition

The ‘Concurrent’ exhibition is a reconciliation of uprootedness and far-sightedness that define Dominic Nahr’s work. Here, impressions from Switzerland meet world events. They are details and panoramas from the international stage and from personal life.

Exhibition at the IPFO – International Photo Festival Olten
 until Sunday August 29th
https://www.ipfo.ch/exhibition-dominic-nahr

MSF x MAPS collective exhibition

More than a photo — 50 years of medical aid

For half a century, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), has been caring for people in emergency situations. In these five decades, the world has changed. And MSF with it.

MAPS photographers captured some of MSF’s actions throughout these years. The NGO asked Dominic Nahr to take a look into the analog and digital photo archives of 8 of our photographers, who have accompanied MSF in their operations.

Each image is accompanied by a video interview of the photographer, as well as archives, contact sheets and explanatory texts — all gathered on a dedicated website. (DE)

» Exhibition at the photoSCHWEIZ festival, Zürich, Switzerland, from July 2nd to 11th.

Unfamiliar exhibition

The constant reduction of ecosystems creates new geographies of disorientation, in which human and animal now seem to coexist only in an imaginary space, a rêverie. Simona Ghizzoni interprets this uprooted humanity in ‘Unfamiliar’.

‘La Inteligencia de la Flores’ exhibition

The humanizing process of cannabis has given rise to an alternative current that proposes to distance itself from this anthropization of the cannabis landscape. What is proposed accordingly is a gesture of return to a more organic, natural and binding way with the environment of which we are all part of.

Living Lullabies exhibition

Living Lullabies sheds light on the role of lullabies and the critical issues faced by women and children through multidisciplinary narratives of family nighttime rituals.

The series will be exhibited during the Cortona On The Move festival in Cortona, Italy. From July 15th to October 3rd.

More information

Discover the photo galery

Le Fotografe TV show

This new Sky Original series is the first documentary series dedicated to Italian women photographers and their own unique processes. Each episode is dedicated to a specific theme, from love to sexuality, from the role of women in society to body positivity.

Simona Ghizzoni will recount her artistic journey that begins with self-portraiture as a search for the self and adresses her interest in performing arts and reportage, as well as her commitment to women’s civil rights.

The episode “Everything speaks of me” featuring Simona Ghizzoni, will air on July 5th at 9.15 pm, on Sky Arte.

» See the trailer

Les Veilleuses

Night Lights

RESET collective exhibition

The ‘Reset’ photographic exhibition brings together the photographs and film of 18 MAPS members, exploring the transformations that are emerging from the turmoil our modern societies face.

45 photographs and a short film by MAPS members, accompanied by 6 multimedia productions by students of the Ecole Nationale des Arts de la Cambre, create a dialogue to address central issues of our time: the conditions of women and democratic crises, as well as the solace found in communities and the resetting of our relationship with the living.

From May 13th to June 4th 2021.
De Markten, Brussels

» More information

Tour de France 1987

The Tour de France is a mythical bicycle race, made of blood, sweat and mostly tarmac. Each year it attracts millions of spectators, scattered along the roads of France to see their heroes pass by in a whizzing flash.

@ L’oeil urbain, Corbeil-Essonnes, France. From May 27th to July 4th 2021.

» More information

Traces book release

Traces : marks and imprints left by the whirlwind passage of coronavirus through the Iris Sud Hospitals in Brussels in the spring of 2020.

Traces that deserve to be preserved so that nothing will be forgotten of the courage and the abnegation, the dread and the professionalism of the nurses, doctors, ancillary healthcare workers and logistical teams who faced something that had never been seen before.

» Discover the dedicated website

Loïc Delvaux shot & directed the book’s making of, interviewing the people involved in its making.

» See the video

Self-portrait as Myself

A series of conversations on self-portraiture and autobiographical narratives, followed by an exchange of ideas and practices, exploring the motivations and stories of women artists who engage with this particular genre.

In partnership with Fondazione Forma per la Fotografia, Collezione Donata Pizzi, Centro di ricerca Fotografia Arte e Femminismo (Università di Bologna ).

Next meetings (in Italian), live on Facebook :
May 19th with Alessandra Matia Calò
June 9th with Paola Mattioli
Late June with Federica Muzzarelli

» More information

Quaderni di un mammifero

Man’s first pictorial subjects were animals. The first material used for painting was probably the very blood of animals.

The metamorphic relationship of man who sees in the animal his alter ego has faded, but it remains fundamental to the understanding of the self. A mammal’s journal is a Manifesto of belonging to the natural world

@ MLB Maria Livia Brunelli Gallery, Ferrara, Italy. Until May 15th 2021.

» More information

Are They Rocks or Clouds?

The project analyzes the territory of the Dolomites – an area deeply wounded by the hydrogeological disaster of 1966 – to further research about the climate crisis that is undermining our planet.

The series is featured in the collective exhibition “Not Only History, But Our Memories” by Podbielski Contemporary.

@ Podbielski Contemporary, Milano, Italy. From April 28th.

» More information

71 / 21

To mark the 50th anniversary of Médecins Sans Frontières, the organization, in partnership with the SNCF, is hosting the 71|21 exhibition, which retraces the key events in its history through a series of emblematic photos taken by committed photographers.

MAPS members Cédric Gerbehaye and John Vink are among them.

@ Gare de Lyon, Paris, from April 30 to June 30.

» More information

Award – Living Lullabies

Hannah Reyes Morales’ “Living Lullabies” project won first place for the Cultural Practices category for Pictures of the Year Asia.

In cultures around the world, the songs that coax kids to sleep are windows into parents’ hopes, fears, and dreams for the future.

» See the full story, published on National Geographic

Fukushima 10 years Anniversary

Dominic Nahr was in Fukushima shortly after the 2011 nuclear disaster. His photos show the silence and devastation, in the immediate aftermath and years later.

Interview on the Swiss TV channel SRF.

Earth Day

Files of the Disappeard

The “COLLABORATION > CONTROL” exhibition explores engaged collaboration as a potential strategy for both complicating and seeking to overcome photography’s intrinsic position as a tool of power, control and historically, domination.

Ashfika Rahman’s “Files of the Disappeared” portrays victims of political injustice in Bangladesh.

@ Format, online photography festival. From March 21st 2021 to March 5th 2023.

» More information

CHAGRA educational program

CHAGRA’s objective is to create a network of independent visual narrators, to increase their capacity to depict the consequences of armed conflict, environmental upheavals and migration issues in their own communities and territories.

Educational program organized by the Colombian association Baudó, in collaboration with MAPS, designed for indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities.

5 MAPS photographers and creatives took part in a cycle of virtual seminars dedicated to innovation in visual storytelling.

With the interventions of:
João Pina ;
Eefje Ludwig ;
Daniel Berehulak ;
& Chiqui Garcia.

Mentoring by Nicolas Janowski.

» More information

‘Think Like a Street Photographer’ Book release

Street photography may look like luck, but you have to stack the odds in your favour if you want to come back with a ‘keeper’.

From understanding how to be invisible on a busy street, to discovering opportunities in the chaos of a crowd, Matt Stuart reveals the hard-won skills and secrets that have led to his best photographs.

Book available from 11th March 2021.

Order the book

Picture of the Year Award

Alessandro Penso is a finalist in the Picture of the Year competition for the World Understanding Award for his long-term project “European Dream”.
He was also a finalist in the category COVID-19 Personal Expression for his series “Stay Home“.

More information

Photographs & Glances

A Personal Matter

Simona Ghizzoni curated a series of online conversations on documentary photography.

The very first session was with fellow MAPS photographer Dominic Nahr. A second online discussion was held with Justyna Mielnikiewicz.

Prince Claus Fund

More information

The Useful Photographer

» Re-watch the discussion