Andrew Testa, winner of a Getty Images Grants for Editorial Photography, has recently completed his project entitled New Beginning for Kosovo.

In his project summary, Testa writes, “With Kosovo’s widely expected independence delayed by Russian opposition and bogged down in diplomatic wrangling, I set out to make a portrait of this tiny corner of Europe, a province of Serbia, but under the jurisdiction of the United Nations, it’s population of two million besieged by power cuts and water shortages, its infrastructure in tatters and it’s financial institutions and businesses unable to function normally due to it’s unclear status.”

He continues, “During the three trips that I made with the grant money I had a mantra running through my head; it came from a long ago review of Waiting for Godot that described it as ‘a play in which nothing happens, twice.’  This seemed to me to be the perfect summation of Kosovo at that time, a place in limbo, a country in waiting that was completely hamstrung by the fact that it was not actually a country.”

See Andrew’s finished photo essay at Getty Images.

Digg This!   Tweet This!   Share on Facebook   Stumble It!

Rena Effendi, winner of a Getty Images Grants for Editorial Photography, recently completed her project entitled Pipedreams: a chronicle of lives along the pipeline in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey. 

Effendi writes, “Pipedreams is my first book that evolved from a long-term project documenting my country’s post-Soviet turmoil in which corruption, poverty and war were all related to, and fed by, oil and gas.  What I witnessed in this journey is that initial promises and expectations of trickle-down wealth still remain unfulfilled. Pipedreams is dedicated to the neglected people of Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey, linked by the pipeline, and their faded hopes for a better future.” 

See Rena’s finished photo essay at Getty Images.

Digg This!   Tweet This!   Share on Facebook   Stumble It!

Winner of a Getty Images Grants for Editorial Photography, Simon Roberts recently completed his project entitled The Russian Army.

Photo courtesy of Simon Roberts

Roberts writes, “My study begins with an exploration of the military in Russian society, looking at how closely the two are tied. It then follows the lives of conscript soldiers, those young men who are forced to spend 2 years in military service and who still make up the backbone of the army.   It documents them saying goodbye to their loved ones and follows them through their basic training at barracks around Russia.  The Russian army is one of the most problematic and intriguing cornerstones of Russian society.  Every year some 40,000 troops desert, approximately 200 soldiers commit suicide and new conscripts are paid as little as £1 a month. Human Rights Watch (HRW) deputy chairman for Russia, Alexandra Petrov, recently said that, “there are two places in Russia that people die practically on a daily basis: Chechnya and the Army.”

See Simon’s finished essay at Getty Images Grants website.

Digg This!   Tweet This!   Share on Facebook   Stumble It!

Jonathan Torgovnik

For the past three years I have been working on a personal project Intended Consequences: Rwandan Children Born of Rape, collecting testimonies and photographing women that were brutally raped during the Rwandan Genocide and had a child as a result of those brutal encounters. I have photographed and interviewed forty families throughout Rwanda, learning first hand about the multiple levels of trauma these mothers are dealing with on a daily basis.

After my second trip to Rwanda, I knew that this would be a project I wanted to continue and would need substantial support in order to do so.  After applying  to the Getty Images Grant for Editorial Photography (for the second time) I was thrilled to learn I was awarded the $20,000 grant. It was instrumental in helping me to complete this undertaking and making sure I could work on the project with the freedom, depth and time necessary to do it the right way. I’m really grateful to Getty Images for creating this grant which enables documentary photographers to complete projects that often are hard to finance from mainstream media.

On March 5, 2009, the Intended Consequences exhibition launched at Aperture Gallery in New York , coinciding with the 15th year anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. Intended  Consequences will be in NY until May 5 and on April 29 a panel discussion will be held regarding my project at 6:30 PM.   I hope this exhibition will bring awareness to the forgotten consequences of sexual violence and genocide.

Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th Street, Fl.4
between 10th and 11th Avenue
New York, New York
(212)505-5555

I have also co-founded Foundation Rwanda which supports secondary school education of children born of rapes committed during the Rwandan genocide in 1994.

To see more of my imagery from my Sept 2007 grant project, please click here.

Digg This!   Tweet This!   Share on Facebook   Stumble It!