New Zealander Photographer | Born: 1975
Robin Hammond is a freelance photojournalist born in New Zealand. He has been part of the photo agency Panos Pictures since 2007.
The winner of four Amnesty International awards for Human Rights journalism, Robin has dedicated his career to documenting human rights and development issues around the world, but especially in sub-Saharan Africa.
In 2011 Hammond won the Carmignac Gestion Photojournalism Award which allowed him to document in Zimbabwe for four months. Actes Sud published a book of the photos to coincide with an exhibition of the work in Paris in November 2012. The work will be published in national Geographic in May 2013. His long-term project on mental health, Condemned, was exhibited in September 2012 at the photojournalism festival Visa Pour l’Image.
After living in Japan, the United Kingdom and South Africa, Robin Hammond currently lives in Paris, France.
He contributes to many international newspapers and magazines including National Geographic, Time Magazine, The Sunday Times Magazine, The New York Times, and Polka Magazine. He also works regularly with various non-governmental organisations.
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Author: Robin Hammond
Publisher: FotoEvidence
Year: 2013 - Pages: 132
Condemned: Mental Health in African Countries in Crisis by Robin Hammond presents a profound body of work produced over seven years in nine African countries. "Condemned" was selected for the 2013 FotoEvidence Book Award by a prestigious international jury. Hammond captures both the deplorable conditions that the mentally ill endure and the overwhelming challenge that mental health workers face with limited resources and inadequate or failed systems health care systems in which the mentally ill have the lowest priority. Interviews with both the incarcerated mentally ill and those working to heal them - secular mental health workers and both Christian and Muslim faith healers - provide blunt evidence of the past trauma and current suffering of his subjects and the challenges and frustration of those struggling with limited resources to find ways to address the needs of vast numbers of mentally ill. Shame and prejudice based on traditional and religious beliefs about mental illness add cultural obstacles to the effective treatment of the mentally ill in many regions of Africa. The hardbound book measures 8 inches by 12 inches, with a matt laminated cover. It contains 89 black and white images, an introduction by the photographer and raw fragments of interviews conducted with patients, care givers, healers, and mental health administrators. Printed on 100lb paper on a Heidelberg press at Ofset Yapimavi in Istanbul, the photographs bring a rich aesthetic feel to a subject matter that could be considered harsh and disturbing.
