Rising Photographers / I

Ordinary Grief is a story of tenuous reconciliation. In 2017, I returned to Iran after 25 years of self-exile, where I embarked on a personal and political reclamation of my identity and history. With images spanning 2017-2022, Ordinary Grief is my attempt to reconcile despair and joy, exhaustion and hope. It’s about ordinary Iranians actively trying to create new futures for themselves despite the odds. It’s a love letter to a country from which I feel estranged, despite having been born there, and to the people who call it home.

More than a decade ago, artist and curator Liza Faktor started looking more deeply into the annals of her family while navigating the dissolution of her own relationship and confronting the aftermath of her father’s sudden death. She turned to photography to explore the nature of a committed relationship while questioning what family truly means to her.

These images were selected from a body of photographs produced during the fair's two-week run at the end of August between 2015 through 2021. My assignment, from the fair’s marketing department, was to capture iconic images of those who participated in the fair while documenting the fair’s events and singular moments that define the small-town aspect of life in rural Alaska’s Matanuska Valley. I was so happy that my client gave me the freedom to find and capture images that spoke to me. Never once did they give me any instructions or tell me how to make my images.

''Souvenir d'un Futur'' documents the life of senior citizens living in the “Grands Ensembles” (large housing projects) around Paris. For the most part erected between the 1950s and the 1980s to address the housing crisis, urban migration and the inflow of foreign migrants while meeting modern comfort needs, these large estates are today often stigmatized by the media and marginalized by public opinion. In sharp contrast with these cliché views, and fascinated by these projects’ ambitious and dated modernistic features, Laurent Kronental was moved by the living conditions of these urban veterans who have aged there, and who, he feels, are the memory of the locus.

Research has shown that elders in the LGBTQ+ community are often more likely to experience loneliness, exclusion, and fear of turning to health and welfare services. The men pictured in this series, all over seventy, identify as gay and live in Israel. A land of continuous religious and ideological struggles, where, despite progressive reforms in recent decades, LGBTQ+ members are still subjected to legal discrimination, stigmas, and exclusion fueled by influential and political groups.

Life can present many obstacles for people with disabilities. These challenges lead to social isolation, poverty and reduced quality of life. However, amid these obstacles, Uganda is gradually transforming to become more inclusive.

Women fleeing homes that have become traps, holding their children by the hand, carrying only a few belongings and one certainty: they can no longer stay where they are. In those moments when darkness seems to prevail, Fondazione Asilo Mariuccia Onlus is there to provide support. Since 1902, this foundation has been a point of reference for the protection of women and minors who are victims of violence. Founded in the early 1900s, it is now one of the most active organizations in the field of protection and social inclusion.

This series of monochromatic portraits, titled "Portrait of a Poet – A Journey Through Layers", explores the multifaceted persona of Manka Menga, a Tanzanian poet whose work challenges societal norms and serves as a form of self-expression and therapy. It's an intimate journey into the poet's singular world, yet a reflection of the universal human experience, where we all seek to commune with ourselves. Highlighting the paradox of human experience – the unique and the universal intertwined.

I started learning photography when I began my career in journalism in my home country of Chile. I worked as a photojournalist for a human rights organization and for several news agencies, documenting protests and conflicts in Chile under the Pinochet regime.