From the Berlin Wall to the Twin Towers

Pathshala requests the pleasure of your company at the presentation by Robert Pledge ?on 1961-2001: From the Berlin Wall to the Twin Towers – History and Photojournalism ? parallel developments.
Schedule of the lecture session
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Date: 28th March 2012
Time: 6:45pm
Venue: Pathshala.

View into East Berlin during construction of Berlin Wall. August 1961. ??Don McCullin/Contact Press Images

?1961-2001: from the Berlin Wall to the Twin Towers? focuses on major international events, trends, and issues that developed throughout the world between the rise of the Berlin Wall on August 13, 1961 ? a wall that would for 28 years symbolize the East-West?s ?Cold War? deep divide opposing communism to capitalism ? and the fall of New York?s World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 ? that marks the start of the then coined??War on Terror.?
Indian troops along the border during Bangladesh's liberation war. 1971 ? David Burnett/Contact Press Images

The SS France, passing the just completed WTC Towers on a last voyage. New York. USA. July 1974 ??David Burnett/Contact Press Images

Fall of the Berlin Wall. West Berlin. Germany. November 1959 ? Alexander Avakian/Contact Press Images

Nelson Mandela on a presidential campaign rally. Bophuthatswana. South Africa. March 1994 ? Alon Reininger/Contact Press Images

Tutsi refugees massacred by Hutu genociders in a catholic mission. Rukara. Rwanda. May 1994 ? Frank Fournier/Contact Press Images

This fast-moving, compact presentation of two hundred and forty often iconic and never cropped black-and-white and color images taken by a small group of remarkable photographers associated with ?Contact Press Images,? a highly-regarded independent international photo agency, not only establishes the work by these men and women of different generations and nationalities as an important contribution to the recording of history, small and large, but also mirrors the evolution of photojournalism itself ? the ?art? of witnessing and storytelling ? and of its role over four decades in the changing print media landscape, as television, the personal computer, the internet, and ?revolutionary? digital technologies have gradually come to dominate and transform our increasingly ?globalized world of endless information and communication.
The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center from New Jersey. USA. September 2001 ? Sean Hemmerle/Contact Press Images

Robert PLEDGE was born in 1942 in London, UK and moved to Paris, France at the age of ten. A student of West African languages and anthropology, he found his way into journalism as a specialist in African affairs. In 1970 he became an editor at the French visual arts magazine Zoom, le magazine de l?image and in 1973 the director of the New York office of the picture agency Gamma. In 1976 he founded Contact Press Images in New York with American photographer David Burnett. He has curated major exhibitions worldwide and served on prestigious international juries including that of the World Press Photo Foundation, three times. A visiting professor at several Chinese universities, he is also a member and former president of the Board of Trustees of the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund. In 2004 and 2010 he received the Overseas Press Club of America’s “Olivier Rebbot Award? for Best Reporting in Books, respectively for Red-Color News Soldier, A Chinese Photographer?s Odyssey Through The Cultural Revolution (Phaidon) co-authored with Li Zhensheng, and 44 Days?Iran and the Remaking of the World (Focal Point), co-authored with Burnett and writer Jacques Menasche.
Contact Press Images is an independent international documentary photography agency founded in New York City in 1976 by Franco-British journalist Robert Pledge and American photographer David Burnett. For over three decades it has promoted and distributed the work of some of the finest award-winning photojournalists and documentarians in the world.
Today, with offices in New York and Paris, it represents a select group of talented men and women from more than a dozen nations.
Hasib Zakaria
Vice Principal
Pathshala South Asian Media Academy
Phd Candidate
Archeology & Art
Vrije University Brussels, Belgium
Two other presentations at Pathshala on the 28th March 2012
Schedule of other presentations (for Pathshala students only):
Sudharak Olwe
Date: 28 March 2012
Day: Wednesday
Time: 10:30-12:00
Sudharak Olwe is a Mumbai based documentary photographer and he has been doing several projects for the last couple of years. He won National Geographic All Roads Grants in 2005 for his work on Sweepers.
and
Stephenie Hollyman
Date: 28 March 2012
Day: Wednesday
Time: 12:30- 2:00 pm
Stephenie Hollyman is both a still and video photographer. She is member of IATSE, Local #333, The Cinematographer’s Guild and is represented by Getty Images. She is a Fulbright scholar and the author two books.
Her work as a photographer and video-journalist has taken her to many of the world’s countries for publications such as TIME, PEOPLE, and STERN Magazine. Her photo book,? Dogon, Africa’s People of the Cliffs was published by Harry N. Abrams in 2000. A Fulbright Sr. Research Fellow, she was profiled on CBS Sunday Morning by Charles Kuralt in 1988? for her book on America’s homeless, “We The Homeless, Portraits of America’s Displaced People” .

Author: Shahidul Alam

Time Magazine Person of the Year 2018. A photographer, writer, curator and activist, Shahidul Alam obtained a PhD in chemistry before switching to photography. His seminal work “The Struggle for Democracy” contributed to the removal of General Ershad. Former president of the Bangladesh Photographic Society, Alam set up the Drik agency, Chobi Mela festival and Pathshala, South Asian Media Institute, considered one of the finest schools of photography in the world. Shown in MOMA New York, Centre Georges Pompidou, Royal Albert Hall and Tate Modern, Alam has been guest curator of Whitechapel Gallery, Winterthur Gallery and Musee de Quai Branly. His awards include Mother Jones, Shilpakala Award and Lifetime Achievement Award at the Dali International Festival of Photography. Speaker at Harvard, Stanford, UCLA, Oxford and Cambridge universities, TEDx, POPTech and National Geographic, Alam chaired the international jury of the prestigious World Press Photo contest. Honorary Fellow of Royal Photographic Society, Alam is visiting professor of Sunderland University in UK and advisory board member of National Geographic Society. John Morris, the former picture editor of Life Magazine describes his book “My journey as a witness”, (listed in “Best Photo Books of 2011” by American Photo), as “The most important book ever written by a photographer.”

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