Pakistan Photo festival fellowship 1st edition 2017 Mentors

Asim Rafique
Independent photographer

Asim Rafique is an independent photographer whose work has been featured in publications such as National Geographic (France), Stern (Germany), The Wall Street Journal Magazine, Newsweek, and Time (USA, Asia) among others. He won numerous awards for his work, with most recent in 2015 Magnum EF Grant – Pakistan Justice Project and in 2013 Artist Residency at LUMS. He is also an author of blog, The Spinning Head. His essays on The Idea of India Project and Law & Disorder: A people’s History of the Law in Pakistan can be read on his blog The Spinning Head. Asim earned his undergrad and an MBA from Columbia University, New York City.

Matthieu Paley
photographer

Matthieu Paley is a freelance photographer and a regular contributor to National Geographic.

Over the last 17 years, Matthieu’s passion for the human nature has taken him all over the world. He likes to focus his camera on regions that are misrepresented or misunderstood.

Matthieu also uses video and writing to open people’s eyes on our common humanity. He has published several books of his work (on Afghanistan’s Pamir mountains, Mongolia, Siberia and on the Evolution of Diet) and his fine-art images have been shown in solo exhibitions worldwide.

Over the course of his career, Matthieu has learned six languages (including Urdu!), feeding his passion to connect with the people he meets and helping him to instill a sense of intimacy into his images. He has been coming to Pakistan since 1999, one of his favorite country in the world.

Wendy Marijnissen
Documentary photographer

Wendy Marijnissen is a freelance documentary photographer from Belgium. Intuition and personal interests have always played a major role in her work and naturally guided Wendy to her subjects.In 2008 she completed a long-term reportage in Israel and Palestine, using music to show a different side of daily life in this violent and conflicted region.In the summer of 2009 she covered the East-Jerusalem evictions and later that year traveled to Pakistan for the first time. For the following 3 years she worked in Pakistan focusing mainly on photographing the hardships of pregnancy and childbirth there. From fistula, traditional midwives to a camp pregnancy after the devastating flood in 2010 which displaced millions of people in the country. A part of this work was used for the ‘End fistula campaign’ of the UNFPA.

In 2015 she returned to Pakistan twice to continue working on what now will become her first book ‘In Praise of Shadows’ and she founded the non profit organization ‘Bending The Frame’, which tries to create new platforms and finds ways to bring strong photography out into the world.

Mahesh Shantaram
Documentary photography

Mahesh Shantaram uses personal and subjective documentary photography series to study complex systems, societies, and institutions, particularly with reference to contemporary India.

Everything that’s great about India and everything that’s wrong with it can be summarised in a single wedding. I n Matrimania, six years in the making, Mahesh Shantaram constructs a fictional photo series about Indian society seen through the prism of its wedding culture . Matrimania was seen at the Sony World Photography Awards 2011 (3rd Prize, Arts & Culture), Photoquai 2011, PhotoPhnomPenh 2012, Delhi Photo Festival 2013, Addis Photo Festival 2014, and Chobi Mela 2015.

Didier Ruef
Documentary photographer

Didier Ruef, born in 1961, is based in Lugano, Switzerland and works as a freelance documentary photographer. Ruef’s photographs have been published in major international magazines and newspapers, such as Time, The Observer Magazine, Daily Telegraph, Le Monde, El Pais Semanal, Geo, Marie Claire, D La Republica, Der Spiegel, National Geographic Germany, Die Zeit, Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Ruef is the author of five books : Bauern am Berg – Offizin Verlag (in french Paysans de nos montagnes – Editions Monographic, in italian Vita di montagna – Edizioni Casagrande). Afrique Noire – Infolio Editions. Enfants Prisonniers – DiDé. Recycle, Labor et Fides (french – english) and Edizioni Casagrande (italian – german). Bestarium – QTI.

Shah Zaman Baloch
Founder/ festival Director
Filmmaker and Photographer

Shah Zaman is an independent freelance filmmaker, photographer and the director of Pakistan Photo Festival. Former resident of at Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto Italy, won an award at Asian film academy at Busan international film festival South Korea, wiki heritage, work screened at Cannes short film corner France.

Pakistan Photo Festival Fellowship 2017 Projects

Pakistan photo festival fellowship 2017 is a two-months long program hosted by PakistanPhotoFestival for Pakistani photographers who are interested in documentary photography and photojournalism.

The Fellowship will be awarded to the 15 Pakistani photographers every year to undertake the 8-months long photography project under the supervision of Internationally recognized photographers. They will provide ongoing mentorship throughout the two-months. During two-months long residency program every photographer will produce body of work individually in the field of documentary photography/photojournalism. All work will be exhibited in the Pakistan Photo Festival’s annual event.