Marcus Bleasdale, the photographer behind “Frustration”, traveled to Djibouti in northeast Africa where he captured not only what malnutrition looks like, but also why it exists, how mothers of malnourished children experience it, and what MSF is doing to try to fight it. Watch the video interview:
Archive for June, 2010
Interview with Photojournalist Marcus Bleasdale
Saturday, June 12th, 2010The Art of Invisible Photography
Monday, June 7th, 2010Stephen Mayes – Director, VII Photo Agency
Burkina Faso 2009 © Jessica Dimmock/VII Network
India 2010 © Stephanie Sinclair/VII
Democratic Republic of Congo 2009 © Franco Pagetti/VII
It’s tempting to think that a photographic project should be about photography, but in the context of Starved For Attention this would be misleading.
The challenge to the photographers working on this project with MSF was to inform and inspire the viewer, to provoke and raise questions, but not to distract from the issues under scrutiny. The mission was to make simple images about complex subjects, pictures that would peel away the layers of statistics and data to reveal an unadorned truth: this is about real people with the same daily needs as our neighbors in New York, London or Tokyo.
There is no magic in these pictures, only a direct truth about subjects that might seem far away but which in reality are immediate and familiar to all of us. We all need a square meal.
But the idea of a square meal is deceptive in its simplicity. Working in collaboration with our inspiring colleagues at MSF the photographers of VII found ourselves exploring convoluted layers of surprise, contradiction and irony. We found lives lived in the midst of plenty yet wasted for the price of a fish that is within reach yet unreachable; we witnessed abnormality made normal by the shrunken expectations of the preceding generations; we visited the vast corn fields of Illinois and watched the massive machinery of American industry pouring $6 billion into a hole that cannot be filled by corn alone.
And above all we found hope in the midst of despair: a child crying full-force in his fight for life amidst a lush but war-ravaged landscape; a mother hewing wood from dawn to earn the money to buy a meal she won’t eat so her baby will grow, and mothers walking so many miles to find the help and support they need to care for their children.
And as we looked at the images loading onto our servers from around the world we ultimately saw the true simplicity of this complex issue: this condition of malnutrition that is today decimating the lives and futures of 195 million children is curable now. All it takes is knowledge and the will to make a change.
There is no place for art or artifice in this situation, only action. We hope that you appreciate the photography and we hope that you ignore it. Look through the images to see the lives behind them. If some simple photos can spark a reaction, your action, our efforts will have been fulfilled.
Exhibit is Up at VII Gallery in Brooklyn
Monday, June 7th, 2010The Starved for Attention exhibition is now up at VII Gallery in the DUMBO neighborhood of Brooklyn. You can see it there until July 2.
VII Gallery is open daily from 10 am to 6 pm. Address is 28 Jay Street, DUMBO – Brooklyn, two blocks north of York Street station on F train.
Visitors to VII Gallery in Brooklyn watched the Starved for Attention videos on Saturday, June 5. 2010 © MSF
VII Gallery on Jay Street in DUMBO, Brooklyn, will host Starved for Attention through July 2. 2010 © MSF
Visitors took in images from the Starved for Attention exhibit at VII Gallery on Saturday, June 5. 2010 © MSF
Exhibition Launches in New York City
Thursday, June 3rd, 2010Starved for Attention officially launched last night at the TimesCenter in New York City.
Some 500 visitors attended the event and viewed the seven mini-documentaries that examine malnutrition in as many countries, with images by some of the world’s top photojournalists represented by VII Photo. The panel discussion, moderated by NBC’s Ann Curry, drew nearly 400 at the event and 1,000 watching online through LiveStream. Watch a rebroadcast of the panel discussion on this Web site.
Today the exhibition leaves the TimesCenter and arrives at the VII Gallery in the DUMBO neighborhood of Brooklyn. Here are some photos from last night’s event:
Watch a recording of the panel discussion
Watch live streaming video from starvedforattention at livestream.com
Ann Curry views the exhibition. 2010 © MSF
Visitors view one of the seven documentary videos. 2010 © MSF
MSF-USA Executive Director Sophie Delaunay speaks with guests. 2010 © MSF
Some 500 people came through the exhibition at the TimesCenter. 2010 © MSF
Ann Curry led the panel in a discussion on childhood malnutrition. 2010 © MSF
The panel fielded questions from the audience. 2010 © MSF
Nearly 400 people attended the panel discussion on childhood malnutrition. 2010 © MSF
Indian "Right to Food" movement activist Biraj Patniak spoke about the need for political will in solving malnutrition. 2010 © MSF
The Search for a New Visual Language for Malnutrition
Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010By Jason Cone, Communications Director, MSF-USA
Over the past few decades, the image of emaciated, fly-ridden children on the brink of death from famines and other catastrophe has come to define the visual representation of childhood malnutrition. And in this media saturated world, flush with information documenting the daily toll of human suffering, it is understandable that a visual immunity has developed as a line of defense against this clichéd imagery provoking any kind of an emotional response to tackle the crisis of childhood malnutrition head on.
USA 2009 © Antonin Kratochvil/VII
India 2010 © Stephanie Sinclair/VII
Burkina Faso 2009 © Jessica Dimmock/VII Network
It was in this context that Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) challenged seven of the most accomplished and award-winning photographers to capture a new visual identity for malnutrition. VII Photo’s Marcus Bleasdale, Jessica Dimmock, Ron Haviv, Antonin Kratochvil, Franco Pagetti, Stephanie Sinclair, and John Stanmeyer willingly stepped into the breach to try to rewrite the story of the 195 million malnourished children worldwide.
They traveled to rural villages, war zones, teeming capitals, and mountain hideaways to document childhood malnutrition and its varied faces: the incongruity of malnourished children in lush and bountiful Congo; the cyclical nature of malnutrition in Bangladesh; a young mother and her struggle to access the foods she knows her children need to grow and thrive amid the annual “lean season” in the Sahel.
Edited by the documentary filmmakers at Herzliya Films, VII Photo’s startling images will be revealed in a seven-part mini-documentary series on StarvedForAttention.org over the coming weeks. And tonight, at the TimesCenter in New York City, exhibit attendees will be able to get a sneak preview of the films as displayed on LG INFINIA flat screen televisions and through a panel discussion moderated by NBC News anchor Ann Curry, with global health experts, activists, MSF aid workers, and VII photographers. (You can also watch the event streamed live.)
In “Frustration,” the first film to be released online, Marcus Bleasdale follows MSF outreach workers deep into Djibouti City’s slums to seek out malnourished children and inform their families of available treatment, and captures the frustration—and successes—of the staff at the 35-bed MSF nutrition hospital. While more than 1,700 children were treated in 2009, they know that’s just the tip of the iceberg outside the clinic’s doors – a mounting crisis that is hidden and elusive.
Photographer Jessica Dimmock’s “A Mother’s Devotion,” opens a window into the life of Natasha, a young mother living in a poverty-stricken village in rural Burkina Faso, as she struggles to keep her year-and-a-half-old son Alexi well nourished.
With intimate portraits and striking landscape images, photographer Ron Haviv’s “Terrifying Normalcy,” documents a community at the mouth of the Meghna River in southern Bangladesh that is resigned to the fact that malnutrition is part of the daily cycle of life.
In a somber, yet bold, reportage, captured in the Democratic Republic of Congo, photographer Franco Pagetti reveals the daily struggle to survive in North Kivu Province’s forbidding bush and teeming, fetid displaced persons camps, where food is scarce and the people are on edge, ready to run at a moment’s notice. He follows Bahati, a severely malnourished one-year-old boy—born displaced rather than on his father’s farm—and in “The Malnutrition that Shouldn’t Be,” documents the efforts of an MSF team trying to save him and hundreds of other children cut off from the nutritious food they need.
Photojournalist Stephanie Sinclair turned her lens on an MSF program in India’s Bihar State, which treats children at the epicenter of one of the world’s malnutrition hotspots. In “Invisible,” Sinclair’s images capture how children descend from generations of a chronically under-nourished population, making malnutrition more difficult to spot.
A young woman in labor bounces in a pick-up truck as it races down a rutted mountain road deep in rural Oaxaca State, Mexico, rushing to a birthing clinic that is part of national program, Oportunidades. In “A Solution from Within,” photographer John Stanmeyer chronicles health workers traversing mountain passes, going village to village, house to house, targeting pregnant and lactating women and children under two, underscoring how it is possible to confront childhood malnutrition in even the most remote and isolated parts of a country.
In a nation that provides half of the world’s food assistance, why is substandard food being sent to the poorest corners of the earth while a US government program provides nutritious foods to its own most vulnerable citizens? Photojournalists Antonin Kratochvil and Jessica Dimmock strikingly capture the double standard of US food aid policy in “The US Standard” and “A Double Standard.”
At its core, Starved for Attention, offers the opportunity to discard preconceived notions of malnutrition and confront in vivid detail the great potential that exists today to combat early childhood malnutrition. But we need your help to rewrite this story. Sign the petition today and spread the word far and wide.
A Radical New Vision Of Malnutrition
Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010Doctors Without Borders and VII Photo Launch Global Multimedia Campaign on Childhood Malnutrition; Crisis Affects 195 Million Children Worldwide
NEW YORK, JUNE 2, 2010 – The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the VII Photo agency today launched “Starved for Attention,” a global multimedia campaign presenting a unique and new perspective of childhood malnutrition, a preventable and treatable condition that nonetheless claims the lives of millions of children each year.
The collaboration challenges established notions of malnutrition through a seven-part mini-documentary series; clichéd images are substituted with those of parents and health workers struggling to meet the nutritional needs of young, growing children. Starved for Attention highlights how increased childhood sickness and early death can be prevented with effective nutritional interventions. The campaign launch coincides with the onset of a particularly harsh “hunger gap” season in Africa’s Sahel region, the period when staple food crops run out before the next harvest and malnutrition typically increases.
The documentaries will be released over a seven-week period beginning today.
“Documenting malnutrition has been one of the toughest challenges our agency has faced,” said VII Photographer Ron Haviv. “There is a sense that this story has already been told through the body of work produced by photojournalists who covered famines of the 20th century. Yet we believe that we have found a completely new visual language to tell this story—one that has the potential for great impact.”
At any given time, an estimated 195 million children are affected by malnutrition worldwide. It contributes to at least one-third of the eight million annual deaths of children under five years of age. These deaths are preventable if the nutritional requirements of young children are met. Starved for Attention underscores the possible, focusing on successful strategies implemented daily to address malnutrition, and how they can, and must, be expanded.
The most vulnerable are children up to two years of age, whose nutritional needs are especially high. If children in that time-frame do not receive quality foods that provide balanced nutrition, they face stunting, cognitive impairment, and increased vulnerability to disease. At worst, they can face early death.
“Our medical teams working in more than 30 countries with high levels of malnutrition, in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, have demonstrated that with early intervention with quality, balanced foods, countless children can be spared the consequences of malnutrition,” said Dr. Christophe Fournier, president of MSF’s International Council “We know what children need. It’s simply a matter of ensuring they get it.” In 2009, MSF treated 250,000 malnourished children in 34 countries.
VII photojournalists Marcus Bleasdale, Jessica Dimmock, Ron Haviv, Antonin Kratochvil, Franco Pagetti, Stephanie Sinclair, and John Stanmeyer contributed to Starved for Attention. They traveled to rural villages, war zones, teeming capitals, and mountain hideaways to document childhood malnutrition and its varied faces: the incongruity of malnourished children in lush and bountiful Congo; the cyclical nature of malnutrition in Bangladesh; the impact of the annual “lean season” in the Sahel. Highlighting successful treatment and prevention programs in countries like Mexico and the United States, Starved for Attention emphasizes the great potential for combating early childhood malnutrition.
The Starved for Attention campaign seeks to build a critical mass of awareness that will translate into reforms of humanitarian food assistance and nutrition programs for malnourished children, and the mobilization of resources needed to scale up programs to prevent and treat malnutrition. Visitors to starvedforattention.org can add their names to a global petition drive titled “Overcoming Childhood Malnutrition: The Time to Act is Now.”
Currently, international food donors mostly provide cereal-based fortified flours. While these foods can relieve hunger, they do not meet the nutritional requirements of young, growing children. For example, the US, the world’s largest food aid donor, is sending sub-standard foods that do not meet basic nutrition requirements for infants and young children. These foods would not be provided to children in the US. Starved for Attention exposes this double standard.
Tested strategies to address malnutrition are effective and are showing promising results in many countries. Some, including Mexico, Thailand, and Brazil, have reduced early childhood malnutrition through direct nutrition programs that ensure infants and young children from even the poorest families have access to quality foods, such as milk and eggs. At the same time there is growing political will in Asian and African countries to replicate successful programs. The Starved for Attention petition calls for support to these efforts.
Along with the multilingual website, the global campaign launches in New York City tonight with an exhibit and panel discussion event, followed by an exhibit at the VII Gallery in Brooklyn, New York. The multimedia exhibit will travel to Toronto, Milan, and Rome, among others.
Starved for Attention is made possible with the support of LG Electronics, which has provided financial support and its latest generation INFINIA flat panel television screens to display the project’s documentaries in exhibitions.