All posts tagged: national geographic society

Telluride MountainFilm Festival 2015 with National Geographic Young Explorers

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This weekend I will be in Telluride, Colorado attending the Telluride MountainFilm Festival as a guest of the National Geographic Society (NGS). NGS is a festvial co-sponsor and supporter and has contributed a range of talent and programming to this year’s MountainFilm Festival, including a presentation of photographs by recipients of their Young Explorers Grant. If you are attending Telluride MountainFilm, please join me after 3:30pm Friday May 22 for the Gallery Walk or Sunday afternoon from 12-2pm for presentations by Young Explorers at the Sheridan Opera House. Additionally, Cara Eckholm, who I traveled to Bosnia with in October of last year and with whom I will be presenting on Sunday, will be featured in “Coffee and Conversation” with Ambassador Christopher Hill and Festival Director David Holbrooke (and son of Richard Holbrooke) very early Sunday morning at 8am at the Hotel Telluride.

Postwar Bosnia for National Geographic Young Explorers to Telluride Mountainfilm Festival

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Thanks to National Geographic, the work I shot on Bosnia’s postwar reconstruction last October will be shown for the first time at the Telluride Mountainfilm Festival in May! The festival director is Richard Holbrooke’s son, David Holbrooke, so now I am indebted to both father and son for what they have done for Bosnia.

Best of 2014: Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Germany and Sweet Home Chicago

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(NOTE: Much of my work from this year remains under embargo until publication including my recent work in Bosnia and Herzegovina with National Geographic Young Explorer Grantee Cara Eckholm.) In February, events in Ukraine rapidly spiraled out of control following the peaceful occupation of the central Maidan Niezalezhnosti or Independence Square in Kiev that had begun late in 2013. On the evening of February 18, 2014, the government of Viktor Yanukovych ordered snipers positioned around the square to fire on demonstrators. The gunfire continued intermittently, killing dozens for two days until it stopped. Then Yanukovych fled to Russia. Since then, Russia has annexed Crimea and sent troops into eastern regions of Ukraine. The government in Kiev has realigned itself with the West and the European Union. In early April, I traveled to Kiev to photograph those who had survived the sniper attacks from February 18-20, 2014 and to hear their stories. I hoped to bring their voice into a conversation about the conflict playing out in the international media and policy circles in Washington and …

Explorers Journal: Views of Sarajevo From Young Explorers

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The Explorers Journal blog of National Geographic featured late last week a teaser post about a project I have been working on with recently named Young Explorer Cara Eckholm in Bosnia and Herzegovina on cultural heritage preservation and postwar reconstruction, “Views of Sarajevo From Young Explorers“: National Geographic Young Explorers Grantees Cara Eckholm and Amanda Rivkin have been on the ground in Sarajevo this month. They’re pursing the story of the new urban landscape in Sarajevo, delving into the triumphs and tensions of a city that not long ago was ravaged by war. Through interviews with Sarajevo’s citizens Cara and Amanda are investigating battles over public monuments and museums, the complications of the foreign investments funding the rebuilding, and other stories from every corner of the historic city.

Look3 Festival of the Photograph: Masterclass Street Smart with Bruce Gilden

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For the past week, I have been fortunate to take Bruce Gilden’s Look3 Masterclass Workshop Street Smart and attend the Look3 Festival of the Photograph in Charlottesville, Virginia. Leica and Canon provided generous support for the tuition-free workshop. In addition to their support, I was lucky to have been invited here by National Geographic Society’s Expeditions Council. They were also nice enough to take a few of us Young Explorers Grant recipients out to dinner along with National Geographic Magazine photographer Carsten Peter who spoke about some of his assignments that involved chasing and being jolted by lightning as well as his favorite vulcanoes. Thank you to everyone who supported my trip to Look3 this year! Here is my favorite image from the workshop which I produced for our street photography portrait assignments that will be projected in the pavilion at the start of tonight’s slide presentations at 9pm at the end of the downtown mall in Charlottesville.

National Geographic Young Explorers Bio and Q+A

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Explorers Bio Amanda Rivkin Photographer Young Explorers Grants, Expeditions Council Grant Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois Current City: Baku, Azerbaijan What did you want to be when you were growing up? When I was very small, maybe seven years old, I told my godmother I wanted to be a crane, and when she asked what kind of crane, I said an operating crane like on a construction site. As a teenager, I thought I would be a writer, which is what led me to go to the college I eventually went to, Sarah Lawrence College, although I waited until the last possible moment of my senior year to take a writing class, because the curriculum itself was designed for writers, with no exams and independent research projects to complement the work in every course. This is what led me to journalism school, where I discovered by wonderful accident my true passion, photography. How did you get started in your field of work? I was studying print journalism at Columbia University when I enrolled in a short course …

Now on Emphas.Is: BTC Pipeline by Amanda Rivkin (A Crowdfunding Campaign)

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Watch this video and consider making a contribution to my ongoing, long-term project, please. There are rewards at every step of the way: For the full project information and pitch on Emphas.Is: BTC oil pipeline I first became interested in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline in the mid-1990s, when the Clinton White House Special Envoy Bill Richardson and Azerbaijani government were pushing oil companies to build the massive multinational infrastructure project. In the tumultuous post-Cold War period and with the demise of the Soviet Union, major oil companies preferred a more direct and less expensive route through Iran, but American interests prevailed. Oil from the BTC pipeline first reached the port of Ceyhan in southeast Turkey in May of 2006, an event hailed as the greatest geopolitical victory for the West in the aftermath of the Cold War. Since 9/11, however, the same interests that enthusiastically backed the project initially have now shifted their attention elsewhere — towards the Middle East and South Asia. In the summer of 2010, with the assistance of a Young …

June Newsletter: National Geographic publishes BTC pipeline / Fulbright to Azerbaijan

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This is a pretty special newsletter for me concerning announcements. First, I have graduated from the Georgetown University Graduate School of Foreign Service, which ends a two-year chapter of my life first in Washington, DC and then commuting between there and New York over the past year. While it was a fascinating educational experience, I am ready to move on to new projects and pastures. As a photographer, my work grew as well over those two years, for me most notably last summer when I was a recipient of a National Geographic Young Explorers Grant which facilitated travel photographing the social and economic life along the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline which delivers Caspian crude to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan by way of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey. Recently, this work was published on the National Geographic website in a photo gallery entitled, “At Five Years, BTC Pipeline Moves Oil, Culture,” with accompanying text by Marianne Lavelle. Lastly, the biggest bit of news. As a consequence of this work and my interest in the people, culture and …

Today on Verve Photo: Amanda Rivkin in Azerbaijan

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Amanda Rivkin Verve Photo: The New Breed of Documentary Photographers December 13, 2010 Amanda Rivkin (b.1984, USA) is currently based in Brooklyn while completing a master’s degree in security studies: terrorism and sub-state violence at the Georgetown University Graduate School of Foreign Service in Washington, D.C. Previously based in her hometown, Chicago, where she travels frequently, her work has appeared on the front pages of Le Monde, The New York Times, and The Washington Post and Courrier Japan, The Financial Times, Foreign Policy, and The London Sunday Times Magazine. She received a Young Explorers Grant from the Expeditions Council of the National Geographic Society to travel to Azerbaijan, Georgia, and eastern Turkey for a project, “Exploring the Evolving Oil Economy: the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline,” in 2010. She is a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and Sarah Lawrence College. About the Photograph: “This photo was taken on a beach in the Bibi Heybat section of southern Baku, Azerbaijan on the 4th of July, 2010, the same day Hillary Clinton visited the oil …

“A Caususes Wedding,” A Pictoral Accompaniment to the Cable of the Same Name

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The recent “Cablegate” affair, 270,000 of leaked U.S. Department of State cables, appearing on the Wikileaks website and excerpted in five newspapers, The New York Times, El Pais, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, and The Guardian simultaneously, has prompted wide disclosures of snarky observations about foreign leaders by U.S. diplomats abroad, disclosed to the world that Arab governments across the Middle East hoped Israel would attack Iran – positions they never would take publicly, and brought out a host of regional and national issues in a series of countries across the globe from Argentina to Albania to Pakistan. But consensus appears to be that a single cable, “A Caucuses Wedding,” by Deputy Chief of Mission to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, Daniel Russell, contains some of the finest prose, wittiest detail and overall storytelling. Although not Dagestan, these Bakuvian wedding pictures reveal some commonalities and quotes from the original cable have been excerpted in the caption section of the photographs when you click them open. Without further ado, a proposed pictoral accompaniment from last July in …