All posts tagged: young explorers grant

Cara Eckholm’s Series on Postwar Bosnia for National Geographic Voices with My Photos

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Last October, I traveled to Bosnia with fellow National Geographic Young Explorer Cara Eckholm to report and photograph stories from postwar Bosnia. She now works for the consulting firm, ReD Associates, out of Copenhagen. Below are excerpts and photographs from the series we worked on and completed together. Exploring Sarajevo, 20 Years After Dayton Peace Accord May 29, 2015 From morning to midnight, in sun or snow, pensioners play chess with passion, swinging life-sized pieces across a board painted onto the pavement in the center of Sarajevo. I struck up a conversation with a crowd of bystanders, and learned that was not always so. Twenty years ago, this square was deserted, a victim of Bosnian-Serb mortars. Now, the chess players razz each other against a backdrop of multinational chains. But the past is never absent in Bosnia, and the storefronts face the once-majestic Austro-Hungarian officer club, still riddled with bullet holes two decades after the country’s ethnic war. Supported by a National Geographic Young Explorers Grant, I’ve been exploring Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital that was …

Telluride Mountainfilm Wrap-Up + Press

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Over the Memorial Day weekend, I was in Telluride, Colorado for the Mountainfilm Festival thanks to the support of National Geographic Expeditions Council and the Young Explorers Grant Program. It was a fantastic weekend spent in the company of some great friends, and when it was over and our presentations complete, we sat down and watched my beloved “politics by another means” Eurovision Song Contest. But once it was really over, the local indy paper, the San Juan Independent, came knocking and sent over some questions for a Q + A. Here are the parts that are relevant generally to photography today: […] Q: As a photographer, how do you believe technology has and will affect the field of photojournalism, if at all? Specifically, we are seeing more advanced cameras and equipment at more affordable prices, including GoPros and camera phones, and more “average Joe’s” being able to capture images and moments they could not years ago. Is this a good thing for photojournalism and photography or does it have a negative impact? A: A …

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.

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.

National Geographic Explorers Journal: Explorer of the Week – Amanda Rivkin

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Explorer of the Week: Amanda Rivkin Posted by Amy Bucci of NG Staff in Explorers Journal on August 14, 2012 This week we are featuring Amanda Rivkin, a photographer who decided to focus her lens on Azerbaijan’s offshore oil fields in the Caspian. Using funds from her Young Explorer grant, she followed the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline’s 1,100-mile route, which skirts five conflict zones in three countries representing believers of both Islam and Christianity. Rivkin’s photos reveal her passion and keen sense of storytelling. As she tells us, “I have come to see photography maybe in the vein of ancient epics, for a good photo is crafted like poetry.” In one National Geographic staff favorite, Rivkin captured a man reclining in a crude oil bath at a spa near Baku. Rivkin’s attention to detail, her knowledge about her subjects, and her unique vision will certainly continue to push her into the spotlight. What project are you working on now? I am transitioning from two long-term projects on the role of women in Azerbaijan and the …

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 …

Young Explorers’ Grant Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Oil Pipeline Photo Essay Published On National Geographic Website

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Pictures: At Five Years Old, BTC Pipeline Moves Oil, Culture National Geographic June 10, 2011 A New World Unveiled Photograph by Amanda Rivkin The landlocked Asian nation of Azerbaijan forged a powerful connection to the West five years ago with the first delivery of oil through one of the most ambitious energy projects of a generation—a $4.2 billion, 1,100-mile (1,800-kilometer) pipeline to the Turkish Mediterranean coast. When the deal was originally struck in 1994 for the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) Pipeline, the late Azerbaijan President Heydar Aliyev called it “the Contract of the Century”—the first time a former Soviet state had signed a deal for its oil to reach international markets without going through Russia. It was also hailed as a major policy success for the United States, which had engaged in years of intensive diplomacy to build an avenue for Caspian oil wealth that did not rely on Moscow. (Related: BP’s map of the pipeline route) The BTC has the capacity to deliver 1.2 million barrels of oil per day to the Turkish port of Ceyhan …

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 …