Join us for a panel discussion with Fiona Rogers, founder of the Firecracker project and co-author of Firecrackers: Female Photographers Now (Thames & Hudson, 2017), on the most inquisitive, intelligent, and daring photography being created by female photographers working today. Rogers founded Firecracker in 2011 to support female photographers worldwide by showcasing their work. Building upon Firecracker's foundations, the newly released book brings together photography that encompasses an eclectic variety of styles, techniques, and locations, from Alma Haser's futuristic series of portraits that use origami to create 3D sculptures within the frame to Laura El-Tantawy's filmic and intensely personal series on political protest in Cairo. There is a recurring theme throughout the book that serves to unite these extraordinary women and their work: the exploration of marginalized individuals and under-discussed subjects, seen by fresh eyes.
Photographers Cemre Yesil, Diana Markosian, Diana Matar, and Bieke Depoorter, all of whom have work featured in the book, will join Rogers in conversation. Copies of Firecrackers: Female Photographers Now will be for sale after the program.
This is a free event, but please register in advance. ICP Members have access to preferred seating in our reserved members’ section.
Bios
Cemre Yesil is a Turkish photographer living in Istanbul. She has a BA in photography and an MA in visual arts from Sabanci University in Istanbul. She is currently a practice-based PhD student at the London College of Communication. Her work has been exhibited and published internationally. She was nominated for the Foam Paul Huf Award in 2014, the ING Unseen Talent Award in 2016, and Lead Awards in 2016. In 2015 the British Journal of Photography listed Yesil as one of the twenty-five most promising new talents in a global survey of emerging photographers for her work For Birds’ Sake. A selection from her An/Other series is in the Istanbul Modern Art Museum’s photography collection.
Diana Markosian is an Armenian-American artist whose images explore the relationship between memory and place. Born in the former Soviet Union, her family immigrated to the US when she was a child, leaving her father behind. In 2010, she received her MA from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Her work has since taken her to some of the most remote corners of the world, where she has produced both personal and editorial work. Her images can be found in publications such as National Geographic Magazine, the New Yorker, and the New York Times. She became a Magnum nominee in 2016.
Diana Matar is an artist working with photography, testimony, and archive. Often spending years on a theme, she attempts to capture the invisible traces of human history. Her works are concerned with power and violence and the question of what role aesthetics might play in their depiction. Matar graduated from the Royal College of Art London in 2008. She has been the recipient of a Ford Foundation Grant; Deutsche Bank Pyramid Award for Fine Art; Fifty Crows International Fund for Documentary Photography; and Arts Council of England Award twice. Her work has shown at Tate Modern, London; Institute du Monde Arabe, Paris; and Museum Folkswang, Germany among many other international institutions. Her first monograph, Evidence, was published in November 2014 by Schilt Publishing to international critical acclaim, including being chosen by New York Times photography critic Teju Cole as one of two best photography books of the year. Her bodies of work have been published internationally including in the New Yorker and Financial Times Magazine. Her works are held in the collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum London; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Santa Barbara Museum of Art; and George Eastman Museum among others.
Bieke Depoorter was born in 1986 in Kortrijk, Belgium. She received a master’s degree in photography at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent in 2009. Her early color photography work is the result of a unique approach: she captures the privacy of people whom she meets by chance and she gets to invite her into their homes. She captures indescribable, fragile, and intense moments, always with kindness.
For the Ou Menya series, the young artist travelled for three months in Russia, to remote villages, guided by the Trans-Siberian Railway. This work won her several awards, including the Magnum Expression Award in 2009. Her first book, Ou Menya, was published by Lannoo (Belgium) in 2011.For a similar long-term project entitled I Am About to Call it a day, the photographer went to the United States. A book of the same name was jointly published in 2014 by Edition Patrick Frey (Switzerland) and Hannibal (Belgium).
With Sète #15, in photographs taken during an artistic residency for the festival l’Image Singulières, Depoorter explores for the first time the thin line between fiction and documentary. She presents a nocturnal vision of the city, with a filmic dream-like atmosphere. Her photographs convey the muted pulsations of a sleeping city.
Depoorter finalized her first short film Dvalemodus in 2017, which she directed together with musician Mattias De Craene. The film talks about the everlasting darkness in a small village in the northern Norway. Depoorters new book As it May Be is going to be published by Hannibal, Aperture, and Edition Xavier Barral in October 2017. Since the beginning of the uprising in 2011 in Egypt, she tried to find trust in a country where mistrust predominates. Engagement has always been important to Depoorter. Nevertheless the consciousness of her status as an outsider, both culturally and as a photographer started to grow. She went back with a dummy of the new book to open a dialogue with more Egyptians.
When she was just 25 years old, she joined the Magnum agency, of which she became a nominee in 2012 and a full member in 2016.
Fiona Rogers is the global business development manager at Magnum Photos International. She is also the founder of Firecracker, a platform supporting female photographers, and recently co-authored a book with curator Max Houghton, Firecrackers: Female Photographers Now, celebrating women working in this medium. She has participated as a judge for several notable competitions, including the Mack First Book Award and the Getty Images Grant for Editorial Photography.
