Editorial & Business
7 jours d'Agence
Echo
“I spent 10 years traveling for South-America jails. A different and complex world in which violence and abuse are part of convicts life. I saw how the convicts try to find a space similar to that one they had outside jails. They try to preserve their dignity. Jails are a reflex of the society, a mirror of a country for both small problems and for the big economic and social crisis. They hardly try to maintain their habits in a human boundary condition and overcrowding status. Violence and power management inside the jails are direct consequences of these conditions. I went around for 74 male and female jails in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Colombia e Venezuela. I got in contact with prisoners and guards, with fear and anger, with hope and diffidence. Some convicts considered me a distraction, others looked at me with envy, others again with contempt because they thought that I was there only for taking pictures to sell of their confined life. Every jail was a way to tell the country from inside and outside. Even if everything seems to be just a reflex of violence the contrast of life and violence belongs to one line. This corresponds to the history of South America.” © Valerio Bispuri1/Echo
“I spent 10 years traveling for South-America jails. A different and complex world in which violence and abuse are part of convicts life. I saw how the convicts try to find a space similar to that one they had outside jails. They try to preserve their dignity. Jails are a reflex of the society, a mirror of a country for both small problems and for the big economic and social crisis. They hardly try to maintain their habits in a human boundary condition and overcrowding status. Violence and power management inside the jails are direct consequences of these conditions. I went around for 74 male and female jails in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Colombia e Venezuela. I got in contact with prisoners and guards, with fear and anger, with hope and diffidence. Some convicts considered me a distraction, others looked at me with envy, others again with contempt because they thought that I was there only for taking pictures to sell of their confined life. Every jail was a way to tell the country from inside and outside. Even if everything seems to be just a reflex of violence the contrast of life and violence belongs to one line. This corresponds to the history of South America.” © Valerio Bispuri1/Echo
Anti Mubarak asking for the death of the former president © Gianmarco Maraviglia1/Echo
Military police in the area where the trial is held © Gianmarco Maraviglia1/Echo
Images from the work about the first state circus in Egypt © Giorgio Palmera/Echo
“Olivia has grandparents coming from four different nationalities. Italy, Germany, Egypt and Romania. A child who embodies these diverse cultures, traditions, languages and religions. In daily family life, you can clutch, unaware, fragments from common experiences . Traveling through the four places of origin of her family, there are more similarities than differences. This project, a gift to Olivia, my dearest daughter, is above all a gift to all those people living today, feeling at home in every nook and corner of this world.” © Gianmarco Maraviglia/Echo
“Olivia has grandparents coming from four different nationalities. Italy, Germany, Egypt and Romania. A child who embodies these diverse cultures, traditions, languages and religions. In daily family life, you can clutch, unaware, fragments from common experiences . Traveling through the four places of origin of her family, there are more similarities than differences. This project, a gift to Olivia, my dearest daughter, is above all a gift to all those people living today, feeling at home in every nook and corner of this world.” © Gianmarco Maraviglia/Echo
Images from the project Soccer in Palestine “How about putting 'soccer' to the test now? Stalled, with no other means out, somebody had the brilliant idea to put a ball between the feet of children, instead of a machine gun in their hands. In this way, kicking out 'war' using a ball as a potential mass media object promoting a dream: that of a palestinian state. Sport, an old trick, always with a new twist, to this cause provocation acceptance and sympathy. Surely a project concerning kids, in need of a professional champion and a national star.” © Giorgio Palmera/Echo
Parkour in Gaza © Giorgio Palmera/Echo
Image from the project Las Pelequerias Tradicionales Traditional Mexican hair salons, pelequeris, where men go to cut their hair, beard and moustache. © Meeri Koutaniemi/Echo
Image from the project Life in Rubbish Burmese refugees living on the edge of survival in a garbage dump in Mae Sot, Thailand © Meeri Koutaniemi/Echo
Images from the long project on transexuals in Mexico Documentary photo project of 3 individuals who are facing racism because of their indigenous mayan roots, homosexuality and travesties' while suffering from AIDS © Meeri Koutaniemi/Echo
“I spent 10 years traveling for South-America jails. A different and complex world in which violence and abuse are part of convicts life. I saw how the convicts try to find a space similar to that one they had outside jails. They try to preserve their dignity. Jails are a reflex of the society, a mirror of a country for both small problems and for the big economic and social crisis. They hardly try to maintain their habits in a human boundary condition and overcrowding status. Violence and power management inside the jails are direct consequences of these conditions. I went around for 74 male and female jails in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Colombia e Venezuela. I got in contact with prisoners and guards, with fear and anger, with hope and diffidence. Some convicts considered me a distraction, others looked at me with envy, others again with contempt because they thought that I was there only for taking pictures to sell of their confined life. Every jail was a way to tell the country from inside and outside. Even if everything seems to be just a reflex of violence the contrast of life and violence belongs to one line. This corresponds to the history of South America.” © Valerio Bispuri1/Echo
It's rare enough that we should mention it here. It is not often, in this economy, with the current conditions of the editorial market that a new photo agency is born. Created this year (yes, in 2012) and named ECHO by photographer, manager & a photojournalism professor Gianmarco Maraviglia, it is a self described photo agency of the insight and unexpected. Instead of trying to compete with the mighty and powerful wire services like Getty images, AFP, AP , Reuters who cover any and all news items wherever and whenever it might be, Echo will instead use the long road approach to those stories that are too often skimmed and fast forgotten. Sometimes using the full power of the community of photographers or sometimes only covered by a lone photographer, Echo will use subtle approach of long term photojournalism to document the after effects of those events and measure their impact. Like it's name suggest, Echo is all about the after effects and impacts : “ An 'Echo' left by these events that influence the singular lives of each human being.”
Currently Echo is made of : Giorgio Palmera, photographer & founder of 'Fotografi senza Frontiere' (Photographers without Boundaries), part of the organization of the agency, Valerio Bispuri, author of the work 'Encerrados', a lengthy documentation of the South American prisons pitiful situation, exhibited at VISA Pour l’Image (2011). And finally, our youngest member Meeri Koutaniemi, winner of the Best Portrait award in Finland (2012) as well as an honorary Foreign Reportage photographer.
For it's first appearance in Le Journal, Echo has chosen a little bit of the work of its photographers instead of just one long story.
Paul Melcher
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Paul Melcher