The eighth Moving Walls, a photographic exhibition series sponsored by the Open Society Institute, was officially inaugurated at a reception at OSI’s New York City offices. The new series showcases the work of five individual photographers, who cover a wide range of subjects and regions, in addition to images provided by Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
The fertile and populous Ferghana Valley in Central Asia is divided among Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, countries struggling to establish their post-Soviet identities. Jonas Bendiksen’s images look at some of the issues most crucial to the valley and Central Asia, in particular the resurgence and consequential repression of political and religious Islam.
Hélène Caux’s photographs document the daily travel of Serbs, Roma, and Albanians whoin sharp contrast to segregated Kosovar liferide a train together across Kosovo, visiting friends or returning home. Dubbed the “Freedom of Movement Train,” it reflects the continuing tensions among ethnic groups in that war-ravaged region while offering the promise of a more harmonious time.
Another view of the region’s recovery from war comes from Jeffrey Ladd, whose images personalize this collective struggle, showing a Serbian woman’s journey home and her family’s attempt to reconcile the old way of life with the new.
As open society endures daily challenges in postwar regions around the world, the United States faces its own pressing crises. In New York and Texas, Andrew Lichtenstein examines the immense social, political, and economic repercussions of the U.S. prison complex through the stories of those who know it firsthand.
Steve Liss also critiques the punitive approach of the U.S. prison system, turning his lens on an underresourced, overcrowded juvenile detention center near Laredo, Texas. With his photographs, Liss challenges viewers to see these kids not as a social ill but as a social responsibility.
In an effort to remember the past, to learn lessons for the future, and to heal the nation’s wounds, Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has compiled a visual narrative of the two decades of violence that caused the deaths or forced disappearance of nearly 60,000 Peruvians. Selected from an archive of over 20,000 photographs taken between 1980 and 2000, these images help reconstruct the history of one country’s brutal conflict.
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Moving Walls 8 Brochure |