On the occasion of World Habitat Day, The National Building Museum in Washington D.C. presents Jonas Bendiksen’s body of work, The Places We Live, on view through January 15, 2010 and published by Aperture last Fall.  For the first time in history, more people live in cities than in rural areas. One-third of those city dwellers—over a billion people—live in slums, mostly in the rapidly urbanising cities of Africa and Asia. Slums have become the fastest growing human habitat in the world. The Obama Administration with UN-HABITAT co-hosts the global celebrations of World Habitat Day in Washington, D.C. on October 5th, an event celebrated on the first Monday in October each year. World Habitat Day this year will focus on the theme of improved urban planning so that our cities can manage and reduce the impacts of climate disruption, the economic crisis and urban poverty around the world.

Visit Aperture’s microsite for The Places We Live to learn more about this important project.

Click here to purchase your copy of The Places We Live through Aperture.

Click here to read the FLYP Media interview with photographer Jonas Bendiksen.

Jonas Bendiksen: The Places We Live
Thursday, September 17, 2009—Friday, January 15, 2010
The National Building Museum
401 F Street, NW
Washington, D.C.

Magnum photographer Jonas Bendiksen’s series The Places We Live, was recently featured on  The New York Times Lens blog in a piece titled: Must See: A New Kind of News. This project is highlighted as it has been presented as an interactive website based on his series, which was published by Aperture. The site provides a 360-degree view of the urban slums of Kenya, India, Venezuela, and Indonesia as well as interviews with the people who inhabit them. This interactive experience engages the viewer and opens eyes into the stories of those who live in the most unfortunate of conditions.

Check out www.theplaceswelive.com to experience these impoverished urban spaces for yourself.

Click here to purchase your copy of The Places We Live through Aperture.

An exhibition of this work is soon to be on view at The Building Museum, Washington D.C. this fall.

Coinciding with Aperture’s Spring 2009 title Access to Life copublished by Magnum Photos, The Stenersen Museum in Oslo presents an exhibition of works from eight Magnum photographers Jonas Bendiksen, Jim Goldberg, Alex Majoli, Steve McCurry, Paolo Pellegrin, Gilles Peress, Eli Reed, and Larry Towell. The work presents people in nine countries around the world before and four months after they began antiretroviral treatment for AIDS. The emotionally charged presentation of their faces, voices, and stories is illustrative of millions of people who would have died without access to free antiretroviral drugs.

Click here to view Access to Life via Magnum in Motion.

Click here to purchase your copy of Access to Life.

Access to Life
Saturday, June 20—Sunday, August 9, 2009
The Stenersen Museum
Munkedamsveien 15
N-0116 Oslo, Norway
+47 23 49 36 00

© Gilles Peress/Magnum Photos

For the past 25 years, the AIDS pandemic has inflicted excruciating pain upon humanity, having ravaged the lives of millions of people around the world. Over the past few years, however, a quiet global revolution has enabled millions infected by HIV to live healthy lives through the free antiretroviral treatment program initiated by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

In Access to Life, eight of the world’s leading photojournalists, all members of Magnum Photos, follow thirty individuals in nine countries before, and four months after, they began the antiretroviral treatment, documenting the transformative effect on their bodies, their lives, and the lives of their families. This dream team of photographers was assigned to the following countries: Jonas Bendiksen (Haiti), Jim Goldberg (India), Alex Majoli (Russia), Steve McCurry (Vietnam), Paolo Pellegrin (Mali), Gilles Peress (Rwanda), Eli Reed (Peru), and Larry Towell (South Africa and Swaziland). These powerful images reveal the patients’ complex struggle against the disease with great subtlety and hope.

Coinciding with the release of Access to Life (Aperture, Magnum Photos and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, April 2009), Aperture and The New School are pleased to present a compelling panel discussion with photojournalists Gilles Peress and Kristen Ashburn; Mark Lubell, the Bureau Chief for the Magnum Photos New York and former picture editor of Time magazine MaryAnne Golon; and moderator Fred Ritchin, Associate Chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and Director of PixelPress.

Following this panel discussion, Aperture will host a reception and book signing on Thursday, April 23 with Magnum photographers in attendance.

Access to Life: Photojournalism on AIDS
Panel Discussion
Wednesday, April 22, 7:00 pm

FREE

The New School
Tishman Auditorium
66 West 12th Street
New York, New York

Access to Life
Book Signing
Thursday, April 23, 7:00 pm

FREE

Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th Street
New York, New York
(212) 505-5555

Just announced! Photo-eye Magazine’s list of Best Photo Books 2008. Congratulations to all who are recognized, most notably Josef Koudelka’s Invasion 68: Prague, which made the Top 12 list.

Publisher of the Aperture Book Program, Lesley A. Martin’s list can be viewed here. Darius Himes, Publisher and Co-founder of Radius Books chose Martin Parr’s eclectic work, Parrworld as one of his favorites of the year. Michelle Dunn Marsh, Senior  Art+Design Editor, Chronicle Books nominated two Aperture titles, Hank Willis Thomas: Pitch Blackness* and Misty Dawn: Portrait of a Muse* by Jock Sturges both are available signed from Aperture. Aperture works recognized by PDN include Paul Fusco: RFK* and Travelers*by Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz. Also nominated was Jonas Bendiksen’s powerful work documenting urban slum dwellings in The Places We Live*.

Be sure to check out Aperture’s bookstore to purchase these incredible titles. Order your copy of Invasion 68: Prague here today!

*Signed copies available through Aperture.

It’s that time of year once again!  Jörg Colberg from the fine-art photography blog Conscientious announces his picks for Best Photo Books of 2008. Thanks for highlighting Aperture’s The Places We Live!

Colberg notes:

Jonas Bendiksen’s The Places We Live shows the “apartments” of inhabitants of slums – a single room, with the fold-out pages showing each wall. The photos come along with the voices of the people living in those places (in the form of text).

Also check out the exhibition BARE curated by Jörg M. Colberg at Michael Mazzeo Gallery.

Featuring Rachael Dunville, Amy Elkins, Ethan Aaro Jones, Richard Learoyd, Jennifer Loeber, Hellen van Meene, Josh Quigley, Richard Renaldi, Jessica Roberts, Alec Soth, Shen Wei, former Aperture work scholar Carmen Winant.

Michael Mazzeo Gallery
526 W.26 Street / Suite 209 / NYC 10001

Last Monday November 24th, Magnum photographer Jonas Bendiksen, and author and editor of the Paris Review, Philip Gourevitch discussed Bendiksen’s work from his latest book The Places We Live (Aperture, 2008). The publication, with an introduction by Gourevitch, documents life in slums in four different cities around the world: Nairobi, Kenya; Mumbai, India; Jakarta, Indonesia; and Caracas, Venezuela.

During the talk Gourevitch asked Bendiksen several questions, including one about the striking attractiveness and color intensity of the photographs, which could be seen as a sharp contrast to the difficult subject matter at hand. Gourevitch wondered if it was a conscious decision for Bendiksen to reveal the beauty in these precarious dwellings.

Listen to Bendiksen’s response here.

Watch a video of the entire discussion on Aperture Live.

View the interactive website The Places We Live.

On Monday, November 24th at 6:30pm Aperture will host a conversation between photographer Jonas Bendiksen and author Philip Gourevitch. Their discussion will focus on the subject of Bendiksen’s recent and remarkable book, The Places We Live, which documents life in slums around the world.

Jonas Bendiksen is a Norwegian photojournalist and member of Magnum Photos. For such a young photographer, he has received a wide range of accolades including the 2003 Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography. Focusing on enclaves and other isolated communities, Bendiksen often photographs dire social situations from a unique investigative perspective.

Philip Gourevitch is among the most vibrant nonfiction and editorial writers of our time. His texts have tackled such weighty topics as American torture of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib, ethical conflict in Africa, and presidential campaigns. In an interview with Alex French, he explains: “I guess I like to look at things that might normally make me prefer to look away, but which in fact I feel more uncomfortable ignoring.” Gourevitch contributes the introduction to The Places We Live where he describes the growing problem of slums in major urban centers.

We hope you’ll join us on Monday night at Aperture for this amazing event, but in case you can’t make it in person, be sure to check out the live stream of the event on Aperture Live.

Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor
New York, New York

You can already feel Autumn on the way in New York and Aperture’s Fall season of books is in full swing. Now available for sale are the titles listed here, Erwin Olaf, Paul Fusco: RFK, The Places We Live, photographs by Jonas Bendiksen, Parrworld: Objects and Postcards, by Martin Parr, and Invasion 68: Prague, photographs by Josef Koudelka coinciding with the exhbiition soon to be on view at Aperture Gallery and Pace MacGill Gallery. To see upcoming titles view our Fall Preview.

This year, for the first time ever, more people on Earth live in cities than in rural areas. A billion of these urban dwellers are living in slum conditions, often in makeshift homes, without access to basic infrastructure. How does a photographer tackle such enormously complex subject matter? For his ambitious new project, Jonas Bendiksen decided to hone in on twenty stories, five families in four different slum neighborhoods, in Kibera, (Nairobi); Dharavi, (Mumbai); Jarkata; and Caracas.

Bendiksen’s resulting project, The Places We Live, opened last week at Oslo’s Nobel Peace Center. This multimedia exhibition, comprised of rear-projections, allows viewers to enter the homes and environments that Bendiksen photographed. Audio of his subjects telling their stories, in their own voices, is piped in from above, adding further context. The result was immersive and effective, driving home the point that this is how a billion people live today and that each has his/her own story to tell, of everyday life, and events both big and small.

You can purchase the newly available book here.