VII Photo Agency
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VII Photo Agency is an international photo agency wholly owned and governed by its membership.


History

The photographer owned agency was originally conceived by
Gary Knight Gary Knight may refer to: *Gary Knight (photographer), British photographer and photojournalist *Gary Knight, American singer and songwriter, one half of the 1960s duo Dey and Knight * Gary Knight (cricketer) (born 1950), former Australian crickete ...
and
John Stanmeyer John Stanmeyer (born March 1964), is an American photojournalist based in Otis, Massachusetts. He is one of the founders of VII Photo Agency. Stanmeyer has received the World Press Photo of the Year,
. They were subsequently joined by Alexandra Boulat, Ron Haviv,
Antonín Kratochvíl Antonín Kratochvíl (also written Antonin Kratochvil; born 12 April 1947) is a Czech-born American photojournalist. He is a founding member of VII Photo Agency. Life and work Kratochvíl was born in 1947 in Lovosice, Czechoslovakia. He gained ...
, Christopher Morris, and
James Nachtwey James Nachtwey (born March 14, 1948) is an American photojournalist and war photographer. He has been awarded the Overseas Press Club's Robert Capa Gold Medal five times and two World Press Photo awards. In 2003, Nachtwey was injured in a gren ...
and the agency, named after the number of founding members, was launched at the Visa pour l'image Festival in
Perpignan Perpignan (, , ; ; ) is the prefectures in France, prefecture of the Pyrénées-Orientales departments of France, department in Southern France, in the heart of the plain of Roussillon, at the foot of the Pyrenees a few kilometres from the Me ...
,
France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...
, in September, 2001. VII was conceived to operate as a means of digital image distribution and representation wholly owned and controlled by the photographers it represented in response to large corporations acquiring the small photo agencies present in the industry at the time. Today the agency represents 29 members and 10 mentees. VII established its reputation for news coverage during the war in
Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...
that followed
9/11 The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...
and during the conflict in Israel/Palestine in 2002 and the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. Their first assignment was photographing 9/11.
James Nachtwey James Nachtwey (born March 14, 1948) is an American photojournalist and war photographer. He has been awarded the Overseas Press Club's Robert Capa Gold Medal five times and two World Press Photo awards. In 2003, Nachtwey was injured in a gren ...
, one of the founding members of VII was packing his bags to go on an assignment for Time Magazine in the Caribbean. He looked out of his window near Wall Street in New York and saw everyone in the street looking up at the sky. He saw flames coming out of the World Trade Center just a few blocks from his apartment. Nachtwey spent the next hours photographing as the Twin Towers collapsed, killing thousands of civilians. The other six founding members of the agency flew from Europe to the USA or to Afghanistan, where they covered the fall of the Taliban, and unimaginable to them at the time, the beginning of America’s longest war. VII focused much of its energy in the ensuing years documenting the wars and violence that followed in the Middle East, wars that have killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. From being principally focused on news for editorial clients, the agency has diversified into social media, live events, video, and creative partnerships with
NGOs A non-governmental organization (NGO) is an independent, typically nonprofit organization that operates outside government control, though it may get a significant percentage of its funding from government or corporate sources. NGOs often focus ...
/ colleges / universities, exhibitions in leading museums, featured appearances at major art and photo festivals, and education. In addition to the member photographers, young photographers are mentored by full members through the VII Mentor Program and represented by the agency.The VII Mentor Program was created in 2008 and is the first mentor program of its kind. Former mentees have gone on to build successful careers in the media. Some of them are now members of VII, Noor, and Magnum photo agencies and are working on assignments for publications like
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
,
Time Magazine ''Time'' (stylized in all caps as ''TIME'') is an American news magazine based in New York City. It was published weekly for nearly a century. Starting in March 2020, it transitioned to every other week. It was first published in New York Cit ...
, and
National Geographic ''National Geographic'' (formerly ''The National Geographic Magazine'', sometimes branded as ''Nat Geo'') is an American monthly magazine published by National Geographic Partners. The magazine was founded in 1888 as a scholarly journal, nine ...
. In 2018, VII was named in a story by a journalist, Kristen Chick, which was published in the
Columbia Journalism Review The ''Columbia Journalism Review'' (''CJR'') is a biannual magazine for professional journalists that has been published by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism since 1961. Its original purpose was "to assess the performance ...
detailing accusations of sexually harassing behavior by a founding member, Antonin Kratochvil, against former VII members (
Anastasia Taylor-Lind Anastasia Taylor-Lind (born 1981) is an English/Swedish photojournalist. She works for leading editorial publications globally on issues relating to women, population and war. She has lived in Damascus, Beirut, Kyiv and New York City and is now b ...
and
Stephanie Sinclair Stephanie Sinclair (born 1973) is an American photojournalist who focuses on gender and human-rights issues such as child marriage and self-immolation. Her work has been included in ''The New York Times'', ''Time Magazine'' and ''National Geogr ...
), and accusations by them of a toxic culture amongst the VII members which enabled such behavior. Kratochvil subsequently resigned from the Agency. As a result of the accusations, VII instated a systemic change in culture, obliging all members and staff to fulfill online HR, compliance and harassment training with Emtrain and created a strict code of ethics for all members and staff.


Member list


Projects


Newest Americans: Stories From the Global City

Newest Americans is a three-year longitudinal study at
Rutgers University Rutgers University ( ), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of three campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's C ...
–Newark that will document the lives and communities of students at the university and take an in-depth look at immigration and the idea of American identity. It is a collaborative effort involving VII, Rutger's Center for Migration and the Global City (CMGC) and the Department of Arts, Culture and Media. The project, spearheaded by Tim Raphael, director of CMGC, focuses on immigrant experiences in New Jersey with Newark as the hub where these different stories converge. ''Notes for My Homeland'' was produced by Talking Eyes Media and is the first professionally produced piece in the storytelling project.


Evolution Tour

For the Evolution Tour, photojournalists from VII Photo Agency, along with technical specialists from AbelCine, presented an examination of the evolving business, technology and craft of visual storytelling. This program was structured as a combination of seminars, panel discussions, hands-on workshops and networking.


European Workshops Series

In 2015,
Ed Kashi Ed Kashi (born 1957) is an American photojournalist and member of VII Photo Agency based in the Greater New York area. Kashi's work spans from print photojournalism, long term personal project, documentary films to experimental film. He is noted ...
, Ron Haviv,
Marcus Bleasdale Marcus Terence Luke Bleasdale (born 1968) is a British photojournalist. His books include ''One Hundred Years of Darkness'' (2003), ''The Rape of a Nation'' (2009) and ''The Unravelling'' (2015). Bleasdale was appointed Companion of the Order of ...
, Stefano De Luigi and
John Stanmeyer John Stanmeyer (born March 1964), is an American photojournalist based in Otis, Massachusetts. He is one of the founders of VII Photo Agency. Stanmeyer has received the World Press Photo of the Year,
, all members of VII Photo Agency led photography workshops in four European capitals: Paris, Barcelona, Amsterdam and Berlin, as part of the Eyes in Progress's workshops program.


Fatal Neglect

Through a partnership between VII,
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF; pronounced ), known in some English-speaking settings as Doctors Without Borders, is a charity that provides humanitarian medical care. It is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) of French origin known for its projects in conflict zo ...
(MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders), and UNION HZ, Fatal Neglect was a multi-part documentary film project, to tell the stories of the millions of patients left behind by the global health revolution. In Fatal Neglect: The Global Health Revolution's Forgotten Patients, VII documented the impact of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis and some of the deadliest neglected tropical diseases: “kala azar,” and “sleeping sickness.” Ron Haviv and John Stanmeyer traveled to capture the stories of frontline health workers trying to fight diseases that affect millions of people and kill hundreds of thousands each year yet garner little attention from drug developers, policy makers or the mass media.


Starved for Attention

In 2010, MSF and VII launched “Starved for Attention,” a multimedia campaign about childhood malnutrition. Petition signatures were collected from people around the world who joined the partnership in demanding that donor nations stop supplying nutritionally substandard food to malnourished children.


People who have been involved with the VII Mentor Program


References


External links


VII Photo AgencyMSF Fatal Neglect
*http://www.bjp-online.com/2014/05/vii-photo-rises-to-challenges-of-changing-photographic-landscape-with-dynamic-new-agency-model/ {{DEFAULTSORT:Vii Photo Agency Photography in France Photo agencies Artist cooperatives in the United States Photojournalism organizations Cooperatives based in New York (state)