All of which begs the question: are we starting to get tired of the sh*t photographers say?

© Justin Maxon/Prospekt

The Magnum Foundation has announced the 2012 class of Emergency Fund grantees. The Emergency Fund supports photographers who are working on long-term documentary projects that address “critical global issues that have not received the attention they deserve, or budding crises that are still over the horizon,” according to the EF Web site.

This year’s grantees are:

Evgenia Arbugaeva, for her project “Tiksi, the Far North”; Rena Effendi, for “Capturing Coptic Life: Egypt’s Sectarian Struggle”; Eric Gottesman, for “Baalu Girma”; Sebastián Liste, for “The Brazilian Far West”; Benjamin Lowy, for “iLibya: Libya’s Growing Pains”; Justin Maxon,  for “Murder That Goes Unsolved and Unheard”; Donald Weber, for “War is Good*”; and Paolo Woods, for “Poor Rich.”

The Magnum Foundation, established by the cooperative photo agency to promote and finance independent documentary photography, began its Emergency Fund grants in 2010. Past grantees include Jonas Bendiksen, Tomas van Houtryve, Emily Schiffer, Larry Towell, Bruce Gilden and Krisanne Johnson.

Grantee candidates are nominated by an international committee and evaluated by a selection committee. This year the Emergency Fund received 93 nominations, and 76 photographers from 28 countries submitted proposals.

The Magnum Foundation also announced the its 2012 scholarships for the NYU/MF Photography and Human Rights program, a 5-week summer intensive at New York University that teaches photographers skills for creating documentary projects on human rights. This year’s scholarships went to: Poulomi Basu of India; Arthur Bondar, of Ukraine, Liu Jie of China; and Pooyan Tabatabaei of Iran.

Under the terms of the proposal, the SFA would grant the Estate of Marilyn Monroe LLC “the sole and exclusive right and license” to exploit photographer Sam Shaw’s many images of Marilyn Monroe for commercial uses. The SFA would continue to license the Monroe photographs–including Shaw’s iconic “blowing skirt image of Monroe–for editorial, fine art and exhibition purposes.

Because the SFA filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last summer, the agreement with the Monroe estate is subject to approval by a federal bankruptcy judge. A ruling is expected later this month.

In court papers seeking that approval, the SFA says, “the Agreement is critical to the [SFA's] effective reorganization as it ensures the longevity of the [SFA]  as a business by providing the [SFA] with tangible benefits, including: a minimum income that is more than the [SFA] has made in the last three (3) years…and ending most, if not all, of the litigation” between SFA and Monroe’s estate.

Melissa Stevens, operations manager for SFA, characterizes the deal as “a business arrangement that both parties feel will be mutually beneficial to the continued preservation and promotion of both Marilyn Monroe and Sam Shaw’s legacy.”

SFA was forced into bankruptcy largely by unpaid legal bills, which now total more than $1 million. Shaw’s heirs have been embroiled in lawsuits for more than 15 years, fighting not only the Monroe estate but also each other for control of the photographs.

Most costly was the bitter $100 million claim that Shaw filed against his son Larry in 1996. The photographer accused his son of stealing his images and exploiting them for his own gain, without Sam Shaw’s permission. After his death, Shaw’s daughters Meta Shaw Stevens and Edith Shaw Marcus continued to press their father’s claims against their brother.

The siblings finally reached a settlement in 2002, agreeing to combine all the Monroe images in their possession and market them jointly under the Shaw Family Archives name. Larry Shaw, who has since died, was entitled to 50 percent of all revenues under the settlement, while his sisters and other family members shared the remaining 50 percent.

But that wasn’t the end of their legal troubles. The lawyers who had represented them won judgments for unpaid legal fees. According to SFA’s bankruptcy filing, those legal fees alone total more than $1 million.

Then in 2005, Monroe’s estate and its licensing agency, CMG Worldwide, sued SFA for unauthorized use of Monroe’s likeness on some t-shirts sold at a store in Indiana.

The lawsuit brought to a head a disagreement simmering for years between Monroe’s estate and various photographers who own copyrights to images of Monroe. Monroe’s estate had long argued that any commercial uses of those images without the estate’s permission violated Monroe’s right of publicity. It hurt the photographers’ businesses by threatening to sue anyone who used Monroe images on commercial products without the estate’s permission.

The Shaw Family Archives finally challenged the validity the estate’s right of publicity in court to defend itself against the 2005 lawsuit. In 2007, the judge ruled in favor of SFA, on the grounds that Monroe never had any publicity rights to pass on to her heirs or beneficiaries, because those rights didn’t exist in either New York or California at the time of her death in 1962. (Her residence at the time of her death was subject to some dispute in the case.)

Meta Shaw Stevens said at the time that the victory was “a big boost…in the past, [our clients] had to pay a tremendous amount of money to CMG, which left very little money for photos.  Now companies can come to us, and they don’t have to pay CMG.”

But legal fees from that battle added more than $250,000 in additional legal fees to SFA’s debt. The Monroe estate has also continued to sue the Shaw Family Archives over other issues, such as whether some of Shaw’s images are now public domain because he didn’t renew copyright registration in a timely manner.

And in the end, SFA’s 2007 court victory didn’t improve its licensing business enough to meet its debt obligations, so it was forced to file for bankruptcy last June.

The need to tell stories
Social injustice is not new to our planet. As life-threatening diseases take hold of global populations, their burden weighs most heavily on the shoulders of developing and emerging nations. When organizations of all types collaborate together they have the power to make a difference where it’s needed – and they often do. But the first step is raising awareness of the issues; without awareness there can be no advocacy, and advocacy is a direct path to action.

Why photography?
More often than not we at BD choose to tell these stories through photography. We know that the power of the medium cannot be overstated: a photograph has the ability to convey emotion, mood, narrative, ideas and messages. We know that you know this, too.

So who is BD, anyway?
Often described as a “humanitarian healthcare company”, BD makes fundamental medical technology focused on improving drug delivery, diagnosing infectious diseases, and advancing research and production of new drugs. The breadth of our capabilities gives us the privilege to help combat many of the world’s most pressing diseases. Our company’s purpose is Helping all people live healthy lives, and with our partner organizations, we are able to serve mankind in both the most industrialized and the most impoverished places on earth.

For more information or to enter the contest, please visit: www.bdphotocompetition.com

The columnist, Nicholas D. Kristof, wrote about the plight of the two journalists over the weekend to draw attention to the tyranny and repression of Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s government. His report was based on an interview with the wife of the Swedish reporter, not his own first-hand account.

“[Reporter] Martin Schibbye, 31, and [photographer] Johan Persson, 29, share a narrow bed, one man’s head beside the other’s feet. Schibbye once woke up to find a rat mussing his hair,” Kristof wrote. “What was the two men’s crime? Their offense was courage. They sneaked into the Ogaden region to investigate reports of human rights abuses.”

The Ethiopian government has been battling insurgents in Ogaden, and has prohibited journalists from that region. Schibbye and Persson were caught traveling in the region last summer with opposition fighters. They were convicted at a show trial December 22 of supporting terrorism, and then sentenced to the long jail terms.

Kristof says Zenawi is making an example of the two Swedes to send a “Don’t you dare mess with me!” message to all foreign journalists.

“So the only proper response is a careful look at Meles’s worsening repression,” Kristof argues. “Sadly, this repression is abetted by acquiescence from Washington and by grants from aid organizations.”

He notes, however, that Schibbye and Persson are likely to be released “because of international pressure. But there will be no respite for the countless Ethiopians who face imprisonment, torture, and rape.”

Related:
Swedish Journalists Seek Pardon After Terrorism Conviction
Swedish Photographer, Reporter Convicted in Ethiopian Show Trial

“We’re deeply shocked and heartbroken to learn of the sudden passing of our close friend and long-time photographer, Andrew MacNaughtan. He was a sweet person and a very talented artist. Words cannot describe how much he will be missed.”

MacNaughtan is survived by his partner, Alex Kane Privitera; parents, Neil and Barbara MacNaughtan; sister Sarah and her husband Nino Curcione; brother Alex and his wife Dorothy MacNaughtan; and uncle and aunt, Phillip and Samantha Curcione.

Greenfield, a photographer and director whose previous documentaries include “Thin,” an HBO film on anorexia, was honored for her direction of a non-fiction film about a real estate mogul who tried to build the biggest house in America, only to be hit hard by the 2008 financial crisis. Earlier in the week, Magnolia Pictures bought the rights to distribute “The Queen of Versailles” in North America, and plans to release it this summer.

Reviewing the list of other award winners at the Festival, two more photographers’ names caught our attention.

“Chasing Ice,” directed by Jeff Orlowski, which documents how nature photographer James Balog has used time-lapse photography to show the shrinking of arctic glaciers over the years, won the award for Excellence in Cinematography in a US Documentary.

In the World Cinema category, “Valley of Saints,” written and directed by Musa Syeed, won the Audience Award for dramatic film. The director of photography on the film was Yoni Brook, a photographer and filmmaker known to us as a former PDN‘s 30.

The full list of award-winners is available at the Sundance.org Web site.

Related articles
Photographers’ Documentaries Debut at Sundance

Lauren Greenfield Sued for Defamation by Documentary Subject

“In the space of two months in the United States, more than 25 [journalists] were subjected to arrests and beatings at the hands of police who were quick to issue indictments for inappropriate behaviour, public nuisance or even lack of accreditation,” Reporters Without Borders wrote in their report. The US “owed its fall” to arrests and harassment related to coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the non-profit reporters’ rights group said.

The drop saw the US ranked just above Latvia, and Trinidad and Tobago, which fell 20 places due to a scandal involving the government spying on journalists.

In a statement released along with the index today, Reporters Without Borders noted that “Many media [around the world] paid dearly for their coverage of democratic aspirations or opposition movements…. Crackdown was the word of the year in 2011.”

In North African and Middle East, the Arab uprisings greatly affected the rankings of several nations. In Tunisia and Libya rose in the index as censorious regimes were deposed. Egypt, however, fell 39 places in the index due in part to “The hounding of foreign journalists for three days at the start of February, the interrogations, arrests and convictions of journalists and bloggers by military courts, and the searches without warrants,” the report said.

Syria and Yemen were already lowly ranked, so their crackdowns on demonstrations and journalists only caused them to sink a bit lower. Iran fell in the rankings to 175. China, “which has more journalists, bloggers and cyber-dissidents in prison than any other country,” the report notes, also ranked near the bottom of the index at 174.

Eritrea was the worst nation in the ranking for a fifth straight year, and its Horn of Africa neighbors Somalia and Sudan also received low rankings as part of an East African region where journalists are regularly subjected to violence, censorship and lengthy prison sentences served in awful conditions.

The Press Freedom Index is calculated using a scoring system based on a questionnaire distributed to partner organizations, a network of 150 correspondents around the world, and to journalists, researchers, jurists and human rights activists.

For the full report and more on the creation of the index, see the full Reporters Without Borders release.

Related: New York Times Photographer Blocked by NYPD
Photogs Arrested in Raid on Occupy Protest at Zuccotti Park

The event will take place at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto, Morton’s home town, on February 5 at 7pm. Photographers Naomi Harris, Daniel Ehrenworth and Brett Gundlock will be showing images from recent projects, and there will also be a raffle for dozens of prizes. Sponsors include Pikto, Agency Access, Westside Studio, Katarina Marinic and others (a full list of sponsors, a look at some of the images for sale and more information can be found on Morton’s blog, where friends and colleagues have been helping with postings).

Tickets are $10, and available via PayPal on Morton’s site to anyone who wants to attend (or just support this effort from afar).

©Peter Rad--From an anniversary campaign for the Brooklyn Academy of Music, featured in PDN's Who's Shooting What column.

In the latest installment of PDN’s Who’s Shooting What column, we feature Nigel Parry’s work for the MSNBC “Lean Forward” print campaign,  Peter Lindbergh’s work with actress Gwyneth Paltrow for the Coach spring/summer 2012 campaign, a nude by Emily Shur for an advocacy campaign, plus a lot of other assignment work by photographers from all over the country (not just LA and New York). We also name the ad agencies and creatives behind the assignments for Bally, AOL, VW, Frito-Lay, Cocoa Metro and other clients.

Another special feature of the latest Who’s Shooting What column is our first-ever WSW Quiz, where readers can test their skill at separating advertising fact from fiction.

If you would like to see your advertising work featured in future installments of Who’s Shooting What, follow the submission instructions here for consideration. Please note that WSW is primarily for advertising assignment work. Editorial work is rarely included.

Now, for the fine print: you have to be a PDN subscriber to access the WSW column, which is behind our pay wall. Subscription information is available here.