Alona says goodbye to her husband Nikoli as she flees westward in Ukraine with her child on March 7, 2022. Photo by Ron Haviv / VII.
The challenge of living in a world where beliefs and actions are increasingly out-of-sync with facts and realities is never ending. The VII Foundation’s mission is to harness the power of first-person visual journalism to expose these truths by putting the story into the hands of people living with those realities.
Dear Friends,
After photographing war, injustice, and inhumanity of many kinds for two decades, I thought there were few acts of atrocity beyond my imagination. I was wrong; I could not imagine Ukraine.
In January, in our first report, I wrote that "when we turn on our screens and look at our news feeds, we witness politicians of every stripe constantly changing facts, politicizing information, and undermining our fragile societies." Even that seems understated now. For all of us, Russia's invasion of Ukraine has underlined the fragility of the universal desire for peace and a life without fear and the vulnerability every one of us faces when confronted by avarice, criminality, and unconstrained brutality and ambition.
War blinds peace, but when we are breaking frozen ground to bury children in mass graves, the urgency to summon the courage to find a path to peace could not be more profound. The VII Foundation's signature project, Imagine: Reflections on Peace, examines the realities of how post-conflict societies emerge from war and explores how to make better and more resilient peace agreements. It is exhibiting at two significant locations this spring. First, it opens at the National Museum of Bosnia in Sarajevo in April. This symbolic museum is situated on what we used to know as 'Sniper Alley' and was on the frontline during the siege of Sarajevo. Then, in June, we open the exhibition at the United States Institute for Peace in Washington DC, established by the US Congress in 1984 as an independent institution devoted to the nonviolent prevention and mitigation of deadly conflict abroad.
The necessity of trustworthy journalism and evidence-based reporting to free societies and democratic culture could not be more apparent. And the need to support the men and women who readily put themselves at risk to bring us the horrific stories that document war has rarely been more compelling.
Our sister organization VII Agency has eight photographers working in Ukraine and Poland, providing essential coverage. Ali Arkady, Eric Bouvet, Ron Haviv, Joachim Ladefoged, Maciek Nabrdalik, Ilvy Njiokiktjien, Espen Rasmussen, and John Stanmeyer have all been working in Kyiv, Lviv, and on the Polish border. VII Insider's online community hosts special audio dispatches from Kyiv by Eric Bouvet and Ron Haviv, and Ilvy Njiokiktjien in Lviv, sharing how they work in an active war zone. In solidarity with our Ukrainian colleagues, The VII Foundation supports hazardous environment training for Ukrainian journalists.
The VII Academy in Sarajevo has trained refugees and migrants in Bosnia to tell their own stories for the last year. "Dispatches in Exile" is the product of a partnership with the International Organization for Migration, and a selection of the stories was recently published in the Bosnian daily newspaper Oslobodenje. We hope that "Dispatches in Exile" will be replicated for other refugee populations, including those forced to leave Ukraine. In the meantime, VII Academy alumni have been photographing Ukrainians who have had to flee and seek sanctuary in Moldova and Romania.
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization, reminded us this week that even amid the war in Ukraine, "nowhere on earth are people more at risk than Tigray." John Edwin Mason will address Tigray's media coverage in an upcoming essay on VII Insider's blog. For those of us who seek a more inclusive, evidence-based picture of the world, the VII Foundation is the non-profit media education organization transforming visual journalism by giving local voices the power to have a real impact on global events. We continue to pursue our global mission by launching our first Level 1 Photojournalism and Documentary Photography Seminar for English speakers in Sub-Saharan Africa.
If you would like to support the programs and initiatives of the VII Academy or The VII Foundation, or if you would like to partner with us or join one of our programs, please don't hesitate to contact us.
I join you all in looking forward to better times,
Gary Knight
CEO
The VII Foundation
Irpin Bridge, Ukraine, March 8, 2022. Civilians, including patients from a hospice for the elderly, attempt to flee the fighting in the city of Irpin, Ukraine. Photo by Eric Bouvet / VII.
Projects
Hazardous environment training is essential for managing the risk to visual journalists working in conflict zones. The VII Foundation has been working with Silk Road Training to provide a safety, security and first aid learning experience that can help raise global safety standards as well as develop the skills of everyone living and working in hostile environments. This training is now being provided to VII Academy’s 13 mentees and 14 fellows, as well as journalists and producers from Ukraine currently operating in the current war.
Dispatches in Exile
VII Academy in Sarajevo has for the last year trained refugees and migrants in Bosnia to tell their stories of the journey to sanctuary. These stories have then been published on Dispatches in Exile, a media portal produced in partnership with the International Organisation for Migration that showcases these first-person accounts. A selection of the stories was recently published in the Bosnian newspaper Oslobodenje in an eight page insert (cover image above), edited by some of the participants in collaboration with staff from Oslobodenje and VII Academy. The VII Foundation is now in discussions to see how Dispatches in Exile can train refugees and migrants who have fled other conflicts around the world.
Alumni work on the border with Ukraine
According to the UNHCR, nearly 3.5 million Ukrainians have (at the time of writing) been forced to flee the war. Poland has taken in more than 2 million refugees, and Romania is the second most significant destination, with more than 500,000 people having crossed the border. VII Academy alumni Vladimir Zivojinovic, Ioana Moldovan, Andrei Pungovschi, and Alexandra Radu have been photographing on the border between Ukraine and Romania, and their work has been featured on the VII Academy Instagram feed. According to Ioana, “The border crossing in Siret has never been so crowded. Thousands of Ukrainians, relocating to what they believe is a safer place, are crossing into Romania. The waiting line on the Ukrainian side stretches for kilometers. Teenagers, mothers with small babies, grandparents accompanying their grandkids, are pushing or carrying the little they managed to pack in their escape from war."
Some customers comply with the COVID-19 protective measures enacted by the Congolese state, while others seem to live their lives normally without even wearing a mask, which is compulsory during this period of containment following the declaration of the state of emergency for DR Congo. Ngaliema, Kinshasa, DR Congo, 29 April 2020. ©Justin Makangara for VII Academy.
New course for African photographers
VII Academy is launching its first Level 1 Photojournalism and Documentary Photography Seminar for English speakers in Sub-Saharan Africa. VII Academy will offer scholarships to 10 photographers who are citizens and residents of the following countries: Angola, Botswana, the Comoros, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The course is led by South African picture editor, photojournalist and educator Paul Botes and will begin on 22 April. The participants will explore how to develop a lasting career in visual storytelling, including conceiving, researching and planning story ideas. The deadline for application is March 30 at 2359 EDT.
VII Insider’s online community continues to provide an open platform for public debate and discussion, including on the war in Ukraine. On the VII Insider blog, you will find special audio dispatches from Eric Bouvet and Ron Haviv in Kyiv, and Ilvy Njiokiktjien in Lviv, detailing how they are working daily in order to make their photographs. In addition, VII Insider has hosted a debate about ethics in a time of war, and published on its blog the first video - looking at Ron Haviv's coverage of the Irpin evacuation and Ukrainian resistance - from a new partnership with the visual culture and media literacy foundation Reading The Pictures.
Members of the VII Insider community get access to weekly live presentations, and can view the video collection, which contains nearly 100 recordings of educational discussions. Check out the upcoming events and new writing and video presentations on the VII Insider blog.
VII Insider is a program of The VII Foundation in partnership with PhotoWings and VII Agency.