Contact Press Images

Contact On Tour: available exhibitions (click on thumbnails for more details)

Contact/s: The Art of Photojournalism
features giant contact sheets depicting thirty important historic moments since 1976. Made by the photographers of Contact Press Images, and curated by Robert Pledge, these photographs span the Iranian Revolution, genocide in Rwanda, famine in Somalia, and the destruction of the World Trade Center.

Red-Color News Soldier
features the most complete set of images ever to document China’s Cultural Revolution. Made by Li Zhensheng, a photographer with a Communist Party-controlled newspaper, these photographs, hidden for years under the floorboards of Li’s home, reveal the full chaos of the period (1966-1976), from public humiliations and street battles to executions and the Cult of Mao.

Faster, Higher, Farther:
The Spirit of Track & Field Sports.
This past summer’s historic Olympic Games in Beijing is the handy pretext for Faster, Higher, Farther, an exhibition curated by Robert Pledge and produced by Jeffrey Smith. It draws on images of four unique photographers: veteran photojournalists David Burnett and Kenneth Jarecke, master colorist Dilip Mehta, and famed portraitist Annie Leibovitz.

Bob Marley: Soul Rebel
In 1976, while on assignment in Jamaica for Time, David Burnett photographed Bob Marley for the first time, and was so entranced by Marley’s charisma that he continued to document the musician throughout his groundbreaking European “Exodus” tour. Burnett’s vision, coupled with Marley’s larger-than-life charisma, resulted in this intimate portrait of the reggae legend.

44 Days: Iran and the Remaking of the World
features images made by David Burnett in Iran in late 1978 and early 1979: a period that saw the fall of the Shah, the return of Ayatollah Khomeini, and the transformation of the former US ally into an Islamic republic. Burnett, then 33 and on assignment for Time magazine, was among a handful of photographers in Iran at the time, and the very rare American.

Afterwar: Veterans From a World in Conflict
features fifty-one color images from Lori Grinker’s fifteen-year project documenting the physical and psychological wounds of war veterans throughout the 20th century. Seeking to illuminate our culture of war as measured in its human, personal toll, Afterwar presents the men, women, and children who fought on the frontlines of twenty-five conflicts around the world, from as early as World War I and as late as the war in Iraq.

Don McCullin:
A Heroic Journey — A Retrospective — 1958-2008
This exhibition of the great British war photographer features 150 images made over five decades. Here we find Don McCullin’s recent work from Ethiopia and on AIDS in Southern Africa placed alongside images of Biafra, the Congo, Rhodesia, and Sudan in the sixties and seventies.

David Burnett: Too Close
This exhibition presents images from Burneet’s over four decades of work covering world events. All images are of historic moments or personalities and display Burnett's talent for taking the wide view – photographically speaking. His images restore the "big picture" context, in effect turning Robert Capa’s axiom that "if your pictures aren't good enough, you’re not close enough" inside out.

Raskols: The Gangs of Port Moresby
features thirty black and white portraits made by
Australian photographer Stephen Dupont of young gang members in Port Morseby, the capital of Papua, New Guinea. Known as “Raskols,” these rampaging gangs are responsible for much of the violent crime — armed robbery, rape, and carjacking – that plagues Port Moresby.

Bloodline: AIDS and Family
features thirty-one black and white images by Kristen Ashburn that provide an intimate and haunting look at the reality of the AIDS pandemic in southern Africa. Photographed between 2001 and 2006 in Botswana, Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, and presented on light boxes, these medium-format images document the men, women, and children at the heart of the pandemic that has claimed over thirty million lives, left millions of orphans, and decimated the family structure in sub-Saharan Africa.

Tango, Never Before Midnight
features fifty black and white images from Adriana Groisman’s decade-long project on the traditional dancehalls of Buenos Aires where tango was born. Photographing in the dimly lit ‘milongas’ of the Argentine capital, Groisman reveals a subterranean world ruled by subtle gestures and eye contact.

Traces: In the Path of Hurricane Katrina
features thirty-three color images made by American photographer David Burnett following the devastation of the Gulf Coast in 2005. Originally done at the request of the National Geographic, these images were made six months after the disaster breached the levies of New Orleans and caused the deaths of nearly 2,000 people, leaving hundreds of thousands of others homeless.

Windows of the Soul:
My Journeys in the Muslim World
In a riveting personal story, illustrated with stunning images she risked her life to capture, photojournalist Alexandra Avakian shares the challenges, insights, and rewards of nearly two decades spent photographing Muslims around the world—often in lands torn by poverty, repression, and conflict.