Deborah Copaken born in Boston, Massachusetts, USA in 1966. Started her career out of college and went to live in Moscow for a couple of years (1990 and 1991). She became a television producer. Distributed through Contact Press Images since 1991.

J.B. Diederich was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti in 1963. Growing up he often traveled and worked closely with his father, the Latin American and Caribbean Bureau Chief for Time Magazine. Fluent in five languages, Diederich became a dominant photojournalist during the 1980s, extensively covering the social and political scene in Haiti, from which he was expelled in 1986, and political crises in Nicaragua, Panama, and the Soviet Union. His work has appeared in Time, Life,The New York Times Magazine, Paris-Match and Il Venerdi (La Republica). Since his return from Moscow in 1997, he has worked as a television producer. He is based in Miami, USA.

Chuck Fishman born in New York City, USA in 1953. Among his most prominent works are images of jazz legend Count Basie, the exiled Ayotollah Khomeini before his return to Iran, Solidarity Founder Lech Walesa, and Pope John Paul II's historic trips to France, Ireland, Poland, and the US. Distributed by Contact Press Images since 1977.

Matt Franjola born in the Bronx, New York, USA in 1942. Covered the war in Vietnam, and in 1973 became staff correspondent for the Associated Press in Indochina and Africa. One of the few Americans to remain in Saigon at the war’s end, he also covered the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa. The latter work is distributed by Contact Press Images since 1977.

Gianfranco Gorgoni born in Rome, Italy in 1941. Began his career in fashion and advertising. Once in New York he becomes portraitist of the American art world and produces several books. At the same time, covers political and current affairs events in Iran, Afghanistan and Cuba. Joined Contact Press Images in 1976.

Hale Gurland born in USA in 1952. Artist, photographer and helicopter pilot, welds large-size sculptures in metal. Contributed in September 2001 to the rescue effort at Ground Zero in New York, cutting beams. His images made at that time are distributed by Contact Press Images.

Afrim Hajrullahu born in Pristina, Kosovo in 1970. Has worked as a photographer for the Institute for Protection of Cultural Monuments in Kosovo since 1992. In 1999, he reported on his forced exodus from Pristina during Serbian ethnic cleansing. This work has been distributed through Contact Press Images since.

Liu Heung Shing was born in Hong Kong, China in 1951. While under contract with Time magazine, between 1976 and 1981 he photographed extensively in the People’s Republic of China. The resulting book, China After Mao was published by Penguin Books in 1983. Since the early eighties he has been, successively, an AP correspondent in Los Angeles, USA, New Delhi, India, Beijing, China — where he covered the Tiananmen Square uprising in 1989 — and Moscow, USSR. In 1992, he was part of the Associated Press team that received the Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of the attempted coup d'état in Russia and the collapse of the Soviet Union. He has since divided his time between Hong Kong and Beijing, working as a consultant and producer for Time, Inc. He is based in Beijing, China.

CURATOR:
Robert Pledge was born in 1942 in London, UK and moved to Paris, France at the age of ten. A student of West African languages and anthropology, he found his way into journalism as a specialist in African affairs writing for Jeune Afrique and Le Monde Diplomatique. In 1970 he coordinated a daring trip into Libya and Chad with the late photographer Gilles Caron and filmmaker Raymond Depardon. Later that year he became the editor of the French visual arts magazine Zoom, and, three years later, director of the New York office of the picture agency Gamma. In 1976 he founded Contact Press Images with American photographer David Burnett in New York. He has edited highly-acclaimed books and catalogues, and curated major photographic exhibitions throughout the world. In 2004 he received the Overseas Press Club’s “Olivier Rebbot Award” for Red-Color News Soldier, which he authored with Jacques Menasche and photographer Li Zhensheng. He commutes between Paris and New York.

TEXTS:
Jacques Menasche was born in 1964 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. He began his career in journalism as a desk clerk at The New York Times and has since written on culture and conflict from the Middle East, Afghanistan, China, and the US. He is the author with Robert Pledge of Eleven: Witnessing the World Trade Center 1974-2001 (Universe Publishing/Rizzoli International 2002), and with Pledge and Li Zhensheng of Red-Color News Soldier: A Chinese Photographer’s Odyssey Through the Cultural Revolution (Phaidon 2003). His work has appeared in The New York Daily News, ESPN The Magazine, and Vanity Fair in the US, The Independent in the UK, Corriere dela Sera in Italy, Maxim in Germany, and many other publications around the world. In 2006, his film collaboration with Stephen Dupont on heroin addiction in Afghanistan, “Brothers of Kabul,” was a finalist in the Rory Peck Award for Freelance Features, and winner of Australia’s Walkley Award. He is based in New York City.

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