A Zone to Defend will be presented at the exhibition Young Greek Photographers in the context of the Athens Photo Festival 2019.
Opening: Thursday 13 June 2019, 20.30
Location: Benaki Museum, 138 Pireos str. , Athens, GR
Duration: 13 June – 28 July 2019
Photo Doc. is a foire dedicated to documentary photography that takes place for the 4th time in central Paris. It is a research and production platform for new documentary forms, as well as it provides consulting for collectors.
My series Life Twists will be presented along with small prints of other series, next to the work of 12 fellow Hans Lucas photographers. It will be a great pleasure to see you there!
10-12 of May 2019
at la Halle des Blancs Manteaux
48 Rue Vieille du Temple, 75004, Paris
Friday 14h-22h, Saturday 12h-21h, Sunday 11h-20h
Exhibiting: Galerie agnès b – Paris, Galerie Jean-Denis Walter – Paris, Galerie Photo 12 – Paris, Galerie Sit Down – Paris, Hans Lucas Studio – France, L’Oeil du Douard – José Nicolas – France, Les Bains Révélateurs – Roubaix, Meeting Art Point – France, Plac’Art – Paris, Photo Doc. galerie – Paris, Photo Doc. Lab – Paris, Regard Sud – Lyon, Vincent Scali – Paris, Singulart – France, YPF / Yakushima Photography Festival – Ile de Yakushima – Japon
What is the relevance of Anarchism today? This is exactly what Durty Words is about.
As its authors put it: Durty Words is an invitation to make a space for dialogue, solidarity, resistance and creation through the medium of print. In 2016, we began the journey of making this book by asking people to respond to the relevance of Anarchist thought today. The title alludes to the fact that anarchism, along with other theories and practices that seek alternatives to capitalism, are often misunderstood. There are fractures within how we organise for a better world; it is important to recognise these, and therefore we set out to create a space for debate that is built on respect. By bringing together 134 contributors from different backgrounds from all over the world, we aim to begin to map the resonances and dissonances across diverse social movements. In this time of great social injustice, protest is necessary, but there is more to resistance than protest. We are interested in the space that opens up when we create a platform for building alternatives to that which we protest.
It feels so good to hold Durty Words in my hands! Thanks Kate O’ Shea and Victoria Brunetta for bringing together 134 contributors, for creating the beautiful Durty Words book and for including some of my pictures in it, along with John Jordan’s inspiring words.
Preview at www.durtywords.com & orders at info@durtywords.com
A year of an intense photographic education programme is over! Thanks to Magnum Photos this a rich and fruitful year and for sharing some of graduates’ thoughts and work, including mine, in this article:
“September will see the start of 2018’s one-year program in Documentary and Photojournalism in Paris. The accredited course runs until July 2019, and is delivered by Spéos Photo and Video School alongside photographers and staff from Magnum Photos, with much of the course taught within Magnum’s Paris office. The intensive course is aimed at providing students with the historical and contextual framework required to develop and engage in critical thinking about documentary photography, as well as providing technical guidance and tutorial support to develop students’ individual documentary practices.
In advance of this year’s course, we look at the work of three previous students and share their impressions of the program, as well as the thoughts of Magnum photographer Patrick Zachmann, one of the program’s teachers.”
Read the whole article at MAGNUM Theory & Practice section of MAGNUM PHOTOS official website.
A Zone to Defend series got the 1st prize at the Reportage category of the Spéos Photo Awards 2018! As a result, it will be screened during VOIES OFF Festival in Arles, along with the photos of all the winners of the 1st edition of the Spéos Photo Awards.
The screening will take place on 7th of July , 2018 at 22:00 at the Courtyard of the Archdiocese in Arles.
The awarded students are:
Reportage Category
1st prize: Penelope THOMAIDI | 2nd prize: Anouar HENDRIXX | 3rd prize: Mahé CHARPENTIER (Wozniak)
Fashion Category
1st prize: Aleksandra PAVLOVA | 2nd prize: Thomas KUHN | 3rd prize: Ang LIANG | 4th prize: Roee BOKOBZA
Studio Category
1st prize: Lina BENOUHOUD | 2nd prize: Santana PETCHSUK | 3rd prize: Elle HARDMAN
Happy to participate at Le Boudoir #2 pop-photo exhibition! Le Boudoir #2 will take place in a secret place in Paris on 9 June 2018!
RSVP to redorreveal@gmail.com to get the address.
Le Boudoir #2 is curated by RED REVEAL (Marieke Zapasnik) and presents the work of women photographers:
Olga Sondyk, Penelope Thomaidi, Hortence Giraud, Wozniak
Join us to celebrate the graduation of students from the Magnum and Spéos one-year “Creative Documentary & Photojournalism” programme with the exhibition European Youth.
Opening on Thursday 31st of May at 18h30
Duration: 31 May - 15 June 2018
at Magnum Photos 19 Rue Hégésippe Moreau75018, Paris
A short report on the eviction operations that took place in the ZAD of Notre-Dame-des-Landes, in west France, in April 2018. See full article on LIFO.
This is a long read by one of the inhabitants of the Zad, about the the fortnight rollercoaster of rural riots that has just taken place to evict the liberated territory of the zad. It’s been incredibly intense and hard to find a moment to write, but we did our best. This is simply one viewpoint, there are over 1000 people on the zone at the moment and every one of them could tell a different story. Thank you for all the friends and comrades who helped by sharing their stories, rebel spirits and lemon juice against the tear gas.
The Revenge against the Commons of the zad or Why France’s biggest police operation since May 68 is prepared to kill for Macron’s Neoliberal Nightmare.
“We must bring into being the world we want to defend. These cracks where people find each other to build a beautiful future are important. This is how the zad is a model.” Naomi Klein
“What is happening at Notre-Dame-des-Landes illustrates a conflict that concerns the whole world” Raoul Vaneigem
The police helicopter hovers above, its bone rattling clattering never seems to stop. At night its long godlike finger of light penetrates our cabins and farm houses. It has been so hard to sleep this last week. Even dreaming, it seems, is a crime on the zad. And that’s the point: these 4000 acres of autonomous territory, this zone to defend (zad), has existed despite the state and capitalism for nearly a decade and no government can allow such a place to flourish. All territories that are inhabited by people who bridge the gap between dream and action have to be crushed before their hope begins to spread. This is why France’s biggest police operation since May 1968, at a cost of 400,000 euros a day, has been trying to evict us with its 2500 gendarmes, armoured vehicles (APCs), bulldozers, rubber bullets, drones, 200 cameras and 11,000 tear gas and stun grenades fired since the operation began at 3.20am on the morning of the 9th of April.
The state said that these would be “targeted evictions”, claiming that there were up to 80 ‘radical’ zadists that would be hunted down, and that the rest, the ‘good’ zadists, would have to legalise or face the same fate. The good zadist was a caricature of the gentle ‘neo rural farmer’ returning to the land, the bad, an ultra violent revolutionary, just there to make trouble. Of course this was a fantasy vision to feed the state’s primary strategy, to divide this diverse popular movement that has managed to defeat 3 different French governments and win France’s biggest political victory of a generation: The abandonment of the building of the international airport of Notre-Dames-des-Landes.
Published on Argot.fr / Words & pictures by Penelope Thomaidi
Saint-Denis “Ilôt 8”: The renovation of a utopia
In the Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis, residents demand the renovation of Ilôt 8, an emblematic residential building from the era of the utopian architecture that followed the revolutionary thought of May ‘68. Read the full story