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Narciso Contreras

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Narciso Contreras (born 1 July 1975, Mexico City (Valle de Anahuac) is a documentary photographer and photojournalist born in Mexico City (Valle de Anahuac). Since 2010, he has covered a variety of issues and topics in four different continents, leading him to focus his work on the humanitarian cost of conflicts, economics and war.[1] He is known for documenting the war in Syria,[2][3][4][5] the military coup in Egypt,[6][7][8] the war in Yemen,[9][10] and for being the first to bring international audiences proof in pictures of human trafficking and slavery in Libya.[11][12][13]

His work has been exhibited in galleries, museums and photo festivals in Europe, Asia, the USA and Mexico. At the Saatchi Gallery in London his exhibition “Libya: a human marketplace"[14] ranked the most visited exhibition in photojournalism in the world in 2017, and 3rd in Photography category with more than 520,000 visitors.[15]

Biography

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His father, a professor in philosophy, started teaching him from childhood at the age of eight, driving him to study philosophy at a later time at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM –Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico). His interest in documentary cinema lead him to apply to study cinematography, but he was rejected from entering the two most prestigious schools in Mexico after failing the photography test during the selection process of applicants. He went on to study photography at the Active School of Photography (EAF – Escuela Activa de Fotografia)[16] and simultaneously visual anthropology at the National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH –Escuela Nacional de Antropologia e Historia) in Mexico City. After graduating from photography he began doing non-paid assignments for local newspapers and started publishing his first reports.

While studying Hinduism at university, he came into contact with Gaudiya Vaishnava monks. He moved to live in a monastery in Vrindavan, India to continue his studies. While there he photographed spiritual communities in the north and the influence of Maoism on the religious society of Nepal. [1][17]

In 2010, after closing this period and motivated by unfolding events in the region he decided to move to Thailand to the border with Myanmar where he started working on documenting the ethnic war along the tribal areas in the country’s Karen and Kachin States. This was the beginning of his career as professional photographer. The ethnic war in Myanmar and the separatist strife in the Kashmir region controlled by India were the first stories of conflict he documented. He first joined Zuma Press agency, and then moved to the New York based agency, Polaris Images.

In July 2012, Contreras made his first incursion into the Middle East, covering the war in Syria. His pictures depicting the horrors of the war and the carnage over the civilian population were significant, and in some cases, unforgettable.[3] While covering the war in Syria he started collaborating as stringer with the AP agency, a partnership that ended a year later after a controversy over a doctored photograph was made public.[18]

In July 2013, he was assigned to cover the military coup in Egypt for The New York Times[6][7][8] among other assignments for different media outlets in the term of the next two years, counting in his records the political upheavals in Istanbul in 2013, the war in Gaza in 2014, and the tribal conflict in Libya in the same year.[19]

Aside from photographing some of the major events in the Middle East he also aimed to document under reported yet crucial affairs in the region lifting his camera to photograph in July 2015 one of the most controversial unfolding wars in the region’s recent history, the entangled war in Yemen.[9][20]

With support from the Fondation Carmignac, after winning the Carmignac Photojournalism Award in November 2015,[21][22] Contreras brought to light “Libya: a human marketplace”, A report[12][23][24] that narrates his thoughts and observations as he travelled through the complex tribal society of post-Gaddafi Libya from February to June 2016, photographing the brutal reality of human trafficking. It was the dawn of a long-term project documenting a modern-day slavery issue framed on the trafficking of human beings along the network that stretches from the Niger border with Libya, to the main rescue zone in the Mediterranean Sea, off the Libyan shoreline.[25]

It became a cornerstone of his current work focused on migration as part of a life project of photographic documentation based on the world conceived phenomenon of "massive human displacement".[26][27]

Contreras received the recognition title of HIPGiver[28] in 2017 from Hispanics in Philanthropy for his contribution in photography.[29]

Incident with Associated Press

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Contreas was sacked by the Associated Press in 2014 for digitally manipulating an image in violation of the AP's rules.[30] He had shared a Pulitzer prize the previous year for his work for the AP in the Syrian conflict.[31] He had digitally altered an image to remove a video camera from the corner of the frame.[31] Contreas said "I made a horrible mistake and I accept full responsibility for it."[31] He insisted that he had not altered any other images, and a review by the AP of the nearly 500 photographs he had submitted to them did not reveal any other examples.[31]

Contreras brought back in 2016, with the help of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award,[21] a photojournalism grant which supports each year the production of an investigative photographic report on a region of the world where fundamental rights are threatened, the first proofs of slavery in Libya.[32][33][34]

Publications

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  • Syria’s war: a journal of pain. War Photo Limited, 2014. Photographs and text by Contreras. Catalogue.
  • Libya: a human marketplace. Fondation Carmignac/Skira, 2016. Photography by Contreras. Texts by Ela Stapley & Narciso Contreras. Monograph/Catalogue.

References

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  1. ^ a b "Narciso Contreras y las encrucijadas del periodismo globalizado" (in Spanish).
  2. ^ "The Syrian conflict: a war photographer's story". TheGuardian.com. 14 December 2012.
  3. ^ a b "From the Front Lines: Syria by Narciso Contreras".
  4. ^ "A close-up view of the bloody battle for Aleppo". 5 November 2012.
  5. ^ "Photographer In Syria Describes The Moment He 'Felt The Horror Of This War As Never Before'". Business Insider. December 2012.
  6. ^ a b "A Bloody Crackdown in Egypt". 15 August 2013.
  7. ^ a b "A Burst of Violence in Cairo". 27 July 2013.
  8. ^ a b "Egyptian Protests Explode Into Violence". 6 July 2013.
  9. ^ a b "Narcisco Contreras - Yemen the Forgotten War".
  10. ^ "Life Persists in Ancient City as Yemeni Homes Turn to Rubble". Retrieved 14 February 2024.
  11. ^ "Libya's Migrant Economy Is a Modern Day Slave Market". Retrieved 14 February 2024.
  12. ^ a b "Migrants : les esclaves de Libye" (in French).
  13. ^ "INTERVIEW-World turns blind eye to Libya slave trade - photographer". Archived from the original on 18 May 2017.
  14. ^ "7th Carmignac Photojournalism Award Exhibition: Narciso Contreras". www.saatchigallery.com. Archived from the original on 30 May 2017.
  15. ^ Ranking of worldwide exhibitions attendance in 2017, TheArtNewspaper.com. Accessed 14 February 2024.
  16. ^ "Activa de Coyoacan". Retrieved 14 February 2024.
  17. ^ "Narciso Contreras entra a Siria" (in Spanish).
  18. ^ "Photographer Fired by AP Says Decision Was Fair, But Process Wasn't". January 2014.
  19. ^ "Libya's Tawerghans stuck in limbo". December 2014.
  20. ^ "NARCISO CONTRERAS Interview by Svetlana Bachevanova". Retrieved 14 February 2014.
  21. ^ a b "Narciso Contreras' series Libya: A Human Marketplace wins Carmignac Photojournalism Award". British Journal of Photography. 1 September 2016. Retrieved 23 January 2017.
  22. ^ "7th edition — Libya".
  23. ^ "Libye: l'enfer des migrants victimes du trafic humain, vu par Narciso Contreras (In French)". 21 October 2016.
  24. ^ ""La Libye est devenue la plaque tournante d'un gigantesque trafic d'êtres humains"" (in French). 28 October 2016.
  25. ^ Contreras, Narciso (2016). Libya: A human marketplace. Paris: Skira. pp. 6–14. ISBN 978-2-37074-043-4.
  26. ^ Eggli, Ann Vibeke (January 2002). Mass Refugee Influx and the Limits of Public International Law. ISBN 9041119213.
  27. ^ "Forced displacement worldwide at its highest in decades". Retrieved 14 February 2024.
  28. ^ "Connecting Advocacy and Imagery: Narciso Contreras – HIP". hiponline.org. Archived from the original on 30 May 2018.
  29. ^ "Connecting Advocacy and Imagery: Narciso Contreras". Retrieved 14 February 2024.
  30. ^ "Award-winning photographer dumped for altering single Syria image". The Guardian. 22 January 2014. Retrieved 23 January 2017.
  31. ^ a b c d Estrin, James (24 January 2014). "Truth and Consequences for a War Photographer". The New York Times. Retrieved 23 January 2017.
  32. ^ "Migrants : les esclaves de Libye". Paris Match. 29 September 2016.
  33. ^ "Libye: l'enfer des migrants victimes du trafic humain, vu par Narciso Contreras". France TV. 21 October 2016.
  34. ^ "La Libye est devenue la plaque tournante d'un gigantesque trafic d'êtres humains". Télérama. 28 October 2016.
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