© Robin Hammond
FORMA Centro Internazionale di Fotografia Piazza Tito Lucrezio Caro, 1 I-20136 Milano Italie
CARMIGNAC GESTION AWARD FOR PHOTOJOURNALISM
With this annual award, Carmignac Gestion seeks to support the photojournalists who are at the forefront of their work and who exemplify the values of courage, independence, transparency, and sharing.
In 2009 the Carmignac Gestion Foundation created the Carmignac Gestion Award for Photojournalism, designed to finance reportage on a specific contemporary subject. Coming with a gift of 50,000 euros, the prize aims to encourage a photojournalist's indepth work in the field. In addition to the financial prize, the Carmignac Gestion Foundation assists the winner to promote his reportage by presenting an exhibit and publishing a monographic work. The grant also includes the acquisition by the Foundation of four photographs chosen from the winning reportage. A jury composed of image and information specialists select the annual winner. Photographers are free to choose how to address the given theme and the political, economic, social, or cultural angle from which to cover it. Their chosen approach must abide by the humanistic tradition. The photographer should not succumb to caricature or the tyranny of the instant, but instead study the context and understanding the situation in order to present reality in its complexity. In choosing to support a profession in grave financial crisis, Carmignac Gestion seeks to provide to these contemporary global witnesses the necessary means to go where others do not go. In keeping with the values that animate its collaborators, Carmignac Gestion aims to protect the personal, engaged point of view, one that is by definition a minority, and thus indispensable.
Your wounds will be named silence Photographs by Robin Hammond
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© Robin Hammond
“Their suffering, in generations to come, their collective wounds, will be named silence.”
From “A poem for Zimbabwe” by Chenjerai Hove.
In a powerful piece of photojournalism, Robin Hammond narrates the present situation in Zimbabwe.
A former British colony, Zimbabwe gained its independence in 1980. Rather than years of freedom though, the local population has endured 33 years of dictatorship and witnessed the deterioration of their country under Robert Mugabe’s violent regime.
Robin Hammond visited Zimbabwe as a journalist for the first time in 2007, returning often over the next five years. Each time he left torn by conflicting emotions: dismay and revulsion, but equally strong, profound attachment to a nation hanging in the balance.
His powerful photographs depict a country dotted with skeletons, those of once productive factories and farms, of abandoned or destroyed houses and, more chilling still, those of the bodies of its inhabitants bent by sickness and deprivation. Through his images we meet communities composed of children or the elderly, in which the young men and women have died or fled abroad. Through his eyes we behold a nations fear and pain, and the loss of what should have been a great African nation.
“Zimbabwe has become a forgotten land. Today, with no light cast on the dark shadows of Robert Mugabe's relentless tyranny, the downtrodden people of one of Africa's most hauntingly beautiful nations feel rightfully abandoned by the world. Their modest hope devoured by the malice and greed of politicians, Zimbabwe's people have nowhere to turn and, against the brutality of the police and military, no strength to cry out in the dark. In Your Wounds Will Be Named Silence the Award-Winning photojournalist, Robin Hammond, provides a critical voice to this lost generation of African's dying of disease, poverty and neglect. By baring witness to a nations great despair, at personal risk to himself and those brave enough to help him, he brings one of Africa's most enduring and important crisis back into the spotlight - into an unhindered space of free expression and protest where the voices of Zimbabwe's dispossessed can once again be heard.” Dan McDougall. Award-Winning Africa Correspondent. The Sunday Times of London
Robin Hammond is a 37-year-old freelance photojournalist born in New Zealand. He has been part of the photo agency Panos Pictures since 2007.
The winner of four Amnesty International awards for Human Rights journalism, Robin has dedicated his career to documenting human rights and development issues around the world, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.
After spending time in Japan, the United Kingdom and South Africa, Robin Hammond currently lives in Paris.
Fondazione Forma per la Fotografia, was founded by Contrasto, and enjoys the collaboration of Corriere della Sera, for the communication, and ATM which hosts FORMA on the premises of the historical tram depot in the Ticinese district.
Photography © Robin Hammond