Art Openings 6/2: Moving Walls 17

Very late notice and hopefully if you're in NYC you're already planning on going to this TONITE:
Opening reception for Moving Walls 17, part of the Open Society Institute Documentary Photography Project.

Moving Walls 17
opening Wednesday, 2 June
5:30-8:00pm
OSI-New York 400 W. 59th St., New York 10019

Started in 1998, Moving Walls features photography works addressing issues of social justice and human rights.
One project in particular this year has really intrigued me -- Chacipe: An Exploration of Roma Images and Identity, which features selected images from the Chacipe Youth Photography Contest. The contest was organized by OSI's Roma Initiatives and the Open Society Archives as part of the Decade of Roma Inclusion 2005-2015, an international initiative to bring together governments, NGOs and Roma civil society to work towards improving the welfare of Roma communities.

I'll Stop the World and Melt with You, 2008
from the project Chacipe: An Exploration of Roma Images and Identity
© Martina Mitrovic (Serbia)

Roma youth ages 12-25 were asked to contribute photographs of their daily lives in one or more of the 12 participating countries, based on themes such as "My Street, My Neighborhood", "My Colorful Life", or "What is Wrong?"

Konik Children II, 2008
from the project Chacipe: An Exploration of Roma Images and Identity
© Pavle Calasan (Montenegro)

The issues facing Roma communities in Europe became ever more illuminated to me as I worked on a project many years ago photographing Hungarian and Ukrainian Roma villages.

(Lakatos Rudolf in his village, Ukraine, 2003)

So I highly recommend a look at the Chacipe project at Moving Walls.

(Ferkes Diana, age 15, on her wedding day, 2003)

As for Moving Walls 17, the rest of their roster this year includes:
Jan Banning, Bureaucratics
Mari Bastashevski, File 126 (Disappearing in the Caucasus)
Christian Holst, In the Quiet Land: Life Under the Military Regime of Burma
Saiful Huq Omi, The Disowned and the Denied: Stateless Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh
Ara Oshagan, Juvies: A Collaborative Portrait of High-Risk Juvenile Offenders in the California Prison System
Lori Waselchuk, Grace Before Dying