In the Picture: Documentography

How do photographers establish themselves in the competitive world of photojournalism? If you’re not represented by an agency what’s the best way to secure stories and promote your work? Go it alone and try and make a name for yourself in the dog-eat-dog photography business? Or form a collective?

Documentography is a group of photographers who collaborate internationally covering documentary, reportage, portraiture and fine art. Since 2000 this collection of five very different and equally talented photographers has worked together to promote their work and share their success. They combine forces to produce a quarterly web magazine, ISSUE.

Two members of Documentography, Guilhem Alandry and Anna Kåri, will be at the Frontline Club to discuss their collective and their varied techniques, including their innovative joint project about a shanty town built on a rubbish tip in Sierra Leone commissioned by Save the Children.

The event will be moderated by Jennifer Pollard, a Senior Lecturer in History & Theory of Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at London College of Communication. She specialises in the history of photojournalism and documentary, trauma, and globalized visual culture.

Guilhem Alandry is a videographer, photographer and multimedia producer. His use of 360-degree documentary technique has won him awards and has been used in print, interactive projects, exhibitions and TV. He won the Olympus Digital Elements Award 2003 and the Olympus Digital Photographer of the Year in the Observer Hodge Award 2004.

Anna Kåri’s specialties are humanitarian issues of migration, refugees, identity and human rights. The Danish photographer has worked extensively in the Balkans, Ethiopia, Southern Sudan and West Africa. Her 5-year long project “The Roma refugees from Kosovo” won a Metro young photographers bursary award, The Tom Webster Award and was a runner up in the Ian Parry Awards. In 2005, Kåri was selected for the World Press Masterclass.