Moving Walls 21: A Photo Exhibition That Fights the Good Fight

2 minute read
Gym class at School No 1 in the Chechen village of Serzhen-Yurt. The schoolgirls, all dressed in skirts with their heads wrapped in headscarves, say gym clothes violate Muslim dress code.
Gym class at School No 1 in the Chechen village of Serzhen-Yurt. The schoolgirls, all dressed in skirts with their heads wrapped in headscarves, say gym clothes violate Muslim dress code.Diana Markosian—Reportage by Getty Images
By Richard Conway

Launched in 1998, the Open Society Foundation‘s annual Moving Walls exhibition aims to support photographers working on social, political and human-rights issues that can sometimes fall under the radar. This year marks the 21st edition of the show, and features work from South Sudan to Hong Kong.

Shannon Jensen’s project, “A Long Walk,” saw her visit refugee camps in northeast South Sudan. Aiming to document the plight of refugees fleeing both the Blue Nile and South Kordofan, Jensen took an unusual tack: Instead of photographing the refugees themselves, she focused on their worn-out shoes, which she believes are visceral reminders of the struggle of displaced people. The images that emerge are as simple as they are haunting.

Sparse, sometimes playful, Diana Markosian‘s work chronicles life in war-torn Chechnya. Purposefully avoiding any representation of the violence that plagues the region, she instead documents the coming-of-age of young girls and women in a repressive environment. Markosian seems to show us how ordinariness itself is a malleable state.

Hong Kong’s chimerical identity is examined in Mark Leong‘s frenetic images. Here the autonomous city-state seems like a hyper-capitalist, hyper-dense world of neon and cables — a place consciously asserting a character at-once tied to, and wholly separate from, that of mainland China.

Nikos Pilos turns his lens to unemployment-racked Greece. His shots of abandoned offices in the northern region of Thrace paint a picture that is both eerie and moving. Here are the former headquarters of booming, state-subsidized companies that came tumbling down during the economic crisis that started in 2008. The chaos Pilos distills seems to highlight the political and cultural strife that has convulsed the nation ever since.

João Pina looks at the effects of Operation Condor, a little-known 1975 plan by the dictatorships of Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Paraguay to quash political opposition. The plan resulted in the extrajudicial executions of at least 60,000 people.

Moving Walls is on view at the Open Society Foundation at 224 West 57th Street, New York City, from January 29 to October 3, 2014.

Richard Conway is Reporter/Producer for TIME LightBox. Follow him on twitter @RichardJConway

Gym class at School No 1 in the Chechen village of Serzhen-Yurt. The schoolgirls, all dressed in skirts with their heads wrapped in headscarves, say gym clothes violate Muslim dress code.
Gym class at School No 1 in the Chechen village of Serzhen-Yurt. The schoolgirls, all dressed in skirts with their heads wrapped in headscarves, say gym clothes violate Muslim dress code.Diana Markosian—Reportage by Getty Images
A couple on a date in the village of Serzhen-Yurt. Couples must meet in public and sit a distance from one another. All physical contact is forbidden before marriage.
In the village of Serzhen-Yurt, Chechnya, a couple on a date must meet in public and sit at a distance from one another. All physical contact is forbidden before marriage.Diana Markosian—Reportage by Getty Images
Beat-up armchairs await residents of an informal settlement built on the top of a factory building. Middle and working-class Hong Kong residents are feeling the housing squeeze from China on two fronts. While wealthy mainland Chinese investors drive up real estate prices, affordable housing grows scarce in one of the world’s most expensive cities. At the same time, Chinese migrant laborers are crossing the increasingly open border to the north, which creates competition even for these dilapidated squatted rooftop units in industrial neighborhoods. Mark Leong—Redux Pictures
The Mongkok district in Kowloon is one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in the world, and is well known for its underground night life such as the mah jong games, massage parlors, sex workers, and night markets that are overseen by Hong Kong’s organized crime organizations called the Triads.Mark Leong—Redux Pictures
Former military men, hide their faces to the photographer during a session of their trial in which they are being accused by the Argentine state of crimes against the Humanity in the last dictatorship from 1976-1983. The forced disappearance of locals happened during Operation Condor, a joint secret military plan aimed at eliminating political opponents using common resources, exchanging information, prisoners and torture techniques. This plan, which was carried out during the 1970's, resulted in the “extrajudicial executions” of at least 60,000 people.
Former military men hide their faces during a trial conducted by the Argentine government to prosecute former officials for crimes against humanity that were committed by the military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983. .Joao Pina
An airplane used by the Argentinian military to drop left-wing militants alive to the La Plata river and Atlantic ocean during the military dictatorship which was known as the "Death flights" is now used as an advertising object for a construction materials store in the outskirts of Buenos Aires. The death flights happened during Operation Condor, a joint secret military plan aimed at eliminating political opponents using common resources, exchanging information, prisoners and torture techniques. This plan, which was carried out during the 1970's, resulted in the “extrajudicial executions” of at least 60,000 people.
During Argentina’s military dictatorship, security forces executed left-wing militants by taking them out in this plane for what became known as the “Death Flights”—flights in which the militants would be thrown alive from the plane into the La Plata River and the Atlantic Ocean. Today, the plane is used as an advertising prop for a building supply store on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. Joao Pina
The Sidiropoulos factory produced packaging for dried fruit and went out of business in 2008, when the financial crisis struck Greece. The relief map of Greece on the wall is one of the few things that remained intact in the factory.Nikos Pilos
Most of what was left after these Greek factories were closed or abandoned has been taken by looters to sell as scrap.Nikos Pilos
A Long Walk (Refugee Shoe Project)
June 2012. These are the shoes of Jamun Mam, a woman in her 70s from Iferi, South Sudan, who walked for days to reach the border after months of displacement in the Blue Nile region of South Sudan. Shannon Jensen—Reportage by Getty Images
A Long Walk (Refugee Shoe Project)
June 2012. These are the shoes of Musa Shep, a 2-year-old boy from the village of Gabanit, South Sudan, who traveled for more than 20 days to reach South Sudan’s northern border. He sat on the shoulders of his mother.Shannon Jensen—Reportage by Getty Images

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