Boniface Mwangi is a photojournalist and activist based in Kenya. Inspired by photography’s role in raising consciousness of the Ethiopian famine, he taught himself photography. Mwangi helped found Picha Mtaani and Pawa 254 , two visual activism organizations located in Kenya. He continues to work to create new approaches to community self-reflection and dialogue, as well as innovate new ways to build peace through culture. He is currently involved in graffiti activism in Nairobi. Boniface has been recognized with the Acumen Fund East Africa Fellowship, the Principle Prince Claus Award, and has recently been made a senior TED fellow.
Manca Juvan is a freelance photographer based in Slovenia. Juvan’s long-term project “Unordinary Lives” documents the consequences of the Afghanistan War through the stories of ordinary Afghans. She was selected Photographer of the Year in Slovenia for her reportage work in 2006, 2007 and 2008. Her book Afghanistan: Unordinary Lives was published in 2010 and an English edition followed in 2012. Her work has appeared in The Times, National Geographic, and The Guardian. She is a member of the international photography collective Sputnik Photos and was a MF Human Rights Fellow in 2011.
Nazik Armenakian is a photojournalist and photo editor based in Armenia. She has worked as a photo editor and photographer for magazines such as Forum Magazine and Yerevan Magazine. Since 2008, Armenakyan has been a professor of photojournalism at Gladzor University in Yerevan. Her long-term project, “Survivors,” investigates the survivors of the 1915 Armenian Genocide through portraiture. The project went on to win the Grand Prix award and was exhibited in several galleries. In 2011, she has received the MF Human Rights Fellowship and an Open Society Foundation Production Grant for her ongoing project on LGBT communities in Armenia.
Having grown up in Singapore, Sim Chi Yin is based in Beijing, China, where she is documenting China’s social and human rights issues. She graduated from the London School of Economics and Political Science before becoming a journalist and foreign correspondent for Singapore’s national daily, The Straits Times. Since going freelance in 2011, she shoots regularly for The New York Times, and has been published in the Financial Times Magazine, Stern Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications. In 2010 she was awarded the MF Human Rights Fellowship, and in 2011 she became a member of the VII Photo Agency’s Mentor Program.
Taslima Akhter is an activist and photographer who focuses on workers’ and women’s organizations based in Bangladesh. Akhter graduated from the Pathshala Institute in photojournalism and completed her M.Phil from the department of Public Administration at the University of Dhaka. She is primarily interested in gender, environmental, and cultural issues. Her project, “The Life and Struggle of Garment Workers,” was published in The New York Times Lens blog and exhibited in the Drik Gallery and the Angkor Photo Festival. She has also received the Margaret Cameron Award.
