Sunday Preview. Stories we feature next week.

October 03, 2021

The week ahead will offer you three very different bodies of work touching the historical tragedy of the Holocaust and its traces we still are able to evidence nowadays, the phenomenon of Collecting revealed via photographer's father personal story, a very artistic take on the climate change and its consequences.

What is common about these stories is the in-depth, thoughtful approach to investigation the subject. We believe you will enjoy them—see the previews below.

A month since the birth of mnngful đź”´

Building this platform is a fascinating endeavour when each new submission and new curious reader make us believe we are on the right way. To be even more confident in that we are doing the right thing, we invite everyone to contribute into our development.

The first month of building the platform walked us through the journey of realising what mnngful really is and how it perceived by the community of photographers.

We received a huge amount of both support and criticism, we've had a lot of public and in-person conversation about what we create, how we treat the photographers' work, how we promote it, how we pay and what we charge from our readers.

Many were asking us about our strategy, development plans, detailed principles and policies, like we are an established organisation, but we are not. Yet.

We are the two, myself and Zak Dimitrov, who are eagerly challenging ourselves to build something of real and pure value for everyone around, and we are open for conversation and collaboration to achieve that.

Join the discussion in this Twitter thread. Reach us directly if you have some ideas to share.

— Max Zhiltsov

Published — Monday, 04 Oct

© Marc Wilson: A Wounded Landscape

This story will introduce you to the recently published photobook by Marc Wilson—an impressive by its scale and depth project documenting the traces of the Holocaust.

Six years of photographer's investigation across 20 countries are embodied in the book. The images of places, artefacts, documents are accompanied by memories from survivors.

© Marc Wilson | A Wounded Landscape

Photographed in more than 130 locations, the 360 images are paired with 22 stories from Holocaust survivors and their descendants. A Wounded Landscape brings the past into sharp focus, forcing us to confront the fact that these terrible events happened in our world.

Published — Wednesday, 06 Oct

© Callum O'Keefe | Antiques of the Future

This project documents all sorts of collections. Star Wars figurines, peculiar orange boots, vintage vacuum cleaners in different colours, baked beans paraphernalia (including a necklace made of beans), you name it. It’s a body of work that speaks of individual oddities and makes us realise that everyone is different with their own little quirks and peculiarities.

Callum O’Keefe’s father was an avid collector and his obsession with Coca-Cola and Tretchikoff paintings turned into a vast collection. As it is no longer in its entirety, O’Keefe decided to use his camera to document people with a passion for collecting to vicariously understand his dad’s mindset.

The project has given me the opportunity to explore my own fascination with this subject; my Father was a collector, amassing a range of objects from Coca Cola Memorabilia to Tretchikoff paintings.

When he passed away a few years ago, my interest in his collection grew and although we now no longer have much of it left, I am beginning to understand my Father’s obsession through documenting other collectors; and their passions.

Friday, 08 Oct

© Melanie King | Submerged Landscapes

Melanie King is a photographer who works with alternative image-making methods. Currently studying for a PhD, she’s very much interested in using natural materials such as seaweed, coffee and spinach to develop and print her images. Submerged Landscapes, commissioned by Mural According to the Climate Central app, is a mixed media body of work for which King documented the area of Thanet, near where she lives, before it disappears in the sea — something which, according to reports, is likely to happen within the next decade as the ocean levels begin to rise.

The project demonstrates King’s persistent work ethos, one of raw honesty and integrity. According to her, she wouldn’t feel comfortable to be making work about climate change while simultaneously using toxic chemicals, such as a standard photographic developer. Instead, she opted to make her own, organic seaweed developer, which isn’t hazardous to the biodiversity of our planet and can be safely disposed of.

Submerged Landscapes is an ongoing project where I am documenting the affected areas before they are submerged, using the materiality of the sea within the production of the work. I used seaweed developer to create these photographs.

Support the stories worth seeing

What's meaningful and what's not? We believe that passion-driven people with cameras, either professional photojournalists or hobbyist photographers are those who are in position to answer these qeustions from their own perspective.

mnngful is created as a platform to showcase these points of view via images and text. To support photographers in telling their stories and ispire them to keep doing this in all verity valuable work. 

Join mnngful as a Member to indulge your curiosity, support independent documentary photography and journalism.

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