Moving Walls — and Minds

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It was never easy to finance in-depth social documentary photography, or to get it widely shown. But it has become even more difficult in the past decade, as media backing for serious photo stories has virtually disappeared.

Which is why the Open Society Foundations Documentary Photography Project has become a lifeline. Through its ground-breaking “Moving Walls” exhibition series â€" as well as grants that finance individual projects and innovative displays â€" it has sustained documentarians over the last 15 years.

Now, “Moving Walls” is, indeed, moving. And becoming more accessible.

On Wednesday, the 20th edition of “Moving Walls” will grace the new exhibit space in the Argonaut Building at 57th Street and Broadway where the financier George Soros has taken almost the entire building for his Open Society Foundations. For the first time in its history, the exhibit will be easily accessible to the public, on view Mondays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Additionally, the “Moving Walls” Web site has been upgraded so almost all the participating photographers are featured in an elegant, searchable display.

Since 1998, the “Moving Walls” openings have become important events in the photography community, largely because they feature work that is unlikely to be exhibited in more commercial New York spaces. Andrew Lichtenstein‘s projects on prison life and the effects of incarceration onthe outside were exhibited in 1999 and in 2003.

Lynsey Addario Sudanese Liberation Army soldiers sat by their truck while it was stuck in the mud in Darfur, Sudan. 2004. From “Moving Walls 11.”

“It’s a terrific way to show serious work: to have a budget and be able to help curate the show,” said Mr. Lichtenstein, who is based in New York. “I think ‘Moving Walls’ is a centerpoint of connecting photographers to activists on the ground, dealing with the actual issues that you are photographing â€" in my case, prison reform.”

Most projects chosen for “Moving Walls” are self-financed or begin with an assignment, but some of the photographers have received money from the Open Society Foundations to produce the work or to further exhibit it. Mr. Lichtenstein’s project inside prisons was paid for through a Soros Justice Fellowship.

The organization has also encouraged and paid for innovative ways to use images to engage people on specific issues and has supported a wide array of photography groups and projects.

“Open Society has been a pioneering foundation in supporting documentary work of an in-depth nature in a number of ways including supporting the Eugene Smith Grant and the Aftermath grant,” said Susan Meiselas, a photographer who is also the president of the Magnum Foundation.

Ms. Meiselas helped create “Moving Walls” and co-curates the exhibits with Stuart Alexander, an international specialist at Christies. The Documentary Photography Project receives 350 to 400 submissions for consideration each year. There are few constraints, but the projects usually address issues that the organization is engaged with, like incarceration and immigration in the United States, the strengthening of democracy in the former Soviet Union and Europe, discrimination against the Roma, land rights in Africa and the effects of war. An honorarium of $2,500 is provided, but more important, printing and framing costs are covered, and photographers are given ownership of their exhibit to show it elsewhere.

Until now, the exhibits were crammed into the organization’s office space, and after an opening night, the public had little access. The new 3,400-square-foot space, intended for exhibiting and with street level access, solves that problem.

Nina Berman/Noor Cpl. Tyson Johnson III, wounded in a mortar attack at Abu Ghraib, Iraq, at home in Prichard, Ala. 2004. From “Moving Walls 10.”

Though her “Moving Walls” opening was cramped, Nina Berman â€" whose powerful portraits of wounded Iraq war veterans were exhibited in 2005 â€" remembers it as “particularly beautiful” because one of her subjects, Robert Acosta (Slide 2), attended and spoke to the gathering. Later, she received the Documentary Photography Project’s audience engagement grant, which allowed her and Mr. Acosta to travel to high schools, colleges and local exhibitions across the country to speak about war’s effects on veterans.

Ms. Berman’s book, “Purple Hearts,” was published by Trolley the year before her show, but the work had not yet been properly exhibited. “Moving Walls,” she said, gave her the opportunity “for the first time to think about which pictures go together, how she should print them and helped prepare me for bigger and more public shows that followed.”

The new Web site, unveiled this week, is easy to use.

“ ‘Moving Walls’ has shown the work of more than 170 photographers, but this will be the first time that people will be able to see almost all of the work that we have supported and the photographers that have been exhibited,” said Amy Yenkin, the director of the organization’s Documentary Photography Project. “We look at it as a catalog of 15 years of human rights photography.”

This spring’s edition of “Moving Walls” features Katharina Hesse’s “Borderland: North Korean Refugees,” Yuri Kozyrev’s “On Revolution World,” Fernando Moleres’s “Juveniles Waiting for Justice,” Ian Teh’s “Traces: Landscapes in Transition on the Yellow River Basin” and Donald Weber’s “Interrogations.”

It’s rare when social documentarians can directly trace the effect of their work on the issues that concern them. For the most part, they merely hope to provide photographs that challenge viewers. Eugene Richards’s gut-wrenching image of Jose Pequeño, an Iraq war veteran who lost 40 percent of his brain after a grenade explosion (Slide 1), won’t stop wars. But it does hammer home its cost, and perhaps remind others of the consequences of their action or inaction.

Hopefully, this new exhibition space and Web site will allow even more people to encounter serious work around social issues, and even to stop and think.

Ian Teh A temple, nestled in a quarry where the surrounding mountains are dynamited to provide building materials for construction. Bayin, China. 2011. From “Moving Walls 20.”

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