Globalization is making us more aware of the realities of the entire planet through news, visits, and business travel. In addition, urbanization and consumer markets are tending to bring cultures and lifestyles ever closer to each other. Even so, and fortunately, diversity and differences remain. What is more, the most radical forms of alterity are found not only outside of our societies but tend to merge with them, and at the same time to change our core identities and our very ideas about universality.
RAYMONDE APRIL, Near You No Cold
After several stays in Mumbai, Raymonde April was able to find her bearings in this bustling, very foreign city. From her apartment to her studio and its yard, through the streets in which people work, meet, and perform their rituals, April captures, in her way, particular moments and ambiences that hold up a mirror to our own lives.
With an interview by Charles Guilbert
JULIAN GERMAIN , The Future is Ours, Classroom Portraits
For a dozen years, Julian Germain has photographed groups of students gathered in their classrooms, on several continents. This space, with its blackboard, rows of desks, and schoolbooks, somehow condenses the very idea of education and transmission of knowledge. In it are reflected the divers- ity of social conditions and cultural and religious values within which a universal model of education becomes real and concrete.
With an interview by Johanna Mizgala
ALEJANDRO CARTAGENA, Carpoolers
With this series of photographs taken on the fly on a highway overpass, Alejandro Cartagena brings to light an unusual, and illegal, twist on carpooling that has developed in Monterrey, Mexico, to compensate for insufficient public transit. Bodies at rest, direct gazes at the camera, and some humorous situations draw our attention away from the vicissitudes of long daily trips under uncomfortable, and even dangerous, conditions.
With an interview by Isa Tousignant