Feb. 16: Your lens to the interne t's most powerful photographs. 📸

Feb. 16: Week in Photography

📸Your lens to the internet's most powerful photographs 📸

MOST POWERFUL PHOTO OF THE WEEK

Valarie Macon / AFP via Getty Images

Last weekend at the 92nd Academy Awards, the film Parasite made history by becoming the first foreign-language film to bring home the award for Best Picture, as well as three additional Oscars, including Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. Such huge success might go to someone's head, but South Korean director Bong Joon-ho kept audiences amused with his down-to-earth attitude and humble acknowledgments.

Here, Bong is joined after the ceremony by screenwriter Han Jin-won (left) and producer Kwak Sin-ae, along with their golden statues, at the 92nd Oscars Governors Ball in Hollywood, Feb. 9.

📸FOR YOUR 👀 ONLY:

THROUGH THE EYES OF WOMEN WITH WE, WOMEN

Photojournalism has a long history of being disproportionately produced by men, but a new organization is aiming to change this dynamic. We, Women was organized in collaboration between United Photo Industries and Women Photograph with the goal of supporting women and gender nonconforming artists in telling their stories. This year, We, Women is hitting the road with an exhibition of 20 artists who have received grants to pursue a wide range of community-focused storytelling.

Here, Laura Roumanos, cofounder of We, Women and United Photo Industries, speaks with BuzzFeed News about the powerful initiative.

What are the goals of We, Women?

We are the social art project by women, transgender, and nonbinary creators, each exploring crucial issues of photo-based projects across the US. Something that we’re really proud of is that the majority of our artists are people of color.

Arin Yoon

About a year ago, we put out a national call for visual artists who are working with their own communities to submit proposals on projects. Some of them only had a concept or hadn’t started, while others had work that they had been doing in their communities for months or even years. Each of these artists are addressing urgent issues, whether it is mental health, immigration, voting rights.

Each artist receives a grant between $5K–$10K each. We’re providing mentorship, toolkits, and within the next few months, we’re going to start developing and working on our major national public art exhibition that will start here in Brooklyn and will travel across the country.

When we put the call out, we received close to 400 amazing proposals — and yet this was a very limited reach. I just kept thinking about all the stories that are out there that we haven’t heard from yet.

Koral Carballo / Anita Pouchard Serra / Jessica Ávalos

We’ve really been methodical about this whole process and we want to do right by the communities that we’re working with. We really want to support these visual storytellers, because at the end of the day, when we see what’s going on in the world, we’re actually consuming information that is mainly delivered by men. Whether it’s photojournalists, producers, editors, or reporters, it’s usually men who are telling the stories. For us, it’s about looking at all of these very universal issues through the lens of female, non-binary, and trans artists.

Muna Malik

How difficult was it to get this initiative off the ground?

When we started working on this project, it felt like such a no-brainer. Everyone was so excited and felt like it was going to change the game. What’s been incredibly difficult is to know that you can have a really amazing idea, but can’t get it off the ground without funding and resources to support it. We’ve been so lucky to have the Open Society Foundations to come on board which was an absolute boost for us. We’re also running a Kickstarter at the moment to raise funds, too. People have come up to us and said, “Wow! You’ve been able to do this so easily!” But the truth is that this has been two years in the making.

What do you want people to take away from the upcoming exhibition?

I’d like people to see that there’s so much out there and that there’s different perspectives than what they’re usually getting. We want people to be inspired and to continue to ask questions. The exhibition is just going to be the start of all these projects, so we hope that folks around the country will dig into who these artists and start talking to their neighbors about the work.

Rowan Renee

📸THIS WEEK'S PHOTO STORIES 📸

First up this week, in honor of the Westminster Dog Show, photographer Dolly Faibyshev takes us behind the scenes of the cute and chaotic world of dog shows, where colorful characters and their canine divas compete for superiority. Next, we go back 17 years to when the SARS outbreak was gripping headlines and putting the world on edge with the possibility of a major pandemic. It was reported last weekend that the coronavirus has surpassed the 2003 death toll of the SARS epidemic. Lastly, we continue our visual storytelling for Black History Month with the history of the Black Panther Party.

Here are more photo essays published by our friends elsewhere.

FABULOUS AND FURY: THE ART OF DOG SHOWS

Dolly Faibyshev / Chronicle Chroma 2020

For years, photographer Dolly Faibyshev has been a fixture at dog shows across the country, capturing their big personalities and canine stars in her unique and vibrant style of shooting.

PANDEMIC: THE 2003 SARS OUTBREAK IN PERSPECTIVE

Christian Keenan / Getty Images

This past weekend, the novel coronavirus surpassed the 2003 death toll of the SARS epidemic. These pictures show how those regions hit hardest by SARS responded to this global outbreak.

BLACK POWER: THE HISTORY OF THE BLACK PANTHERS

David Fenton / Getty Images

In 1966, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was formed to help protect black communities from racial violence and police brutality.

📸YOUR WEEKLY PALATE CLEANSER📸

Gokhan Balci / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

In this breathtaking photograph by Gokhan Balci, an enormous supermoon is captured rising over the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne, Turkey, on Feb. 9. The supermoon is a full moon that almost coincides with the closest distance that the moon ever is to Earth in its elliptic orbit, resulting in a larger-than-usual visible size of the lunar disk as seen from our planet.

"That's it from us this time — see you next week!" —Gabriel and Kate

📝 This letter was edited and brought to you by the News Photo team. Gabriel Sanchez is the photo essay editor based in New York and loves cats. Kate Bubacz is the photo director based in New York and loves dogs. You can always reach us here.
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