Ron Haviv Foundry Presentation

At the 2019 Foundry Photojournalism Workshop, Ron Haviv gives a presentation on his documentary film, Biography of a Photo, which tells the story of two iconic photographs of conflict and how they shape the course of history and inspire a quest for justice. He talks about the ideas that sparked the film, delves into how photographs can take on a life of their own.

The Foundry Photojournalism Workshop offers majority world students who could not otherwise afford it a chance to learn from some of the world’s most well respected photojournalists and photography professionals.

Ron Haviv is an Emmy nominated, award-winning photojournalist and co-founder of the photo agency VII, dedicated to documenting conflict and raising awareness about human rights issues around the globe.

In the last three decades, Haviv has covered more than twenty-five conflicts and worked in over one hundred countries. He has published three critically acclaimed collections of photography, and his work has been featured in numerous museums and galleries, including the Louvre, the United Nations, and the Council on Foreign Relations. Haviv’s photographs are in the collections at The Houston Museum of Fine Arts and George Eastman House amongst others as well as numerous private collections.

Haviv has produced an unflinching record of the injustices of war and his photography has had singular impact. His work in the Balkans, which spanned over a decade of conflict, was used as evidence to indict and convict war criminals at the international tribunal in The Hague. President George H.W. Bush cited Haviv’s chilling photographs documenting paramilitary violence in Panama as one of the reasons for the 1989 American intervention.