About us
Showcasing positive solutions through documentary photography
Mission
FotoDocument is a unique not-for-profit arts education social enterprise that brings visibility to positive social and environmental initiatives around the world through visual story-telling. At FotoDocument we believe in the power of visual imagery as an effective communication tool to harness public attention and engage people in powerful storylines which create a sense of active global citizenship.
© Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi
What we offer
FotoDocument commissions professional photographers to produce extended photo essays, FotoWork, focusing on positive social and environmental issues in order to inspire, engage and effect behaviour change in a large and diverse audience.
We receive photo essay commissions for our popular FotoStory service from businesses, NGOs and the public sector to enhance the visual storytelling aspects of social and environmental initiatives.
We provides routes for meaningful participation in our work through our FotoSchool workshop programme as well as through talks, events and competitions.
We run an ethical photography agency, FotoAgency, which reinvests its profits back into FotoDocument’s arts education work.
We facilitate the Marilyn Stafford FotoReportage Award, supported by Nikon, an annual Award for women photographers specialising in documentary photography with a focus on solutions.
Who we are
Nina Emett
Nina Emett (b. 1968) is founding Director of FotoDocument, where she has worked as commissioner and curator since 2012. She is a passionate believer in visual story-telling to engage people in powerful narratives, creating active global citizenship to effect positive change. In 2015 she won a PEA (People Environment Achievement) Award for FotoDocument’s acclaimed ‘One Planet City’ environmental project. She has worked as a photographer widely including for The Independent, Amnesty International, PwC, Brighton & Hove City Council and she is currently finalising her photo book about a women’s worker co-operative in India. Nina was Strategic Lead for Brighton & Hove City Council’s anti-racism strategy (2005-09) and Director of refugee education charity Salusbury WORLD (1999–03). She holds a BA Hons in French, Postgrad Dip in Photojournalism & MSc in International Development.
Lucy Bryson
Lucy Bryson has been a Non-Executive Director of FotoDocument since January 2013. Lucy has always worked in the voluntary and public sector on issues related to the protection and integration of refugees and other vulnerable migrant groups in the UK. She spent ten years at the Refugee Council in London and Leeds where she helped resettle households fleeing Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s and managed a team of advisors for unaccompanied children seeking asylum. She has been working at Brighton & Hove City Council since 2003 in a policy role advising on the city’s response to international migration. Lucy brings considerable experience in management, policy and strategy to FotoDocument as well as a focus on BME and marginalised communities. Lucy has been recognised as a Community Hero by the University of Sussex.
Simon Roberts
Simon Roberts (b.1974) is a British artist-photographer whose work deals with our relationship to landscape and notions of identity and belonging. He has published and exhibited widely and his photographs reside in major public and private collections, including the George Eastman House, Deutsche Börse Art Collection and V&A Collection. In 2010 he was commissioned as the official British Election Artist by the House of Commons Works of Art Committee to produce a record of the General Election on behalf of the UK Parliamentary Art Collection; and in 2013 was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society. He has published four critically acclaimed monographs, Motherland (Chris Boot, 2007), We English (Chris Boot, 2009), Pierdom (Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2013) and most recently Merrie Albion (Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2017).
Toby Buckle
Toby Buckle works with organisations across the UK and internationally helping to develop resilient and resourceful and effective leaders. Toby is a certified trainer of NLP with a Bsc Hons in Management Science (UMIST). His background gives him insight into the private, public sectors and charity and social enterprise. Toby spent ten highly successful years in management and director positions and combines hands on experience with the best of theory and advanced coaching skills. Toby has a way of helping you see things from a new perspective and looks to the heart of issues in order to produce results. He makes the exploration of emotional intelligence enjoyable and enlightening.
Donna Decesare
Donna De Cesare is an author, documentary photographer and educator known for her groundbreaking coverage of the spread of US gangs in Central America. She is an Associate Professor of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, a consultant to the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University and a Master Teacher with the Gabriel Garcia Marquez Foundation for Latin American Journalism. She has received many prestigious awards including Maria Moors Cabot Award, Pictures of the Year International, National Press Photographers Association, the Dorothea Lange/Paul Taylor Prize, the Mother Jones Award for Social Documentary Photography. Her photography has been exhibited internationally in venues such as Visa pour l’Image in Perpignan, France; Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City; the Guangdong Museum of Art in Guangzhou, China among many others.
Neo Ntsoma
Neo Ntsoma is an award winning photographer, educator and consultant whose photos have appeared in renowned newspapers, magazines and books as well as exhibitions worldwide. In 2004, Ntsoma became the first female recipient of the Mohamed Amin Award, the CNN African Journalist of the Year Photography Prize. Ntsoma is also the recipient of the National Geographic All Roads Photography Award and the co-author of ‘Women by Women’, a book on 50 years of women’s photography in South Africa commissioned by the Department of Arts and Culture and published by Wits University Press. In 2006, she was named one of the ‘100 Most Influential Women’ by Africa’s largest media group, Media24, and in both 2004 and 2006 Cosmopolitan magazine included her in their top thirty “Awesome Women” list. In 2019, she was featured in the Mail & Guardian bulletin of Top 100 Women Changing South Africa.
Marilyn Stafford
Marilyn Stafford was born in 1925 in Cleveland, Ohio, USA and her first introduction to photography was photographing Albert Einstein. From then on her career took her across the World, living first in Paris, where, with the encouragement and guidance of her friends Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson she became an internationally published photographer. Marilyn’s work spans continents and covers a variety of subjects from street scenes, portraits, refugees and tribal peoples to international fashion. After living and working in France, Italy, Lebanon and India she made her home in England in the mid-Sixties, where she was one of a handful of women photographers working on Fleet Fleet who paved the way for todays women in an industry once a male preserve. In 2017 the Marilyn Stafford FotoReportage Award for women photographers was set up in association with FotoDocument in her honour.
Melanie Friend
Melanie Friend worked as a photojournalist before embarking on long-term projects resulting in exhibitions & books. Her exhibition on Kosovo, Homes and Gardens: Documenting the Invisible (1996) toured for five years, including shows in USA & Sweden. Friend’s book No Place Like Home: Echoes from Kosovo (2001) was reviewed internationally. Border Country, focusing on immigration detainees, was first shown at Belfast Exposed gallery in 2007 & toured until 2010. Her new work The Home Front, which engages with the culture of militarisation in the UK, was first shown at Impressions Gallery in 2013 & is now touring; the accompanying book was published by Dewi Lewis Publishing in association with Impressions Gallery. Friend is Reader in Photography in the School of Media, Film and Music at University of Sussex.
Cesar da Luz
César Santos da Luz is an artist researcher and community organiser, an experienced community arts facilitator & reflective practitioner. He was awarded an MA from the University of Brighton in Photography. His artistic practice interrogates the role of photography in relation to memory, diaspora and family stories. He uses found photographs and family’s photographic archives as mnemonic reminders that activate, imagine and reinvent, individual and collective memory, strengthening the link between present and past. As both European and African, his work is intended to confront issues of erasure and cultural negotiation. Self-narratives that pose questions anchored in problematics around migration and diaspora. He has a Level 3 Teaching qualification.
Poppy Berry
Poppy Berry is a portrait photographer although she covers an assortment of subjects. For over 15 years she has worked as a commercial photographer. Clients include The Times, Observer, Guardian, Washington Post, FT and Scotsman, Design and Advertising agencies, BBC Magazines, Hodder & Stoughton, Hachette, and Orion Publishing. Among corporate clients are JPMorgan & Citibank. Her subjects range from actors, writers, artists and bankers to landscapes, interiors and farmers, not forgetting children and the odd animal. She has a Level 3 Teaching qualification.
Francesca Moore
Francesca Moore is a freelance photographer whose personal work stems from interests in people and the environment. With an MSc in Biological Photography and Imaging, Francesca draws on her scientific background to portray humanitarian, social and environmental issues. Past projects include a documentary project on the effect of EU legislation on traditional Romanian subsistence farmers at the point of Romania joining the EU. Francesca is currently working on the Arts Council funded project Bhopal: Facing 30, that portrays the site of the 1984 Bhopal disaster today, and of the people that continue to be affected 30 years on. Francesca has a Level 3 Teaching qualification.
Caroline Cortizo
Caroline Cortizo has worked with award winning photographers and major photography publishing companies for over 16 years before founding Shifting Pixels. Within post production she has a great track record of efficiency, delivering projects on budget and on brief; the key to her success is to listen to customers and work hand in hand to deliver their vision. During the course of her career she has also become a truly knowledgable and professional archivist with expertise in all areas of digital and film management. Within publishing Caroline is the go-to person for CMYK profiling helping photographers and publishers alike.
Samantha Beckett
Samantha Beckett BA studied her Photography Bachelor’s degree at Westminster University and had a successful career working for top flight advertising photographers before founding Shifting Pixels. Samantha understands the needs of the photographer and the demands of the industry to always deliver meticulous post production no matter the budget whilst providing a great service. She is also specialist in exhibition print management having produced shows for high profile photographers including Tim Flach, Linda McCartney and Mary McCartney both nationally and internationally; she is highly regarded for her quality control and eye for detail.
Chris Cousins
Chris Cousins is an award-winning, multi-disciplined designer for print, digital and broadcast. With a background in print and editorial design for several national newspapers, Chris branched out in 2006, using his skills as a 3D artist to enter the expanding digital realm. As a designer of live visuals he has worked with major artists such as Elton John, Queen, The Rolling Stones, Fat Boy Slim and ACDC, and for clients such as BlackBerry, Nokia, BP, Disney and Virgin. Chris has ventured into the wider areas of film production, as an on-set vfx supervisor, technical director and post-production specialist. He currently freelances and collaborates internationally from sunny Brighton.