Nine female photographers embark on an epic photographic road trip along the length of the Danube river in a truck, converted into a mobile gallery.

Danube Revisited – The Inge Morath Truck Project

Danube Revisited is a photographic road trip accompanied by a traveling exhibition in which nine female photographers will convert a 7.5T truck into a mobile gallery and drive it through ten countries along the Danube River from Germany to the Black Sea. The exhibition will feature the work of renowned Magnum photographer Inge Morath, who photographed life along the Danube before and after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

WHO WE ARE:

Olivia Arthur Lurdes R. Basolí Kathryn Cook (UK, 1980) (Spain, 1981) (USA, 1979) Mimi Chakarova Jessica Dimmock Claudia Guadarrama (Bulgaria, 1977) (USA, 1978) (México, 1976)

Claire Martin Emily Schiffer Ami Vitale (Australia, 1980) (USA, 1980) (USA, 1971)

The nine of us are recipients of the Inge Morath Award, a grant given annually by the members of Magnum Photos to a female photographer under 30 years of age. We will retrace Morath’s journey along the Danube, producing new work, and promoting dialogue about documentary photography through night projections, artist talks, photography forums, and cultural exchange with institutions. With the river as a collective subject, we hope to connect with the region that meant so much to Inge Morath.

Our core motivation is to honour Inge Morath's legacy by supporting the under-represented female voice in documentary photography. We have created a project that is for women, by women, and in the legacy of a pioneering woman. In line with this vision, Danube Revisited is offering select female photographers in the Danube region exhibition and publishing opportunities as a part of the project.

Danube Revisited - The Inge Morath Truck Project, provides a unique opportunity to amass a new collection of visual stories that examine contemporary culture along the river. Approaching our shared subject as a collective, we hope to discover the region that meant so much to Inge Morath throughout her life, the River itself becoming a metaphor for the kind of long-term, sustained international projects to which we have devoted our careers. We will each have a subjective approach with our photography, and together with our selection of local women’s photography this will offer a unique and very rich representation of Europe’s most mythical river.

The Outcome: The project will culminate with a large-scale exhibition, which pairs Morath’s Danube work with images created by the award winners and local women, a feature documentary film about the tour, and a book. The exhibition and documentary is sponsored by Fundación Telefónica, Spain, and will debut as an official exhibition of Photo España before traveling to a number of other countries. The book will be produced and published by Fotohof, Austria, who coordinated Inge’s tour of the Danube in the 1990’s, and published her monograph “Donau”.

The Partners: The Inge Morath Truck Project is a collaboration between the nine award-winning photographers, The Inge Morath Foundation (New York City, USA) and Fotohof Gallery (Salzburg, Austria), which facilitated Inge Morath’s journey along the Danube. We have also established support from the Magnum Foundation, The Institute for the Danube Region and Central Europe (IDM), Spedition Ebeling Truck Company (Germany), and Fundación Telefonica (Spain).

The Journey: The Inge Morath Truck Project is scheduled to tour for 5 weeks, from the 5th July to the 11th August 2014. Starting at Donaueschingen, the source of the river in Germany, the truck will work its way along the river to the final destination, the Black Sea. Every other day the truck will stop at a new destination along the river, where a partner institution or organization will host the project, opening the truck gallery to the general public, exhibiting open-air night projections as well as engaging the public in a variety of photo forums. The participating photographers will photograph their own personal projects relating to the river and the region around these scheduled events.

Map of our journey

The Truck: The “gallery-truck” concept enables the historic photographs from Inge Morath’s voyage along the Danube to be seen in large cities and small villages alike. Her work will be returned to the very villages where her photographs were taken, during and after the Soviet occupation, engaging communities with their own history.

Visualisation of the Gallery - Truck

The Talent: Between us we have been finalists and winners of almost every major award in photography and documentary film making including World Press Photo Awards, Magnum Foundation Emergency Funds, Nestor Almendros Awards for courage in filmmaking, the W. Eugene Smith award and The Aftermath Project grant, among others. Clients include National Geographic, New York Times Magazine, TIME Magazine, 60 minutes, Frontline, HBO to name a few. Our agency representation includes Magnum Agency, VII Photo, Agence VU, Panos Pictures and Oculi.

Inge Morath: Morath began photographing in 1951, and assisted Henri Cartier- Bresson as a researcher in 1953-54. She became one of the first female members of Magnum Agency in 1955. When Morath was in her early thirties, she set out to photograph life in all the countries along the Danube River, but was barred from entering many countries by the iron curtain, and was unable to complete her work. In 1993 Inge returned to photograph the former Soviet Countries and over a period of two years, she documented the impact this historical event had on individual’s daily lives.

Inge Morath 1923 –2002 jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj “I love voyages. Voyages where the going from one place to the other informs, allows one to go deeper. One day, in May of the year 1958, it became clear to me that to follow the Danube from its source to its end was one of those inevitable voyages.”

The Danube: People of the Danube region see the River in many different ways, and to make it more complicated, the image and importance of the Danube shifts from country to country. The Danube has always been one of the great symbols of Europe. Though it is not the world’s longest river, it connects more countries than any other river does. It is also one of the major geographical barriers of the region – broad, wild and responsible for many crucial floods. In Germany at its origin, the river is small, gentle and beautiful. The river is a romantic symbol. In Austria, Slovakia and Hungary the river is a nostalgic symbol of the disappeared Danube (Habsburg) empire. At one time it was considered a link to the “wild” Balkan countries, although with the opening of the EU this is no longer seen as exotic or exciting. In Croatia and Serbia you can still see the horrible vestiges of the Balkan wars at the beginning of the 1990’s. In Bulgaria and Romania, the river is very broad, and the natural border of the two countries. The river here is divisive, with only one bridge between these countries on a border that is 500km long. In the Ukraine the river again is seen as a connector, and is of great economic importance. www.danuberevisited.com [email protected]

SPONSORS IN KIND