Abir Abdullah
Location: Bangladesh
Spoken languages: Bangla, English

About
Abir Abdullah studied at the Bangladesh Photographic Institute and at the Pathshala South East Asian Academy where he took his diploma in photo- journalism and where now he is collaborating too. He followed up com- pleting the three-year seminar “Pleasure of Life '' supported by the World Press Photo. Abir worked as a freelance and as a staff photographer for the Drik Picture Library for several years.

Achievements & Awards
Abir’s pictures have been exhibited in Europe, South America, Asia and U.S. His work has been published by The New York Times, the Der Spiegel, The Guardian, the Newsweek, the New Internationalist, the Stern, the Geo-France, the International Herald Tribune and the Asiaweek. Among many awards and prizes are winning the 2001 Phaidon 55 photography competition, the first prize in South Asian Journalists' Association Photo Awards and the Asian Press Photo Contest.

Shahidul Alam
Location: Bangladesh
Spoken languages: Bangla, English

About
A globally reputed photographer, writer, curator and activist whose ongoing “A Struggle for Democracy”.  A former president of the Bangladesh Photographic Society, Alam set up the award winning Drik agency, the Bangladesh Photographic Institute and Pathshala, the South Asian Institute of Photography. He set up the Majority World Agency as well as the Chobi Mela Festival: the photography festival in Asia. He is a visiting professor at the University of Sunderland in the UK. His books include Nature's Fury (2007), My Journey as a Witness (2011) and Tide will Turn (2019). He was jailed for 107 days by the Bangladesh Government in 2018 for his activism.

Achievements & Awards
Honorary fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, Alam has chaired the World Press Photo. His work has been exhibited all over the word, including the White Chapel Gallery and the Tate Modern Gallery in London. Alam has been shown in MOMA in New York, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and was given the Shilpakala Award in 2015 (highest award for cultural activities), in 2018 the Humanitarian Award from the Lucie Awards. He was one of the persons of the year selected by Time Magazine in 2018.
 

Richa Bhavanam
Location: India
Spoken languages: Hindi, English

About
Richa was schooled in Centre for Learning – Bangalore (2011), where her interest for art, humanities, and naturally formed. She went on to study Philosophy at St. Stephen’s College– New Delhi (2014) and is now a free- lance photographer based out of Bangalore.
Her learning in Photography began with the medium of black and white film, in 2010. In 2014, she received the Neel Dongre awards/grants for excellence in photography. In 2018, she received the Sahapedia Frames Photography Grant.
Her photographs have been published in leading newspapers and online portals. She most enjoys working on themes connected to the humanities and nature.

Julio Etchart
Location: Singapore Spoken
languages: Spanish, Portuguese, English, French

About
Julio Etchart is a well-known photographer from Uruguay. Actually, he is in Singapore carrying out research on new media and participatory photography. Julio started to take pictures when he was fourteen thanks to his father’s camera. Now he is a photographer with more than 30 years of experience. He studied documentary photography at the Newport Art College with David Hurn the famous Magnum photographer that gave him the tools to become a professional and carry on. He uses photography as a powerful way to communicate ideas, emotions and feelings. As he said: “Photography expresses things in a very concise and powerful way”. He loves to take portraits and tell people's stories. He generally spends a long time with his pictures’ subjects attempting to empathize with them. He has a long working past with NGOs & the non-profit sector, working in remote areas.

Achievements & Awards
Julio has received numerous awards among which the Word Press Photo First Prize for environment issues, the UNICEF prize, many other NGOs prize and has been nominated photographer of the year a couple of times.

Aaron Sosa
Location: Uruguay
Spoken languages: Spanish, English

About
Aaron Sosa is a freelance photographer based in Panama City, Panama where he works serving international editorial and corporate clients. His work has been exhibited in over 90 gallery showings across Europe and Latin America. He is the recipient of numerous grants and awards for his documentary work and has served as an ambassador of the arts throughout Latin Ameri- ca on speaking tours and through teaching University-level workshops, most notably with the Latin American Kaleidoscope Project. In between assignments and travels, Sosa may be found roaming the streets with his Holga, up to his elbows in a fixer in his darkroom or working with children's NGOs to teach photography to disadvantaged youths in the slums of Caracas.
Aaron Sosa is available for any assignment national and international.

Javad Montazeri
Location: Norway
Spoken languages: English, Norwegian

About
Javad Montazeri is an Iranian born photojournalist graduated from the Azard University of Art in Iran. He worked for several years as a photographer and photo editor in Iran collaborating with international agencies like Reuters and World Picture News. His work has been published in magazines like Time, Newsweek, Observer, The guardian, The Sun, El Mundo, Der Spiegel, El Pais, L'express, Le Monde, Herald Tribune and Figaro.

Achievements & Awards
To his work Javad has received the Honorable mention from 1st Kaveh Golestan Press, the First prize from 6th Iranian Newspapers & Magazines Festival as the best photographer of the year, the honorable mention from 1st Iranian Students Festival, the Special prize from 4th Iranian International Photo Festival of the Child and Young Adult and the Special prize from 2nd Iranian Art Students Festi

Suchit Nanda
Location: India
Spoken languages: HIndi, English

About
Suchit Nanda lives in Mumbai (Bombay), India and has been fortunate to have had an opportunity to travel multiple times around the globe. His visits included some interesting & off beat locations. Some of the countries he has visited during these travels are: USA, Canada, UK, Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Australia, India and many more. While an IT professional with a strong background in computers having spent nearly 2 decades in the field of ICT, photography is a significant part of his life.  Suchit has held photography exhibitions in Cambodia, Bangladesh and India. Suchit writes for a number of publications and for a long time had a column in “Express Computer”. Suchit is very often invited internationally to conduct seminars/workshops and is frequently invited to give lectures on communications, Internet and other facets of computers.

Shehzad Noorani
Location: Pakistan
Spoken languages: Urdu, English,Bangla

About
Shehzad is a professional freelance photographer from Pakistan. He has worked as a freelance documentary photographer with a special focus on social issues since 1987, covering major crisis situations resulting from wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan and Uganda and natural calamities in Sri Lanka (tsunami), Iran (Bam earthquake) and Bangladesh (flood 1988 and 1998 and cyclone 1991 and 1993). He has also covered assignments in Cambodia, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Kenya, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Tajikistan, Thailand, Syria, Vietnam, Yugoslavia and Zambia. He has carried out numerous assignments including 'Changing Realities of HIV/AIDS, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand’ for UNICEF & UNAIDS.

Achievements & Awards
His work has won him the following awards –The Motherjones Internation- al Award for Documentary Photography (Fifty Crows), 2000, National Geographic - All Roads Photography Program, 2005 - Honorable Mention, UNICEF Photographer of the Year 2006 - 2nd Place and was selected for Moving Wall 15, by Open Society Institute, Soros Foundation, 2008

Neo Ntsoma
Location: South Africa
Spoken languages: Afrikaans, English

About
Neo Ntsoma is a photojournalist from South Africa. She began her studies at Cape Peninsula Technikon in 1992. As a black woman, she was one of the only three others in the profession and felt no doubt challenged. Like elsewhere in Africa, black women have always found themselves in front of the lens, rather than behind it and frequently portrayed as victims of patri- archy, tradition, violence and poverty. She wanted a life different to what her mother had lived.

Achievements & Awards
Neo has won several awards over the years, including being the first woman recipient of the CNN Africa Journalist Award for Photography in 2004.

Saiful Huq Omi
Location: Bangladesh
Spoken languages: Bangla, Urdu, Hindi, English

About
Saiful Huq Omi is a documentary photographer particularly committed to social and political issues. Saiful studied telecoms engineering and then took his diploma in photojournalism at the South East Asian Academy. In 2010 he participated in the Joop Swart Masterclass. To him photogra- phy is a way to change minds and to spread consciousness about social issues and global concerns. He firmly believes in the importance of telling a story from the inside “on his own way” as he said. This is what he came through with his photography, a way to tell about Bangladesh from the Bangladeshi’s eyes.

Achievements & Awards
Saiful has received a number of awards, including the All Roads National Geographic Award, and an emerging photographer’s grant from the Open Society Institute. His works have been published in Newsweek, Foto File USA, New York Times, New Internationalist, Time Magazine, The Guardian, The Economists ,Days Japan and Asian Photography and in the Arab News and in BBC.

Kishor K. Sharma
Location: Nepal
Spoken languages: Nepali, English, Hindi, Bangla

About
Kishor K. Sharma is a Nepalese freelance photojournalist. He studied Mass Communication and Journalism at the College of Journalism and Mass Communication in Kathmandu. Through his photography he attempts to explore and understand the human society’s heterogeneities. He believes in photography as a great visual means of communication able to take social issues to the front. He works mainly on social documentaries. People and portraits are his favorite shooting subjects. He has participat- ed in several competitions.

Achievements & Awards
Kishor has recently concluded a course on Visual Storytelling at the Danish School of Media and Journalism thanks to a fellowship from the Danish Ministry of Education.

Shehab Uddin
Location: Australia
Spoken languages: Bangla, English

About
Shehab Uddin is a Bangladeshi photographer and a photography teacher now based in Australia. He graduated in photojournalism at the Pathshala South East Asian Academy. He worked for more than 7 years as a newspaper’s photographer in The Daily Sangbad, then joined Drik where he worked until 2010. He is now doing his Doctorate of Visual Arts and works as a tutor at Queensland College of Art, Griffith University in Brisbane. He is interested mainly in documentary photography. His works are permanently exhibited at the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts (Japan), Dhaka Nagar Jadughar (Dhaka City Museum) and Liberation War Museum (Bangladesh).

Achievements & Awards
His work has been published in magazines like CPN, Time Journal of Photography, The POLITIKEN, USA Today, CBSnews, Time Online, The Guardi- an, Times daily, New Internationalist, Der Spiegel, Nepali Times and so on. He also gained a project fellowship from the Mangum foundation. Among his many awards and prizes are winning the Roads (Honorable Mention) National Geographic, WHO, Asahi Shimbun & IIPC, FIAP, HPA