AMI VITALE

Ami Vitale attended the University of North Carolina and took a course in International Studies, before working for Associated
Press as a picture editor in New York and Washington, DC. She worked overtime on the picture desk to get enough money to
make the break, initially basing herself in the Czech Republic, and working around Eastern Europe.

In 1995, she had visited her sister, then working for the Peace Corps in the tiny remote village of Dembel Jumpora in the east
of Guinea Bissau. A grant in 2000 from the Alexia Foundation for World Peace, Inc enabled her to return there to photograph in 2001.

The opportunity led her to realize that she wanted to show how the ordinary people of the majority world live, and to promote a
real understanding of other cultures. Vitale went intending to stay a couple of months, but ended up living in the village with the
people there for 6 months. She stayed with a woman and her children in a mud hut, shared their lives, living, eating, sleeping as
they did, and helped in their everyday tasks (finding an American education and upbringing had ill prepared her for many of these.)

Since Guinea Bissau, Vitale was based for several years in India, producing memorable work from Kashmir, Gujarat and elsewhere.
One of her most surreal works is from idyllic Dal Lake in Srinagar, Kashmir. The shikaras (gondolas) with their posts supporting
colored roofs have featured in many travelogues, and she captures them perfectly, reflected in the mirror-perfect water,
looking like some fleet of brightly decorated curiously rustic alien space fleet floating above the reflected clouds. Looking in
them brings us down to earth with a jolt, as we see the khakis of the Indian border security force, seated guns ready to hand as
they set of on patrol.

Now based in Barcelona, Vitale also has a contract with Getty Images, and has worked for a number of NGOs. Her pictures have
appeared in magazines around the world, including the major US publications such as Geo, Time, The New York Times, Newsweek,
National Geographic Adventure and more. Unsurprisingly she also has a very long list of awards, including the Canon Female
Photojournalist Grant, World Press Photo, National Press Photographers Association, POY International and many other awards.
One of them was a Magnum grant, given in honor of Inge Morath (1923-2002), the fine Austrian photojournalist.