VII Foundation Documentary Photography
Funding original documentary work and supporting community-led, aspiring artists in support of global environmental, social, health, and human rights issues
What They Do
A group of engaged and committed photographers concerned with the world and the lives of others. The VII Association supports projects that create a dialogue about environmental, social, health and human rights issues that are of urgent concern in our time with an ambition to effect change and seek solutions. They focus particularly on issues that are given little attention elsewhere. While they expect most projects to be media related, they will support projects that are related to the stories they cover whether they are media based or not by providing non-profit and fiscal sponsorship for fundraising.
The
VII Association was established by VII Photo Agency, created in 2001 by seven of the world’s leading photojournalists. Recognized in American Photo’s “100 Most Important People in Photography,” the agency has earned a reputation as one of the most dynamic and innovative organizations in the world of photojournalism with a growing number of awards for photography, film, and multimedia. Both VII Photo Association and VII Photo continue to build effective partnerships with the world’s leading NGO’s (Non Governmental Organizations).
What drives the photographers of VII Photo Agency and what unites them is a sense that, in the act of communication, the seeds of hope and resolution inform even the darkest records of inhumanity; reparation is always possible; despair is never absolute.
Blue Chip Foundation and
VII Foundation
documented the final year of the
Millennium Villages Project in 2015. Together, they created a book and five short films to coincide with the release of the final statistics of the project in the hopes to humanize the research. A series of selected photographs were exhibited at the United Nations and will continue to travel around the world to educate others on the economic model designed to alleviate extreme poverty in developing nations. In the next two years, Blue Chip Foundation will fund a new documentary work called “Peace.” The book will examine the last one hundred years of the world’s efforts to create peace by revisiting the scenes of recent conflict. The photographers will explore the consequences of peace and try to understand why some attempts at peace succeed and others fail. They will challenge the conventionally held wisdom that peace is an outcome worth seeking at all costs and seek to understand how to answer the question - How do we make better peace that benefits the people who have to live with the consequences?
Jennifer Gross serves on the board of
VII Foundation .
Current VII Foundation Projects
VII Foundation working with the The William, Jeff, and Jennifer Gross Family Foundation .
VII Foundation is currently developing an academy in the old city of Perpignan, France considered to be the home of photojournalism in that country. Perpignan currently supports the world's premier photojournalism festival and a leading historical photo archive. Students will have the opportunity to enroll in a one-semester term dedicated to vocational instruction for Asian, African, and Latin American male and female storytellers as well as the indigent living in Europe and the United States.
The curriculum covers media ethics, research, visual literacy, and narrative construction and development. Coursework also includes marketing, branding, communication, accounting and finance, business planning, and proposal writing.
The building will accommodate media equipment and audio-video facilities including a world class studio that will facilitate still and video photography, analogue darkrooms, digital printers, video and audio editing facilities, gallery space, and teaching classrooms. Range-finder cameras, medium- and large-format, digital, and analogue systems will all be made available for students to develop their craft.
VII Foundation also offers a mentor program for students that provides access to additional facilities and resources that are available through the foundation’s network of partners, media contacts, and journalism professionals. The Academy is designed to reach a diverse population of students in geographical locations spread throughout the developing world that exists beyond major metropolitan hubs in an effort to expand alternative voices and wider perspectives.
Blue Chip Foundation and VII Foundation seek to provide scholarships for up to twenty students from economically challenged communities each semester. These scholarships will range from $20- to $25,000 depending on campus and course variables. This funding will support tuition fees, travel, accommodation, and stipend.
VII Foundation and Blue Chip Foundation are dedicated to educating new voices that will be responsible for reporting from all corners of the world and especially from those areas that have limited access to media resources and infrastructure.
Generation Human Rights (GenHR): US High School Tour and Africa Exhibition
Generation Human Rights (GenHR) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1998 that operates globally. The organization is dedicated to engaging and empowering youth at the local level about charting a world that is free from human rights abuses and genocide.
GenHR has developed a curriculum that is connected with the
Millennium Villages Project (MVP). The
MVP curriculum includes a classroom component and exhibition tour that is constructed on a school bus that travels across the United States on a multi-school tour illustrating the nature of extreme poverty in Africa, specifically in Ghana, Senegal, Rwanda, and Ethiopia. The content educates students about the methods that MVP has developed in collaboration with the villages located in these countries to provide solutions to combating poverty. Students will have the opportunity to analyze the interconnected facets of extreme poverty to develop a better understanding and empathic awareness of the challenges facing the Millennium Villages as well as the potential solutions.
Participating schools will have access to a photography exhibit, films, and six educational mini-units that will explore MVP’s goal of eradicating extreme poverty in Africa. The lesson plans will emphasize MVP’s mission of providing training and resources to communities to achieve the outcome of sustainable development.
VII Foundation supports projects that explore environmental, social, health, and human rights issues of our time that are of urgent concern and demand solutions and positive change.
The foundation’s Peace Project is a narrative of the world’s leading war photojournalists, photographers, and editorial correspondents examining how peace is achieved and what separates enduring peace from failed attempts at ending these prolonged conflicts.
The project examines the conventionally held wisdom that treats peace as an outcome worth seeking at all costs. The individuals involved in the project seek an answer to the question – How do we make better peace that benefits the people who have to live with the consequences?
The Peace Project will examine the countries of Bosnia & Herzegovina, Northern Ireland, Lebanon, Colombia, Cambodia, and Rwanda. The project will include a book, documentary episodic, and educational materials for high school and college level students. Exhibitions in Paris will be held in 2020. The documentary episodic will be produced in partnership with ABC featuring individual episodes devoted to each one of the examined countries.
