Last day of school

May 18, 2023

Marko Risovic has turned his lens to his home country of Serbia to illustrate this trend. The images are strikingly different from what one would expect from a typical school photograph — it’s a decrepit environment and there are hardly any smiles. Far from the ideal happy atmosphere to foster happy childhoods and promote learning.

Recent Stories

The losses to be never ever forgiven
No words and tears are enough. Evgeny Maloletka [https://www.evgenymaloletka.com/], a Ukrainian freelance photojournalist based in Kyiv, tells the story of the Mariupol attack via the death of a small girl who was brutally attacked with her parents. A list of answers to the questions "What can I do to help?" [https://www.mnngful.com/stand-with-ukraine] Reached Ukrainian friends, checked the sources and give you a list of options, direct links to organizations where to donate. The list is bei
Evgeny Maloletka
Fire Corps
The concept (and practice) of voluntary work brings out the best of people. Volunteers not only don’t get paid, they also give their time, passion and effort to a cause that they believe is worth fighting for. Johan Brooks presents us with the story of the Fire Corps — groups
Johan Brooks
A Rural Lifeline
Joanne Coates is a photographic storyteller from a working-class background. Based between Yorkshire and Scotland, she depicts everyday stories with a documentary approach. Apart from this, Coates has also done work in the commercial sector with clients including the BBC, Vice, Financial Times, The Guardian, and more. Coronavirus: A Rural Lifeline in North Yorkshire shows how rural communities, away from the hub of the big city, managed to cope with isolation when social distancing became the n
Joanne Coats
Exemplary Home
Exemplary Home is a documentary work exploring the north-western part of rural Bulgaria. It aims to illustrate the effects of rapid urbanisation, progressive globalisation and corruption on the most vulnerable parts of Bulgarian society.
Yassen Grigorov
The body keeps the score
The Body Keeps the Score takes its mysterious title from a book he found on his mother’s shelf when he was clearing out her house after her death. It refers to how trauma, something most would consider to have purely psychological consequences, can actually be internalised and transpire within the physical body rather than just the mind.
David Lintern
Submerged Landscapes
According to the Climate Central app, Thanet, the UK is likely to become an island again within the next decade. In this ongoing project, King documented the affected areas before they are submerged, using the materiality of the sea within the production of the work.
Melanie King
Balaganza
A spotlight on the drag queens in the only gay bar in Lithuania. Forcedly hidden from the public eye in the post-Soviet country, these performances seem too deliberately shocking for the part of the society.
Milda Vysniauskaite
I want it all to go back to the way it was before
Pippa Healy is a photographer, artist and printmaker based in London. Her raw, diaristic practice responds to events that have occurred in her life, therefore it has a unique sense of authenticity. Healy’s work references loss, grief, longing and violence and it’s rather difficult to pigeonhole as every
Pippa Healy
100 days before conscription
Young Cypriots at months before unavoidable military service. Do they come to celebrate the upcoming life milestone or to protest against forced consription?
Max J
Southtown
Tommy Lee Grimmer is a young photographer based in Great Yarmouth, East England, which is, in fact, the part of the country which is the furthest East. His project Southtown explores his hometown, the area where he grew up, its physical environment and community as well as the change of his perspective from a child to now an adult. © Tommy Lee Grimmer | SouthtownThe text accompanying Southtown is nostalgic and evocative of innocent childhood — Kickpost, a game similar to hide and seek, late ni
Tommy Lee Grimmer

mnngful Originals

mnngful Members

Stuart Freedman
UK
,

Commercial, editorial and travel photographer based between New Delhi and London working worldwide on a range of consumer brands with/without art direction.

James Hopkirk
UK
,
London

Documentary photographer, journalist. Began his career as a local newspaper reporter in Kent before moving to The Sunday Times and ITV. Spent six years as Editor of IdeasTap, a charity that helped young people to build careers in the arts and media. As a freelance writer and photographer James worked on stories in Afghanistan, Benin, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, India, Rwanda, Somalia and Uganda.

jose artur macedo
PT
,
Ponte de Sor

Self-taught photographer, based in Ponte de Sor (PT)

Philip Butler
UK
,
Worcestershire

Documentary photographer focusing primarily on capturing the remains of Great Britain’s inter-war architecture. Philip has published two books focusing on this work; ‘Odeon Relics’ (2019 on ADM) and London Tube Stations 1924-1961 (2023 on FUEL).

Vera Hadzhiyska
UK
,
Portsmouth

Multi-disciplinary artist and curator based in Portsmouth, England. Her practice is informed by the study of migration, cultural and national identity, history and collective memory. Her work begins autobiographically, tracing family narratives and shared traumas. Through the use of photography, archival documents, audio and video installations Hadzhiyska examines historical and political events in Bulgaria and Eastern Europe, their impact on people’s lives and identity.

Callum O'Keefe
UK
,
Bristol

Documentary photographer focused on the relation between people and place. Building the base of my portfolio on live music, he has recently graduated with a First Class Honours in Photography from The University West of England.

Sean McDonnell
UK
,
Londoon

I've been practising street photography since the 1980s. A south Londoner by birth pre-occupied with the West End in black and white on film. Lockdown was an epiphany for me. I started documenting my neighbourhood to raise money for food banks with books and working with local community groups.

Verity Adriana
UK
,

Visual artist who uses light, installation and photography to investigate the phenomenology of the metaphysical and existential. She has been a practicing and exhibiting artist for over a decade. Adriana was born in Hull, UK, and grew up around the world wherever her mother found work, including Spain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. Adriana returned to Hull independently at the age of 14 to see herself through her final years at school and went onto establish herself in the regional arts community.

Pengkuei Ben Huang
CA
,
Toronto

Documentarty photographer based in Toronto, Canada. His early interest in history and geopolitics inspired him to undertake international politics studies at Pitzer College in Claremont, California in the US. Upon discovering photography as his passion, he relocated to San Francisco and earned his BFA at Academy of Art University. He was selected as one of the finalists for The Scotiabank Prize in 2007 at Magnum Workshop Toronto under the mentorship of the renowned photographer Larry Towell. Since then he has taken an interest in utilizing photography as a medium to form a visual narrative that explores the relationship between humans and their surrounding environments.

Edward Thompson
UK
,

Documentary photographer focused on various subjects over the years covering environmental issues, socio-political movements, subcultures, everyday life and the consequences of war. He had a life-changing experience with an early apprenticeship with the Russian photographer Sergey Chilikov, whom he met at the Arles Photography Festival in 2001. That summer Ed stayed with Sergey in Paris and learnt the value of shooting everyday life, eating fried fat and drinking red wine. Sergeys friend Gueorgui Pinkhassov told him how photographing the everyday can allow you to touch at something great. And it did.

Milda Vysniauskaite
LT
,

Designer and photographer, after her studies at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, she continues her professional career back in Lithuania. She works with themes of gender, LGBTQ+ and masculinity. The main subject of her photographs is the male gender and social constructs around it.

Stewart Weir
UK
,

"I began my journey into the world of photography aged 15 when I received a Pentax ME Super camera from my father for Christmas. I was hooked but drifted away from photography after leaving school. I returned to photography in 1993 after being uninspired by having a ‘normal’ job. I'm self taught and have an attitude of ‘just do it’ regardless of people saying you can't. Over my career I've shot most genres of photography from sport to documentary, portraits, weddings, travel, news, magazine and conflict. I've produced several long term stories ranging from 2 to 10 years."

John Angerson
UK
,

Documentary and portraiture photographer, based in London He started his career in the early 1990s, covering the fall of the Berlin Wall and the changing geopolitical landscape of Eastern Europe. Since then, his work has continued to explore the different languages of documentary photography, focusing on how specific communities form, shift and develop. His projects have garnered critical acclaim and have been exhibited at major art institutions in the UK and overseas.

Karin van de Wiel
NL
,
Amsterdam

Photographer and journalist focsued on topics of people in relation to place In the absence of bodies, the implied human presence questions the notion of otherness and belonging.

Sushavan Nandy
IN
,
Kolkata

Documentary photographer based in Kolkata, working primarily with Barcroft Media. His work focuses on issues of climate change, human crisis, society, and culture. His works have been published in various international publications which include The Guardian, Daily Mail, CNN among many. Sushavan lives in Naihati town in West Bengal, India and is currently working on long-term photographic works.

Stories worth seeing

mnngful is a platform supporting independent documentary photography & photojournalism.

Thanks to passionate storytellers, we learn about matters that otherwise stay neglected. Stories that matter, but have not been covered enough are captured and told by passion-driven photographers and journalists.

They create because they care about the world they live in and tell us about matters beyond our eyesight.Their work is often driven by pure enthusiasm, fuelled by own beliefs and dreams for a better world. That's why such independent work is worth special attention.

mnngful is here to support the meaningful stories they tell.

Read more