Photojournalism Now: Friday Round Up – 31 July 2020

This week on Photojournalism Now: Friday Round Up – the latest book from FotoEvidence, He Threw The Last Punch Too Hard by Los Angeles-based Hannah Kozak. Plus the recipients of the annual Getty Images’ Reportage Grant series are announced.

Book:

He Threw The Last Punch Too Hard – Hannah Kozak

One night, Hannah Kozak’s mother Rachel Zarco, “a beautiful, passionate, vivacious, and fiery Guatemalan Sophia Loren-type brunette,” was brutally beaten by her second-husband.

“My mother’s second husband with his dog, Rocky, in their backyard.”

Rachel incurred permanent brain damage. At the age of 41 she was moved into an assisted living facility and life, as she and her family knew it, was over. (Below: Rachel circa 1970).

For the past decade Hannah has documented her mother’s journey. He Threw The Last Punch Too Hard shares their story, one that Hannah hopes may “inspire other women to leave an abusive relationship, before it’s too late.”

“The report from the second hospital my mother went to during the summer of 1974 states she had a “severe subarachnoid hemorrhage,” which is a life threatening type of stroke caused by bleeding into the space surrounding the brain. As a result she had a right hemiparesis, meaning paralysis on her right side.”

“My mother being taken to the emergency hospital for pneumonia, February 27, 2013.”

Autobiographical and biographical, Hannah weaves metaphor and abstraction with documentary form to create a powerful, heartbreaking and distressing narrative of the lived experience of domestic violence. It is a brave body of work. Yet despite the harrowing, visceral nature of the images and the ever-present cognisance of personal tragedy, there is beauty in the relationship between mother and daughter, where once the carer is now the cared for.

“Self-portrait Polaroid with Burn. May 11. 2018”

“I’m not embarrassed anymore about what happened in our family,” says Hannah. “Instead, I have become an advocate about domestic violence. We are here to reach out and touch others, not hide family secrets. It serves no one to lie about the white elephant in the living room.”

Hannah is a finalist of the inaugural FotoEvidence W Award (2019). The book is available on the FotoEvidence website or via Amazon.

Awards:

Getty Images Reportage Grants series

Eight photojournalists from Brazil, Germany, Iran, Colombia, Lebanon, Italy, Peru and China, have been awarded $5,000 each for their work covering important COVID-19 stories in the annual Getty Images Reportage grant round. It’s an impressive selection. Congratulations to the winners!

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