VII

Location Midwest, WY, USA
Warsaw, Poland
Paris, France
New York, NY, United States
Yerevan, Armenia
Netherlands
Oslo, Norway
Sarajevo, Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Nairobi County, Kenya
Berkeley, CA, United States
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Tomas Van Houtryve / Paris, France

Tomas van Houtryve is an artist, photographer and author who engages critical issues around the world. His major works interweave contemporary concepts, investigative journalism and metaphor, occupying the intersection between art and pure documentary. Many of his projects push the technical limits of photography, from 19th century chemical processes to thermal imaging and Augmented Reality.

Van Houtryve’s work is included in the permanent collections of the International Center of Photography Museum (ICP), the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago (MoCP). He is the author of the book Behind the Curtains of 21st Century Communism. His groundbreaking Blue Sky Days series about America’s drone wars was published in Harper’s in 2014 as the largest photo portfolio in the magazine’s 164-year history.

Van Houtryve has been honored with over a dozen top awards, including the ICP Infinity Award, World Press Photo, POY Photographer of the Year and the Bayeux Prize for War Correspondents. He is frequently invited for public speaking engagements and has appeared on the BBC, CNN, MSNBC, ARTE and France 5. He is a CatchLight Pulitzer Fellow has been a member of VII Agency since 2010.

California Drought
House boats are seen squeezed between the expanding exposed shoreline of Bidwell Canyon on Lake Oroville in Northern California. Lake Oroville is California's second largest reservoir, and it is shown 70% empty as a result of the state's severe drought.
Blue Sky Days
Blue Sky Days series — People exercising in central Philadelphia. As an unnamed senior U.S. government official said to the New York Times in May 2012, “three guys doing jumping jacks” might for the CIA constitute sufficient evidence of a terrorist training camp—an allusion to policies whereby unidentified persons overseas who exhibit so-called signature behaviors are targeted in “signature strikes.”
Blue Sky Days
Blue Sky Days series — A public park is seen from above in San Francisco. California is a major center for the development and manufacture of military UAVs—General Atomics builds its Predators and Reapers in the state—and the Bay Area in particular is a hub of the expanding consumer-drone market.
Blue Sky Days
Blue Sky Days series — Baseball practice in Montgomery County, Maryland. According to records obtained from the FAA, which issued 1,428 domestic drone permits between 2007 and early 2013, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Navy have applied for drone authorization in Montgomery County.
Blue Sky Days
Blue Sky Days series — Students are seen in a schoolyard in El Dorado County, California. In 2006, a drone strike on a religious school in the village of Chenegai reportedly killed up to 69 Pakistani children.
Borderline North Korea
Borderline North Korea series —The "Peace Dam" is seen in Hwacheon, South Korea. The preventive dam was built 35 km downstream from North Korea's Imnam Dam, which is seen as a threat that could kill thousands of people in South Korea if the water held back by the dam was suddenly released by accident or as a deliberate attack by the North Koreans. In 2005, South Korea completed the construction of the Peace Dam, at a cost of $429 million US Dollars, to protect downstream populations from a potential flood from the North. So far, the risk remains hypothetical and and dam's reservoir is empty.
Borderline North Korea
Borderline North Korea series — A South Korean solider looks over the DMZ from a guard position on top of Observation Post 717, on the edge of the North Korean border near Goseong, South Korea.
Behind the Curtains of 21st Century Communism
Behind the Curtains series — The Korean Workers' Party monument is seen through curtains in Pyongyang, North Korea.
Behind the Curtains of 21st Century Communism
Behind the Curtains series — The barrel of a tank and various diagrams of tank systems decorate a classroom in Pyongyang, North Korea.
Behind the Curtains of 21st Century Communism
Behind the Curtains series — An attendant stands near the tracks as a metro train arrives in the station in the subway of Pyongyang, North Korea.
Behind the Curtains of 21st Century Communism
Behind the Curtains series — A North Korean woman loads a pistol for firing practice in Pyongyang, North Korea.
Behind the Curtains of 21st Century Communism
Behind the Curtains series — A Korean woman carries a bouquet of yellow flowers down the escalator into the Pyongyang metro subway, North Korea.
Behind the Curtains of 21st Century Communism
Behind the Curtains series — A man looks at an exhibit behind a red curtain inside the Ho Chi Minh Museum in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Behind the Curtains of 21st Century Communism
Behind the Curtains series — Nabin Pun, a Maoist rebel soldier of the People's Liberation Army, raises the communist flag from a tree above the village of Rukumkot, Nepal.
Behind the Curtains of 21st Century Communism
Behind the Curtains series — An all girls group of Young Communist League members walks past a statue of Chairman Mao Zedong in front of the Yan'an Revolutionary Memorial Hall in Yan'an, China. Yan'an is promoted as the "Revolutionary Holy Land" and offers a number of museums, monuments and other "Red Tourism" sites supported by the Chinese government.
Behind the Curtains of 21st Century Communism
Behind the Curtains series — A Maoist rebel soldier wearing a Britney Spears t-shirt stands among a battalion of other soldiers of the People's Liberation Army during a drill in a schoolyard in the village of Gairigaon, Nepal.
Behind the Curtains of 21st Century Communism
Behind the Curtains series — A nurse pushes her son's bicycle as he walks along side in Cienfuegos, Cuba.
Peru Mine Eats City
The open-pit mine operated by Volcan is seen in the center of the city of Cerro de Pasco, Peru, photographed from a hot air balloon.
Peru Mine Eats City
Children play in a playground bordering contaminated mine tailings in the Paragsha neighborhood of Cerro de Pasco, Peru.
Castaways of the Marshall Islands
A child looks through the window frame of a partially destroyed abandoned home on the Pacific shore of Ebeye, Marshall Islands. Over 12,000 people live on the tiny overcrowded island of 36 hectares. The islanders relocated to Ebeye from their original homes because the U.S. military leases those areas for ballistic missile testing. Other current residents of Ebeye moved from islands which were contaminated by U.S. nuclear bomb tests. Infrastructure, housing and sanitation on Ebeye are deplorable.