Dispatches

The VII Ecosystem

The VII ecosystem is a group of organizations built around ideas initially developed between 1999 and 2001 when media production, distribution, and publishing models were evolving in exciting and challenging new ways. The VII ecosystem continually evolves and is currently involved in producing and distributing non-fiction visual stories and diversifying the pool of storytellers through media and journalism training, mentoring and development.

The VII Ecosystem started with the VII Photo Agency (VII), created in September 2001. The application to create the VII Foundation was made in the same year. The foundation acquired VII in May 2023. VII was created to represent the work of independent photographers who worked with the press, NGOs and supra-governmental organisations to produce image-based stories. The VII Foundation is a non-profit structure created to explore and support long-form storytelling on fundamental issues like the environment, human rights and food insecurity and to support tuition-free media training and education in the Majority World through its academy. The VII Academy, based in Arles, France and Sarajevo, Bosnia, was created with the generous support of Jennifer Stengaard Gross and her family to work in the visual media education and training environment to provide tuition-free education to young journalists in countries and communities where there is little media education and where the need for world-class reporting is paramount. I am the co-founder and CEO of The VII Foundation, founder of the VII Academy and one of the architects and co-founders of the VII Photo Agency.

VII Photo Agency

VII evolved from conversations in the field with several photographers in the late 1990s. The first of these was with Gilles Peress in a Toyota Land Cruiser during the war in Kosovo in 1999; they were provoked by a desire to have more impact and control over my professional life. These conversations crystallised when Saba Press Photos, my Agency at the time, was sold to Bill Gates. I was in Vietnam and flew across the South China Sea to meet John Stanmeyer in his studio in Hong Kong. We sketched a plan and called Alexandra Boulat, who was on assignment in Indonesia. The three of us decided to go it alone and create our own Agency with the help of Alex’s mother, Annie Boulat, a well-known agent in Paris. Christopher Morris, James Nachtwey and Antonin Kratochvil soon joined us, and Ron Haviv made seven.

VII was born. Capitalised using ATM withdrawals from the seven founding members, VII went small and photographer-owned, believing in the power and energy of collective effort when everyone else seemed to be going big and corporate. It remains a disruptive and innovative business unafraid to swim against the prevailing currents. Founded a few days before 9/11 and defined by the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Middle East, VII is now a storied photo agency and has turned its gaze far from the frontline of its foundation. It has earned a reputation for uncompromising photography immersed in the profound issues of today. It leads the industry in innovating new representation methods and enhancing its members' professional lives. VII photographers and filmmakers are as likely to focus on race, gender, and identity as they are on migration or conflict. Amplifying local voices and addressing the complex political, environmental, and social questions facing families everywhere, VII places great value in the power of images to tell important stories and connect directly to its audience. The members of VII are motivated by issues and are proud to elevate those issues above the cult of the image or the cult of the photographer. in 2023 VII was acquired by the VII Foundation and is now part of the non-profit ecosystem.

The VII Foundation

The idea for the VII Foundation originated when I understood how Foundations could be used during the Balkan wars to support the work of photographers and writers. When VII was founded, I knew that one day there would be a benefit in creating a non-profit that my colleagues and I could use. It was evident that the media was in freefall at that time. Magazine assignments were still relatively easily found because our clients needed to cover the wars in which the photographers of VII were engaged. Ironically the digital revolution that enabled us to build our Agency also precipitated a catastrophic loss in advertising revenue for our clients. We knew they could not sustain support for our long-form projects for much longer. I knew that building an independent non-profit model that was more engaged in advocacy and with a more sophisticated approach to the issues we were interested in was required. Ron Haviv and I put the paperwork in motion, and we received non-profit status for the Foundation after two years. Still, we focussed our energy on the VII Photo Agency until 2010. The VII Foundation has now evolved into an independent, non-profit media and educational organisation engaged in support for documentary practice that addresses complex social, economic, and human rights issues and vocational media and journalism education. It works on significant film, education, and mixed media projects in partnership with photographers, authors, and educators worldwide.

The VII Academy

The idea for the VII Academy came initially from teaching workshops in Asia and Africa. These experiences were further developed as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard and through my work at the Program for Narrative & Documentary Practice, which I created with Sam James at Tufts University in 2010. After experimenting with various forms of teaching media practice and journalism and working with students from many different backgrounds, it seemed clear that creating an environment to train and mentor a new generation of media practitioners from communities that were ordinarily unable to access media training was critical. Who better to tell the story of global warming than people from the communities living with the consequences first-hand? Who better to talk about African economic development than Africans?

The VII Academy was made to promote, teach, and foster high-quality international journalism to emerging professionals and students on scholarship from the Majority World and underrepresented communities in G20 countries. We train them in media practice, visual journalism, narrative, ethics, business, and entrepreneurship, thereby democratising the information narrative. The VII Academy is funded by Jennifer Stengaard Gross and Peter Stengaard of the Blue Chip Foundation and The William, Jeff, and Jennifer Gross Family Foundation, who are committed to education and providing opportunities for young men and women from the Majority World. With campuses in two strategic locations, the VII Academy offers the highest standard of education in photography, journalism ethics, business practice, and real-world training. Through scholarships to established programs, on-campus seminars and workshops, and events like 2019’s “VII in Sarajevo: Festival of the Image” and “Nature Through Her Eyes",” the VII Academy creates a valuable mentorship network between seasoned veterans and talented and committed young photographers.