Jodi Cobb, a staff field photographer for National Geographic, is the only woman to hold that position in its history. She has travelled through sixty-five countries, breaking gender and cultural barriers to document people and places on the edge of momentous change in some of the world’s most complex, impenetrable environments.
Cobb presents her work of the geisha to the public at Xposure 2023. She made a book out of her journey into the secret world of the geisha. it took her 6 months over a 3-year period to finish the project because it was difficult to get into their world, marking her as the first photographer to be allowed in.
She stated, during her interview with “Sharjah 24”, that the geisha world was off-limits. No one has seen their homes or what they do backstage. Cobb encounters various obstacles during her exploration impeding her progress. “Everybody said no, so I have to go to geisha by geisha, day by day, which is why it took 6 months,” Jodi Cobb said.
Cobb was able to finally pull through. She formed a good relationship with the geisha and had a really long interview with them.
Elisa Iannacone has worked as a photographer and cinematographer on six continents producing work for outlets such as Newsweek, National Geographic, and BBC. Elisa’s conceptual work is grounded in magical realism. She is fascinated by the realm of the imagination and pulls from her background in cinematography and film production to address serious global issues. She believes that art has the power to generate awareness, trigger change, and support those in front of the lens on their healing journey.
Iannacone focuses on re-framing trauma and the use of magic realism in healing the wounds caused by the trauma, in her exhibition at Xposure 2023. She has been doing this for about 15 years. She started as a documentary photographer and filmmaker, and eventually use magical realism to address human rights issues.
Covering various issues such as rape survivors, prisoners of war, and children that have gone through traumatic incidents, Iannacone attempts to grasp how they feel about their traumatic experience in the realm of imagination.
In her statements to “Sharjah 24”, Iannacone went on to talk about one of the photos displayed in her exhibition, which is a story of a child who suffers from chronic illness at the Nelson Mandela Children's Hospital in South Africa, and how he dreams about travelling the world, and that’s when a big ballon comes to the hospital and takes the child away.
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