Various Works

Gigi Cohen

Gigi Cohen, a Brooklyn-based photographer, has focused her work on social issues in South Africa, Hong Kong, and the United States. She was affiliated with Network Photographers Photo Agency in London and has been published in various European magazines and other publications. She completed a project on people living with AIDS that is in a group exhibition that toured the United States and abroad. Her other projects included child labor in South Africa and a journey throughout the American landscape.

Artist Statement

Gigi Cohen

This collection of images features various works by Gigi Cohen, photographed between 1994 and 1997. In My Sister’s Kids (June 1994), Cohen documents the work of Ethel Mabala, who runs a home that supports homeless children who struggle with drug addiction in the Soweto neighborhood of Johannesburg, South Africa. Similarly, The House of Ruth (August 1996) also highlights the work of an organization that provides a safe haven to people in need, this time in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1977, the House of Ruth shelters families affected by domestic violence. 

People Living with AIDS (1996-7) includes images of adults and children who are HIV-positive, or who have relatives living with the HIV virus, while Children’s Rights Suffer Under the New Hong Kong Government (July 1997) documents the stories of families whose Chinese-born children could potentially be repatriated following the handover of Hong Kong to China.

Summer 1998

Moving Walls is an annual exhibition series that explores a variety of social justice and human rights issues through documentary practice, and is produced by Open Society’s Culture and Art program. Moving Walls is exhibited at our offices in New York, London, and Washington, D.C., and includes five to nine discrete bodies of work.

Since 1998, Moving Walls has featured over 200 photographers and artists whose works address a variety of social justice and human rights issues.

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