Marizilda Cruppe (37, Brazil) worked as a mechanical technician from age 17 to 22 and studied Engineering at university but quit it before finishing. She studied photography with recognized Brazilian photographers and worked with advertising photos for a short period before being able to pursue photojournalism full-time. For the past 11 years she has been working as a full-time photographer for O Globo newspaper, part of Brazil's main media group.

In addition to her newspaper’s work she develops personal projects and concentrates her work on examining Brazilian social inequality and poverty. In 2005 she received an honorable mention in the Fourth Edition of the Iberian-American Communication Award for the Rights of Children and Adolescents, and the Silver Gold medal at United Nations Correspondents’ Association Award.

Agnès Dherbeys is a 29 year old French photographer with Cosmos Agency. She graduated from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques of Lyon and with a Masters in Communication Sciences from the Celsa (Sorbonne IV). She became a photographer in 2001 after arriving in Bangkok, and has worked in Indonesia, Cambodia and Thailand. After covering the devastation caused by the Tsunami in Thailand, she returned to follow the tale of the survivors and the reconstruction in Phang Nga, north of Phuket.

Her work has appeared in Newsweek, Le Monde2, Libération, the South China Morning Post Magazine, Sapio and other publications. Her Tsunami coverage from Thailand was screened in collective projections in Les rencontres d’Arles 2005 photo festival, and Visa pour l’Image 2005.

In November 2005, she was awarded the Fondation Hachette grant for photography for her long term project in East Timor, the youngest country of the world, titled “from Independence to dependence”.

Bénédicte Kurzen is a 26 year old French photographer currently living in South Africa. At the age of 23, she left Paris for Israel/Palestine. She has been a photographer since then, covering the news in the Middle East from Jerusalem to Charm El Sheick and from Beirut to Baghdad, until recently. Freelance but represented by World Picture News, her work has been seen in Paris Match, Newsweek, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, The Times of London, and Courrier International.

In 2004, she took part in a common project with 8 other photographers on the global theme of “Violence against Women.” She worked in Gaza and explored the lives of Palestinian widows caught between the radicalization of Islam and murderous Israeli attacks. The project was screened at the 2005 Visa pour l’Image in Perpignan and is currently exhibited around the world.

To broaden her understanding of the places were she stays, she learned to speak English, German, some Spanish, some Arabic and is now starting Zulu.

Justyna Mielnikiewicz was born in Poland in 1973 and has been working as a professional photographer for 7 years. She graduated from Jagiellonian University in Krakow with a Masters in New Media and Culture Management. Immediately after finishing university she started to work as photojournalist in the daily newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza.

In 2001 she became a freelance photographer and moved to Tbilisi / Georgia to work on a time project on the South Caucasus. The project was awarded an honorable mention at the 2003 Dorothea Lange R. Taylor Prize and at the 2003 Santa Fe Project Competition, and received a grant from the European Culture Foundation. Since then, in addition to work on personal projects, Justyna regularly photographs news events – mainly in the Caucasus area.

Her recent work has appeared in: Newsweek Poland, Paris Match, New York Times, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, among others. The project was screened in Arles 2005. In 2005, her work was distributed by Cosmos Agency and currently by World Picture News.

Lourdes Segade was born in 1977 in Spain. She graduated in Communication Sciencies, specialized in Advertising and Public Relations, with a Degree in Reporting. She started working in a small university magazine and it was there, while taking her first photos, that she realized she wanted to be a photojournalist. She works mainly in Barcelona –where she is based – and all over Spain.

Her work is seen in Spain, where she regularly publishes in Sunday newspaper supplements such as La Vanguardia Magazine (where she’s a collaborator) or El Semanal, and in other magazines such as Yo Dona or Revista, of La Vanguardia newspaper. Her work has as well been published in some European magazines like DAMn (Belgium), VIVA, Le Nouvel Observateur and 60 M de Consommateurs (France) or D/Repubblica delle donne (Italy).

She has shown her work in screenings at several festivals, including the International Meeting of Photojournalism in Gijón and also the Albarracín Photo and Journalism Seminar, both in Spain. Since September 2005, she has been a member of the French collective, PictureTank.

Newsha Tavakolian (25, Iran) has been working as a photographer in the Iranian press since she was 16. In 2002, she started to work internationally covering Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Newsha feels strongly about women’s issues in the Middle East, which is one of the main focus points in her work.

Her pictures have been published in Time magazine, Newsweek, Stern, New York Times magazine and newspaper, Le Figaro in France, and NRC Handelsblad in the Netherlands. In 2005, she was chosen with nine other women photographers for a special issue in Marie Claire magazine (US Edition). In 2003, Newsha was runner up in the Picture of the Year award, magazine feature.

She is represented by Polaris images in New York, USA. Newsha speaks Farsi, English, Kurdish and a little Dutch.