he is charging around 700 us dollars for
a killing sometimes killing several
times a week
most of his teenage years he's been a
gang member so i can only imagine what
those eyes has seen
[Music]
my name is mass liz and i'm a
documentary photographer based in
copenhagen
so this is the work about homophobia in
russia
the first images are from 2013 and then
i just keep going back
homophobia in russia is happening on so
many levels it's happening within people
themselves is happening in the families
it's happening in the street
what putin is afraid of is that if you
are
a lesbian person
and you talk about being lesbian to a
child suddenly that child will be a
lesbian as well so the law does not make
it illegal to be gay
but it prohibits what they call gay
propaganda to children
the consequence of this law is that you
cannot show a rainbow flag to a child
the first image here
is of kiril so right here you have the
police on this side you have some of the
homophobes here and in the middle you
have kadil and his two friends kirill
bleeding from his face
because they're being punched at they've
been sped up they're being kicked all
because kirill is gay
what i like about the image is the way
that his friend are embracing him i like
the stare of her her eyes i like that
her lips are just slightly open
and what i find in this image is not
just victims
it's also survivors
this is a very very horrible image it's
actually a picture taken of a screen and
that's why you can see
all of this here
this is mashinkevich
a self-declared militant homophobe
machine cubits and his group put up a
fake profile
and a dating app
when the person shows up they catch the
gay person they drag him to somewhere
and they'll torture him for hours
they are pretending to cut off his head
they're interviewing him with this dildo
they're writing on them
shaving his head painting rainbow colors
they film everything and share it online
and there's many other groups like this
one in russia and some of them are even
worse when they rape the person where
they force them to drink their own urine
to cure them
from being gay
those videos were made to encourage
homophobia
but what i'm trying to do now
with these frame grabs and putting it
into this new context
is directly the opposite
[Music]
so i think this is the only funny
picture i ever took it's from another
prize you see all the balloons from the
activists in rainbow colors and in the
foreground here you see
russian policemen if you look at the
text on the back of them in russian you
pronounce it
but the joke here of course is that if
you look at it through a mirror
it says
homo
and they know
a few years ago i did a story on
maternity health in nepal and as part of
this story i was being given a tour by
the director of the main hospital in
kathmandu he opened a small room pointed
at a chair where there was a small baby
left alone
the girl did not have a name
the mother left her because the girl
suffered from this illness where the
liquid can go to the head but it cannot
leave
when i went to her and looked her in the
eyes
and smiled at her she smiled back
so i printed the story and there was a
lot of reactions one of the reactions
was from a businesswoman cecilia
cecilia wanted to go to nepal pay for
all the operations needed in order to
save this little girl she named her
victoria
they did
a lot of exams
despite her handicap
she had the functions of a normal child
the bound between cecilia and victoria
became stronger and stronger for the
first time there was someone who
actually cared about her someone to play
with her here cecilia is using her
mirror in her makeup to show you
victoria her own face
as cecilia explains she's now probably
the closest to a mother that victoria
ever had
[Music]
so the plan is to put a small
a tube inside her head to drain out all
the liquid this is getting increasingly
more and more complicated
here she is victoria in the operation
theater just moments before the
operation starts obviously the little
girl is scared and you can see one of
the nurses is trying to comfort her
but the operation actually went very
well more than one and a half liter of
liquid came out of her head
things were getting better it was almost
like you could see the little girl
was being relieved
but then there was hot days moments
where she seemed to disappear more and
more
so this is where the story ends cecilia
received a text message from the doctor
in nepal she's back in denmark and it
says something like this dear cecilia
be brave
you tried we all tried but it was her
fate
tried to find peace
the little girl did not make it
but as cecilia says
at
least someone cared for her
the last days of her life
[Music]
this project is called we are
indestructible
it's about the colombian conflict that's
been going on for more than 50 years
with the guerrilla group and the
government soldiers there's also a story
about what is financing much of this
which is the cocaine production more
than 220 thousand people have died in
this conflict alone
this picture is of
andrea
and a david in a secret gorilla camp
inside the jungle we are both members of
the farc guerrilla it's a group that's
been labeled as terrorists and yet here
we have a more intimate image of the two
of them in the bed
i asked them like are you a couple
andreia she did like this
on the chest of david said no
we're not a couple he's my lover and
[Laughter]
and it shows
a bit of that fierceness
and that strength that you see in a lot
of colombian women
there's a lot of waiting time so they're
using the waiting time a little bit more
interesting than most other soldiers
so this is the final stage of the
cocaine production so as you can see
martin brought his wife he bought his
two children and it's really just a
family business these people are not
getting rich it's the car tells you
who's getting rich this is just ordinary
farmers trying to make a living they
really caught in the middle between the
many armed groups one thing that was a
little bit concerning though is that
martin was also teaching his son how to
make cocaine
and what you need to do when you're
producing it is you need to taste it
once in a while and i i remember that
the sun liked it a bit too much
so here we are in cali
one of the most poor neighborhoods
it's a gang controlled area and one of
the gang is this one this is john and
brian they're roughing their ceiling but
they also do murders for money sicarios
brian told me that he hate his job he
hate doing those kind of things
but he feel forced to do it because of
poverty because of no other options
one of the things that was so sad to me
is also that whenever i revisited
barrier some of them been killed in the
meantime
whenever someone is taking cocaine here
in europe in united states wherever in
the world made in colombia you're also
financing the war there's a trace of
blood directly from the discotheque to
these areas in colombia
as trying to explain the most important
word for me in photography is empathy i
think that is the power of photography
that we can really
use it as a tool as a bridge to bring
people closer to one another so whenever
i photograph hate
war
or conflict
i'm looking for moments of hope
of love
of passion
and i hope the people who see the images
also get inspired because if we're not
inspired
nothing will ever change
you