Collab

Twice named Swiss Press Photographer of the Year, Mark Henley is based in Geneva, Switzerland at the UN. Having spent many years on the road, examining the effects of economic and social change in the majority world, his recent work observes the structures and organizations affecting those changes, many of them operating from his adoptive home town.

The project ‘ Bank on Us‘ on the Swiss banking industry has won several awards including Swiss Press Photographer of the Year in 2012. He won this award a second time in 2014 for his observation of the diplomatic negotiations leading to the Iranian nuclear deal in Geneva ‘ Waiting on a deal‘

Born in Oxford U.K., he studied literature at the University of York, and lived for ten years in Asia.

He is represented by  Panos Pictures in London, and  Jiji Press Photos in Tokyo.

The UN is in crisis on multiple fronts. It already had a budget crunch, with members states not paying their dues – the lights have been going out early in UN offices for a while now. Now with the US, its single largest donor, cutting its contribution to the central UN structure, leaving a shortfall of some US$500million in its budget, things have become serious. The US has also completely withdrawn from several UN agencies – most significantly the World Health Organisation and UN Human Rights Commission, and is reviewing (for a second time) its contribution(s) to the rest. European powers cannot take up much slack as they are already – under US pressure – being forced to find extra funding for defence and Nato obligations.

Accordingly reform is in the air. 
The UN has announced a UN80 plan to examine how to effectuate cuts in its main body, and the some 80 semi-detached and independently financed UN organisations – looking for redundancy and overlap in their operations.
Job cuts, of upto an estimated 20%, as well as de-location from expensive centres like New York and Geneva, are the order of the day. The pressure, and depression, is on. As the Head of the UN refugee agency is quoted as saying – ‘we now will do less, with less’, a more honest appraisal than the World Health Organisation’s present ‘rightsizing’ management speak. There have even been reports of cutting the calory intake per day for the 110,00 UN peacekeepers, currently in operation in 11 countries.

The malaise however runs deeper than budgetary issues , to the basic functioning of the organisation. It is clear that the UN Human Rights Council has long been in danger of capture by alliances of countries that do not want their countries examined too closely (China in particular, but Russia also) and the withdrawal of the US and its funds, only increases that tendency.

But perhaps the greatest malaise at the UN, is around the functioning of the Security Council, with its 5 permanent members. It was set up to encourage peace, and stop wars, whereas its actual present functioning might be said to perpetuate killing, the very reverse of its mission.

The UN model of consensus is also proving inadequate.Negotiations remain opaque, with the sense that commercial interests often seem to have access to the ears of negotiators, whereas ‘Civil Society’ has little or no voice. Meanwhile, the much touted UN Development Goals, seem to be drifting further away.

The UN is on fire, and the one usually trying to put out the flames, seems presently to be fanning them instead, and no one was quite ready for that.

The world is fracturing, and just when the United Nations unique role might be most needed, the organisation seems least able to deliver.

What future the UN has, and in what form exactly, only time will tell, but meanwhile, in the corridors of New York, or Geneva the mood is bleak. 

Geneva, January – April 18th 2021

« Bats-toi, signe et persiste: résiste, résiste, résiste ». 

Sang the lady in the long black dress to a masked audience on the 19th April the day the theatres re-opened.

This is a partial record of what may already seem like ancient history, of ‘culture’ in Geneva facing Covid, made phantom by closed halls, vacant seats, masked streets and anxiety around the pandemic and the future.

It grew out of a conversation, and evolved organically, from artist to musician, to performer, to director, and back again, an ever growing cast, kind enough to allow an unknown camera eye inside their world, during a complicated and stressful time. 

The works shown are inevitably ‘in progress’, including their false starts, and explorations, with changes of direction, of dropped songs and the sound of that half-second it takes a full orchestra to stop unexpectedly. It’s a zone we see too rarely, this process of creation, and I hope something of that creative energy, as well as the frustrations of the period is caught here. 

Some of the work has since been completed and shown: either ‘live-streamed’ or miraculously presented the moment a public was allowed again. Some were brought down by the pandemic, while others were born or evolved through this strange time.

Portraits of refugees seeking asylum in Switzerland, defaced during an exhibition, and so showing directly the hand of prejudice and rejection.

The original series was produced as part of an anti-racism week, in cooperation with local social service provider, the Hospice General, and the New York-based Insideout Project, who produced the one meter prints and which were pasted in a public square by the refugees themselves, many of whom were living – and photographed – in underground bunkers.

The exhibition had to be removed following the damage, but not before this new series of images were taken, and which echo something of the global refugee experience in present times.

Portraits include people seeking asylum from countries as diverse as Togo, Mali, Guinea, Ghana, Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia, Algeria, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Iraq and Syria.