Amanda Rivkin

portraits

HOLLAND, MICHIGAN. Momka through a decorative crystal mobile at the Tulip Festival, May 2, 2009.
   
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS. Democrat Barack Obama waves to his supporters in Grant Park, Chicago through bullet proof glass after winning the U.S. presidential election, defeating Republican John McCain, to become the 44th U.S. president on November 4, 2008. Obama gave his victory speech to a crowd of just over 200,000 supporters.
  
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS. Citizens of the city of Chicago greet Mayor Rahm Emanuel in an open house in the mayor's office on the Fifth Floor of Chicago City Hall on May 16, 2011.
     
  
MEXICO CITY, MEXICO. A Mexican man protests the appropriation of his land at a naked protest organized bythe group 400 Pueblos near the traffic-congested Avenida de la Reforma in the central Zona Rosa district of Mexico City, Mexico on June 24, 2008.
   
BAKU, AZERBAIJAN. Reyhan Huseynova, the president of the Azerbaijan Future Studies Society, in her office in the Old City of Baku in front of a painting from South Africa she acquired while attending a conference on November 17, 2011. Reyhan is the daughter of a Soviet era prime minister of Azerbaijan.
   
BAKU, AZERBAIJAN. Young girls dress themselves appropriately for prayer upon entering the Shi'a Icherishahar Djuma Masjid or Innercity Mosque for Friday prayers in the old city on July 2, 2010. Viewed as "the wrong message" by the ruling regime of Ilham Aliyev, Islam has been shunned in favor of opulence and materialism for the elite and the imam of the Icherishahar Djuma Masjid was replaced after dalliances with the opposition in 2005, the time of the last major civil disturbances, and Iranian-style clericalism; the wider effect in Azeri society of the corruption that resulted from the second oil boom of the 1990s has left the society of the elite with great wealth but an absence of moral leadership, yet few have turned to Islam for answers.
     
  
BAKU, AZERBAIJAN. Safura Alizade, Azerbaijan's Eurovision contestant in 2010, with her mother, Naila Alizade, in her dressing room after performing at the opening ceremony of the International Wrestling Final Golden Grand Prix at the Heydar Aliyev Concert Complex in Baku, Azerbaijan on July 16, 2010. One goal of the current regime is to win Eurovision investing huge amounts of Azerbaijan's vast oil wealth in the effort, which some estimate at $20 million, and would result in hosting the European pop song contest in the Azeri capital Baku in an effort to show off the country's European qualities.
   
BAKU, AZERBAIJAN. Aysel Teymurzadegi, who performed as Azerbaijan's contestant in the Eurovision song contest in 2009 and currently stars in Azeri commercials, with a friend and colleague, Zaur Darab-Zadeh (left), director of an internet radio station, on the rooftop of the Landmark Hotel rooftop terrace on July 3, 2010. In an effort at public promotion and demonstrating European aspirations, the Azeri government spends untold amount which one consultant estimated at 15 million in an effort to win the Eurovision song contest.
   
GANJA, AZERBAIJAN. Eurovision Song Contest winners Ell and Nikki (Eldar Gasimov and Nigar Jamal) in the lobby bar of the Ramada after a performance at an open air concert in the Heydar Aliyev Park on October 15, 2011, hosted on the occasion of the World Youth Festival that brought young people from around the world to Azerbaijan as part of a week-long tour sponsored by the pro-government youth group Ireli (translation, "Forward") to showcase Azerbaijan and extol the virtues of the country and the culture to foreigners.
     
  
ALAKHI SANGORI, GEORGIA. Mariam Aptsiauri and her husband Anzori Aptsiauri in their home on August 1, 2010. While the Aptsiauris have received nothing yet in compensation for having the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline traverse their farmlands, destroying the possibility for continued agricultural production there because of damage to the topsoil and live in poverty, their neighbor Gia Obgaidze is likely the largest recipient of compensation funds in Georgia, which he used to start a chicken farm in addition to remodeling his home; according to an attorney who formerly handled compensation issues with the Young Lawyers Association, Obgaidze likely received 187,000 Georgian lari or approximately $100,000.
   
KOLONTAR, HUNGARY. Melinda Lehmann, 28, sits in her car outside her family's bar on November 22, 2010. An industrial accident in nearby Ajka, Hungary destroyed her family's home on October 4, 2010 when a flood of toxic red alumina sludge came gushing through her village, the closest to a collapsed reservoir wall that caused the accident, Hungary's worst ecological disaster.
   
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS. Grant Newburger, 50, a supporter of Bob Avakian's Revolutionary Communist Party, in his apartment at 1230 N. Burling, a Cabrini Green high rise, on the corner of North Halsted and Division Streets on Chicago's Near North Side, December 18, 2007. Newburger has lived and worked as a community organizer at the once notorious and now partially demolished Cabrini Green since 1996, fighting the Chicago Housing Authority's "Plan for Transformation."
     
  
BERWYN, ILLINOIS. World's Largest Laundromat, July 7, 2008. (Credit: Amanda Rivkin for Swindle Magazine)
   
ATLANTA, GEORGIA. Michael Jernigan who was seriously wounded in a roadside bomb attack in Fallujah, Iraq in 2004 and was medically retired from the marine corps in December 2005, and his seeing eye dog Brittany after speaking at a luncheon co-hosted by the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma and The Carter Center on January 9, 2010.
   
SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS. Beleaguered Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich prepares notes in his final act in the governor's office in Springfield before speaking in his own defense at his impeachment hearing at the state capitol in Springfield, Illinois on January 29, 2009. Blagojevich said he rarely sticks to his notes but uses them for support and back-up. (Credit: Amanda Rivkin for The New York Times)
     
  
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS. Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich leaves the Dirksen Federal Building with his wife Patti Blagojevich on June 27, 2011 after being found guilty of 17 counts of wire fraud, attempted extortion, bribery, extortion conspiracy and bribery conspiracy. He was acquitted on one charge of bribery, and the jury deadlocked on two counts of attempted extortion. (Credit: Amanda Rivkin for The New York Times)
   
OCONOMOWOC, WISCONSIN. Uncle Herm on Christmas Day 2010.
   
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS. William Fiedler, the owner and proprietor of the Gallery Bookstore on Belmont Avenue on January 4, 2010.
     
  
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS. Writer Aleksandar Hemon at the Metropolis Coffee Company in the Edgewater neighborhood of Chicago on May 7, 2009. (Credit: Amanda Rivkin for The New York Times)