Amanda Rivkin

portraits

  • 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.
  • 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)
  • SINCAN, TURKEY. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan addresses a crowd of supporters after more than two weeks straight of protests across Turkey against his rule on June 15, 2013. Sincan is the site of the 1997 {quote}post-modern coup{quote} and where Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan chose for his Ankara rally to bolster his position with regard to ongoing protests in Istanbul's Taksim Square and across Turkey; at his rally he said that the security services would promptly take care of the protesters and shortly after riot police were unleashed on the peacefully gathered demonstrators who quickly retook the square.
  • ERZURUM, TURKEY. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan departs a political rally in support of the September 12 referendum which would change the nature of the country's constitutional court to solidify the hold of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) under the pretext that it would prevent future military coups, in Turkey's conservative far northeast on August 13, 2010. Erzurum is the first major city near the route of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline in Turkey, located just 10 kilometers from the pipeline which traverses numerous villages near the city's airport.
  • VESKIMÄE, ESTONIA. Former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves on his mother's farm which was left to ruins during Soviet occupation that he purchased and restored following the fall of the Soviet Union on June 26, 2023.
  • SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA. Henry Kissinger with the Texas delegation at the conclusion of the Republican National Convention at the XCel Center on day four, September 4, 2008.
  • BAKU, AZERBAIJAN. (Center) Ibrahim Ibrahimov, an Azerbaijani oligarch and billionaire, talks on his cell phone at the breakfast table while seated between his wife (at left) Valida Ibrahimli and son Huseyn, 18, in one of several houses on his Caspian seaside property he used to inhabit with his family in the Garadagh region just southwest of Baku, Azerbaijan on July 18, 2012. Ibrahimov is the developer behind the Khazar Islands artificial islands project; in his private life, he enjoys building a home for his family, moving in, and then quickly tires of the property before building a new home on an adjacent lot on his seaside lands. (Credit: Amanda Rivkin/VII Mentor Program for The New York Times Magazine)
  • BAKU, AZERBAIJAN. Emin Milli, a blogger and opposition activist heavily championed by the West who was imprisoned for 17 months on hooliganism charges following a video he made satirizing his country's leadership, remarries for the second time a painter Tora Agabekova following his divorce from a previous marriage earlier this year after being released from prison on November 12, 2011. To Emin's right is Adnan Hajizade, who served with him in jail and now serves as a witness at his wedding.
  • 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.
  • 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 {quote}the wrong message{quote} 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. A young dancer participates in Azerbaijan's Ballroom Dancing National Finals at a wedding palace in the Surakhani District on November 27, 2011.
  • REFAT, 19Refat, 19, a Ukrainian soldier from Crimea, sits on his hospital bed at the Main Military Clinical Hospital of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Kiev, Ukraine on April 8, 2014. Refat was shot in the left knee by a sniper on February 20, 2014 while trying to maintain a line of soldiers on orders and had the lower part of his left leg amputated from above the knee.{quote}We had orders to stand in the line. In the morning, it was quite calm and silent and then the protesters started to attack and they threw a grenade and I walked away from there and then I felt a sniper's bullet in my knee. It was the morning of February 20 and we were unarmed. I was standing with just a shield. That morning there was shooting from both sides. The criminal case is still open and nobody knows why they were shooting. I blame the president. I want a normal president and stability to come to Ukraine. I want to stay in Kiev and enter the main university and study law. I want to become a prosecutor. I want things to be calm here in Ukraine.{quote} -Refat
  • NICOSIA, CYPRUS. Stavros Agriotis, a Cypriot financial services executive, is seen in his home office on March 28, 2013.
  • CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA. Mary Kay saleswoman stands beside her Mary Kay white Chevrolet Malibu in the parking lot of the Cavalier Inn on June 4, 2012.
  • BERN, SWITZERLAND. Irina Venediktova, the Ukrainian Ambassador to Switzerland and the former Prosecutor General of Ukraine, in the Ukrainian Embassy on February 21, 2023.
  • 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 {quote}Plan for Transformation.{quote}
  • BELGRADE, SERBIA. Jelena Karleusa arrives in custom Versace according to her Instagram ahead of a concert on the splav, or barge, River on the night of July 3, 2015. Karleusa is the lone turbofolk star who has been outspoken on the issue of gay rights and many of her looks have been copied by the likes of Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, and Kim Kardashian; in an e-mail Karleusa declared she doesn't sing turbofolk music, despite having deep roots in the industry and coming up through the same television channels, venues and other mechanisms used to promote turbofolk, but refused repeated requests to clarify the description of her music.
  • NIS, SERBIA. Vladislava Djuric, 30, holds her nationally famous icon of Svetlana Raznatovic, better known as Ceca, which garnered national headlines after pictures went viral of it taken during a student exhibition at Djuric's university, on July 10, 2015. Ceca, a turbofolk star better known as {quote}the Mother of Serbia,{quote} was married to one of the Bosnian War's most notorious Serbian military commanders, Arkan, who was later assassinated, and was one of a rotating cast of turbofolk stars who gave daily concerts in Belgrade's Republic Square during the 1999 NATO bombing.
  • SARAJEVO, BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA. Architect Ivan Straus, 86, one of the star architects of the former Yugoslavia responsible for designing the Holiday Inn Sarajevo as well as Sarajevo's Twin Towers, sits in his living room at the dining room table on October 13, 2014.
  • Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Oil Pipeline
  • Odessa Diary
  • Turkey in Transition
  • Turkey Gezi Uprising
  • Serbia Turbofolk
  • Postwar Bosnia Reconstruction
  • Prague Stag Nights
  • Trumpistan
  • Chicago Police Torture Survivors
  • Sustenance: Chicago + the Food Chain
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  • tearsheets
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