User generated youth initiative Ctrl.Alt.Shift and VICE Magazine have collaborated to launch a unique photographic project that explores the global issues of Gender, Power and Poverty. The creative collaboration takes the form of an international competition, educating young people around the world on this major global development issue and inviting them to create photography inspired by this theme.

The upper gallery features the winning shot by Jonathan Hyams alongside the images of the fifteen finalists, and one show from each of the project’s all-star project mentors, including Alexa Chung, renowned photographers Ben Rayner and Valerie Philips, VICE Editor Andy Capper, and VICE photo editor Alex Sturrock.

The lower gallery features the commissioned project by the overall winner Jonathan Hyams who was accompanied by researcher Samuel Hornsby, were commissioned by Ctrl.Alt.Shift and VICE to create a series of photos that explore the complex issue of gender discrimination in India. Hyams and Hornsby travelled to West Bengal to collaborate with Sanlaap, a project run to work for the rights of those children and women who have been tricked, exploited and abused by society and its systems. The images used for this exhibition were taken at Nerandaopur, laxmikantapur and Kalighat where Hyams and Hornsby met many women and girls targeted by traffickers who utilise India’s train and bus networks to abduct and sell children into brothels by the thousands. Their images aim to highlight thee victims of culture and circumstance and to tell their stories in their own words.

Gender, Poverty and Power
All over the world, women are routinely abused and deprived of their most basic human rights. It is women who make up the world’s poorest, most marginalised and discriminated against members of society. This ‘invisibility of women’ actively locks half the world’s community out of accessing and participating in the development process. Ctrl.Alt.Shift seeks to expose and tackle the structures that continue to perpetuate poverty.

In addition, this January saw competition winner Johnny Hyams travel to India to visit a project called SANLAAP, which works for the rights of those women and children who have been tricked, exploited and abused by society and its systems. A selection of his shots from the trip will be on display throughout the exhibition.

Cultural Interventions
The VICE collaboration is part of a wider initiative called Cultural Interventions – a series of collaborations created to harness contemporary culture to stimulate interest amongst youth audiences around issues of global development. Each collaboration will focus on a particular issue in a global development context. Other projects include collaborations with The Baltic (War + Peace in Latin America) and Sadler’s Wells (HIV + Stigma in Africa).

For further information visit www.ctrlaltshift.co.uk/vice

View the press release here