Mariella Furrer, Swiss/Lebanese, was born in Beirut in 1968 and has lived in Africa her whole life. She attended the Documentary Photography & Photojournalism Program at the International Centre of Photography in NYC (1993), and has since been working as a freelance photojournalist based in Kenya. Mariella has covered Africa extensively and has worked on stories in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. She can communicate in several languages. Mariella has been awarded two grants (3P & Hasselblad Foundation), received an Honorable Mention from Unicef Photo of the Year 2005 and has been nominated for the Santa Fe Prize for Photography 2006 - all for an ongoing project on child sexual abuse in South Africa. A book of this work will be released by Mets and Schilt in 2009. Mariella's work has appeared in publications such as Time, Newsweek, Life, New York Times, Marie Claire, Outside Magazine, Talk Magazine, Paris Match, Der Spiegel, among others. She has also participated in several book projects and her work has been shown at group exhibitions.