Entry Title: " Obamaland:Triumph and Downfall"
Name: Amanda Rivkin, United States


Entry Description: The city of legendary elections and father and son mayors for life, Barack Obama emerged an outsider in the U.S. presidential election. Yet he is the single greatest student to date of the Chicago machine he emerged from. His campaign represented both the emergence of a new generation on the world stage while affirming the battle-tested strength of Chicago’s Democratic machine. When the moment came to claim a hard fought victory on November 4, 2008, he greeted 250,000 people gathered in Grant Park along Chicago’s lakefront. His first words to the nation were not “my fellow Americans,” but “hello Chicago!”

Amanda Rivkin, 24, is a photojournalist currently based in her hometown, Chicago. She has photographed for Agence France Presse/Getty Images, Der Spiegel, The New York Times, Newsweek, among others. Her work has appeared on the front pages of Le Monde, The New York Times, and The Washington Post and in such international publications as The Financial Times, Foreign Policy, and The London Sunday Times Magazine. Since early 2008, Amanda has been based in Chicago. She has covered Illinois and national politics including Barack Obama's election night victory, transition to the presidency, and historic inauguration, the corruption scandal surrounding Rod Blagojevich and his final day in the Illinois governor's office where she was the sole photographer to shadow him for The New York Times. Amanda produced several features surrounding the financial crisis and its impact on the midwestern United States as well as spot news, features, and personal projects on a range of topics including public housing, education, and immigration. Additionally she has received support and funding to pursue stories and other reporting opportunities in Ethiopia, Germany, Hungary, Mexico, Poland, Spain and the United States. She speaks fluent Spanish, Portuguese and Polish. Amanda previously worked as a writer and researcher for news media, policy, diplomatic, and cultural organizations and is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in New York. Amanda will relocate to Washington, D.C. in August 2009 to complete a one year master's degree in terrorism and sub-state violence in the security studies program at the Georgetown University Edmund Walsh Graduate School of Foreign Service.