Erik Ljung

credit: Producer / Director of Photography / Editor

view full video / article on New York Times website >>

A new law in Wisconsin might offer a model for the nation in how police-involved killings are investigated.

Interview / camera: Erik Ljung

Producer: Reem Makhoul

Client: Wall Street Journal

Two American military veterans decided to fight with a Kurdish militia against ISIS in Syria. They captured their harrowing journey on video, and say the Kurds need more support from the U.S. to succeed. Photo: Bruce Windorski

Producer / Camera: Erik Ljung

Editor: Michael Vollmann

Assistant Editor: Matt Prekop, Ian Anderson

Camera: Joel Van Haren, Chris Thompson, Dan Peters

After her unarmed son, Dontre Hamilton, was shot and killed by a Milwaukee police officer in 2014, Maria Hamilton formed Mothers for Justice to bring together women who have lost their children to police or vigilante violence. After months of organizing, the mothers took their demands to Washington, DC.

Producer: Colin Archdeacon

DP: Erik Ljung

Client: Fast Company

credit: Director / Camera

agency: AboutFace

client: Aurora Health Care

2014 Official Selection Milwaukee Film Festival

credits: Field Producer / Director of Photography

client: VICE News

On December 14, 2012, a young black high school student named Corey Stingley was aggressively restrained after he tried to shoplift alcohol from a neighborhood store. Three white men held Corey to the ground, "squeezing the hell out of him," according to an eyewitness. When the police arrived, he was no longer breathing. He died two weeks later from brain injuries resulting from asphyxiation. The men who restrained him were never charged.

Corey's story is painfully similar to those of young black men across the country. Did his skin color preemptively decide his fate in the American justice system? VICE News follows Corey's father, Craig, as he seeks justice in the hyper-segregated Wisconsin city of West Allis, and mourns the death of his son.

credit: Director / Camera

agency: AboutFace

client: Children's Hospital

Living with cancer is nothing new for Hailey. She’s been receiving treatments since she was just 1 year old. Thanks to the Northwestern Mutual Day Hospital in our MACC Fund Center, children like Hailey are now able to receive life-saving care in a comfortable, open outpatient setting — or as Hailey calls it, “the fun side!"

credit: Director of Photography

There's a resource curse on the Navajo Nation. The 27,000-square-mile reservation straddling parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah has an extremely high abundance of many energy resources — particularly coal. That coal is what's burned to provide much of the Southwest with electricity, and it creates jobs for the Navajo. But the mining and burning have also caused environmental degradation, serious health issues, and displacement.

VICE News travels to the Navajo Nation to find out how its abundance of coal is affecting the future of the Navajo people.

credits: Co-Director of Photography

Producer: Arthur Ircink

Client: Wisconsin Foodie - (PBS)

In this episode of Wisconsin Foodie we profile a new wave of farming, from multigenerational farming roots to first generation pizza making. Kyle visits Stoney Acre Farm in Central Wi. We meet a young family that has decided to stay on the family farm but try something totally different, a pizza farm. To compliment their CSA program, every friday night in season the family opens their farm to the public for a popup pizza shop on the farm. From the crust to the veggies, everything comes from the farm. Utilizing two brick ovens that living outside they have taught themselves the art of pizza making and the community has taken notice as hundreds of people come out each friday.

credit: Director of Photography

client: VICE News

Detroit’s seen a staggering 140,000 foreclosures in the last decade. Tens of thousands of homes have been left abandoned, turning entire neighborhoods into an urban wasteland. The Obama administration has been pumping billions of dollars into the Motor City in an effort to revive it, and last week the president paid Detroit a visit to see if the federal funding has had any effect.

VICE News reporter Simon Ostrovsky traveled to Detroit to find out how wrecking crews are actually improving conditions in parts of the battered city.

Client: People Magazine

Producer / Camera: Erik Ljung

Camera: Brendan Leahy

producer: Erik Ljung

camera: Joel Van Haren

commissioned by AJ+

Mothers from across the U.S. gathered in Washington, D.C. during Mother's Day weekend to demand justice for all the sons killed by police.

credit: Co-Director of Photography

produced by: Allies & Co.

Mama Tried is an indoor motorcycle invitational in Milwaukee, WI, showcasing the most honest, home-built and unusual bikes in the midwest.

mamatriedshow.com

credit: Director of Photography

Coal ash, which contains many of the world's worst carcinogens, is what's left over when coal is burnt for electricity. An estimated 113 million tons of coal ash are produced annually in the US, and stored in almost every state — some of it literally in people's backyards. With very little government oversight and few safeguards in place, toxic chemicals have been known to leak from these storage sites and into nearby communities, contaminating drinking water and making residents sick.

On February 2, 2014, up to 39,000 tons of coal ash and 27 million gallons of contaminated water spilled out into the Dan River in North Carolina after a pipe broke underneath a coal ash pond at a Duke Energy power plant. The environmental disaster thrust Duke Energy, the country’s largest electricity company, into the spotlight, revealing a history of violations and inadequate oversight of ponds at all of its plants across the state.

In part one, VICE News travels to North Carolina to visit a river that’s been poisoned with arsenic from a nearby Duke Energy site, speak with a resident who has found toxic heavy metals in her drinking water, and question a Duke Energy spokesperson about the power company’s policies.

Credit: Additional Cinematography

Directed By: Michael T. Vollmann

Official Selection of 2015 Sundance Film Festival

Watch entire film on CNN website >>

CNN Film Presents "The 414s: The Original Teenage Hackers," a look at an unexpected group of hackers who forever changed the idea of cybersecurity. In the early 1980's, this group of Milwaukee teenagers broke into dozens of prominent computer systems, including the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, sparking landmark legislation that impacts how we use technology today.

credit: Director of Photography

client: VICE News

Earlier this year, Detroit's Water and Sewerage Department began turning off water utilities for overdue or delinquent accounts. Since April, the department has cut off the water for nearly 3,000 households per week — meaning roughly 100,000 Motor City residents are without water. Entrenched at the bottom of Detroit's current economic crisis, many of those without water are the city's poorest resident.

The city’s shut-off campaign has garnered international press attention, and has been called “an affront to human rights” by representatives of the United Nations.

VICE News traveled to Detroit to see first-hand how residents are dealing with the water shut-offs, speak with local government representatives about the issue, and discuss possible resolutions with activist groups.