Paolo Evangelista: Zanzibar

Photo © Paolo Evangelista-All Rights Reserved
Paolo Evangelista holds degrees in music and anthropology, but decided to pack his bags, his espresso machine (after all, he's Italian) and his cameras to live in Australia for a while. Currently based in Perugia, he traveled to Zanzibar where most of his galleries are of.

Most interesting are Paolo's street photographs in Stone Town.

It's the old city and cultural heart of Zanzibar, where nothing much has changed in the last 200 years. Its winding alleys, bustling bazaars, lovely mosques and typical Arab houses are exquisite backdrops for this sort of photography. Its name conjures sea traders, explorers, Sultans and the fragrance of exotic spices. It was also declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

Also of interest to me is Paolo's gallery of Sydney's Chinese market, since I photograph in New York Chinatown.

MSF's Starved For Attention

"this year 195,000,000 children will suffer from malnutrition"

and so starts “Starved for Attention” the extremely well produced multimedia campaign by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and VII Photo which exposes the neglected and largely invisible crisis of childhood malnutrition.

The campaign aims to present a series of multimedia documentaries of still photography and video from the well-known photojournalists at the VII Agency, such as Marcus Bleasdale, Jessica Dimmock, Ron Haviv, Antonin Kratochvil, Franco Pagetti, Stephanie Sinclair, and John Stanmeyer.

The first multimedia reportage is titled Frustration and is by Marcus Bleasdale, who narrates it out of Djibouti.

Bookmark this website, since the remaining reportages will be featured over the course of the coming months.

For more background on the project, JournalismNow features an interview with Ron Haviv, which touches on his work in Bangladesh for Starved For Attention.

Marc Garanger: Femmes Algériennes

Photo © Marc Garanger -All Rights Reserved
Algeria's War of Independence from France officially lasted almost a decade, but its genesis goes back to the early 40s. It was one the bloodiest struggles against a brutal colonial power with over a million Algerians killed, with thousands interned in concentration camps. To this day, the French have not accepted responsibility for these crimes.

Growing up in my native Egypt and full of nationalistic fervor against colonialism, I remember quite well the admiration we had for the Algerian resistance...the names of Ben Bella, Boumedienne, Djamila Bouhired still easily roll off my tongue.

So it was with much interest that I saw recent coverage from photo websites and newsmedia on Marc Garanger, who was stationed against his will in Algeria, and managed to avoid combat by becoming a photographer in the French army. His job was to produce images for new mandatory ID cards, and villagers were forced to sit for him.

Less than a year later, Garanger's photographs of shamed and angry Algerian women would become a symbol of French oppression over its Northern African colony.

I left a comment of the New York Lens Blog which featured Garanger's work:

"the French colonialism/occupation of Algeria was one of the most brutal in history, and the Algerians' independence war cost over a million of their lives. in my view, the expressions of these women are principally of defiance, hatred of their oppressors, and rebellion. the women were combatants as well, as has been mentioned in the article. perhaps there's an inkling of truth in that they were ashamed to show their faces, but what i sense from these expressions is that they're telling the French "you'll soon be gone"...and they were right."

Garanger received today a Lifetime Achievement Award at the New York Photo Festival for Les Femmes Algeriennes.

For further photographs, go to Algeria.com which has a number of large images of these Algerian women; some ashamed, some scared but many defiant.

Jehad Nga's Turkana in NYC

Photo © Jehad Nga -All Rights Reserved
The beautiful work of Jehad Nga, one of my favorite photographers, is on show at the Bonni Benrubi Gallery on the Upper East Side in New York. The exhibition runs from May 13 to June 16, 2010, and is timed to coincide with the New York Photo Festival. Limited edition prints are priced from $2,800-$10,000.

The UK's Daily Telegraph also featured Jehad's Turkana work. I scratch my head in puzzlement that a UK daily would feature news of a photographic event (and images), while our own newspapers have not. Perhaps I've missed it...?

For background on Jehad Nga and the Turkana images, check my earlier post here.

POV: Marco Vernaschi & Child Sacrifice

Update: 4.25.2010: See my follow-up post So Whose Judgment Lapse Is it?
Update 4.22.2010: Jon Sawyer of the Pulitzer Center responds, and within the response is this:

"Yet we also believe, and Vernaschi agrees, that it was wrong to ask that the body be exhumed. It showed disrespect for the dead, and forced a grieving family to suffer anew. It also had the effect of focusing attention on the actions of one journalist, as opposed to a horrific crime that needs to be exposed.

We regret any damage that may have been caused. We intend to continue this project, documenting the phenomenon of child sacrifice, but in so doing we we will redouble our efforts to authenticate every claim and to insure the privacy rights of individual victims."

Here's my original post 0f 4.21.2010:

Here's another story that is guaranteed to make your stomachs churn. It involves Marco Vernaschi an Italian photographer/photojournalist who worked on a project documenting the phenomenon of child witches, human sacrifice and organ trafficking in Africa, and the Pultizer Center For Crisis Reporting.

I have linked to various photographs, but be aware that these are highly disturbing.

It appears that the Pulitzer Center funded Vernaschi to do a story on child sacrifice in Uganda, and it published some of his hard-hitting photographs in an article titled Uganda: Babirye, The Girl from Katugwe, in which the photographer convinces a Ugandan mother to allow the exhumation of her mutilated daughter's body in order to photograph it as "visual evidence". The photograph of the corpse is then shown on both Vernaschi's website and on the Pulitzer Center's. Payment (described as "a contribution for a lawyer") was made by the photographer to the mother.

Another photograph on Vernaschi's website shows an abused boy with a catheter protruding from where his penis has been cut off. His face is clearly shown.

Vernaschi's website explains that

"Child sacrifice in Uganda is a phenomenon that has embedded itself within traditional customs but that bears no genuine relationship to local culture. The appeal to "cultural beliefs" is actually an excuse used by witchdoctors to justify their crimes, and by the Ugandan government to avoid taking action. The government tries to minimize the magnitude of the problem because politicians fear losing votes and this is a a country where witchdoctors wield surprising influence at the polls."

I'm all for documentary coverage to expose and stop this barbaric practice...there's no argument there. However, for a photojournalist to ask (and then pay) for the exhumation of a body beggars belief. Had the child died in a ritualistic murder in Italy, could Vernaschi been able to ask its family to exhume the body for a few pictures? Had he been able to photograph an Italian baby boy with a catheter sticking out of his groin? Why can't these photojournalists and publishers understand that they cannot continue to show pictures of mutilated children??

It's immoral. It's as simple and as complex as that.

As I wrote in an older post: To Vernaschi and to the Pulitzer Center's Board of Directors, Advisory Council and Staff: what if Babirye and the baby boy were your children, your niece and nephew or even just a relative...or an acquaintance? Would you still have photographed and published the photographs...or is it because they're "just" Africans?

Vernaschi is an award winning photographer....and well-experienced dealing with gruesome topics. Surely he could have photographed the story differently? Or is it about winning awards and applause from the rest of the lemmings?

Update: For a more detailed and comprehensive opinion, along with some responses from the Pulitzer Center, check A Developing Story.

Matjaž Krivic: Earth Temples

Photo © Matjaž Krivic-All Rights Reserved
Matjaž Krivic describes his whereabouts as traveling with his camera somewhere between the Sahara and the Himalayas...and having seen his portfolio of photographs, I believe him. He just returned from an overland road trip from Slovenia to Nepal via Senegal (Dakar to Katmandu), which took him 13 months of living and photographing out of a 4x4 Nissan Patrol.

For 20 years, he globe-trotted the world capturing the personality and grandeur of indigenous people and places, and found the time to be awarded many prizes, and recognized in various venues and exhibitions. He traveled in Yemen, Mali, Tibet, North and West Africa, Iran, Mongolia, China, Nepal and India.

I particularly liked his lovely Earth Temples portfolio, which consists of over 60 photographs of various temples, places of worship and still (or silent) places in India, Tibet, Morocco, Bolivia, Nepal and Kenya...to name but a few. These are so beautiful that I wish they were twice the size to appreciate them even better.

Maynard Switzer: Dogon Mask Dances

Photo © Maynard Switzer -All Rights Reserved
Maynard Switzer has recently returned from Mali, where he attended and photographed a Dogon mask dance. These dances are performed at several times during the year, and serve to celebrate the start of the rainy seasons to bring about abundant rainfall, at the end of the harvest seasons to ensure plentiful crops, and also as funerary rituals to commemorate the dead.

Photo © Maynard Switzer -All Rights Reserved
The dances involve dozens of dancers representing figures from the animal world, male and female powers, and the after-world, while the masks represent spirits, women, midwives, witchdoctors, snakes, antelopes and other various representations.

Maynard tells me that the masks are made by boys as part of their coming of age. No outsider is allowed to see the dancers get dressed & put on their masks. The older men are dressed in dark blue, and are retired former dancers who train the new dancers.

Photo © Maynard Switzer -All Rights Reserved
The Dogon are an ethnic group living in the central plateau region of Mali, south of the Niger bend near the city of Bandiagara in the Mopti region. They are best known for their mythology, their mask dances, wooden sculpture and their architecture.

Maynard Switzer was previously featured here on this blog.

PBS Features "Starved For Attention"

PBS' Need To Know is featuring a Starved For Attention slideshow with 19 large photographs by Marcus Bleasdale, Jessica Dimmock, Ron Haviv, Antonin Kratochvil, Franco Pagetti, Stephanie Sinclair, and John Stanmeyer.

It's based on the extremely well produced multimedia campaign by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and VII Photo which exposes the neglected and largely invisible crisis of childhood malnutrition.

As an aside, I also noticed on Need To Know an article by Kavitha Rajagopalan on the buffoonish remarks made by Palin on the plans to erect a mosque and Islamic center near Ground Zero.

All I have to say is that it is New York and its inhabitants who suffered on September 11, 2001....and it's they who have the voice in this.

No one else.

Greg Du Toit: The Waiting Game

Photo © Greg du Toit- (Courtesy The Daily Mail) -All Rights Reserved
Here's an interesting story reported by The Daily Mail (a UK newspaper) which tells us that Greg du Toit, a wildlife photographer living in south Kenya's Great Rift Valley, spent 3 months submerged in a wild lions watering hole for three months, just to get what he deemed to be the perfect photograph of these lions drinking.

The photographer had tried to get the right photograph for a year, but failed to get "it", so he waded into the murky pool with his camera where he spent 270 hours and ended up contracting several tropical diseases, including the potentially deadly Bilharzia.

There are some inconsistencies in this story as the Daily Mail's article mentions that the photographer spent 3 months in the watering hole, and then mentions 270 hours. Obviously, the hours (or days) he spent in there were not consecutive, but notwithstanding, it's a testament to Greg's single mindedness. Why he didn't wear a wet suit to protect him from waterborne diseases is another question which is not addressed in the article.

Yes, photography is a waiting game. I think travel photography, in particular, requires infinite patience, certainly not to the extreme lengths this photographer seems to have gone to, but nevertheless persistence and tenacity are needed. "Parachuting" in a remote Indian village hoping to capture a bunch of wonderful images in an hour or two is -unless one is very lucky- an overly ambitious goal...a holy grail kind of thing. For that, one has to spend the time, establish the requisite connections and know how to engage people honestly, respectfully and with kindness.

Book: Charlotte Rush-Bailey: Soul Survivors

I've just received the book Soul Survivors from its author Charlotte Rush-Bailey, who was a participant in The Tribes of Rajasthan & Gujarat Photo~Expedition, and it's certainly a wonderful addition to anyone's travel book collection.

It's essentially a tribute to the people of the Sahel, and focuses on Niger which Charlotte visited in the fall of 2005, amidst a food crisis that had enveloped that nation. Despite the food shortages, Charlotte marvels at how she was welcomed with generous hospitality everywhere she went. The book is full of lovely photographs; many of which are portraits, processed in the photographer-author's signature style.

Published and available through Blurb, the link above provides a preview of some of the book's pages. My favorite photograph of the book is the 5th on the preview strip, which is of a camel caravan. Just a perfect composition.

Charlotte Rush-Bailey's website has more of her photography.