Travel World

The Nazar Foundation, in partnership with the India Habitat Centre, is organizing the Delhi Photo Festival on 15 to 28 October 2011.

The Delhi Photo Festival is a non-commercial venture, and entry will be free to ensure popular and wide-reaching participation. Through Nazar Foundation, the festival is the brainchild of Prashant Panjiar and Dinesh Khanna, both well known photographers, and for mentoring young photographers and propagating photography. Nazar Foundation was launched with the aim of institutionalizing what these two photographers are already been doing so on an informal basis.

The core attraction of the festival will be exhibitions of photography from India, Asia and other international work.

This promises to be quite an event, and will include workshops and seminars. I am excited to have been asked to teach an Introduction to Multimedia class on the afternoon-evening of October 15.

More details will be available in due course, and a schedule for submissions and the process will be announced soon.

Beyond Assignment is a documentary produced by The Knight Center for International Media at the University of Miami, which explores the approach of three female photojournalists (Adriana Zehbrauskas, Gali Tibbon and Mariella Furrer. covering Mexico, Israel and South Africa.

From the documentary's website:

"Their three journeys dramatize the fervent curiosity and determination needed to perform difficult and often dangerous jobs as visual storytellers. BEYOND ASSIGNMENT examines the artistic and ethical responsibilities inherent in capturing vital subject matter and the subsequent emotional cost to journalists and their subjects."

The documentary's trailer starts with Adriana Zehbrauskas photographing adherents of La Santa Muerte in Mexico City. Adriana is planning to show the documentary at the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop in Buenos Aires. I am look forward to see it, and I'm sure it'll be very well received.

Now in its 7th year, the free 2011 Angkor Photo Workshops is now officially accepting applications from all young Asian photographers.

To get started, photographers can download and read through the application guidelines and the application form below:

• APWS 2011 Application Guidelines
• APWS 2011 Application Form

The guidelines and form contains all the information needed on how to apply for this year’s workshops. However for clarifications and or questions, the Angkor Photo Workshops can be contacted email at angkorworkshop [at] gmail.com .

The workshop will be held from November 17 – 23, 2011 in Siem Reap, Cambodia. As per the previous years’ workshops, 30 participants will be selected from amongst the applications received. The deadline to submit the application is July 15, 2011.

Since its inception in 2005, more than 180 young photographers from all over Asia have been selected to participate in the annual free Angkor Photo Workshops. Conducted by renowned international photographers who volunteer their time, the Angkor Photo Workshops provide participants with firsthand training, invaluable exposure and a chance to perfect their art.

Over the years, the workshop has highlighted emerging talent from the region, and many previous participants go on to embark on successful photography careers both regionally and internationally.

I'll be there!!

Image © Alexandra Avakian. Courtesy British Journal of Photography

From The British Journal of Photography:

Jean-François Leroy, Visa Pour l'Image's director, believes it's essential to remind "people of the important role photojournalists play in keeping us informed," which, he says, will be reflected in this year's edition of the world's largest photojournalism festival.

"But don't expect to see projects on Tahrir Square. I've never received that many CDs about one particular event. I know that square by heart now. I could draw you a plan from memory. I've seen it all: Tahrir during the day, Tahrir at night, Tahrir and the dogs, Tahrir in the morning, Tahrir in the evening. So what? What's the point? What's the story?"

- Jean-François Leroy, Visa Pour l'Image's director

What's the story, he asks. What's the story in Tahrir??????

After guffawing at that er...statement, what can I say other than some people are visionaries, and others are myopic, provincial and silly...and past their useful shelf life?

In contrast, take a look at NOOR Images current involvement in Cairo, where Stanley Green and others are leading a photojournalism workshop.

Olivier Laurent of The British Journal of Photography conducted the interview, and has written this response (which I quote in its entirety for fairness) on my Facebook page:

" I conducted the interview with Jean-François Leroy, and in case things are not clear enough, Leroy did say that he would not show Tahrir Square-related stories (i.e. reportages that only focus on the events at Tahrir Square) because they lack incredible context over the entire Middle-East revolution movement. Instead, he chose to show Yuri Kozyrev's work, which includes images shot in Tahrir Square but put into a wider context thanks to the images he shot in Bahrain, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, etc. To react to some of the comments here, I don't think he uttered "une connerie"** (I wish there were a perfect english equivalent to this word). In my opinion, he's quite right. I'm not saying that there hasn't been meaningful work coming out of Tahrir Square, but have these photographers submitted their work to Visa? A lot of the images I've seen coming out of that square were repetitive (in some cases, shot by three or four photographers at the exact same time) and lacked that overarching meaning - the true impact of this revolution on the Egyptian people. There's nothing wrong with a photographer parachuting in Cairo for such a story (and it's much needed to bring attention to the story) but at the end of the day, I find it more enriching when I look at these events through the lens of a photographer that truly understood these events. Laura El-Tantawy springs to mind, for example...

 One clarification though, we're talking, in this case, of the exhibitions presented at Visa. There's no doubt that countless of images from Tahrir Square will be shown during the evening projections there."

 ** To keep things succinct and brief, I still think it was "une connerie", and an unfortunate one at that.  It will be up to the attendees of the Visa Pour l'Image event as to whether ignoring a seminal and historical uprising in the Middle East (notwithstanding Yuri Kozyrev's wider work) was another "connerie", or not.

Katharina Hesse is a damn good documentary photographer, and here's one of the many reasons why I say that:

She and her colleague, Lara Day, are requiring support for a worthwhile photographic book project Human Negotiations. It's on Kickstarter, and is an independent, self-funded documentary, exploring the lives of a community of Bangkok sex workers through both images and text.

Human Negotiations is not a journalistic account of the sex trade, but instead is a personal interpretation of a line of work that is frequently misunderstood.

To date, the project has garnered international support and was shown at numerous spaces and international festivals. Pledged funds will go directly towards printing costs so that Human Negotiations can be published as a book to coincide with an exhibition in China's foremost space for contemporary photography and video art.

So do consider to help Katharina and Lara with your pledges! It's really a worthwhile project and will encourage other documentary photographers to bring similar projects to the fore.

Katharina Hesse is a Beijing-based photographer who has lived in Asia for nearly two decades. Her photography focuses primarily on China’s social concerns among them youth, urban culture, religion and North Korean refugees.

Lara Day is a writer, editor and photographer based in Hong Kong and Bangkok whose work has appeared in leading publications including TIME and Travel + Leisure.

Photo © Nicole Precel_Courtesy Al Jazeera

If you think Al Jazeera is only an excellent source of international news, and the Arab satellite television channel that left all our cable networks in the dust during the momentous events in the Middle East, you'd be wrong because it also features photography essays such as the one by Nicole Percel's Vietnam: Between Tradition & Modernity.

In February 2011; Nicole Precel and Nick Ahlmark were in Chi Ca Commune, a cluster of villages in Xin Man district, part of Ha Giang province in northern Vietnam, the poorest province in the country, to make a movie for the final episode of Al Jazeera's Birthrights, a series examining maternal health around the world.

Al Jazeera also features social documentary work such as the accompanying video The Mountain Midwives of Vietnam.

"From the pickup, Lynsey saw a body outstretched next to our car, one arm outstretched. We still don’t know whether that was Mohammed. We fear it was, though his body has yet to be found."

We all remember the relief that the photojournalism/media felt when Stephen Farrell, Tyler Hicks, Lynsey Addario and Anthony Shadid were freed from their brutal ordeal at the hands of the pro-Qaddafi military.

Those us who have long memories also recall that the photojournalists' Libyan driver was named in the various articles that reported on the event as Mohammed, or "the driver", if at all. I wrote a blog post lamenting the fact that Mohammed's last name was unknown, despite his probable end at the hands of the Libyan loyalists.

Felix Salmon of the Reuters blog has written The Hermetic & Arrogant New York Times which, among many targets, aims at Bill Keller's (the NYT's editor) by writing this:

He (Keller) talks at length about Hetherington and Hondros, and about other photographers, like Joao Silva, who parachute in to war zones, meet fixers, get their shots, and then move on to the next job — if they don’t get their legs blown off in the process. He writes movingly about NYT photographers Tyler Hicks and Lynsey Addario, who were brutally treated in Libya but survived; he doesn’t mention their driver, Mohamed Shaglouf, who almost certainly didn’t.

For the life of me, I can't understand why he didn't. Is it tribalism, elitism, myopia, "i don't give a shit" about non NYT people...or non-Americans?

Photo © Alvaro Barrientos-Courtesy Photoblog MSNBC

Photo © Alvaro Barrientos- Courtesy Denver Post

Holy Week in Christianity is the last week of Lent and the week before Easter, and provides remarkable opportunities to photographers to capture the various religious festivals, rituals and pageants that are scheduled, particularly in Catholic communities, during the period. The week includes the religious holidays of Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.

Some of the featured rituals in Spain, Portugal and Italy include the processions of hooded flagellants during Lent, as well as self-crucifixion in the Philippines considered as a form of devout worship.

In the top photograph, a masked flagellant is comforted by a colleague at the end of his penance during the 'Los Picaos' brotherhood Good Friday procession in San Vicente de la Sonsierra, northern Spain. The second photograph is of a penitent dragging his chains at the same venue. Both photographs are by Alvaro Barrientos, and I think they're some of the best amongst featured by the various photo blogs.

Flagellation is not restricted to Catholicism, but is also practiced in other religious traditions, notably in Shi'a Islam during the Day of Ashura. Much older religious tradtions, like the cult of Isis in Egypt and the Dionysian cult of Greece, practiced their own forms of flagellation.

Apart from a Holy Week spent in Guatemala in 2002 photographing the processions, I haven't photographed Catholic religious traditions (except for a short photo shoot at a small festival in Oaxaca), and I ought to plan for 2012.

Of course, it depends if the 21st of May doesn't turn out to be the end of the world as a demented US preacher predicts....then I (and the majority of us) would've missed the chance.

Photo © Vivian Maier-All Rights Reserved

Much praise has been deservedly written and said about Vivian Maier, and of her photography. The story of this nanny and her photography has impressed the world, and now she (through the work of John Maloof) has a dedicated website.

Maier’s work was discovered in 2007 by John Maloof at a local thrift auction house on Chicago’s Northwest Side, while researching material for a book on that area of Chicago.

Whilst I knew that Maier's work was principally in street photography, I found out that she undertook trips on her own to Canada in 1951 and 1955, in 1957 to South America, in 1959 to Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, in 1960 to Florida, and in 1965 to the Caribbean Islands. Amazingly, she traveled to India (as evidenced by her portraits in Cochin) and to Yemen in 1959.

The website gathers many galleries of her work; street photographs of New York and Chicago, her travel portfolio (Yemen, India, Canada, France, etc).

I have always maintained that there are no amateur photographers....the work of Vivian Maier validates my point of view.

Magnum In Motion has produced Children Of The Lotus, a multimedia slideshow of Abbas' photographs made during the photographer's travels in 12 Buddhist countries spanning the better part of three years.

Abbas' inspiration was the photograph (it's really a poignant mug shot) of a young Khmer girl who was executed by a genocidal regime. He wonders how a Buddhist society, presumably full of compassion, be able to countenance the massacre and starvation of a quarter of its population?

Most of the images in the slideshow are in black & white, with a few at the end that are in color. Abbas chose to photograph in black & white because, as he tells us, he doesn't describe reality but aims to transcend it. I would have much preferred if the slideshow was either in black & white or color...I suppose the producers had a reason to do otherwise.

I also found the use of the zooming in for close ups and Ken Burns effect somewhat overdone and heavy-handed...and to use throat singing (more of the Mongolian genre) to be the wrong choice to accompany this production. It seems the producers obtained the audio from freesound.org. With the majority of the countries covered in the slideshow being of the Theravada branch of Buddhism, I'm quite sure they could've easily found more appropriate chants.

In multimedia, bad audio kills great photographs. In this project, it's not that it's bad...but it's not relevant. If all the photos had been of Tibetan (although I'm not sure if the chanting are indeed Tibetan...it could be Mongolian) Buddhism, it would've been fine.

Having said that, work by Abbas is still work by Abbas and the mute button is within reach.

Here's a well done video of the festival of Thaipusam (some graphic scenes) by Singapore-based Kevin WY Lee. Kevin WY Lee is a street and documentary photographer and founder of Invisible Ph t grapher Asia, which is not only a collective of photographers in Asia specializing in street photography and visual journalism, but is also a platform, blog, showcase and library archive of street photography and visual journalism in that important part of the world.

I have already posted work by one of their photographers, and I'm consistently impressed by IPA's features...so bookmark it.

It was made using a Panasonic GH2 and Pentax 25mm F/1.4 lens.

Thaipusam is an important festival observed by the Hindus of southern India during the Tamil month of Thai (January - February). Outside of India, it is celebrated mainly by the Tamil speaking community settled in Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka and elsewhere.

This short movie was made in Singapore's Thaipusam, where Hindu devotees walk a pilgrimage from the Sri Srinivasa Perumal Temple in Little India, carrying milk pots as offerings or attaching kavadis (heavy burdens) to their bodies, to the Tank Road Temple, four kilometers away.

Photo © Jeffry Plomley-All Rights Reserved

I caught Jeffry Plomley's work on The Leica Camera Blog, and was immediately drawn to his Havana gallery, which features excellent street scenes that are very nicely toned. A Canadian photographer, he has the ability of traveling to Cuba as freely as he wishes; something that we here in The United States cannot do as freely.

Jeffry tells us in the Leica Camera Blog that he considers Havana to be one of the world’s meccas for street photography. This is not an exaggerated statement, but one that I wholeheartedly endorse since I visited the island and its capital (legally) in 2000. In the first part of Jeffry's post, he also describes his choice of gear, packing two M9s and two M7s, with 21mm Elmarit Aspherical, 28mm Summicron Aspherical, 35mm Summicron Aspherical, 50mm Summicron, and the 75mm Summicron Aspherical. Phew!

There's also a wonderful gallery of Cuban boxing action, which I recall was a huge attraction to the photographers who were attending the workshop I enrolled in.

I suggest you choose the slideshow option, but watch it in full screen. Don't miss the one (#13) of an elderly Cuban patting a dog...grest shot!

I've started to feature the work of young Egyptian photojournalists working for the local newspapers, who not only documented the Tahrir uprisings, but who also participated in the revolution.

For why I'm doing this, you can read my earlier post The Revolution...This Time Through The Lenses Of Home-Grown Egyptian Photojournalists.

This is the third part in the series, and is the work of Lobna Tarek, an Egyptian photojournalist who just started to work for El Shorouk Newspaper a few months ago. She holds a degree in Communications from Cairo University, and at just 22 has taken up photojournalism as a full time career.

Imagine having just joined the profession and being plunged in a historic and momentous event within weeks of starting her career!

For each slideshow in the series, I chose the popular "Enta Omri" or "You Are My Life" from the repertory of the legendary Um Kulthum, the Egyptian singer who was the incomparable voice of her country. I owe the idea to a wonderful multimedia essay titled Spring by Shirin Neshat in the New York Times, who also used it as a metaphor for the revolution.

Photo © Eman Helal-All Rights Reserved

Since the recent effort by BagNews's Assignment Egypt (Analyzing News Photo From the 18 Days Revolution) wasn't about featuring the work of Egyptian photojournalists, I thought I'd solicit submissions from young home-grown Egyptian photojournalists working for the local newspapers, who not only documented the Tahrir uprisings, but who also participated in the revolution...in their revolution, for this blog instead.

These photojournalists are far from being "khawagas" (a colloquial nickname for non-Egyptians), they are not well-known in the Western media, they are -to borrow a word from the US military- "grunts"...hard-working people with little support except their own small local network, and who've been mistreated and distrusted by the Mubarak authorities. They've worked, and continue to work, under difficult circumstances. The foreign photojournalists who "parachuted" briefly into Egypt at the first whiff of civil disturbances did a great job documenting the revolution, but they were still "parachutists'...they were not indigenous to the revolution....sure, they documented it with a good photographic eye...sure, some of them were badly beaten by pro-regime thugs...sure, their photographs were plastered on pages of major newspapers and magazines...but they can never understand the revolution as these young local photographers did.

I know that featuring the work of these Egyptian photojournalists here may start the ball rolling, and could soon lead to larger venues where their talent can be better appreciated...I also know that generous photographers such as Eric Beecroft, John Horniblow and Michael Robinson Chavez are planning such venues. When I have all the details I'll announce them here.

In the meantime, I will feature the work of a handful of these young professionals on The Travel Photographer blog during the coming week.

Tyler Hicks In Libya Photo © John Moore/Getty Images-All Rights Reserved

All of us who are connected to the world of photojournalism and photography were greatly relieved that Stephen Farrell, Tyler Hicks, Lynsey Addario and Anthony Shadid. were freed a couple of days ago from their ghastly ordeal at the hands of the pro-Qaddafi military.

The New York Times featured a compelling narrative written by the four individuals, and which describes in gripping details what they went through; suffering beatings, indignities, insults and more. The most personal cry from the heart came in the following:

From the pickup, Lynsey saw a body outstretched next to our car, one arm outstretched. We still don’t know whether that was Mohammed. We fear it was, though his body has yet to be found.

If he died, we will have to bear the burden for the rest of our lives that an innocent man died because of us, because of wrong choices that we made, for an article that was never worth dying for.

No article is, but we were too blind to admit that.

Mohamed was the Libyan driver who had been driving the four when captured by the pro-Qaddafi military, and there's no news of his fate.

While the great majority of the comments made on the article were extremely supportive, a few were not. However, this is the hard core reality of conflict and war. A split second decision may mean life or death...a turn to the left instead to the right may lead one to death or imprisonment...and being at the wrong place at the wrong time means being maimed or worse. The ones at fault for whatever happened to Mohammed are not Tyler Hicks' nor his companions, but whoever killed or imprisoned him.

Having said that, I wish Mohammed had a last name. Perhaps the article hasn't made it public for fear of retribution on his family...that would be understandable. Otherwise, not to mention it is doing him or his memory a disservice. Mohammed has a surname, has a family name...Tyler Hicks and his companions should have known it.

Photojournalists would be unable to do their jobs if not for the vital support of local fixers, interpreters and drivers. And yet, little recognition if any is granted to them. Perhaps it's the nature of the local fixers to remain anonymous so that they get obtain further assignments.

I don't know for sure...but what I do know is that I felt really sorry for Mohammed to only be known as Mohammed...the driver. Perhaps The New York Times and their journalists will eventually be able to compensate him and his family.