Photoreportage on child trafficking

Chatelaine.com has just published my photoreportage on child trafficking!
I was first introduced to this sensitive subject on the set of Wendy Champagne's documentary film "BAS! Beyond the Red Light", filmed in Mumbai in 2008. I hope to collaborate with various NGOs working to stop child trafficking in Nepal, India, Laos, and Cambodia during my travels this winter.

http://fr.chatelaine.com/dossiers/article.jsp?content=20100831_161050_10116

l'École d'été 2010

Last week, I had the honor of mentoring (for the second year) a photojournalism workshop at the Institut du Nouveau Monde's "École d'été" at Concordia University.

Here is a slideshow I put together with some of the images produced by me and my participants:

The world's first digital camera!

The Places We Live

We are witness to a major shift in the way people across the world live: for the first time in human history more people live in cities than in rural areas. This triumph of the urban, however, does not entirely represent progress, as the number of people living in urban slums—often in abject conditions—will soon exceed one billion.

From 2005 to 2007 Magnum photographer Jonas Bendiksen documented life in the slums of four different cities: Nairobi, Kenya; Mumbai, India; Jakarta, Indonesia; and Caracas, Venezuela. His lyrical images capture the diversity of personal histories and outlooks found in these dense neighborhoods that, despite commonly held assumptions, are not simply places of poverty and misery. Yet, slum residents continuously face enormous challenges, such as the lack of health care, sanitation, and electricity.

The images are presented both online as a multimedia presentation and also as a book published by Aperture Books.

Eyjafjallajökull Timelapse Video Shot With 5D Mark II

Iceland, Eyjafjallajökull - May 1st and 2nd, 2010 from Sean Stiegemeier on Vimeo.

Using Canon’s 5D Mark II, a 16-35mm f2.8 lens, and a motorized timelapse motorized dolly loaned to him by MiLapse, photographer/ filmmaker Sean Stiegemeier made use of the day-and-a-half window of decent weather he got while on location to create the above video, shot from pulled-back vantage points around the base of the volcano.

The trip took Stiegemeier from Seattle to Detroit (where he picked up the dolly and got a tutorial on how to use it on the floor of the airport), back to Seattle (flight to Reykjavik canceled), then to New York, Glasgow, the wrong part of Iceland and then, a six-hour bus ride later, to Reykjavik.

Stiegemeier, who says he is “a firm believer in using technology to color correct and create the best looking images,” used HDR (high dynamic range) processing for some of the shots. He says it took four days for his computer to render the video made up of 7000 stills, but he didn’t spend very much time choosing images, color correcting or editing because he didn’t expect many people to see it.

BAS! wins at DOXA

Wendy Champagne's 'BAS! Beyond the Red Light' wins the NFB Colin Low award for most innovative Canadian documentary at Vancouver's DOXA Film Festival!

http://www.doxafestival.ca/doxa-10/festival/films/bas.html

Peekfreak

peekfreak is a collaborative project between industrial designer Wai Lam and experimental photographer Yann Huey in which they explore the possibility of making cameras using everyday objects. The cameras they’ve made so far use things such as discarded bike parts, plastic containers, and 3.5” floppy disks. The cameras are extremely minimalistic, and the sliding metal cover of the floppy disk is used as a simple shutter mechanism to expose the film. Since the cameras are so randomly put together, the resulting photographs have their unique looks depending on construction.

Travesias cover

Made it on the cover of Mexican travel magazine Travesias!
Plus images to accompany Claudia Itzkowich's article on Quebec City and Montreal's gastronomy entitled "Quebec Fusion".

The Georgia Straight's cover

In anticipation of the DOXA Documentary Film Festival in Vancouver, « BAS! Beyond the Red Light » made it to the cover of Vancouver's Georgia Straight, Canada's most important weekly with 697 000 readers!
Read the article here.

Human Traffic

Australian magazine MindFood just published an article this month called "Human Traffic", written by Wendy Champagne and illustrated by my images. The images were shot in Mumbai on the set of Wendy's documentary film "BAS: Beyond the Red Light" and at the Rescue Foundation, a shelter for victims of child trafficking.

EARTH DAY

To celebrate Earth Day, Magnum Photos presents the natural beauty of the planet, images of human efforts to preserve the environment, and some places not yet touched by the idea of sustainability. Have a look here.

Remote Lives Enduring Spirit

Remote Lives, Enduring Spirit by Kiran Ambwani | BOOK INFO

India's National Census

NEW DELHI (AP) -- India has begun a yearlong census of its billion-plus population in which it plans to photograph and fingerprint every citizen over the age of 15 to create a national database and then issue its first national identity cards. About 2.5 million census-takers have begun traveling across more than 630,000 villages and 5,000 cities in an effort to visit every structure serving as a home, from tin shanties to skyscrapers, in what the government calls the world's largest administrative exercise.

For the first time, they will note the availability of toilets, drinking water and electricity, and the type of building materials to create a comprehensive picture of housing in India. They will also take fingerprints and photographs of each person and collect information on Internet, mobile phone and bank account usage. The census-takers -- mostly local government officials or schoolteachers -- also plan to include millions of homeless people who sleep on railway platforms, under bridges and in parks.

Some interesting images of India can be found on The Frame.

WORLD WATER DAY

More people die from polluted water every year than from all forms of violence, including war, according to the United Nations. "Sick Water", the UN Environment Program's report, estimates 2 billion tons of waste water, including fertilizer run-off, sewage and industrial waste, is being discharged daily. That waste fuels the spread of disease and damages ecosystems. 3.7 percent of all deaths are attributed to water-related diseases, translating into millions of deaths.

Interesting images to commemorate World Water Day worldwide are posted on The Frame, the photo blog of The Sacramento Bee.

Access to Life

The Global Fund is a unique global public-private partnership dedicated to attracting and disbursing additional resources to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.

In Access to Life, a multimedia production for The Global Fund, 8 Magnum Photos photographers (Paolo Pellegrin, Alex Majoli, Larry Towell, Jim Goldberg, Gilles Peress, Jonas Bendiksen, Steve McCurry, and Eli Reed) traveled to 9 countries, photographing people before and 4 months after they began antiretroviral treatment for AIDS.

Phil Borges: social documntary photographer

For over twenty five years Phil Borges has lived with and documented indigenous and tribal cultures around the world, and with his work he aims to create a deeper understanding of issues faced by people in the developing world. Phil says his mission is "To bring awareness and inspire support for individuals and organizations that address social issues around the world."
Have a look at his truly inspiring work:
http://www.philborges.com

The Travel Photographer

Tewfic El-Sawy is a freelance photographer who specializes in documenting endangered cultures and traditional ways of life in Asia, Latin America and Africa. Passionate about documentary-travel photography, he also produces multimedia stories, merging still photography and ambient sound.

Journey To The End Of Coal

I really applaud the creative story-telling of the interactive multimedia piece "Journey To The End Of Coal", produced by a French multimedia and documentary production house called Honkytonk Films. In this story the viewer participates actively as an investigative journalist exploring China's dangerous coal mining industry. Beautiful photography and interactivity... Have a look!

HAPPY HOLI!!!

Holi, the festival of color, being celebrated in India.
A series of colorful images on 'The Frame', the photo blog of The Sacremento Bee.

In the Shadow of Tibet, a Culture in Exile

In honor of Losar (Tibetan New Year), I have been invited to share some images from my series "In the shadow of Tibet, a culture in exile" at Bistro TribuTerre, Montreal.

Je vous invite à decouvrir ce restaurant organisé sous forme de coopérative de solidarité, un lieu de sensibilisation aux enjeux écologiques, économiques, sociaux et internationaux.

There will be a small gathering this Friday 19th February 2010 from 5:30-7pm, where Michael Bramadat Willcock will screen the Canadian premier of YETI, a film about the Tibetan freedom movement in India.

World Press Photo 2010

Results of the World Press Photo 2010 are now online.

The jury of the 53rd annual World Press Photo Contest has selected an image by Pietro Masturzo (Italy) as the World Press Photo of the Year. The picture depicts women shouting in protest from a rooftop in Tehran on 24 June. The winning photograph is part of a story depicting the nights following the contested presidential elections in Iran, when people shouted their dissent from roofs and balconies, after daytime protests in the streets. The story as a whole was awarded first prize in the category People in the News.

Juror Guy Tillim commented: "The difficulty in photographing conflict situations is one of portraying the parallel lives involved, of people going on with their lives. This picture has made a very good attempt at marrying these two elements, in giving the conflict a context - and that is a holy grail of photography. The photographer does it with a very beautiful image of an Iranian landscape, which would be worth looking at in itself. But it also arouses our curiosity about the woman shouting - incorporating this moment, the importance of this historical event. It represents a very honest and successful attempt at taking forward our vocabulary of showing things."

Photographer’s Stop Motion Video Nominated For A Grammy

Israeli photographer Eyal Landseman created a stop motion music video for Oren Lavie’s song “Her Morning Elegance” and now it’s up for a Grammy Award. It's amazing!!!

"Her Morning Elegance" music video was made of exactly 2096 still photographs, shot and sequenced to create the sense of movement using stop motion technique.

After going from stills to motion, the artists decided to break the motion back to its still form and exhibit the 2096 individual photographs in gallery exhibitions worldwide.

Each still photograph will be printed once as a single edition print and sold through their online gallery. Once a photograph is sold, the corresponding second in the video will no longer be available. And with the very last frame sold, the video will have been broken apart, back to its original 2096 pieces, spread worldwide and hung in 2096 houses, bedrooms, living rooms and galleries.

How cool is that?

Kumbh Mela festival, India

Kumbha Mela is the largest religious gathering in the world, where saints and devotees gather to take a dip in the holy river Ganges. The month-long Hindu festival, which is celebrated every three years, rotates among four Indian cities : Allahabad, Haridwar, Ujjain, and Nashik. It is attended by millions of people on a single day. The major event of the festival is a ritual bath at the banks of the rivers in each town. Other activities include religious discussions, devotional singing, mass feeding of holy men and women and the poor, and religious assemblies where doctrines are debated and standardized.

Kumbh Mela is the most sacred of all the pilgrimages. Thousands of holy men and women (monks, saints and sadhus) attend, and the auspiciousness of the festival is in part attributable to this. After visiting the Kumbh Mela of 1895, Mark Twain wrote:

“

It is wonderful, the power of a faith like that, that can make multitudes upon multitudes of the old and weak and the young and frail enter without hesitation or complaint upon such incredible journeys and endure the resultant miseries without repining. It is done in love, or it is done in fear; I do not know which it is. No matter what the impulse is, the act born of it is beyond imagination, marvelous to our kind of people, the cold whites.

In 2001, I attended the Maha Kumbh at Allahabad, with a total participation of approximately 60 million people. The dates for this mela were special due to the planetary positions that repeat only once in 144 years. I hope to revisit the next Maha Kumbh Mela in 2012!

"To take a photograph is to align the head, the eye and the heart. It's a way of life."
- Henri Cartier-Bresson

The Baduy of Indonesia

The Baduy (or Badui), who call themselves Kanekes, are a traditional community living in the western part of the Indonesian province of Banten, near Rangkasbitung. Their population of between 5,000 and 8,000 is centered in the Kendeng mountains at an elevation of 300-500 meters above sea level. Their homeland in Banten, Java is contained in just 50 sq. kilometers of hilly forest area 120 km from Jakarta, Indonesia's capital.The word Baduy may come from the term "Bedouin", although other sources claim the source is a name of a local river. The Baduy observe many mystical taboos. They are forbidden to kill, steal, lie, commit adultery, get drunk, eat food at night, take any form of conveyance, wear flowers or perfumes, accept gold or silver, touch money, or cut their hair. Other taboos relate to defending Baduy lands against invasion: they may not grow sawah (wet rice), use fertilizers, raise cash crops, use modern tools for working ladang soil, or keep large domestic animals. -- Wikipedia

Photos: Getty Images / Ulet Ifansasti

Humanity by Hélène Tremblay

World traveler, author, photographer, speaker, and founder of Familles du Monde, Helene Tremblay has lived with and shared the daily life of families in 116 countries. This unique experience has provided her with a unique vision of what it takes to be a true “Global Citizen”, and resulted in 15 unique books of life from all corners of the planet.

I had the pleasure of meeting Hélène a couple years ago when I was hired by IB World magazine to photograph her for their article. Since then I have been inspired by her and her mission of presenting humanity to humanity so that every one on earth knows with whom they share this planet.

This morning I attended a truly inspirational conference by Hélène on becoming a true global citizen. Through her photographs of life around the world, Hélène explained how similarities around the world can provide a common ground for understanding and embracing our differences.

Spotlight on Haiti

"As the Dust Settles"

Some moving, shocking, and at times horrifying images of day-to-day life in Port-au-Prince taken this past week by photographer Michael McElroy.

McElroy reports: "Since Independence in 1804, Haiti has carried a heavy burden of poverty, corruption and one natural disaster after another. Haiti was still recovering from four hurricanes that struck the country in 2008 when the earthquake shook the city of Port-au-Prince. Fortunately, the spirit of the Haitian people has never been broken, and despite their tortured past, just days after the earthquake life appears to be returning to some sense of normality. People have started to rebuild their homes, the markets are full of produce, and soccer is being played in the empty lots and fields. Perhaps once the dust has settled a new bright day will dawn for Haiti and its people..."

Support NEED Magazine

NEED magazine needs your support.

Despite their exhaustive efforts, NEED magazine has not been able to secure the subscriptions, advertising sponsors or investors needed to continue.

NEED's mandate states: We are not out to save the world, but to tell the stories of those who are

These stories have the power to inspire and create change.

Last year they published my story of the "Women's trek for peace and development in Nepal" on their blog:

http://www.needmagazine.com/blog/2009/09/05/womens-trek-for-peace-development-in-nep/

Visit their website for some incredible photo essays on humanitarian efforts around the globe.