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.