Documenting The Life Of 20-Somethings

What does it feel like to live through your 20s in the 2010s? The New York Times Magazine asked 13 young photographers to capture the identity of their generation using iPhones. They brought back photos of friends, family members, strangers and themselves. See each photographer’s work, organized by row, here.  Photo below by Jen Davis.

Soldiers' Tattoos In Marjah, Afghanistan

Photographer Mauricio Limo asks the Marines of the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines, to show their skin art here.

The Pierced Heart Of Madagascar

The island’s geographic isolation created a wonderland of biological richness. Now population pressures and political turmoil speed the plunder of its rosewood, minerals, and gems.  View more images by Pascal Maitre here.

Last Letter Documentary

The Last Letter Documentary is a narrative film that takes you around the world to explore the tradition of how Jesus' followers are becoming His hands and feet in places both far and near. From the streets of Nairobi, to a Memphis, TN ghetto, to the war-torn jungles of Burma, discover what three individuals are willing to die for, and what the Last Letter lifestyle is all about. 

The New American Diaspora

Photographer, Kadir van Lohuizen has been documenting the lives of two families displaced from Hurricane Katrina to Houston, Texas. The images are a powerful testament to perseverance these two families poses as they continue to piece their lives back together five years after the storm.

"Those who fell through the cracks" is a traveling street exhibition. Learn more about the exhibit.

American Prison Tattoos

According to a 2006 PEW Research Center report, almost 4 in 10 between the ages of 18 and 40 are tattooed. Tattoos may be becoming the norm but before their surge in popularity, tattoos were the province of society's outcasts: sailors, artists, carnies and outlaws – acting as roadmaps of their lives: who they were, what they had done, their loves, desires, their sorrows and pains.

Read the rest of the story and view Robert Gempert's audio slide show here.

The US Standard And A Double Standard

Jessica Dimmock's intimate portraits of families benefitting from the US government-funded Women, Infants and Children nutrition program (WIC) reveal the other half of the US food aid story. WIC supports a quarter of all American children from birth to age four and has been shown to have dramatically reduced anemia and the rate of low birth weight. The access to nutritious, enriching foods that WIC provides to young American children is a stark contrast to the nutritionally devoid blend of fortified flour dumped on starving children outside the country.

Antonin Kratochvil's bold landscape images lay bare the (mis)use of land and resources in the American midwest. The US Government Accountability Office has found that the current system of sending domestically produced blended flour overseas costs as much as 34 percent more than buying food products locally. Kratochvil maps the food-aid pipeline from the corn fields of Iowa to the ports of Africa, exposing the inefficiency of the current system and its failure to deliver nutritious foods to young children.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and VII Photo present Starved for Attention, a multimedia campaign to uncover the hidden crisis of childhood malnutrition.

Hansen's Disease: A Forgotten Existence

In a remote area of the Vietnamese countryside exists a community of Leprosy victims. There are currently 22 Villages like this in Vietnam and approximately 3,600 patients. Having survived a history of persecution, war and murder, they were exiled and forgotten by the outside world. These people live in little brick shacks with no insulation from the elements and poor sanitation. They have no means to improve their lives and solely rely on their caretakers. They receive most of their contact from the outside world from little broken radios and TVs. Subjected to poor healthcare and inadequate funding, these people continue to survive and live a life forced upon them by their ill fate.

This is their story as documented by Ehrin Macksey.

Framework

Framework, the photography and video blog of the Los Angeles Times, celebrates the power and explores the craft of visual storytelling. The blog highlights the work of Times photojournalists who, frame by frame, document the drama, the emotion and sometimes the humor of life. Framework also aims to serve as a resource hub for photography, multimedia and video enthusiasts who share their passion.  Image by Carolyn Cole.

As Long As We Both Shall Live

Click here to view a photo essay on long-married couples in America by Robert Fass.

Wilmington, Delaware

A sobering multimedia expose on the economic meltdown of an all-American city.  Photos and video by John Moore, produced by Getty Images.

American Muslim Teens

Immigrants from all nations face battles fitting into the cultures and social environments of their adopted countries.  Since the September, 2001 bombings, families and children from Muslim countries and backgrounds confront the rigors of a new life in the US under different social and legal constraints and much closer scrutiny.  Click here to view a photo essay on American Muslim Teens by Robert Nikelsberg.

Sourab

"We sniff glue to forget about our bad mood."

Poor Doesn't Necessarily Mean You're Miserable

Watch a photoessay on Reginald Beckford, part of the Portraits of Poverty project.

Ramadan In New York City

View more images by Mustafah Abdulaziz for The Wall Street Journal here.

We Are All Workers

When the steel mills closed in Braddock, PA, they left behind a dwindling population living in near apocalyptic circumstances. Now, a new generation of urban pioneers has come with a mission...to create a new frontier from the ashes of the once vibrant town.

Chritian Movila, Photographer

My two favorites slideshows are "Unfinished Dreams", a story about pediatric cancer patients, and the self-explanatory "Living Poor In America."  They both can be viewed here.

Personal Violence

Joseph Rodriguez began photographing gangs in Los Angeles in 1992.  He saw Los Angeles as the postmodern wild west, a land governed by the gun.  He adds "It was an uncontrolled and scary place, a land of dreams and beauty, playing by its own rules." Read more and view Joseph's images here.

At The Border

At The Border is a photo essay that describes the illegal labor markets in the new member states of the European Union. Photos by Jan Brykczynski.

Winters Of My Life

View a portrait of Howard Weamer by Jonathan Burhop. For the past 35 years Howard has spent his winters as a hutkeeper in Yosemite's backcountry. He fills his days writing, reading, photographing, and being an ambassador to mountain culture. This is a brief look into his world and why he chooses to stay.

Money, Power, Respect

Pictures Of My Neighborhood by Brenda Ann Kenneally.

The Summers Of Louisville

Advocates for the homeless believe the failing economy, rising unemployment and foreclosure cirsis are causing more two-parent families to seek out assistance from local shelters.  Many of the newly homeless are families in which one or both parents lost a job or were low-wage workers living paycheck to paycheck before a crisis hit.

Kentucky produces some of our nation's most povern people, and the Summers of Louisville are no exception. But their strong family values keep their heads above any challenge that seven people in a single cramped room might face. And that is one thing money could never buy.

First Contact

Paramedics, the first responders, as seen through the lens of Robert Gumpert.

Afghanistan - A Short Journey

Since 2002, photojournalist David Bathgate traveled Afghanistan covering its unfolding saga of war and civilian struggle for the international press. This is a brief record of his feelings, impressions and experiences there.

Understanding Doug Latz

Both misunderstood and widely recognized in Athens County, 48-year-old Doug Latz doesn't let his developmental disability keep him from the roads and bike paths of his world.

Zeru Zeru: Being Albino In Tanzania

Around Lake Victoria, Tanzania, evil acts are driven by the belief that albino body parts possess magical powers, which bring wealth if used in potions produced by local witchdoctors. Most clients are rich businessmen, impatient to extract more gold from their mines, or politicians, eager to be elected into office. Since 2007, official reports indicate that over 54 people with albinism have been brutally murdered; their body parts hacked off and sold for large amounts of money: $2,000 for a leg or an arm, and $10,000 for a whole albino body.

View the rest of Franck Vogel's photo essay here.

Drowning In Opium

Addiction in Afghanistan has risen along with the country's opium production, which is now cranking at something close to fever pitch. With much of its society and many of its institutions ruined by 30 years of fighting, Afghanistan produces more than 90 percent of the world's opium. Profits from the drug sales feed the Taliban insurgency.

Watch the rest of the photo essay by Lynsey Addario for the New York Times here.

Intended Consequences

In 1994, in the East African nation of Rwanda, one million ethnic Tutsi people were slaughtered, in a genocide committed by their Hutu countrymen. But the scars left by these murderous militiamen go well beyond the numbers of the dead: they live on, in the lives of the women they held captive, raped - and left pregnant.

Intended Consequences by MediaStorm tells the stories of some of these women, victims of the sexual violence used as a weapon of war against them. Some 20,000 children were born as a result. Photojournalist Jonathan Torgovnik photographed and interviewed 30 women and their families, and has produced a piece of incredible complexity: how does a woman care for her child when it's the son or daughter of the man who raped her?

One In 8 Million

A favorite example of mine of the simple, yet powerful integration of photography with audio narration is the series by New York Times, One in 8 Million. 

The project tells one story each week, focusing on one central character, someone you might brush shoulders with on the subway of New York. The subject describes, in his or her own words, anything from their own personal struggles, triumphs, daily life or something that defines them. The images work to visually capture the story with a timeless quality, in black and white.

Together, the two mediums form a very intimate local human-interest story that fosters a sense of community which is quite an impressive undertaking considering the expansiveness of New York City.

You Support The Troops? Really?

Photo and introduction below by Photojournalist Evan Vucci.  Read the rest of the article here.

Here in southern Afghanistan, I often ask the soldiers what they think about the things folks are saying about the war back home. The question is usually phrased as a simple, "Does the American public get it?"  How can they? The don’t feel the heat, the fear, the flies. Who can understand what it’s like to know the next step may be your last -- unless you’ve been there? Still, it’s a question often on soldiers’ minds.  

Innocence - Sri Lanka's Child Soldiers

Reading, writing, and killing - the Sri Lankan conflict has long been made notorious for the use of suicide bombers and child soldiers.

Innocence, produced by duckrabbit, is the story of David White's journey to photograph the child soldiers of Sri Lanka and his anger at the world's indifference to their plight.

For more information about child soldiers visit these organizations:

warchild.org

child-soldiers.org/home

hrw.org

unicef.org

amnesty.org.uk/