Yangtze, The Long River

This is both poem, travel journal and odyssey: we witness the journey of photographer Nadav Kander from mouth to source at a time of tumultuous change. He draws us into a landscape highly charged with meaning, it is both distant and present, monumental and intimate.

A Photo A Day

A Photo A Day is an e-mail listserv. a website. a plethora of ideas. a supernova. a place to get constructive criticism. a home for work that you shot for you, not them. A constant source of inspiration, a photo community dedicated to the advancement of photojournalism.  Sign up here.  Photo below by Michael Millady.

Visions Of The Artic

The arctic is a fragile ecosystem teaming with life. Not a "flat white nothingness" like pro-oil politicians have labeled it. This video by Florian Shulz was made to bring you an intimate portrait of a place few people have ever seen. After the ecological tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico, it is time to rethink offshore oil drilling in arctic waters. 

Chosen Ones

In China, children with albinism face a bleak future. Often abandoned and ostracized, most will never be educated, marry or find a job in their country. Adoption offers hope for a chosen few.

An American Civil War

Photo essay by Jeff Antebi.

2010 Visa Pour L'image Perpignan, France

View more images from the 2010 International Festival Of Photojournalism here.

Detained

John Moore, of Getty Images, has visited American-run detention centers in Iraq, including Abu Ghraib and Camp Cropper; prisons for Taliban fighters in Afghanistan run by that country’s National Directorate of Security; the Pul-e-Charki prison outside Kabul; and the Guantánamo Bay detention center. He is gathering these images in a longterm project, “Detained.” 

View the rest of his images and read James Estrin's and David Furst's interview here.

Introducing Oliver Asselin Photography

Olivier Asselin grew up in Eastern Quebec, Canada, where he studied and worked in the IT field for four years before dedicating himself to photography.  He graduated in 2004 from the Western Academy of Photography in my hometown, Victoria, British Columbia, and spent the following year working in the newspaper industry in Western Canada and Morocco.

Based in Africa since 2005, he spent four years in Accra, Ghana and one year in Dakar, Senegal, covering the region for development organizations and editorial clients. Now based in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, he continues to work throughout the continent for clients such as UNICEF, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the New York Times, and the Associated Press.

The Exorcised of Bahadur Shahid

Another excellent video from The Travel Photographer, Tewfic El-Sawy, a photo-expeditions leader, multimedia teacher, and self-ascribed pontificator.

Haiti Before 1.12.10

Over the past few months we've been saturated with images of Haiti after the Big One.  Check out Jeff Antebi's Haiti gallery of pre quake images to gain retrospective.

2010 War On Want Photography Award

The 2010 War On Want Photography prize was awarded to Gareth Kingdon, a student from the University of Wales, Newport, for his vivid photographs of Kibera, Kenya, Africa’s largest slum. His photographs of life in Blikkiesdorp, a notorious transit camp for displaced South Africans, were featured on the front page of The Guardian and can also be viewed on his website.

The Brick Kilns Of Bhaktapur

Child laborers make up a large part of the work force in the brick kilns that Conor Ashleigh documented in Nepal.  It was common to meet children as young as 12 who had travelled from the impoverished Indian state of Bihar to work for 6 months of the year. they live in cramped conditions, work 12 hours a day 7 days a week and receive less than $2 US a day.  While the universal right of a child are recognized by Nepal, the exploitation of child labor is still commonplace.

Bloodline

The AIDS epidemic that came to light in the 1980s still rages today across Africa, killing 1.4 million people and infecting another 1.9 million in 2008 alone. The disease does not discriminate, infecting educators and corporate professionals, as well as the poor.

As a concerned documentarian, Kristen Ashburn went to Africa to address this crisis after being struck by reports of the numbers of those dying. What she found, and what she relates in her deeply moving work, are human beings who are desperate for their story to be understood by the larger world.

Through her work we come to know these people, and to see the larger implications of the disease, as it snakes through whole villages, threatening peoples' livelihoods, intensifying the effects of poverty, and threatening the economic stability of the whole region. Lack of education, awareness, and access to medical care have made the problem seem insurmountable. Through Ashburn's efforts come some glimmer of hope toward a solution.

Introducing Photojournalist Robin Hammond

Click here to view a selection of Robin Hammond's images from around the world.

30 Days In Muslim America

30 Days In Muslim America, a photo essay published in the well-known Boing Boing blog, by Aman Ali and Bassam Tariq. 

Land Of 10,000 Homeless

Every day, approximately 10,000 people in Minnesota will sleep outside or in temporary shelter. This video allows us a chance to see the world from their eyes. For more information, please visit www.voicesofthestreets.org.

The Cripplers

Introducing Hampton Roads' quadriplegic rugby team, the East Coast Cripplers. They fly down the court. They get knocked out of their chairs. They are athletes.  Photography by Preston Gannaway.

Environmental Photographer Of The Year Award

An amazing picture of thousands of rays swimming through the ocean in a colossal school has scooped top prize in the CIWEM Environmental Photographer of the Year 2010 awards. The group of Munkiana Devil Rays were spotted in Baja California Sur, Mexico, by German conservation photographer Florian Schulz.

White Poverty In South Africa

Seeking to reverse decades of racial inequality, South Africa’s ruling ANC government introduced affirmative action laws that promote employment for blacks and aim to give black South Africans a bigger slice of the economy. This shift in racial hiring practices coupled with the fallout from the global financial crisis means many poor white South Africans have fallen on hard times.

Gosport's Rowner Estate

For 25 years, Gosport’s Rowner Estate has been a point of contention, and after much deliberation demolition has begun and residents are leaving through choice or eviction. Built in the 1960s by the Ministry of Defence to house service personnel, the estate was later purchased privately during the 1980s housing boom. Since privatization, the area has had a very low level of financial investment, and in the 1990s the estate’s community slumped to its worst, with certain public services refusing to enter. As residents met increased annual maintenance payments, the owners were reluctant to spend money on the upkeep of the now decaying estate as they felt any development would be met with vandalism. Residents could only watch as the material and social fabric of the area fell apart. With its history of intravenous drug users and violence, the estate is still viewed with distaste by the surrounding communities, and not many outsiders venture within the concrete precinct at the heart of the estate.

In Afghanistan, Passing As A Boy

Under social pressure in Afghanistan to have a son, Mehran’s parents began dressing and treating her as a boy when she was five.  Read the rest of the story here.

In The Name Of God

The Ramnamis are a group of untouchables from central India.  Banned from entering temples along with other Hindus, they decided to tattoo God's name (Ram) all over their faces and bodies.  A message to say the they "could have God with them too", and it angered the upper castes who felt that they were polluting God's name with their untouchable bodies.

Access Olivia Arthur's compelling gallery here.

Dancing With The Dead

Winter in Madagascar is a season that sees two traditional rites of passage, famadihana (the turning of the bones) and circumcision.  View Ed Ou's Dancing With The Dead.

Battle For Hearts And Minds

On July 2nd, 2009, four thousand US Marines of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade launched a major helicopter assault into a Taliban stronghold in the Helmand River Valley in southern Afghanistan in order to break a military stalemate with the insurgent group.

Independent filmmaker Danfung Dennis was embedded with Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Company, as they were dropped 18 km behind enemy lines to seize a key bridge. Within a few hours of landing, fierce fighting erupted and continued for the next three days, during which Lance Corporal Charles Sharp, from Adairsville, Georgia was shot and killed by a Taliban fighter.

After the initial fighting, the Marines searched for the insurgents who had killed Lance Corporal Sharp. Frustration set in as the Marines tried to fight the elusive enemy whose IED's cut off their supply lines. The Marines’ objective was to secure and protect the population, but the Afghan villagers complained that the fighting has driven them into the desert, and the bombing destroyed their homes. Can the Marines balance their contradictory roles as warriors and statesmen, as they struggle to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people?

Insect Macro Photos

Although I'm not a huge fan of macro photography, I found these beautifully lit insect shots by Leon Baas to be visually stunning.

Los Migrantes

Los Migrantes, by Tewfic El-Saway, is a photo essay of illegal migrants from Central America traversing Mexico on their way to the United States by hitching rides on freight trains. The main transit point for these migrants is La Lecheria, near Mexico City.

Sin And Salvation In The Mississippi Delta

Matt Eich is a photographer based in Norfolk, Virginia and a Founding Member of LUCEO Images.  Matt has started a new project documenting life in Baptist Town, Mississippi and provides the following introduction:

My goal with this project is to remind people that while we may live in a time where civil rights is taught in history classes around the country, the real legacies of racism in the south continue to impact people economically and culturally, in persistent and often pernicious ways. I want to directly focus our collective attention on this complicated inheritance, focusing on the Mississippi Delta and Baptist Town in particular by bringing an exhibition of the work created to both its residents and the more affluent white communities on the other side of the tracks.

Part 1 and Part 2 of the photo essay are available for viewing now.

Reentry In Los Angeles

Photographs and interviews by Joseph Rodriguez.

A Day In Varanasi

The allure of the whole city of Varanasi - the age-old temples and rituals of life and death being played out in a never-ending rhythm - has driven it to become a significant tourist attraction. Scores of visitors continuously direct their lenses towards the praying, rinsing, dead and religiously awakened. But in the midst of this ceremonial stage there is also daily life.

Palo: African Ritual In Cuba

The Palo religion is a syncretic religion which developed amongst the black slaves brought to Cuba from the Congo during the colonial period. Palo, having its roots in spiritual concepts of the indigenous people in Africa, worships the spirits (of humans, plants, etc) and the natural powers (thunder, ocean, etc).  Due to the forced evangelization, Palo often give them faces and names known from the Christian dogma.  Read the rest of  Jan Sochor's story here.

A Million Shillings: Escape From Somalia

In 2006, Alixandra Fazzina started photographing refugees and migrants from civil war-torn Somalia, the uprooted people who risk all to cross the Gulf of Aden in search of a better life. The two-year project has now been turned into an epic, often sadly beautiful book, A Million Shillings: Escape From Somalia. Fazzina's original idea was to follow a single group of refugees from Somalia to Yemen, but that became untenable when she realised few people reach the other side. As it was, she faced extraordinary risks and came upon dreadful suffering, at one point leaving her camera on a beach to help drag survivors from a boat overloaded with dead bodies.