Gnawa: The African Sufis

One of Tewfic El-Sawy's long-term projects involves the various Sufi traditions in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa.  In 2009, The Travel Photographer was able to capture a number of international performers playing fusion music alongside the Gnawa, traditional Sufi musicians from Morocco.

Life Without Lights - Ghana

Year-round in Ghana, the sun sets at 6pm and rises at 6am – thus, the residents of communities lacking electricity live half of their lives in the dark. Over ten years ago, the government of Ghana began a massive campaign to provide the country’s rural north with electricity, but the project ceased almost immediately after it began. 

Living without lights is more than just a minor inconvenience. Electricity provides a paramount step on the ladder of economics, and northern villagers know what is being kept from them: lights to study and cook by, machinery and refrigeration, and a standard of living that would attract teachers, nurses, and other civil service workers from the city, not to mention foreign tourists. Potential economic growth is stifled and poverty’s cyclical nature is perpetuated.

Gold's Costly Dividends

This report identifies systemic failures on the part of Toronto-based Barrick Gold that kept the company from recognizing the risk of abuses, and responding to allegations that abuses had occurred. The report examines the impact of Canada's failure to regulate the overseas activities of its companies and also calls on Barrick to address environmental and health concerns around the Human Rights Impacts of Papua New Guinea’s Porgera Gold Mine with greater transparency.

Hunger In America

Hunger in America, by Christopher Anderson focuses attention on the more than 6 million Americans who are 60 and older don't have enough to eat. Many of them are eligible for federal help to buy food under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which used to be called food stamps.

Voices Of Haiti

Jeremy Cowart is a professional photographer from Nashville, Tennessee and wrote the following intro to his Haiti photo gallery:

"After the 7.0 earthquake rocked Haiti on January 12th of this year, I was deeply moved as most of you were. For days I watched as the television flashed images of gloom and doom... dead bodies, crumbled buildings... It just felt like a heartless display of numbers and statistics. "How were the people feeling?" I wondered. I was tired of hearing endless reports from strangers that just arrived to this devastated nation. So I decided to go to Port-Au-Prince myself and ask them directly. My question was simply "What do you have to say about all this?" 

Sophie Gerrard: The Coal Cycle Wallahs

Wobbling and pushing their bikes laden high with stolen coal, the Coal Cycle Wallahs slowly make their way through rural Jharkhand's steep and twisting forest roads.  Home to the largest coal belt in Asia, Jharkhand has been plagued by poverty, lawlessness, bad governance and corruption for over 50 years. The Coal Cycle Wallahs and the work they do, are a stark illustration of poverty in the midst of rich fossil fuel resource abundance.

Natabar Sarangi - The Source

Natabar Sarangi is just one of a growing number of farmers throughout the world who realise that if we do not begin to repair the damage taking place to our agricultural systems and our environment, we will lose not just our cultural identity but our fundamental right to a truly sustainable system of food security. 

It's about a global phenomenon taking place where a nonsustainable system systematically destroys a sustainable one, where short term profit has the power to overwhelm common sense and the consciousness of many millions, where progress is not progress but the wanton destruction of an ecosystem and environment we will never be able to replace.

The Housing is a Human Right Project

Housing is a Human Right is an ongoing multi-platform documentary portrait of the struggle for home. The project creates a space for people to record stories, in their own words, of home, community and efforts to maintain or obtain housing. Composed of stories in sound and photographs, in the tradition of oral history, along with testimonies and memories – woven and remixed – this collection of viscerally honest, first-person narratives aims to illuminate the complex fabric of community and the human right to a place to call home. 

To Conquer Her Land

The border areas between India and Pakistan are like their own world. Since partition in 1947, the border has seen war, smuggling (people, arms, drugs), firing, jingoistic parades, killing, suicide bombing, fireworks, lonely tears and moments of glory.  Poulomi Basu documents India’s first ever batch of women soldiers that were deployed at the country’s first line of defence, the India-Pakistan border.

Words By Everynone

Seven Billion

This month's issue of the National Geographic Magazine focuses on the fact that there will soon be seven billion people on the planet.

In the image above by Randy Olson, Kolkata's steaming streets are crammed with vendors, pedestrians, and iconic Ambassador taxis, throbbing with some 16 million people—and more pour in every day from small towns. In 1975 only three cities worldwide topped ten million. Today 21 such mega cities exist, most in developing countries, where urban areas absorb much of the globe's rising population.

White Shadows

White Shadows is a photo-essay by The Travel Photographer, Tewfic El-Sawy on the widows of Vrindavan. It is here, in the sacred and holy city of Vrindavan, that a segment of impoverished Indian widows find refuge after the death of their husbands. Being destitute, these women are often cast out of their family homes by her children and in-laws, unable or unwilling to feed an extra mouth.  The widows earn a meager keep by chanting devotional chants on behalf of pious families, and congregate in various ashrams in the city.

Down And Outs Of Howrah

Soham Gupta has been producing a photo-essay on a group of down-and-outs who live near the world famous Howrah Railway Station, in West Bengal. Most of them have taken to drugs and many of them have developed mental disorders and even HIV over the course of their life. 

Mr Blues

Samuel Hargress Jr. is the owner and manager of the Paris Blues bar in Harlem, New York, one of the few remaining old bars in the neighborhood.  While experiencing dramatic changes around him, Sam has created a timeless place where people could seek refuge and unwind amongst friends. That's why they call him Mr. Blues.

Now See Hear

Jimmy Williams is a self-described visual story teller from North Carolina and has produced an album of Southern Musical Masters.

The Cowboys Of Pantanal

Fernanda Preto is a Brazilian photojournalist currently based in Sao Paulo, and after living in the Amazon area for three years, has worked in environment and social reportages.  Her short film is about the Cowboys of Pantanal, which she produced using a Canon 5D Mark II. Pantanal is the largest tropical wetland in the world and is considered as one of the last natural wilderness areas in the world. The cowboys working in the area have survived for more than 100 years, doing the same task as the fathers and forefathers did, drive cattle to the highlands before the floods.

A Year In Pakistan

This video gives a short recap of Wendy Marijnissen's past year in Pakistan. Included are some photographs on childbirth and maternal health, the aftermath of the floods and Hamida's camp pregnancy. More images and stories can be seen online at wendymarijnissen.com.

Sierre Leone: Where Every Pregnancy is a Gamble

In the video below, Ami Vitale and Lauren Malkani document the many post-war challenges that lay ahead for Sierra Leone including improving child and maternal health. in 2009, one in eight women died during pregnancy. Fatimata Konte, an expecting mother, fears giving birth after already losing five of her children. She hopes the new policy to bring free health care to all pregnant women will save her next child and make giving birth safe for all women.

A Lasting Impact

Ethiopia has one of the highest child marriage rates in the world. A Lasting Impact focuses on the personal experiences of those who have had their lives changed due to the influence of United Nations Foundation educational programs throughout Ethiopia that put girls through school and challenge traditional thinking on child marriage.

Children Left Behind In Moldavia

Tiny Moldova is desperately poor. As many as a quarter of the 4.3 million people listed as living there actually work in Italy and other Western European countries sending pay home to support their families.  Andrea Diefenbach set about to depict the daily lives of the Moldovan children who were left behind either to fend for themselves or live with grandparents, as well as the parents who departed. Her project, “Country Without Parents,” resonates with love and sadness and is a captivating contrast between devotion and abandonment.

Masr

I came across the following video featured on one of my favorite sites, The Travel Photographer, by Tewfic El-Sawy. He introduces the piece by Javier Morgade with the following preamble:

In my view (and I should know), Javier managed to capture in this short movie the essence of the Egyptian character, the kindness, humor, hospitality and generosity...even their occasional legendary intrusiveness. It saddens me to see the poverty in the alleys of old Cairo, but as always, it's mitigated by the Egyptian talent for being able to share setbacks, poverty, sorrows, and life troubles. No Egyptian is an island...and while they find enormous solace in their extended families and friends, neighbors and even casual acquaintances...they deserve better.

Female Imams; Islam In China

After moving to Taiwan from the UK at eighteen, Sharron Lovell developed a soft spot for the east - picking up Mandarin Chinese, a green tea habit and terrible driving skills. It’s stories rather than single images that interest her the most, and she has covered a number of issues in China from HIV/Aids, Islam and internal migration. 

Tango Soul

The dance and music that would become the tango has been created by Italian and Spanish immigrants, freed African slaves and gauchos in Buenos Aires around the 1880s. Tango is not a dance, is a particular way of seeing and enjoying life, far from the glamorous tango-show for tourists, that today lives where dusty bottles line the walls of old cafès. Where tango is poetry, songs, and culture.

Three Women

Three Women is a work of fiction. Eirc Maierson wrote the script and directed the actors. But for him, these stories are also true.  They tell the story of women in pain who struggle to make sense of their lives. Photographs tell these stories, not video, as he wanted viewers to have the opportunity to linger, to consider in a way that only still images, in their slowing down of time, can afford

Maternal Mortality

Every minute, a pregnant woman dies around the world from complications during pregnancy, delivery or shortly afterward—from Sierra Leone, to Afghanistan, to Haiti. Of the more than half a million women who die during pregnancy or childbirth annually, 90 per cent occur in Africa and Asia. In Sierra Leone, the lifetime risk of a woman dying from complications of pregnancy and childbirth is one in eight. 

This is the story, by Lynsey Addario (VII Network), of Mamma Sessay, 18, who screamed in pain and fear "I am going to die" as she lay on the delivery table at the Magburaka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone. These words proved to be prophetic as Sessay had postpartum hemorrhaging and died after she delivered the second of twin babies.

A Lost Boy Returns Home

Joseph Gatyoung Khan made a vow, uttered in the back seat of a Land Cruiser on a very bumpy road, as he headed home for the first time in 22 years: I will not cry.  He had not seen his parents for two decades. He had not set foot in his village since he marched off in 1988, an eight-year-old boy on a barefoot odyssey through one of Africa's worst civil wars.  Photographs and text by  Sven Torfinn.

India’s Rickshaws: Human Horses

These men in bare feet, the human horses of Calcutta, haul people and goods for a few rupees through the city's choked passageways for 18 hours a day in the heat and the rain.  Photographs and text by Palani Mohan.

Near Death, The Nuns Contemplate The Other Side

Photographer Mae Ryan interviews the Sisters of the Convent of Mary the Queen, a home for aging nuns in Yonkers, New York.

Oil In Conflict In The Niger Delta

In this interview with VII The Magazine, Ed Kashi talks about his years covering the explosive situation in the Niger Delta. This story has everything, big oil companies, a corrupt political situation, great wealth and extreme poverty, war and the 50th anniversary of Nigeria's independence.

Disappearing Cultures And Tradition: The Bushman

No longer allowed to roam freely on land that was traditionally theirs, Daniel Cuthbert's photo essay showcases how the modern Bushmen of Southern Africa are adapting to their new way of life.

Bali Tajen

From The Travel Photographer Tewfic El-Sawy, a self-described photo expeditions leader, multimedia teacher, and pontificator.  I often view his website and would love to take one of his photo workshops someday.

Precarious Survival On The Lower East Side

Memories of the sounds and smells of the synagogues of Julio Mitchel’s childhood in Havana led him to document the dwindling Jewish presence on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the 1980s. While his upbringing influenced his decision to photograph the neighborhood’s Jews, he believes that the images are about more than a single culture.

Troy, New York - An American Community

Brenda Ann Kenneally's photographs detail the dispiriting circumstances that cycle through generations of young women, a destiny that may have included her if she had not run away as a teenager. Six years ago Brenda returned to Troy, almost 180 miles north of New York City, and found that not much had changed. Through her photographs, Brenda focuses on those small details, such as ads and signs; the swimming hole and the asphalt playground; even fragments of kitchen tables, that express life Upstate.