Petrut Calinescu: Egypt

Photograph © Petrut Calinescu-All Rights Reserved
Petrut Calinescu is a freelance photojournalist member of Panos Pictures, and is working from Bucharest in Romania. His photographs appeared in AP, AFP, Reuters, New York Times, Der Spiegel, National Geographic and a host of other international publications.

Take a look at Petrut's work in Egypt, and specifically his photo essay on the camel market near Cairo. The market is called Birkas, and is the largest of its kind in Africa...it has been in existence for as long as camels have been used for transport. It's certainly not as colorful as the Pushkar Camel fair, and it's not a place for camera-wielding tourists.

The first time I became aware of camel traders was years ago in Khartoum...where I saw many dusty camel traders with some of their herd just ambling down the streets of the Sudanese capital. It was there that I was told of the ancient camel route that traverses Sudan into Egypt.

Again, a few years back, I was interested in joining an expedition which would travel a section of the darb al-arbaeen (translated as the route of 40 days) from the south of Egypt to its capital Cairo. This ancient route -used since antiquity- was an important trade and pilgrimage "highway", and was used by spice, slave, camel traders as well as pilgrims from West Africa on their way to Mecca, and kings and princes visiting Egypt. Its importance has dwindled, but I understand that traditional camel caravans still use it.

Here's the website of Petrut Calinescu.

Foto 8: Jane Hahn: Stilt Life

Photograph © Jane Hahn-All Rights Reserved

Here's a multimedia feature published by Foto 8 magazine and produced by Jane Hahn. The feature is on one of the more unusual slums in the world: a floating slum called Makoko in Nigeria. The feature is titled Stilt Life.

Jane Hahn is a photojournalist based in Accra, Ghana and specializes in documenting post-conflict and developing societies, as well as marginalized communities. She's a contributor to Panos, EPA and Bloomberg.

For further exploration of other photo essays, visit and subscribe to Foto 8

Boston Globe's The Big Picture

Photograph © Andre Penner/AP-All Rights Reserved
PDN's The Photo Feed reports that the Boston Globe has launched a photo blog called “The Big Picture”. The blog is compiled by Alan Taylor, who credits the old Life magazine, National Geographic, Mediastorm and MSNBC for his inspiration.

The Big Picture aims to host high-quality, amazing imagery of current events and lesser-known stories.

The above photograph is of indigenous women bearing machetes, protesting against the construction of a dam in Altamira, Brazil. The photograph is by Andre Penner.

My Show Off: Indian Renunciate

Here's one of my weekly Show-Off features of my personal photography on The Travel Photographer's blog. Click on the photograph to view it larger size.

I took this photograph of a renunciate at the Sufi shrine of Nizzam-Uddin in Delhi. This is the mausoleum of Delhi's most famous Sufi saint Nizamuddin Auliya, and is visited by thousands of Muslims, and sees a large share of Hindus and Christians, on a daily basis.

I hesitate to describe this man as a sadhu, although that is the popular name for Indian ascetics, since in this case, I'm not sure of his religion. He seems to live at the Sufi shrine, however the heavy chains and padlocks around his neck reveal that he practices self-mortification, which is frowned upon in Islamic theology. I had met another individual at the shrine who told me that he wore a vest made of chains and padlocks as penitence for the sins of mankind, and who professed that he was following the teachings of Islam.

Although Sufism originates from the philosophy adopted by early Muslim ascetics, none of those practiced self-mortification of that kind. It may be that this ascetic's a follower of a lesser-known sect (at least to me), or may have combined the ascetic practices of Hindu sadhus and those of the Sufis.

Mark Tuschman: Bhutan

Photograph © Mark Tuschman-All Rights Reserved
Here's the website of Mark Tuschman, a photographer with a strong affinity to social responsibility and a powerful desire to bridge the gap between affluent societies and those which are poor through his photographic talent.

Mark quotes the words of Sebatiao Salgado: "If you take a picture of a human that does not make him noble, there is no reason to take his picture."

Explore his various galleries as I did, and this will lead you to his set of photographs of Bhutan under the International section. I have the feeling that I also photographed one of his subjects (the elderly man wearing the traditional cho and a blue woolen cap in front of the prayer wheels) during my 2006 photo expedition! Here's the link to my People of Druk Yul slideshow in which he (if indeed he's the same one) makes an appearance.

History!

Photograph © T.C. Worley/The New York Times-All Rights Reserved
"America...This is our moment"

This momentous event spells the end of the cancerous political dynastic nepotism and cronyism, and the rebirth of our nation's democratic ideal: meritocracy.

Ben Lowy: Storylines

Photograph © Ben Lowy-All Rights Reserved
I've posted Ben Lowy's work on a number of occasions here on TTP; one of which was on his work in Ethiopia titled Wandering In Ethiopia.

I bring back Ben's work on TTP because of a new project on his website he calls Storylines. He writes that he was getting frustrated and tired of working with digital camera, and started working with a toy camera that would allow him to overlap the photographs and thus create a narrative from one roll of film. He has such "narratives" for India's Kumbh Mela, Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur and the Tsunami.

As I'm planning to buy a Holga before I travel to Bhutan this fall, I was naturally interested in this very interesting idea, and loved it. A single narrative thread from one roll of film...ingenious!

David Gray: South West China

Photograph © David Gray/Reuters-All Rights Reserved
David Gray is a photographer with Reuters, and has published his audio slideshow of South West China on its blog. These are photographs of rarely frequented regions of China.

I'm not a fan of the Ken Burns effect, and although I found it somewhat overused in this slideshow...it doesn't take anything away from the quality of the photography.

David Gray's South West China

GEO Germany: Jonas Bendiksen

Jonas Bendiksen began his photography career as a 19-year-old intern in the London office of Magnum Photos. He eventually left office life to travel through Russia and pursue his own work as a photojournalist. Since then, Jonas has worked on numerous articles throughout the world, including his ongoing project about the world's slums. His coverage on "Dharavi: Mumbai's Shadow City," is featured in National Geographic.

Here's a a German-narrated slideshow feature published on GEO (Germany) website on Jonas' "The Places We Live" project. Since 2005, he has been working on this project which he says is "about the growth of urban slums across the world. In 2007, the world's urban population for the first time will overtake the world's rural population. At almost exactly the same time, the number of people living in urban slums is topping one billion." (From the project "The Places We Live" © /Magnum Photos)

The project explores what that means to the people living in four different cities across the planet.

Shervorn Monaghan : Crossing The Limpopo

Photograph © Shervorn Monaghan-All Rights Reserved
Foto 8 magazine features a slideshow Crossing The Limpopo showcasing the work by Shervorn Monaghan who, earlier this year, was in Musina, the point of entry into South Africa for most Zimbabweans.

Thousands of Zimbabweans have migrated to cities like Johannesburg, trying to escape their country, forced to look elsewhere to make a life for themselves. Xenophobia has recently erupted in South Africa, and Zimbabweans, Somalis, Mozambicans and Malawians were attacked in Johannesburg and other areas, as South Africans accuse these foreigners of taking their jobs and contributing to violence.

Shervorn Monaghan is currently based between Africa and the UK. She specializes in documentary photography and photojournalism, and has traveled extensively through South America, Southern Africa and the UK.

Foto 8 is a magazine "dedicated to publishing photo stories and new writing that supports photojournalism and original story telling whilst also exploring the boundaries between photography, journalism and art."